died in 2000<\/a>; today, Ness is the only founding member left in the group. (His bandmates are guitarist Jonny Wickersham, bassist Brent Harding and drummer David Hidalgo Jr.)<\/p>\nAsked whether he\u2019s surprised to find himself still playing in a punk band in his mid-60s, Ness shrugs. \u201cNot really,\u201d he says. \u201cMaybe it\u2019s arrested development. Or maybe youth and rebellion are just part of my personality. They\u2019re never gonna go away.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ness wrote the songs on \u201cBorn to Kill\u201d before he was diagnosed with cancer but recorded his vocals after he recovered.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t my first brush with death,\u201d says the singer, who struggled with a heroin addiction in the early \u201980s. \u201cBut it was probably the most profound. I couldn\u2019t even talk after surgery. I mean, I\u2019m pretty sure they had my tongue out on a table.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, they did not!\u201d Christine pipes up. \u201cThis is urban lore in the making right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Social](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778847454_770_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Mike Ness in 1990.<\/p>\n
(Lisa Lake \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201cThen why is my tongue shorter?\u201d Ness shoots back. The couple, who\u2019ve been married for decades, have a daffy Lucy-and-Desi vibe. Christine shows me a video on her phone of the two dancing before a funhouse mirror during one of their antiquing excursions; Ness jokes that they\u2019re considering pitching a reality series called \u201cHappi-Ness.\u201d<\/p>\n
He picks up the story of his tongue: \u201cThey laid it out there and it was wiggling around,\u201d he says, grinning before turning serious again. \u201cI was on a tube feeder then a pur\u00e9ed diet for a couple months. Then speech and swallow therapy. Then a vocal coach.\u201d He recalls celebrating Thanksgiving 2023 with his family at one of his sons\u2019 home with a tour booked to start the following April.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told them \u2014 I remember saying it like it was yesterday \u2014 \u2018If I\u2019m singing by then, it\u2019ll be a f\u2014 miracle,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cFirst day of rehearsal, I was super nervous because it was in front of the guys. But we started and it was like I got back on a bicycle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brett Gurewitz, who released \u201cBorn to Kill\u201d through his Epitaph label \u2014 and whose band Bad Religion played its first-ever show on a bill with Social D in 1980 at a warehouse in Orange County \u2014 describes the LP as \u201ca record about survival \u2014 about hard-earned wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet Gurewitz adds that the anger in the music reminds him of punk\u2019s early days as America lurched rightward at the outset of the Reagan era.<\/p>\n
Says Ness with a laugh of Donald Trump: \u201cLook, I loved the guy in \u2018The Apprentice,\u2019 but as a president? No.\u201d He\u2019s troubled by what he sees as Trump\u2019s threats to free speech \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s insanity,\u201d he says \u2014 and by \u201ca lack of empathy\u201d that he thinks trickles down to average Americans.<\/p>\n
![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778847455_411_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Mike Ness in 2026.<\/p>\n
(Dania Maxwell \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n
\u201cMike\u2019s music isn\u2019t political but his stance is,\u201d Gurewitz says. \u201cI\u2019m proud to work with him.\u201d He may soon be prouder still: At Sardy\u2019s studio, Ness says he\u2019s been working on a song he plans to release in the run-up to this fall\u2019s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
Before that, Social D will crisscross Europe and the U.S. starting next month (including two shows in October at the Hollywood Palladium). Four decades after the band broke out with albums like \u201cMommy\u2019s Little Monster\u201d and \u201cPrison Bound,\u201d the scene backstage can be pretty boring, Ness admits.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see the look of disappointment when someone comes back,\u201d says the singer, who got sober around 1985. \u201cAt noon, the gear comes out of the truck and they turn it into a boxing gym. I\u2019ll do a good hour workout no matter how hot it is. Then before the show we\u2019ll get the blender going for some smoothies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet as soon as he steps onstage, the adrenaline still surges like it always has.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes me think of seeing this guy Ronnie Dawson \u2014 they called him the Blond Bomber back in the day \u2014 at the Palomino like 30 years ago,\u201d Ness says, referring to the legendary country joint<\/a> in North Hollywood. \u201cHe must have been 67 or 68 at the time, but he had more energy than a 25-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\nIn fact, Dawson would only have been in his mid-50s in the early \u201990s.<\/p>\n
Ness laughs. \u201cWell, look at me now,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are luxuries Mike Ness is willing to pay for, and there are luxuries for which he\u2019d rather…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":317145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[11416,132565,132562,217,122450,132564,6135,48,52,51,47,50,49,330,132560,132566,132563,132561,10390,3228,1519],"class_list":["post-317144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-band","tag-brett-gurewitz","tag-christine","tag-day","tag-first-album","tag-first-ever-show","tag-guy","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-music","tag-ness","tag-place-year","tag-social-d","tag-social-distortion","tag-song","tag-studio","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/317145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1778847453_248_hqdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n