Frank Navetta
| Frank Navetta | |
|---|---|
Navetta performing with the Descendents in 1982
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| Background information | |
| Born | March 6, 1962 |
| Origin | Manhattan Beach, California |
| Died | October 31, 2008 (aged 46) |
| Genres | Punk rock |
| Occupation(s) | Guitarist, songwriter, fisherman |
| Instruments | Guitar |
| Years active | 1979–83 |
| Labels | Orca, New Alliance |
| Associated acts | Descendents |
Frank Navetta (March 6, 1962 – October 31, 2008) was an American musician who was the original guitarist of the punk rock band the Descendents, which he co-founded. He formed the band in Manhattan Beach, California with Dave Nolte in the late 1970s and played on their 1979 debut single, the Fat EP (1981), and their first album, Milo Goes to College (1982). Navetta then quit the band and moved to Oregon to become a fisherman. He collaborated with the Descendents again on the 1996 album Everything Sucks, and prior to his death in 2008 had been working on new material with original Descendents members Bill Stevenson and Tony Lombardo.
Frank Navetta and Dave Nolte met as sixth graders at American Martyrs Catholic School in Manhattan Beach, California. "I was friends with him straight away", Nolte later recalled, "We both had interest in music, we both started playing guitar at the same time." They decided to start a band, and Navetta came up with the name Descendents, an intentional misspelling of "descendants". In mid-1977 they befriended Bill Stevenson, who impressed them by overdubbing his own backing vocals onto a demo tape Navetta had recorded. Stevenson joined the band as drummer, and he and Navetta became good friends; as Stevenson later recalled:
We really hit it off and we would go fishing every day. I was in awe of all these great songs he’d written, and he would play them on the acoustic guitar really hard, Johnny Ramone style, all six strings. He had this bitter resentment that drenched every step he took and every word that he spoke. His songs were just filled with that envy of people that are better looking, that are more successful. It was just really inspiring to be around someone that just hated everything that much. It was just great.
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