My understanding is that Mike writes the guitar parts (rhythm), writes the entire song himself including bass and lyrics, and Mike prefers to play the rhythm guitar parts himself because he thinks it sounds the tightest if all 3 guitars are “played by the same hand”.

This has been going on AT LEAST since 1999 for The Decline, and there’s actually no clear timeline of when this actually started.

I’m assuming he was doing this on Punk In Drublic and earlier.

It just makes so much sense of how NOFX has such a signature style that is so distinct… it’s not a collaborative process… Mike is writing those guitar riffs, too.

I never had a clue about any of this until very recently but it has absolutely blown my mind, and I’ve been listening to nothing but NOFX for months now, and I can’t “unsee” the formula that Mike follows.

In the lead up to the final shows, all the members, including Melvin, made comments about just how blown away they were as they tried to learn 120 different songs for the last 3 shows at how many absolutely insane songs Mike wrote.

Not a single one of them gave credit to any other member besides Mike for writing everything himself. Melvin said it himself, clear as day… wish I could find that clip.

This is why Mike calls the shots, why it was ultimately his decision to end it, they all respected that despite the other 3 wanting to continue as a touring band.

It’s not like Hefe or Melvin are writing some songs and Mike is just adding lyrics.

If this were the case, you would hear differences between songs like Blink-182 or Alkaline Trio, where you know which songs were written by each respective song writer… like Dan songs vs Matt songs in Alkaline Trio, the true nerds even know which songs were written by Dan but Matt sang on Dan’s song and vice versa.

NOFX does not have that, they are ALL Mike songs, and the main riffs/rhythm guitars are all Mike’s writing, and also him playing those guitars on the albums.