Fat Mike of NOFX Opens The Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas: Get an Inside Look (Exclusive)

"My job is to get as many different bands in here as possible," Mike 'Fat Mike' Burkett tells PEOPLE

Have you ever wanted to hear the stories of a punk lifestyle that your parents warned you about, from the people who lived it? Have you ever wanted to play your favorite musician's guitar on the amp that they recorded your favorite song on? Have you ever wanted to see what was on all those rolls of film that photographers were shooting on tour? Relive all the memories created on film from shows and parties that you spent every weekend at as a kid? Get a tattoo? Maybe get married?

Well, Las Vegas has just added a new feature to their endless list of experiences with The Punk Rock Museum opening this week.

During the pandemic, one of the most recognizable faces in punk was at a crossroads on their next project. Mike 'Fat Mike' Burkett of NOFX fame was living in Las Vegas and began conceiving of opening a storefront for punks. He enlisted the help of veteran Warped Tour producer Lisa Brownlee before pivoting from a store to a collection of memorabilia to a full-on museum. The idea spiraled into the fully grown idea that now is The Punk Rock Museum.

Artists, fans, and collectors from all over the world shared pieces of their history with the museum to create a living, breathing space for fans to embrace their nostalgic youth, relive wild nights and inspire the next generation. From guided tours to a jam room where you can play on the real guitars of legends to their own wedding chapel, the collective at The Punk Rock Museum has curated a little something for everyone.

PEOPLE sat down with Fat Mike to get an inside look at the process of creating this punk collection.

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PEOPLE: After all the years of performing and living this life and being involved in this scene, have you ever thought about having this all-in-one collection like a museum like this? Or was this a new idea?

Fat Mike: Never, never thought of it before. I wanted to open a punk shop in Vegas, because storefront property was cheap because of COVID, and I had a marijuana store here once, so $1000 a month. I was looking into a punk store, and I called Lisa Brownlee, who was a production manager on the Warped Tour for 20 years, and I said, "Do you want to do this punk shop with me? Run it?" She's like, "Sure." She called back the next day and she said, "Maybe we should get some cool artifacts for the shop, so people can see some old cool s---."

I came out here to find a place. I found this antique store — 4000 square foot antique store, and it's right next to the strip club Little Darlings, which is even cooler, because we couldn't be on the Strip. We have to be next to the strip club and next to the freeway, because punk rock, as a music business — we're satellite, we don't belong in the music industry. And they don't want us. There's no Billboard chart. There's bluegrass, there's classical. There's no Grammy, even though Green Day won a Grammy and Foo Fighters and Blink, and they're all old punk rockers.

So my real job here, as far as I'm concerned, is to be the most inclusive museum, not to be the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Pat Smear — from the Germs, Nirvana, Foo Fighters — was one of the first investors. He's like, "So what do you have to do to get in the museum?" I'm like, "I'm thinking maybe you have to put out a seven-inch [record]." He said, "How about you have your name on a flyer?" I'm like, "That's good with me." He was so happy about it that he put a bunch of money in, and he'd never invested in anything before. He's the coolest person ever.

My job is to get as many different bands in here as possible. I want someone who's in a band in Amarillo, Texas in the '80s to come here and to go, "Oh, my God. Our flyer's up there." They will cry, because they're in here. That's what punk rock has always been — we'll let anybody into our world, unless you're really annoying. That's the only thing you can't be is annoying. Or a rockstar — you can't act like a rockstar, because then you get kicked out.

PEOPLE: How did it feel seeing all this history collected after all these years?

Fat Mike: Every couple days, I have to go outside and cry, because it's so emotional. The first NOFX interview from 1986, where some guy mailed questions to our guitar player's parents' house, and I hand-wrote the interview like, "Who is NOFX and how long have you been around?" I'm like, "Me, Mike" — before I was Fat Mike, I was 19 — "We've been around for three years." I'm so stoked I have that.

Not a lot of people could have opened this. I needed to get the best team, but I can call Roger from Agnostic Front, and I can call Pat Smear and I have these relationships. "Hey Dropkicks, can you send us some bagpipes?" Everyone is so happy to be a part of it. So we talked about having some big corporate company, companies, corporations such as Vans, whatever, to help us along, but I decided it's just going to be owned by punk bands, because we built it.

Everyone's put in, everyone's so happy to put in. I've given shares of the company to the Partisans, to Discharge, to Symbol Six, bands no one even ... "Really, you're going to give us shares? We had one record out in '82." Yeah, you get to be part of it.

In punk rock, it's a family. It really is — it's a community. Everyone knows each other from just playing together, people are friendly. It's not like metal. Everyone's invited.

PEOPLE: Did you get most of these items from artists?

Fat Mike: It's crazy how we found these things. We didn't get most of our things from bands. I'd call bands and they'd be like, "Uh, well, we didn't really keep anything." They didn't really keep anything. But it's from collectors. Henry Rollins' T-shirt that he threw out at his first Black Flag show. How do you know it's his T-shirt? Because his name is sewn in the back by his mom.

We have Darby Crash's phone book, because you had to keep a phone book in your back pocket. I turned it to P and it says "Pat" for Pat Smear, and the top one says, "Poser." The number, seven-digit number. You didn't have to punch in the area code back then when you were doing the dial. Personal stuff like that.

My favorite thing is Pat Smear's first royalty check for $8.34 from Wet Records. We had the canceled check, when they used to cancel checks. Charlotte Caffey from the Go-Go's, she has one for $15 for their first seven-inch. How did we get this s---? We have the molds for the Devo domes, the wood molds — they're downstairs. There's nothing like this place.

PEOPLE: Do you think this museum will not only give fans and older generations a sense of nostalgia, but also pave a path for younger kids to explore this music and culture?

Fat Mike: Absolutely. That's why I made sure this museum was five decades of punk. We have bands that started a few years ago in here, because most punk rock historians or museums that have popped up around the world, it's '70s, not even '80s, early '80s and '70s. But this is everybody, and anyone, because I want to inspire kids who don't know how to play an instrument to play music, and this is the only kind of music you can do that in. You can't throw a brick through a window and say, "Hey, that's jazz." You can say, "Yay, punk."

PEOPLE: Since this space is going to be a living thing, do you have any plans for traveling or rotating exhibits?

Fat Mike: We already do. Up here, right now we have an East L.A. exhibit because punk rock lives in East L.A. right now. It's crazy there. They'll do a show under a bridge and have 5,000 kids with bonfires. I was going to play there with my band Codefendants, and I said, "It's safe if we play at night." No. Bands have gotten beat up there before, but bands were playing backyard parties and on trucks, flatbeds, and we have a whole exhibit of East L.A.. Then an exhibit by another photographer, Rikki Ercoli. He has '70s stuff, he has Blondie and Circle Jerks and it's really good too. Those are going to switch out every four or five months.

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