Prior to forming the Adolescents, the early band members were part of various formative punk rock groups in Fullerton, California during their teenage years in the late 1970s: Guitarist Rikk Agnew and drummer Casey Royer had played in the Detours and with Agnew's younger brother Frank in the early lineup of Social Distortion, while bassist Steve Soto was a founding member of Agent Orange. Soto met Tony Brandenburg at an Agent Orange show in November 1979, and the two, both aged 16, formed a bond, as Soto recalled: "I struck up a conversation with Tony. He was out of control and we became fast friends". "We would talk about music and the problems we were having in high school and about our weight problems", Brandenburg later recalled; "We found that we had a lot in common weight-wise—we were polar opposites was overweight while Brandenburg was tall and thin—but neither of us could change it. All of our problems on the high school scene were caused by our musical taste and our weight. We were the object of constant ridicule, but what was worse was we couldn't get girls".