Interview with:
Mark Deutrom/Melvins
The Melvins Line-up: Mark Deutrom, bass; Buzz Osborne,
vocals/guitar;
Dale Crover, drums - Album: "Stag" - Label: Atlantic
Records - Producer:
The Melvins, Alex Newport, Chris Kezlewski, Joe
Baressi
Q&A with Mark D.
Sheila Rene': Hello, Mark.
Mark D: Hang on a minute. I'm back now, you're down in
Austin?
SR: Yep, I just moved here after spending 30 years in
San Francisco.
MD: I know S.F. well. Where did you live?
SR: All over the Haight/Ashbury, upper and lower
Castro and Diamond
Heights. You grew up in Texas didn't you?
MD: I was born in London and I grew up in El Paso. I
get back to El Paso
every once in a while, usually on tour.
SR: This tour is so exciting to read about. Back in
the early to
mid-'60s it was commonplace for a band like Led
Zeppelin to hit town and
play three or four nights at the Fillmore. You're
going to be playing
with no warm up, but three sets a night. I like it!
MD: That's right. We wanted to make our shows
interesting. We wanted to
try something a little bit different. We've often
collectively talked
about playing more than one night in a town. Most
bands want to play
20,000 for one night instead of playing four or five
concerts. We're
much more into doing a residency in one town, when we
get to that point.
We like the idea of doing something special. It's just
got to be more
fun to hang out in a city for a while.
SR: It must be less stress to tour that way.
MD: It would be great. I can't think of anything
better than hanging out
in Austin for four or five days or Dallas or San
Antonio for that
matter. We could even get in a little golfing. Bands
can do whatever
they want, but they choose to perpetrate the big venue
type thing.
SR: I want to picture this correctly. You're sitting
there with your
favorite beverage regaled in cowboy boots and hat
waiting to light up a
big cigar.
MD: I'm not wearing my hat, but I am wearing my boots.
SR: Light up a big cigar, here we go. Are you still an
aficionado of the
great cigars? It's the latest big fad.
MD: (laughing) I've been smoking cigars for 20 years
so it's too late to
stop now. It's even to the point where I'm really a
little embarrassed
to actually have a cigar in a photo shoot. I don't
really care to be
lumped with the rest of the trend mongers. It
certainly doesn't keep me
from enjoying it when I'm home in England. Life is how
it should be.
SR: I put this new CD on and I kept having to look at
the cover to make
sure I was listening to the Melvins. One great album.
MD: Thanks.
SR: You do additional guitar, moog and then the
baritone guitar. What's
a baritone guitar?
MD: That's a guitar that has had the pitch tuned down
from a normal
guitar. It's actually a guitar that has what's called
'Nashville
tuning.' They use it a lot of times to double guitar
lines to make an
acoustic guitar sound really thick. Elvis Presley used
that tuning a lot
for doubling bass lines. It's a weird thing to play,
but it's easy for
me to play because I'm mainly a guitar player.
SR: You started out on guitar.
MD: Yeah, the bass is something I came to recently.
SR: Would you say that this album was recorded under
the most
interesting of times because you're all living in
different places,
different continents?
MD: It's a popular misconception that we recorded
separately using eight
track tapes. Actually, almost the opposite is true.
When we're apart
from each other we don't talk that much. We work on
material by
ourselves and then when we come back together we bring
it all back. We
just throw it all into a big pile and then start
sifting through it. The
sending of tapes back and forth is a little more
romantic, but it's more
diverse. We spend so much time together that when
we're apart we tend to
isolate from each other. The three of us are open to
completely
different experiences. I think if we were all living
in the same city we
might all have more or less the same experiences.
SR: Diversity is an understatement on this album. We
always know to
expect the unexpected from you guys.
MD: (laughing) Cool. That's a pretty natural thing for
us to do. I guess
we do a lot of stuff on intuition and gut feelings. We
don't have a
master plan. We just work on it until it feels right
to us.
SR: You joined the band in '93 so you played on
"Houdini?"
MD: I didn't play on "Houdini." They didn't have a
bass player on that
album. It was a Buzz and Dale playing bass then.
SR: Rolling Stone Magazine called "Houdini" the best
heavy metal release
in a decade.
MD: (laughter) Yeah, but they called it that in '93 so
go figure. Last
time I checked there were a few more years left in
this decade. I don't
know. One person's heavy metal is another person's
power pop. We take
all that with a grain of salt.
SR: "Stoner Witch" was called a masterpiece. What is
the time frame from
"Stoner Witch" to now?
MD: We finished recording "Stoner Witch" in July of
'94 and it came out
in October of '94. We've had time off intermittently
here and there, but
primarily we've just been touring and working. We put
out a record
entitled "Prick."
SR: They say "Prick" was pure noise.
MD. That's right. Pure annoying noise is what it was.
That came out of
the demo sessions for "Stoner Witch." We started on
"Stag" so it's been
pretty much non-stop touring and recording although we
had a four month
break after we finished Stag this year. Record labels
don't like you to
work too hard which is unfortunate for a band like us.
We could be more
like a band in the late '60s and the '70s who put out
a new record every
year. We'd like to be that kind of band, but,
unfortunately the labels
have so much product coming out they want to run it
into the ground over
a period of two to three years.
SR: Do you keep up with your reviews? Everything I've
read is great.
MD: We've actually seen maybe three or four. I've seen
a couple of bad
ones.
SR: Are you tired of being called the spiritual
fathers of grunge? The
band that used the dropped D tuning first?
MD: I don't know. That stuff doesn't really effect us.
They'll can call
us whatever they want. The dropped D tuning is an old
thing that John
Lee Hooker used way back. It's just that the D blues
tuning is for lazy
rock musicians who don't want to bother throwing F
sharp or the A in
there. All they do is drop the D and there you are.
SR: It's still being extensively used in music today.
You guys just
brought it into focus.
MD: Yeah, that's it.
SR: Engineering has always been one of your big
accomplishments. The
whole band is credited with the production on this
one.
MD: I've done a fair amount of it, sure. That's the
way it works now
unless I specifically do something by myself. I can't
help sticking my
hand in the fire and messing around. I'm always very
questioning of why
people do things a certain way and why they're not
throwing the rule
book out. I tend to have more of a hands-off attitude
when we're paying
someone else to do that job. The reason to hire
someone else is to get
an objective opinion. So it's truly a big
collaboration with us. I am
interested in doing some more engineering and
production in the future,
but I don't know when I'm going to have time for that.
SR: How was touring with the mighty KISS? I know Buzz
has always been a
big fan of theirs.
MD: Buzz and Dale love that band. It was great. We did
five dates with
them. We didn't actually travel with the band, but we
saw them at the
gigs and they were all very nice to us. We've known
Gene (Simmons) and
Paul (Stanley) for a while now. We're not great
buddies, but we're a
little more than acquaintances. They're real gentlemen
and a perfect
example of how you should be when you attain success.
There's a whole
helluva lot of bands out there who could learn a lot
from their
attitudes and the way they conduct themselves. It was
a great
experience. I'd say it was one of the best touring
experiences I've ever
had. It's a completely different type of thing than
touring with younger
bands who've sold some CDs and have some kind of an
attitude going. KISS
has seen everything, been everywhere, done everything
and they've got
enough money to sink a ship, and they're still
completely mellow.
SR: Except for the Grateful Dead, KISS has to be the
most involved with
their fans. I've always felt their sincerity where
their fans are
concerned.
MD: Absolutely. I personally was never a huge fan of
their music, but I
love the concept and the whole P.T. Barnum aspect of
their show. It's a
great take on rock and I think it still is. A lot of
folks take rock
music too seriously and they're the ones who don't
like people like us
poking fun at it all the time. We have our tongues
firmly planted in our
cheeks where rock music is concerned. We really are
serious about what
we do but at the same time...it's only rock and roll.
KISS has never
forgotten that fact. There's nothing better than being
able to poke fun
at yourself.
SR: You came into this project with cuts 4, 12 and 16
all finished:
"Yacob's Lab," "Lacrimosa" and "Cottonmouth."
MD: Yeah, we had them down on four track and complete
Buzz did "Hide" at
his house, Dale did "Cottonmouth" at his house and I
did "Yacob's Lab"
at my house. Those three tracks are quite literally
four track
recordings we just put on the album. All we did was
throw them up on the
half-inch and that was it.
SR: I had to run for the dictionary on "Lacrimosa." It
has to do with
tears.
MD: Yep, that's right. It's actually in the requiem
mass and there's a
particular procedure to it. It's a certain type of
ritual. The lyrics
are a translation of that. That song has an
interesting genesis because
it came out of the Stoner Witch sessions. Originally,
it was just a bass
track with Buzz, Dale and Buzz's wife Mackie playing
drums. I had that
on ADAT and I took it home and put all this ambient
guitar over it. Then
I put a vocal over it and played it for Buzz. He liked
it so much we put
it on Stag. The original version of that song is nine
and a half minutes
long.
SR: I love the "Cottonmouth" track a lot.
MD: That'll make Dale happy. We all like the blues a
lot. We're all fans
of ZZ Top. I`ve seen them all through the years about
12 times. By the
time I met Buzz and Dale I'd already seen them a lot.
Buzz seems to have
gotten into them the last couple of years. I just saw
them in London and
they were really good. They played real sounds, no
triggering, no
sequencing, no sampling. They performed material off
their first four
albums. It was great.
SR: I'm expecting a copy any day now. They're back to
their blues roots
I hear.
MD: I'm really glad about that. I was getting a little
tired of that
sequencing stuff.
SR: I love sequencing.
MD: At least ZZ Top has taken it some place new which
is good. They're
always growing as a band and that's something I can
admire.
SR: That's what you're famous for. We know not to
expect the same old
pap from you.
MD: We might be growing too fast for our britches. I
don't know.
SR: I don't think so. Are the days numbered for
Lollapalooza? Your
reviews on that tour were all the same...that you were
the best.
MD: Not really. As long as they make money they'll
keep doing it.
SR: I saw the Dallas show. I thought the fans were
really taken
advantage of by not letting anyone bring in bottled
water. They sold the
small bottle for $2. The beer drinkers had to spend $3
for a wristband
that allowed them to buy a small cup for $4.50.
MD: It's all down to management. From what I
understand this year there
was a change. Regardless of whether you can take water
in or not, I
don't believe it has ever been a major alternative to
a regular rock and
roll gigs. As far as I'm concerned if you're paying
$50 bucks for your
ticket how alternative is that? It's like the Rolling
Stones tour. I
don't call that an alternative gig. There's a lot of
phoniness and
paradoxes in the whole thing along with a lot of false
posturing. I can
have way more respect for a band like KISS who just
says 'yeah, we're
making a lot of money. That's what it's about.' At
least it's honest.
While we were on Lollapalooza we saw exactly the way
things went down.
They're just copying the European festivals and they
just don't have the
organization over here to do it right. It's just a
business and if it's
viable and if successful, it'll continue.
SR: The word was that Perry Farrell bailed out because
it had not gone
the way he originally planned.
MD: Well, I don't know. There are a lot of theories.
From what I've
heard, read and know, I don't think he's in any
position to be an Andrew
Carnegie-type. It's like the music business in
general. When people in
the music business start imposing their own personal
tastes upon their
business decisions, that's when everyone suffers.
SR: Your show was the best attended of any band on a
side stage.
MD: It was hard to tell how many people were there
watching. We got a
lot of questions like 'don't you feel special to be
involved, blah,
blah, blah.'
It was just another gig for us and to be honest, and
it wasn't that good
of a gig. You're stuck in a tent without
air-conditioning. It's about
105 degrees outside and you've got people stealing
your water out of
your cooler. It was pretty much a bummer. It was okay
to expand our
audience and I'm glad we did it, because we were
exposed to a different
fan...we just did it for the exposure.
SR: There's no better reason.
MD: Exactly. It was a hard tour. To be honest I
wouldn't do it again.
SR: How old were you when you started your own label,
Alchemy? It was
that label that released the first two Melvins albums.
MD: Gosh, I'm amazed you even know about that label.
You've done your
homework.
SR: Don't forget I was living in S.F. then.
MD: Right, right. Did you ever know Victor Haden?
SR: No, I don't think so.
DW: I think it was in '94 which would have made me 26.
I lived in Los
Angeles before I went to S.F.
SR: My question is could you ever be excited about
running a record
company again and signing your own bands?
MD: I would love to be able to play gigs as a guitar
player again on a
side project, but I don't think I'd want to get to the
point where I'd
do the kind of touring that the Melvins do. I'm past
that now. I don't
have the drive in me to do that again...to want to put
together a
project and shop it and get it on the road as a band
project. I think
more along the lines of doing studio stuff of my own
and maybe play
special shows here and there. But, as far as running a
record company,
I'd like to start one and be in charge of all the
creative aspects. At
Alchemy I was going to do all the production and
someone else was going
to do the accounting and run the business side of
things like promotion.
It was a good theory but it didn't work out.
SR: It's a lot of hard work and long hours.
MD: If you depend on someone doing a good job and they
don't do it then
it puts you in a bad position. It was a fun project
and I learned a lot.
I would do it again if I had the time.
SR: Is there a particular band out there that you
think will come on
strong?
MD: I don't know. Things are so artificially inflated
all the time. A
band will get some buzzclip going on MTV and it gets
played ten times a
day. The band sells five million records and they're
huge while it's the
first record they've made in their life. Two years
later they only sell
a million but they haven't acquired an audience. It's
almost like
they've been forced upon the population by the media.
The record company
sees a single moving and then they go to Infinity
Broadcasting or
whoever and purchase $300,000 in advertising time and
they sit there and
play it ten times a day or whatever on stations so the
kids think it's
really hot. They don't go out and tour and acquire a
natural audience.
Bands still do that but most are seduced into the fact
they can make a
lot of money without doing it that way.
SR: Do you have any side projects going at this time?
MD: I don't personally. I have a lot of songs that
I've written and
sifted through for a solo project but not as a band
project. It's
probably several years in the making.
SR: Is the Buzz Hustler edition out yet?
MD: I don't know if it is or not. They're so weird
down there. They're
probably printing their January 1997 issue now.
SR: How did Allan Mac Donell the managing editor from
Hustler happen to
write your biography? It's so funny I was crying.
MD: Yeah, that's good. That's what we wanted.
SR: Buzz says in an interview that 'The Smashing
Pumpkins probably spent
more on their catering than we did for our whole
album.' I thought that
was a funny statement.
MD: (laughter) That's probably true. Everything is
immensely
inflationary. Bands tend to delegate responsibility
because they don't
want to deal with it. If it's from asking your manager
to get you an
8:30 wake up call because you can't be bothered with
setting the alarm
to find me a laundromat and book my tour to go get me
a hamburger. What
happens is all that costs money and ultimately you
have to pay it back.
Smashing Pumpkins, to be fair, if I had as much money
as they have,
everything becomes relative. If you spend more money
than is allocated
for any particular project, it's going to catch up
with you. The public
doesn't know if you spent 150 grand or if you spend
$10 on ADAT. It ends
up with engineers and producers making records for
each other. It's like
stamp collecting, guess what kind of stamp I have?
It's utterly
meaningless. ZZ Top did their first album on an eight
track and it's a
classic album.
SR: Have you seen a copy of the Roger Corman comic
book about the
Melvins? How much were the band members involved?
MD: Yeah, sure. We weren't really involved at all.
When they did the
first one they had a story board that they showed us.
We just okayed it.
SR: There's more than one out?
MD: Yeah, it's Rock ‘N' Roll High School Part 2. I've
seen it.
SR: I'll have to pick up a copy along with Buzz's
piece in Hustler
Magazine.
MD: I don't have a copy myself.
SR: Isn't someone in your camp doing the archival
thing?
MD: Well, between our management and our label it all
gets collected. If
we see something while we're out on tour, we'll grab
it. There's so much
all over the place, it's a little difficult to keep
track of. A lot of
it, I'm just not that interested in.
SR: How was it working with the famous porno director
Gregory Dark on
the video for "Bar X the Rocking M?" Why am I not
seeing it on MTV?
MD: You won't see "Bar X" on MTV. The quote directly
from MTV on that
song via Steve Bascom, who runs the Mammoth label, was
'We don't like
the band.' That's a direct quote. We laughed ourselves
silly when we
heard that, as if we expected something different.
They've never played
us before so 'oh, no, what are we going to do now?'
Like everything else
we do as a band, we're just going to figure out ways
to get our video
out there without using them. There are plenty of ways
to do that today.
In Europe and the U.S. we've got all kinds of regional
shows and the
club circuits.
SR: Don't forget the comic book circuit.
MD: Exactly. We've got a couple of ideas up our
sleeves that we'll work
on.
SR: Your sidewalk 7" single recordings are so
wonderful. I respect any
band who puts their fans first. When will the 7" live
boxed set be
coming out?
Plus the cover of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar
Overdrive" which is being
released on Frank Kozik's S.F.-based label, Man's
Ruin.
MD: The Amphetamine Reptile boxed set with a single
for every month of
the year is a tough one to find anymore.
SR: I only wish you'd make more than 800.
MD: The reason we do that is that our fans like the
idea that it's
difficult to get and it's like a little treasure hunt
for them. Also, by
limiting them, it keeps the big boys happy. It's free
publicity for the
band. It pays for itself. It's just a fun thing to do.
The Pink Floyd 7"
is not out yet, but it'll be soon.
SR: What can the fans expect as far as set one, set
two and set three
goes?
MD: We're not exactly sure of the sequencing yet. I
guess tonight is the
first time we'll be trying it in the U.S. We're in New
London, Conn.
tonight.
SR: I'll see you at Liberty Lunch. You'll have it
going by then.
MD: Actually we just came back from Europe and we were
trying out two
sets over there. It worked out really well. One set is
probably going to
be more like a set we'd play live on tour, then
another will be some of
more experimental tunes like "Sterilized." I'm
actually going to get to
play guitar on about four songs. Another set will be
the quieter jazz
stuff.
SR: How long are you out this time?
MD: We've been out since the beginning of July, went
out with KISS and
then the Lollapalooza. We're interested in finding out
how the U.S. fans
take to the three set a night show.
SR: I'll say this album might make you more famous
than you want to be.
MD: We'll see about that.
SR: Are you an Internet surfer?
MD: I think the whole thing is evil. Yeah, let me tell
you. It's to the
point now that you can't tell anybody anything because
you don't know if
they know anybody. You could just be saying something
that was
confidential and they might tell someone else and then
there's one
person who puts it out on the Internet. The next thing
you know you're
reading about it in a place where a zillion people can
see it. Some
things that were told in confidence have ended up
there. Just the idea
of information or disinformation is potentially a
pretty dangerous
kind of thing to happen. It's just like the Sears
catalog from hell. I
think it could be a great tool for information, but I
also think it's
just the most hideous gossip mill ever.
SR: Sasha from KMFDM says it's total anarchy.
MD: Oh, yeah, I think it is. I like to fool around
with it when I'm at
my parent's house.
SR: Thanks for your time.
MD: An interview is one thing. I don't care about
that, but the Internet
is insidious. I hate to think I have to be careful
about what I say now.
I'd rather give my money to a humane society.
SR: One last word to your fans.
MD: Come on down and see us. You'll get twice your
moneys worth.
SR: I'll pay my respects in Austin.
MD: We'll look for you the end of the month.
(Sheila Rene' conducted this interview for RockNet.
Rene' resides in
Austin, Texas.)