The Last KissThe Last KissAlternative Press March 2002 article
"Welcome to my moldy mansion", bids Davey Havok, creaking open the front door to an old Berkeley frathouse that's gone to Addams Family seed. It's a freaky, funky place - furniture in some sparsely appointed rooms, covered in what appears to be decades' worth of dust; the decor of other wings conversely cluttered and ornate.
And Havok is the perfect Uncle Fester-ing host. He's darkly draped in black jeans, tennis shoes and Apoptygma Berzerk t-shirt, his pitch-black shoulder-length hair framing a corpse-pallid complexion, eyes edged by stripes of mascara and violet shadow, black cat and jack O' lantern tattooed forearms tipped by fingernails adorned with urban decay's ghoulish gash hue(picture an open wound, fly blown and refusing to heal)
One quick caveat though, warns this happily funereal frontman for goth punk outfit AFI. He desperately wants to chat about the sudden major label bidding war that's put his up till now indie combo in the national spotlight. But he's certain to be distracted by his own bidding war, on eBay for a pair of Hong Kong exclusive Living Dead dolls, with painted blood trickling from their soulless tear ducts. The going price, he sighs, is now hovering around $250.
Havok opens another door, this time to his private suite. It's packed to the rafters with the coolest creepy crawling collectibles imaginable - Princess Mononoke dolls, stuffed Maurice Sendak Wild Things, Sleepy Hollow paraphernalia, an entire shrine to the Nightmare Before Christmas, and a rare four statue tribute to the General Mills' Monster cereals - Booberry, Frankenberry, Count Chocula and the long forgotten werewolf, Fruit Brute. In one corner is a set of exaggerated figurines based on the comic drawings of Roman Dirge including the hypnotic Lenore and Havok is proud to note that the artist has just agreed to design a new AFI shirt, right before he goes into production on his Lenore animation film.
Upstairs, drummer Adam is waiting in his sleep chamber, sprawled across his futon and listing intently to old Guns N' Roses cds. Havok whisks in and, true to his word, immediatly sits down in front of the computer to see if he's received a response. No luck. The devilish dolls are still up for grabs. Sadly, he unfolds the room's second futon and hunkers down, yoga position, to contemplate his next move.
Unlucky on eBay? Lucky in other more important areas. After 10 years together, founding AFI members Havok and Carson are finally seeing a big time payoff to all their Fear meets Sisters of Mercy skullduggery. Their last two elaboratly orchestrated albums for the indie Nitro - Black Sails in the Sunset and the Art of Drowning both moved nearly 100,000 units on word of mouth alone.
"And when we played the Warped tour this past summer, just played our show in front of our kids and probably 400,000 other kids over the summer, I think people just finally noticed us," reckons Carson, whose subdued rockabilly look provides the perfect foil for Havok. "It was a larger tour, and it put us on the radar a bit."
An understatement, indeed. The newspaper ad annoucing their string of three Halloween centered dates at San Francisco nightclub Slim's ran one week only: There was no need to advertise futher the shows sold out almost immediatly. Punks, skinheads, metalheads, skaters, ebony garbed goths, even a few daredevil yuppies all mixed congenially at the gig, united by their adoration of the equally eclectic AFI. And everyone met at the merchandise booth, one of the most elaborate in modern rock, which featured roughly 30 different AFI shirts as well as buttons, stickers, metal bat out of hell badges and cds from the bands six disc catalog. The one item that wasn't ready by showtime was a plush doll of Art, the purple boy cadaver created by poster artist Alan Forbes for the Dorwning booklet.
And the word is spreading the band mentioned a show at Londons Astoria to online fans first again an instant sellout. "Even before we knew who was the support bandss were gonna be," Carson marvels. "So when we play England it's gonna be all our kids."
And like boa constrictors sensing a warm, frisky rodent music industry moguls have come slithering toward AFI. Many chortles Carson don't even understand what they're pursuing they've just heard rumors that the band are to become a hallowed Next Big Thing. And while conversations with such idiots always prove both hilarious and illuminating the self managed AFI quickly cut the oretenders out of the equation and set up meetings with an agreed upon Big Four.(In fact reps from some of those companies had flown into the Bay Area for Halloween just to study this homegrown phenomenon.) As of this writing they have yet to settle on the winner although both Havok and Carson truly enjoyed their dinners with Dreamworks honchos Mo Ostin and Leny Waronker two sociable vets who wowed them with tales of legendary recording artists they'd overseen.
"I don't know why they're suddenly interested in us," grumbles Havok, toying with a long black hair that's just tumbled free from his mane. "But we're at a point where this is something that we really need to do - move on and grow. We wanna be able to do this for the rest of ourlives, and we'll do it for as long as we can. But it'd definitely be nice if more and more people could be exposed to it. And that's exactly what we want."
Would such companies know what to dowith AFI once they've won the bands affection? It's unclear. Their sound is astute, esoertic, carefully conceived. It doesn't cater to knuckleheaded rap-rock rowdies - the same kind of jock creeps who hassled Havok and Carson throughout high school in Ukiah California.("We were called faggots, Satan worshippers, nerds, dorks," hisses Havok of those days. "We were really misunderstood.") AFI's morbid mammoth music has its roots in such emotional turbulence. Earlier efforts sported such lightweight anthems as Charles Atlas, Brownie Bottom Sundae, and I wanna get a mohawk. But Black Sails, the subsequent All Hallows EP and the Art of Drowning are streamlined, surreal affairs, wherein '70s proto punk collides with '80s goth rock across a spattered '90s alterna pop drop cloth. It's heady haunted stuff, and not for the faint of heart. The only thing missing is the decadent Montmartre and a flute of green fairy abstinthe.
Oddly Havok finds all of his abyss bleak insirations cold turkey, no stimulants involved. Swears the singer, "I've never done drugs, I've never been drunk it's never been attractive to me. The whole culture behind it has never appealed to me either - I have no desire to experience any of it. The destruction of your mind the risk of destruction to relationships lives in a metaphorical sense. It just doesn't seem like a very fair tradeoff for the high. But having expressed my personal beliefs on that," he's quick to add, "I wanna point out that we are not a straight edge band. There are many different philosophical beliefs in AFI."
Such as "From what I've seen/I hate humanity" Havok won't recant that strong setiment. "Hate humanity?" He grins. "Yep. Sure do. There's such a lack of responsiblity for one's actions in the world, a selfishness and a great destruction in the way people live their lives. It's instant gratification, and who cares how y instant gratification affects those around me, or a small personal level or a global level. The way people treat each other is truly disgusting and we've created an enviroment through advances in science and technology that allows for a very septic society to thrive. And we breed, and all the wrong people breed, while all the right people don't wanna have children because they don't wanna place them in this world."
Havok pauses to catch his breath. "I've just always loved the dark side. Growning up the old horror movies always appealed to me as a kid, and one of my earliest memories - I was about 4 at the time - was asking for this plaster machine that made busts of the monsters. I started with rudimentry stuff like that. Then the first time I heard Joy Division and Bauhaus I was like, 'Oh man! This is incredible!' It was something I'd never experienced before - music that was very artistic not happy in the least bit, with very dark overtures. I loved it. And I read nothing but Anne Rice, Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft. Darkness is something that needs to be embraced instead of ignored loved for what it is in order to see that there's whole lighter side."
Hence the tangible gothic theme running through his toy collection, Havok explains. He loves creators like Tim Burton, visionary artists who somehow manage to make that dark side popular with the masses. Carson clears his throat - he's just been reminded of something, something Tim Burton related. An ardent AFI booster had just sent Havok two ghoul groovy presents - a scultped Jack Skellington coffee mug, and a pewter pendant of a Mexican free tailed bat. Havok studies the gifts, thens beems radiantly.
"See? Our fans!" he bubbles. "Not only do they know I like Nightmare Before Christmas stuff; they get it for me! Our fans are incredible. They're the best, the most loyal, and the only thing that seems to connect them is their dedication to us. They're tattooed with our images, they're driving 12 hours to see us play because thats the closest we're gonna get, or they're flying out to see us at a record release party because they really wanna be a part of it."
In the current AFI contest, label execs see the end product of such dedication - packed enthusiastic houses; solid record sales sans monstrous marketing campaigns. But they'll never comprehend just how deep it that dedication goes. Havok, almost choking up, has difficulty just recalling all the suicide related letters he's received - missives from fellow outsiders who once they tapped into the AFI mainline, chose not to end their lives as they'd oringinally planned. They decided to keep on living, living for AFI. Havok does not take this lightly. He does his best to respond to every depressed fan to inform them that, hey, he's been there too, and things do get better. "You wouldn't believe the stories I have, and I don't wanna say them because I don't wanna disclose what kids have felt comfortable enough opening up to me about," he murmurs, dabbing at his eyes. "Just kids with these horrible lives who've gravitated toward us as a comfort, and I'm very happy that we can provide that for them."
Like Placebo's Brian Molko, Havok also has a hip androgynous look that attracts both sexes. Girls and boys have sent him engraved prom invitations; several young males have informed him that his outrageousness had given them the courage to come out of the closet, to openly accept a gay lifestyle they'd formerly feared. "And that's a great thing to hear about, too, because in certain people's enviroments, coming out is very difficult thing to do," says Havok. "Not everywhere is as open and accepting as San Francisco." And if he did have time for dating, where would Havok take that special someone? Easy, he says: "First the Millenium restaurant in San Franciso, which is all vegan and wonderful, followed by a David Lynch movie, then a few games of Pac-Man at the North Beach arcade."
Carson shakes his head at the same question. "Me, I was never too good at dating. So I was thinking maybe a couple of tall-boy beers, sitting on a hillside somewhere..."
What's ahead for AFI? After 14 months of nonstop touring in support of the Art of Drowning, the pair agree they were happy just to be home for one week straight. Now they just want to polish off their new label deal, and get back to writing and recording for their upcoming album - no matter which imprint wins its release rights. Oh yeah; and maybe finally track down those Hong Kong Living Dead dolls.
One final look at the screen, then Havok closes his laptop on the Living Dead and heads downstairs to erjoin the living. The world where AFI may soon be kings...