AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAggggh fuck! It’s 6:10 on a Friday night and I’m sat at my aging laptop (a wheezing Lenovo that sounds like it has asthma on start-up) waiting to see if Buzz Osborne… King Buzzo… of the goddamned Melvins… will come online.
A larger-than-life character, Buzz has been a major fixture of my record collection since I bought a copy of Stag about a hundred years ago (and I-don’t-know-how-many-records-since), and I’ve always wanted a chance to talk to him about his work. Of course, in my gleeful dash to accept a chance to interview Buzz about the amazing new album, Working With God (reviewed here), all of the questions I’d been plotting in my head have exited stage left, leaving me dry mouthed and desperately hoping that the hieroglyphics which represent my handwriting will resolve themselves into some semblance of language before he hits dial…
Too late…
How are you?
Very well, thank you. It’s the end of a long week, but I’m glad we’ve finally made it to the weekend.
Bad week huh?
Life seems to revolve around video calls at the moment and I’m sure you find yourself in a similar situation as we try to find our way through this situation.
Yes, I’m extremely sick of it!
From what I understand, some of what you’ve been doing with your time has been working with your wife on creating new artwork and things, is that right?
Well, we always do that. It’s nothing new. We’ve done a tonne of recording. We did a live stream on new year’s, we did another one on Valentine’s Day and we’ll probably look into one more after that, so we have that sort of stuff ahead of us. We have a new album out – Working with God. We have a bunch of limited-edition EPs that will be coming out as well. We did all those last year – a whole bunch of those.
And I’ve been doing lots of physical activity – a lot of working out and playing golf and stuff like that and getting outside as much as possible. And me and my wife have basically been following the rules that they’ve set out. And, you know, I take the pandemic seriously. I don’t know how seriously I take the powers that be to know the right things to do… but, you know… I think they have their own best interests in mind [laughs]. That’s the best way to put it.
It’s about the same discussion that we have here. It’s really cool that your wife is involved in the artwork – it makes the pandemic a lot easier to manage, I guess, when you have that shared creative impulse that you’re able to divert yourselves into.
Yeah, it’s nothing new. We didn’t need a pandemic to do that. We’ve been married the best part of thirty years. There’ve not been a lot of big surprises with the pandemic. “Oh, we’re locked down for a lot of months – that’s OK!” [laughs] As far as being together, it’s not a big deal. There are no major issues or anything like that. I know some people who had some trouble with that kind of thing and they’re getting divorced or breaking up because they can’t stand each other once they get around one another for any long period of time. Fortunately, that’s not the case with me.
So… You know, not to say that we’re the easiest people in the world to get along with, but it seems to work for us. We’re happy about that.
For a band that is so used to being out on the road, in one sense, I suppose the pandemic created more space for you to be prolific. I know that you’re always writing, but it sounds like you hit a real peak with the EPs, the new album, the reissues that on their way and your solo album as well… it sounds like you’ve hit a really hectic period in the Melvins’ (and your own) career…
Yeah, it’s kind of two different ways. One way of looking at it is that I’m still going to work on a whole bunch of brand-new stuff that we can’t tour… I was so bummed over the fact that I didn’t get to do anything for my solo record. I had a massive tour planned for that. It just kind of came out, and we couldn’t promote it, we couldn’t do anything. So, the whole of last year was going to be working on that from early May to early November. And then, this record, Working with God, was going to come out at the end of the year, but it all got pushed back and I got to do no touring, so… I’m sure that the record sales will show that graphically [laughs]. It’s terrible, because I had such a great time making that record, the Gift of Sacrifice record, and it came out so well. But there’s no way to go out and do anything with it. And, as far as the live streaming goes, it’s OK… but, you know, most people aren’t going to do that – they’re just not going to watch something like that. It doesn’t matter how much you charge. We’re charging $5 for ours and it’s not like we’re getting tens of thousands of people. We’ve had a few people.
I’ve heard all this crazy shit from people who are like “well, since the pandemic, people have been trying to support bands and bands are selling more records than ever…” That’s a load of shit! [laughs] That’s total shit, I don’t know where people are getting the idea that since the pandemic, where people aren’t able to do anything, they’re suddenly throwing money at bands that they wouldn’t have otherwise. I’m not buying it. It’s just not… I don’t see how anyone can think that! It’s crazy!
[Adopts slightly nerdy voice] “Oh, they really want to make sure that they support you!”
[Reverts to tone dripping with sarcasm] “Oh, OK!”
It’s crazy! I’m doing my part [laughs]. But whatever, you know, we’ll make it through it one way or another. I’ll figure out one thing or another. You’re never going to be able to please most people anyway, so, you just do your best.
I try not to worry about things of that nature. I just forge ahead in the way that I would appreciate as a fan and take it from there. But I don’t know what’s going to happen. I mean, if you can’t open a restaurant, you can’t have a show! I mean, if you can’t open a restaurant, you can’t get drunk at a bar alongside a bunch of people and watch bands – that’s insane!
Now, whether that changes or not, I don’t know! No one knows – the rules seem to change every week. I don’t think anyone has any concept of how this is transmitted and it’s still running. Generally (and I’m certainly no expert), but generally with pandemics it’s two years before you have herd immunity, and even with the vaccine and everything, it’s going to be two years. With it or without it. That’s the way it’s always been in the past, so there’ll be a lot of people – elected officials – who will blow their own horn about all the stuff that they did, but if you look at the numbers, mother nature will do the same thing in the same time without you having done a fucking thing! [laughs]
Whatever! I mean, with the vaccine, I was really hoping… I really had hope that once people had it, that we’d be able to go back to normal but that’s just not the case, or so they’re telling us: “no, no, no, no – you’re still social distancing; you’re still wearing a mask; you can still get sick; you can still transmit it…”
So, nothing’s going to change. It’s just going to have to run its course, so I’m really, really sick of listening to these guys going on about this stuff, and I don’t care where they come from. I’m not that kind of “political” person. I don’t belong to any party. I don’t belong to any side. That’s crazy. You know, I’m way too much of Groucho Marxist for that – I don’t want to belong to any club that’d have me as a member. You know – no thanks! I’m not a joiner inner!
You know?
“Are you flying to the protest?”
“No!”
“Do you disagree with what they’re protesting?”
“No!”
“But you’re still not going?”
“NO!”
I don’t like protesting. I don’t care if I agree with it or not, I’m not going [laughs] That’s not me.
I personally believe that, just because you go out and throw things in the street, that doesn’t give you any more say in how things work because it doesn’t! It’s just not how things work and if you think if you go out and act like a six-year-old kid and throw stuff in the street and we’re supposed to look at you, then you should be treated like a six-year-old-kid! [laughs] If that’s the way you want to act!
I don’t like it. I just don’t like it. I don’t like that kind of thing, I don’t think it… it just scares people, it doesn’t change anybody’s mind. It’s a terrible thing. It’s terrible. And, like I said, it’s not about whether I agree with the issue or not. It has nothing to do with whether I agree with it. I don’t like it [laughs].
So, you can go ahead and do it, But for me, it’s like Bob Dylan:
“Are you going to the protest tonight?”
“No, I’m going to be busy tonight!” [laughs]
That’s how I feel. I don’t want to join in. I just don’t want to be a part of it.
It’s even the same with music and all those guys with grunge bands… people were saying “you’re this…” or “you’re that…”
We’re not part of that. You know, I like those bands fine, but we’re not a part of anything. I’m not a joiner. I don’t want to join the club or group. None of that. I don’t have a target audience. I don’t want to be cool to these people… I mean, I want millions of people to like our music. But I’m not beavering away to make that happen. I’m also not beavering away to make it not happen. It just doesn’t happen, not because I don’t want it to happen – I’d love to have it happen – but I don’t personally believe it’s the kind of thing you can turn on and off. You can’t. So, with us, we’re not part of any group.
We’re progressive in what we do musically. We’re all about what we’re doing that’s new. We’re not an oldies band. We don’t have hit records to go out and rely on where we’re, you know, “well, we have to play these songs.” We don’t have hit records. We don’t have hit songs. So, I feel, we’re as modern as any other band. We’ve waded through all the rest of this stuff, and there it is. We’re still doing what we’re doing and that’s fine with me.
And I am the most appreciative guy, that I get to do what I’m doing. I’m very appreciative of it. I’m not a guy who sits there thinking I wish I had this… no! I’m incredibly happy with what I do have, not what I think that I should have. I think that’s why a lot of people get caught up, especially in their own lives, because people often think they should be doing this or that. Well, no, actually you’ve got it pretty good – you’re not in jail. You’ve got your bills paid. If you’re married and you have a good relationship, you have that – life doesn’t get much better than that. It just doesn’t.
So, people think that a lot of times when I talk this way, it’s because I’m jealous of people or, you know, that I have some kind of weird grudge, but nothing could be further from the truth. It’s not me. I’m very happy with whom I’m playing, what my life is like – all of that. It’s all good! It’s all good, you know, so – there you go… that’s the long answer!
It’s interesting that you used the phrase “progressive”. I always felt like Melvins grew alongside me and my musical tastes. I first discovered you via “Stag”, which was in the one record shop in the town when I was growing up, and the artwork caught me… and ever since, a new Melvins album comes out and it’s kinda – for me – sitting in a room with you guys and listening to your take as to what’s in your record collection at that point in time. So, you know, you get the Beach Boys pastiches to the super-heavy riffing… and I really like that, and I think it’s something that’s left out in the rush to pigeonhole things, but I dig that multi-genre approach…
I would agree. There’s a lot of things you want to do and a lot of things you’re capable of doing and the guys I’m playing with, they’re super-great musicians and there’s really nothing that I can throw at them that they couldn’t do. Nothing. We can make it work, one way or another. And, you know, I don’t want to just do one thing.
Even though our band sounds like… us regardless of what we’re doing. I mean, people ask, “what record would you say defines us?” and I couldn’t say one record.
I could probably pull out five or six to start with, which would give a good idea of what we’re doing. I mean, if you listen to A Walk with Love and Death, that record is one album and one soundtrack album and that’s not exactly everything that we do. It’s a completely different kind of thing, but I was always really proud of that and I don’t know anyone who has done an album and then a soundtrack for a movie that didn’t exist (and then made the movie) [laughs] That was kind of fun.
When you’re prolific and you’re writing a lot, it can become quite challenging. When I’m writing, there’s the stuff I know I want to play, the stuff I kinda hope I can shape into something good and the stuff that falls under the category of “what were you thinking” (which is usually the stuff that’s only heard by my long-suffering wife) – so I was wondering, when it comes to working through your material, is the filter for what’s good or not solely with you, or is it with whichever iteration of the band you’re working with at the time?
Nah, by the time the band hears it, it’s already been worked on a lot by me before they ever get to hear it. I would say that 98% of the stuff I write never sees the light of day for records. At least 98% of the riffs. I’ll write stuff and I’ll have it and it’s just the riffs – I’ll come up with the riff, but I don’t have the whole song, but I ‘ll think that maybe it’s good and I can do stuff with it.
So, I’ll record it and then, later, I go back and sift through the hundreds of riffs like that and go “hmmm – this one… why did I like this? Next!” “This one’s no good – next!” And then, you know, “oh this one! This one sounds cool, maybe I can do something with this…” and then later I go back through the stuff I didn’t think was good enough and it’ll be like “why didn’t I like this?”
That’s how it works. The funny thing is that I’ve always done that. Always. And there’ll be stuff that sits there forever before we finally finish it or figure out a way to do something with it. And the funny thing about that is that, let’s say you have a record like Stoner Witch, people will go “oh, I like the songs on that, but not so much the newer stuff!” And I’ll ask them which newer stuff, and they’ll say a song and I’ll tell them that I wrote the song at the exact same time as Stoner Witch – it could have been on Stoner Witch [laughs] It’s only new to them – it’s not new to me. As a matter of fact, it might be twenty years’ old by the time it hits the record. I didn’t just write it.
It’s like this new record, I don’t know when I wrote those riffs. I’m not sure exactly how old some of that stuff is – none of it is brand new and I just wrote it. I don’t just sit down and write a new record – why would I do that? I always write stuff, you know, always…
You’re always writing stuff and you go through what you have and figure out what’s good and what isn’t good. That’s kind of like a constant. And I don’t even really think about it. Just the other day I was looking at… the way that we do it now, is that’s it’s all digital which means its dated. So, I look and it’s like “wow! I wrote eight riffs that day and then didn’t come up with anything for two days, then I wrote five more riffs and then a riff a day for the next two weeks…” You know, just stuff like that and you look at it and you’re like “I don’t remember it that way.” You know, I just remember playing and then, suddenly, it’s there. I don’t know where it comes from. It’s just like sifting through piles of nightmarish shit until you find a couple of tiny things that are good.
And you know, whenever I pick up a guitar, I’m thinking in terms of song-writing. Always. Always. Unless I’m practicing, which I’ll sometimes do. I sometimes practice cover songs or whatever. So, when you play, you’re always thinking in terms of song writing (or at least you should be) if you call yourself a song writer. So, I’ll come up with something and I’ll play it and play it and play it and if it’s kinda good, I’ll think about what I can do with it.
So, then I start imagining the whole thing – the whole damn thing! What the bass part can do, where the vocals can go, where the drums should accentuate what’s going on… how to start. So, that goes through my head immediately and then I get to the end and go “ah – I don’t like it!”
So, OK, start over – next riff and go through the whole process again. That’s what I do. I can’t think of it any other way. I can’t just go: “well, this is a good guitar riff, maybe someone else will do something with it now…” I go through the whole, entire experience and try to consider what I can do with it as a song writer to make it as dramatic as possible from the get-go. Whatever it is, a guitar is just a tool to write songs. That’s all it is, for me. And then you’re arranging and singing in your head so, by the time the band hears it, it doesn’t mean it’s going to stay that way, but you’ve already gone over this thing a bunch of times.
And then you can sit there and talk to the drummer. So, Dale… I can sit there and talk to him and explain where the vocals should go, so there shouldn’t be a super-busy part over that, because it’ll step all over it. You know what I mean – you figure out how to build the song in the most efficient and dramatic way possible. You know: “don’t build on this part, because it’s not going to be good if that’s where I was imagining a guitar solo” and it goes on and on and on and fortunately the guys are fine with it and they’re incredibly open minded to that. And every version of the band – and there’ve been loads of different guys in the band – it’s always been the case. It’s been very much working towards a simple end type of thing, with not much ego involved. I mean, the whole band can be playing and suddenly, I’ll realise that my initial idea wasn’t right. So, you know, I’ll be: “that’s not right! The powerful part of the song is here!”, you know, from watching the whole and play. So, then, I’ll change my mind and I’m very much an accidentalist when it comes to that. I try to not be so stupid and stuck that I ruin what’s good about some of those moments.
No, no, no – these guys can take it to place that I couldn’t have imagined, so I want to make sure that I am there when that kind of magic happens. I want to be sure that I don’t get too attached – and it’s hard to do. To hear a different thing from what you were doing. You know, if the band are doing a better job of what you’ve created, they’ve taken it up a level because they’re so good. That’s part of surrounding yourself with people that are better than you are, or at least on your equal. It’s only going to make your band and your music better. You’re only as good as the worst musician in the band. That’s it, in a lot of ways.
Fortunately, I’ve been lucky enough to always be playing with who I consider to be super-top-notch players. Stephen and Dale, I think that they’re on a par with anybody else. There’s no one… there are lots of people I would not want to play with, but they can play with anybody in any band. I can’t replace those guys, there’s no way. So, I feel totally fortunate and totally grateful to be in that situation. It’s a song writer’s dream come true. Think about it. One of my favourite bands is The Who and Pete Townsend’s a song writer writing songs for Keith Moon and John Entwistle… I mean, it doesn’t get any better than that! You’re writing songs and those guys are going to play it?! That’s just a song writer’s dream come true – getting these guys to blow it up into this monstrous thing and it makes it way cool.
I think that idea of not having the ego, and serving the music, is the simplest idea and one of the hardest things that a songwriter has to do, because you inevitably get attached to one little bit of the song, and then someone comes in and does it better – so you end up with that paradoxical feeling of: “that’s awesome… you bastard!”
[Laughs] Yeah! But that’s OK though. Because it’s still your initial spark – without you, it wouldn’t have happened. You know. You are bringing it in and letting them do their job. Show me how this is done! I’m not a bass player like Steven McDonald. I can play bass, but I’m not a bass player like he is. It’s like Pete Townsend, he wasn’t John Entwistle and he understood that. He could think of things that would make John Entwistle shine, but he didn’t think of all the stuff that he did – no way. Or Keith Moon. Nobody can think that way. Nobody. Then, you give them a little bit of help “do this, do this” you know? “I really want you to do this…” and they’ll be able to do it way better than you could, or way beyond anything you could have comprehended.
When that kind of stuff happens, for a song writer, you sit there when you’re hearing it at the end of the day and it’s on the record and you think back to where it started, it’s just unbelievable. It’s magic. It’s just magic. I don’t know what else it would be – it’s just turned into something else and it couldn’t be more human. There’s a human element to the whole thing that makes music so cool.
Nothing in the art world has ever moved me the way that music does. Nothing. Not a painting… some movies, because they have music in them… but just a song – nothing gets me going like that. Nothing. So, it’s an immensely powerful and very ancient kind of feeling. Music has always been here in every culture. For some reason it means something to all of us and it always has – everywhere you go, no matter what. No matter how far back I history or time you go, there’s music. So, it’s important to us and we need it for some reason. I don’t know why, but we need it. It’s inside of your brain! If you asked me to write the lyrics down for something, I couldn’t do it, but I could sing you the whole song – you know what I mean. I can’t remember the lyrics, but I can sing them. So, you know, something’s going on in your brain that we don’t even understand. It’s coming from a place that you don’t normally get to and that, to me, is really cool. I’m sure there are brain surgeons or psychoanalysts out there who could explain all that, but to me it’s magic! You know? And I don’t need a massive explanation, it’s OK.
It’s really refreshing to hear that, and I feel the same way – there’s something about hearing a song for the first time and the flesh breaks out on your arms…
Yeah!
And you were talking about the Gift of Sacrifice and I was so disappointed that you didn’t get to tour that – I really wanted to see how you were going to approach it, because there are so many layers in the recording that you did. So, I wanted to ask – the way that you approached that, you had Trevor Dunn on there and there’s some strings and synth in there as well and I was wondering about how you approached the initial demoing of that because it sounds amazing…
Well, I did a solo record – This Machine Kills Artists – seven years ago or something and we did a big tour, so it was time for me to do a new one. So, I had a long time to think about it and I figured that I’d never heard anyone do a record that was acoustic with modular synth, or at least not that I know of. So, that’s how I initially approached it. I didn’t even have the idea that Trevor was going to be on the record. So, I wrote the material, and even had most of it recorded with that in mind and then, when it came down to figuring out how I was going to tour the record… I never do anything last minute – it’s all way, way in advance. I’m thinking in terms of what I’m going to be doing a year and a half from now and stuff like that. So, this is way in advance of the record coming out. I said: “Trevor, how would you feel about going on a tour with me as an opening act? So, you know, forty minutes of solo, acoustic bass and then maybe we could play some songs together at the end? And, if we’re going to do that, maybe we can get together and record a little EP that we can sell on the tour – both of us?” So, he said OK.
He showed up In LA (we’ve got our own studio in LA), with this guy Toshi Kasai – engineer. So, we have this studio where we rehearse and record (he records other bands too there sometimes). So, anyway, he came in and I asked him if he’d try putting bass on one of my songs and then, on the EP, we could have Trevor on a song from the album, but it would be different. Anyway, so he put the bass on it, and I was like “oh my god! That’s so cool!”
So, then I had him do a couple more, then we wrote a couple of songs together and then, he ended up playing on most of the record. I think there are couple of songs that don’t have him on there, so that’s how it happened. So, once again, there it is – exactly what I was talking about before. When something falls in your lap, I’m not stupid enough to just go “forget that!” I’m not going to do that. I don’t want to do that. And it was so cool, and then my wife heard the record and she said “you guys have done something that I’ve never heard before. This combination of things is something I’ve never heard…” So, what I want to do, at some point, seeing as we got so screwed on this last one, is to do another one. Oh, and that’s why the record is King Buzzo with Trevor Dunn – because I had most of it done before. I want to do one where it’s both of us together from the get-go. Then we can go tour all that stuff.
I love that modular synth stuff. I think the idea of pairing these old-school synth sounds and guitar, it’s something you don’t hear, and I think it created an incredibly lush series of soundscapes that I wasn’t expecting, and I enjoyed it an awful lot.
I’m very proud of that record. It was a lot of work. You stand out there with not much. There’re no drums to hide behind or big, massive production. You’re on your own. But the first record I did, it was just me and the acoustic guitar. And I wasn’t really interested in doing that again. I wanted to do something different and I hope to do another one with Trevor and then, maybe, we can take it on the road and see what happens.
But he’s a powerful musician, I’ve played with him a lot and, he’s another guy… on this record, I told him: “Overplay! Overplay on everything! I want you to go crazy!” Because he doesn’t usually get told to do that kind of stuff. And I knew, with his sensibilities, if I told him to overplay, he actually wouldn’t He would just play more than he normally would, you know, and I knew that, and it worked. “No, no, no! You overplay as much as possible!” And I think that kind of turned on the creative juices where he wasn’t thinking that he had to please what I wanted him to do. I did not want that to happen. I think you’re always better off letting people like that do their job. Just let them do their job, you end up with a better song.
You said that, when you’re pulling together a record, you’re pulling together different riffs form different periods rather than writing the album on the spot. But an unsung part of creating an album is sequencing so that it flows, right down to getting the vinyl so that, when you flip over, it kicks off with a cool song. So, when it comes to sequencing, is that where a lot of the challenge comes in?
Well, I view making a record a lot like making a movie. And I’ve done a lot of reading about big movies (I’m a huge movie buff – I love it) and I’ve read a lot about how directors make movies. So, I think when you’re approaching it, I always have that kind of thing in mind – which song obviously should be first and which obviously should be second, and then you make it, so it has an ebb and a flow that makes sense. So, it takes you a journey (whether it does or not). And then I’ll sit and listen to it over and over and over – that sequence – and figure out whether I need to change little bits here and there. So, I’ll change the sequence around and then play it for people and ask them what they think. I’ll do all those kinds of things and then, finally, you end up with the result and I’m done with the record. By the time it comes out, I’ve moved on.
People don’t realise this, I think, when you’re sequencing a record, you hear the damn thing so many times that by the time it comes out, you’re already on to recording new things…
Yeah! By the time the public hears the record I’ve moved on. Usually by the time the record comes out, I can’t listen to it and I’m done with it. It goes out into the world and it has its own life.
A record that surprised me was Everybody Loves Sausages – I was never that keen on covers in general because, unless you’re paying direct tribute, you kind of want to hear bands make the songs their own and that’s not always the case… but on Everybody Loves Sausages, there were some amazing versions and particularly Station To Station, I thought, sounded awesome… so, what I wanted to ask was, when approaching a cover, what makes you want to tackle that song?
Well yeah – it has to say something to me, and I also have to feel that we can do something with the song. We can do something with it, I’m not sure what. With Everybody Loves Sausages, the whole point of that record (which I don’t think we made clear enough) was that these are bands that were big influences on us that maybe people hadn’t thought of. That was how we picked the bands that went on that.
Again, that comes back to that idea of how I felt the Melvins grew alongside me because I think, when I picked up Stag, I must have been a teenager, very heavily into grunge, and my taste has only expanded since then. And for me, music becomes so much more interested when your tastes are varied and open and once you start digging into that remarkable array of influences on Everybody Loves Sausages, it kind helps to make the musical digressions of the Melvins make more sense.
Yeah, yeah. Lots of people were surprised. You know, they think that we listen to Sabbath… well sure! We listen to all kinds of things. I don’t really listen to Sabbath too much and like today, if you asked me what Sabbath record, I wanted to hear, it would probably be Heaven and Hell with Ronnie James Dio [laughs]. The exact opposite of what people might think. I mean I like Sabbath, there’s nothing wrong with it, but I like a whole bunch of other stuff, you know. Piper At The Gates Of Dawn by Pink Floyd, just as much, or Captain Beefheart or Zappa – you never know.
Well Pink Floyd are absolutely amazing, and they made album writing an art form for me, so it was always really important to me that that was something bands engaged with.
Oh yeah! Pink Floyd are great. Anybody who doesn’t like Pink Floyd, they have never listened to Pink Floyd [laughs].
So, the new album is a huge amount of fun – it moves through loads of different moods and ideas, but I loved the backwards-masked satanic barber shop on Goodnight Sweetheart and the Beach Boys pastiche – and again, they were interesting digressions outside of what I would have expected which, I suppose, I should have expected by now!
Yeah, I mean one thing about us is that, as time goes on, the records are going to be recorded really well. They’re going to be very well crafted together and well thought out. Even the stuff that people might not think so. It’s not easy to do all that stuff. Not for us. And we work extremely hard on it. So, I think that the record is probably a little better than the last one we did as the 1983 Melvins… but I really like that record too, so it’s difficult to say. I like the title – I like the title “Working with God” and I like the idea that Working with God has “I Fuck Around” and a song called “Fuck You” on it.
I enjoyed the biography you put out with it as well, which kind of maintains that sense of humour which I suppose is a great way to keep sane and keep grounded in an industry that is hellbent on myth making.
Yeah, you know, it’s why I’m wearing a dress on stage… it’s what it should be. It’s not even a dress, it’s a muumuu [laughs] and, you know, we’re called Melvins and bands like the Fugs are a huge influence on us – always were- on our album titles and everything else. It’s like, we’re just as heavy as any band out there and we can play heavy metal just as good as anybody else, but there’s also a lot of other stuff we do. And a lot of other bands – take a band like Slayer, they would never do anything like that… never! I mean now they’re not going to do anything, but they’d never have done anything like that. Maybe if they had, they’d still be going!
My final question, is that you’re doing these live streams and one of the things that differentiates your streams from some of the others is that first of all, you have these very high production values and secondly, you’re splitting it out so there’s a cool, organic discussion between you guys – it seems like you’ve really planned out something that will work for the fans…
Well, we wanted to make it more like a TV show, because we watched a bunch of streams and thought they were dead boring. Obviously, this stuff is live, we’re playing live, the songs are recorded live and sent out to everyone live. So that stuff is all true. But the rest of it we put together like a variety show type of thing. We just thought it would be better and interviews and stuff like that are just as interesting as anything else. They’re funny, and it’s us interviewing each other. That kinda works. It’s not some interviewer – it’s us, asking the right questions.
That’s a good approach – Paradise Lost did something similar, and you get a better vibe because you guys kinda know what the most interesting touch points are and you don’t get that awkwardness when you have an interlocuter who doesn’t know the band so well.
Yeah, well it’s good – I know so much about those guys, I can ask more personal questions and not just, you know, “when did the band start?” kind of stuff [laughs] I think it’s better. And we did the high production value on it, but it’s very guerrilla filmmaking, which I’m super into – you know movies and doing that kind of stuff. I’m a really serious amateur photographer, so I know what will work and what won’t work. I like all that stuff. Photography is one of my passions.
Yeah, that’s when you finally got onto Instagram, wasn’t it? I think it really helps when you have someone in the band who’s into that side of things, you get a much better kind of aesthetic emerge from it.
Yeah. I think so. Picture taking is something I’ve always done, I was just never on social media… so, I think people were a little surprised at the level the photography’s on. But I never took lessons or went to school or anything like that. I learned how to take pictures and how to use the camera. Most of the stuff you’re going to take is going to be crap, but you’re going to find something that’s going to be good. And I’m a street photographer, so you know, I find it out there in the world an realise if it’s good or not right on the spot. I don’t think I’d be good in the studio.
Capturing moments is a really important part of it…
Oh yeah, absolutely, I love it. It’s one of my favourite things to do.
It’s really helped, you know, throughout this pandemic… being able to create has kept us relatively sane!
Yeah! That’s It! I do the best I can, you know. It’s all I can do [laughs]
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