Interview from On The Record book
If you knew everything at the beginning of your career that you know now, what would you have done differently?
I’m very happy and proud to be who I am, and whatever mistakes I’ve made only helped me become this person.
What is your greatest lesson learned?
Music is not something that you are in control of. It comes from somewhere else. If you’re that middleman between the cosmos and the real world on earth that hte music comes through, you are very lucky. When you record music, it’s not your job to try to control anything. It’s more about being in the right place and flowing with the energies that are in the air around you and with the people that you are making the music with. The second that someone thinks music comes from themselves, and that they are the ones responsible for it, is when they go off track. The most important thing you could ralize is that you are the least important part of the whole process. Music is going to be made whether any one artist is here or not. If John Lennon or Jimi Hendrix had disappeared, music still would have gone on, changed, grown, and been the beautiful thing that it is. You take away the music, all you have are the individuals, and they don’t mean anything. The individual is nothing – it’s the music that’s in the air all the time that’s important, and you have to be humble in the face of that.
What are some of your favorite albums?
I’m naming ones I love, but I can name five hundred others that I love equally. Especially with bands like the Velvet Underground or the Mothers, I love a lot of their albums equally. I’m just trying to pick one per band.
(GI), the Germs
Trout Mask Replica, Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
Low, David Bowie
The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other, Van Der Graaf Generator
The Velvet Underground, the Velvet Underground
Not Available, the Residents
Cut, the Slits
The Ekkehard Ehlers Plays series, Ekkehard Ehlers
Raw Power, the Stooges
Hark! The Village Wait, Steeleye Span
Closer, Joy Division
The Idiot, Iggy Pop
Adolescents, the Adolescents
What Makes a Man Start Fires, Minutemen
I Say, I Say, I Say, Erasure
Penthouse and Pavement, Heaven 17
Fireside Favorites, Fat Gadget
Burning from the Inside, Bauhaus
Over the Edge, the Wipers
The Slide, T.Rex
Remain in Light, Talking Heads
Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
Travelogue, the Human League
Desert Shore, Nico
Slayed?, Slade
Funkadelic, Funkadelic
Red Medicine, Fugazi
Barrett, Syd Barrett
Here Come the Warm Jets, Brian Eno
Black Celebration, Depeche Mode
Red, King Crimson
Trilogy, Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Close to the Edge, Yes
’75, Neu!
Flammende Herzen, Micheal Rother
Get Out, Pita
Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56′ 37†Minus Sixteen Degrees 51′ 08â€, Fennesz
Liege and Lief, Fairport Convention
Led Zeppelin IV, Led Zeppelin
The New Yor Dolls, the New York Dolls
The Ramones, the Ramones
Did you have any posters on your bedroom walls as a kid? Of whom?
Depends on what age…
When I was seven, it was Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, and KISS. When I was ten, I had a garage where I had ads for punk-rock shows, like X, the Germs, and Black Flag. When I was thirteen, I had a nice Ziggy Stardust poster, but it was mostly pictures cut out of magazines. I separated them into sections – Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, and the various people section.
When I was seventeen and moved to Hollywood to live on my own, I started buying eight-by-ten photographs from the memorabilia stores on Hollywood Boulevard. My room was covered in eight-by-tens of Divine (I was deep into John Waters), Nina Hagen, Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, the New York Dolls, and David Bowie.
What are some great shows you’ve seen?
The Butthole Surfers at UCLA in 1989 was an amazing show. I also saw them in New York, which was equally amazing.
Jane’s Addiction, in 1989-91. I saw them a lot, an they were incredible. It was hard for me to imagine a band being more powerful. Eric Avery was such a great prescence, and Perry gave it everything he had. It was beyong inspiring.
In the last five years, I’ve had the good fortune of seeing Fugazi a lot of times I’d seen them as early as 1990, but in the last few years I’ve probably seen them twenty times. Every one of those shows was equally wonderful and exciting and fresh. Every performance they give is completely different from the next. They don’t use a set list. They know every one of their songs, and just go from song to song, barely pausing in between. To me, they are exactly what a band should be – the perfect show for my taste.
