‘It was like we’d signed up for a cult’: the weird, wild world of Butthole Surfers

‘People would be running out of our shows throwing up’ … Gibby Haynes performs with Butthole Surfers. Photograph: Pat Blashill

Nudity, raging fires, belching smoke, blinding strobes, nightmare-inducing surgical videos, fights and firearms: these are some of the things you may have encountered at a Butthole Surfers show while being pummelled by a squealing cacophony of acid-fried psychedelic noise-rock, as a man tripping wildly in his underpants screams at you through a megaphone.

“People would be running out of our shows throwing up,” says Paul Leary, the band’s guitarist. “We were punishing these poor souls.”