No one was more surprised than Michael Bishop when Joan Rivers told him how much she loved his band. It was 1990, and Bishop and Dave Brockie, his bandmate in US shock-metal provocateurs Gwar, were guests on Rivers’ TV talkshow. The pair were in full intergalactic barbarian-warrior regalia, complete with grotesque latex monster mask (Brockie) and full-face gladiator helmet topped off with a gigantic spiked mohawk (Bishop).
“When they cut to a commercial, she said, ‘This is so great, you guys are so creative. When I was a kid I would have loved this’,” recalls Bishop, who joined the band as bassist in 1987, adopting the stage name Beefcake the Mighty. “I was, like, really? Wow!”
