“Some time in the early '90s, I fell asleep in front of the TV and I woke at three in the morning and the TV is flashing these flashing lights and there is some band playing, with smoke and belching flames and horrendous noises. And I thought to myself, That’s what a rock show needs to be. And then I realise, Oh wait, that's us.”
This is the shit. The real shit. The fucked-up shit. The psychedelic, balls-out, untamed, megaphone-wielding, shotgun-blasting, naked pyromania, drug-addled, noise-erupting shit. Cymbals burst alight with stunning suddenness. Scuffles break out stage right as a man in his underpants assaults audience members’ ears with a stream of nonsensical, scary garbage. Trippy cacophonous explosions of looped noise and belching. Dada tape manipulation. Hyper-tinny scratchings of distorted guitars and demented chanting looped around frighteningly hypnotic rhythmic cadences that spin around in helpless abandon. Albums with titles like Psychic.... Powerless.... Another Man's Sac and PCPPEP cos no one knew what the fuck was going on.
“Gibby discovered that if he took a crash cymbal and turned it upside down on the stand and filled it with rubbing alcohol, he could light it on fire and then hit it with a stick. And it would make a mushroom cloud and flame that was really impressive. He would do that a lot, every night. The light of the alcohol would spill onto the floor. The floor would catch on fire and the bouncers would start to come out on stage to put it out, and you would douse them with alcohol and threaten to light them on fire.”
Abnormal. Deranged. Demented. Darkly, darkly humorous.
“We decided to live in Athens, Georgia because we threw a dart at a map and it landed on Athens, Georgia.”
The only band to have slipped PCP into my joint.
“We got an album title by throwing a dirty sock at a keyboard one time.”
Ladies and gentlemen, Butthole Surfers. Your host, Mr Paul Leary. Buckle up.
Oh, wait, first... pub quiz trivia time: which infamous Texan noise-rock band was headlining the Hollywood Palladium on the night Hole's Courtney Love met Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, rolling round the floor in a drunken fistfight with an English journalist?
Answers on a postcard to the usual address.
Now, here's the story of how Butthole Surfers got their first record deal with Jello Biafra’s Alternative Tentacles label, as told by their lively guitarist, Mr Leary.
I thought we were gonna die. And I was like, I don't fucking care
Paul Leary
“We'd driven out to Los Angeles and got a few shows and all of a sudden, we were hungry and couldn't get any more shows. We heard San Francisco is the place to be. They had soup kitchens. You can eat free for six days a week. So man, we were gonna go to San Francisco and eat free for six days a week.
“And our van had mechanical problems and it started breaking down on the way. It's like an eight-hour drive. We get to the outskirts of town and we're going over the Bay Bridge during rush hour traffic. We thought we were gonna die. Hey, the car barely made it to the top of the hill of the bridge and then the engine just died, but we made it over the hump and start coasting down into San Francisco. We sort of roll off at the first exit and the van rolls to a stop in front of this building. There are punk rockers outside loading in drums, guitar amps and stuff. So we start unloading our drums and guitars and this woman stops us and goes, 'Who are you?' And we're like, We're the Butthole Surfers. And she goes, 'Well, you're not playing here.' And we start crying, Oh, we're so hungry, please help us. So she reluctantly lets us play three songs. Jello sees us and gives us a record deal on the spot just like that.
“Yes, we were lucky.”
Wow, that's a good story.
"After the show, we get the van started again, but only for a minute, you know, then it died again on some train tracks. And so we spent the night sleeping on train tracks. I thought we were gonna die. And I was like, I don't fucking care. Every once in a while, a police car would drive by and shine a spotlight at us and I'd wave frantically out the window and they were like we'll be back later. They were not back later. I think they were hoping we'd get hit by a train or something.”
Gibby had a pet cockroach that he nailed to a wall. That thing lived for a long time.
Paul Leary
This is the real shit. From within the Surfers’ deranged '80s output and incendiary live shows, you can trace connections with much that followed – particularly the hardcore punk bliss of Minneapolis' Amphetamine Reptile Records, the less scary but equally as imaginative psychedelic imaginings of Flaming Lips, and yes, much of early grunge. Kurt Cobain listed their Alternative Tentacles debut EP Butthole Surfers (1983) aka Pee Pee The Sailor as one of his favourite 10 albums. And for anyone who needs a memory jolt, their first three full-length albums – PPAMS and PCPPEP and the truly life-changing Rembrandt Pussyhorse (1986) - are being reissued on Matador this month.
I tell Leary that he probably doesn’t remember, but we met a long time back in Austin. Although now I think about it, I don't know if we did. I may have missed my plane. There was a drink in Minneapolis that got out of hand and ended up with my photographer trying to beat me up at the airport.
“Welcome to my world,” the guitarist laughs.
Leary formed Butthole Surfers at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas in the late '70s with singer Gibby Haynes. Haynes was his school’s Accountant of the Year and captain of the basketball team, with a strange fixation on venereal diseases and Lee Harvey Oswald. Leary had been playing guitar since 1962 and was working in a lumber yard, trying to pursue a career as a stockbroker.
"Gibby got a job with the largest accounting firm in the world. I don't even think he lasted a year. Bless him for trying, though.”
Influenced by “Meat Puppets. Dead Kennedys, Black Flag... all the usuals,” the duo decided to move to California and be punk rock stars. “We were more of a performance art band, into Dada and spontaneity,” recalls Leary. “We played at art galleries and staged events and made big messes on the floor.” The band’s wayward, spasmodic sound was underpinned by the dual drumming team of King Coffey and Teresa Nervosa and – after a long series of frazzled band-members, offset by the odd physical altercation – bassist Jeff Pinkus.
Butthole Surfers were desperately poor during the 1980s, sleeping wherever they could: on floors and in dumpsters, in the street and, for at least one album, a shed.
“We alternated between the toolshed behind the studio and this lady would let her sleep in her garage sometimes,” says Leary. “We’d sneak in when the band wasn’t playing and record. Gibby had a pet cockroach that he nailed to a wall. And that thing lived for a long time. You’d think it was dead, then you’d hold a lighter underneath it and it would start kicking its legs.”
So how did you…?
“We hit the road. If we stayed in one town, we wouldn't have survived because you play a show and then, you know, you can't play another show. They start get tired of you real quick. So you go to a town and you play a show and you get loaded up on beer and weed and if you're lucky a little bit of food money and gas money and then you move on to the next town. And after a while you start wondering if that's just how you're gonna die. It seemed like a form of suicide. But fortunately, you know, things worked out.”
The weirdest point of the whole long, weird trip came when the band unexpectedly signed to Capitol Records in 1992 – straight after taking part in the inaugural Lollapalooza tour, and on the back of being the top grossing touring band of ’91 (or so Leary claims). Doubtless, the success of Nirvana’s Nevermind had something to do with it.
“Capitol was fucking cool, man – that’s Dean Martin, The Beatles and Grand Funk fucking Railroad. Why wouldn’t we want to sign with them? I have such fun memories of smoking joints on top of the Capitol building in Hollywood.”
Haynes began to form bands with people like Johnny Depp, King Coffey started up the excellent Trance Syndicate label, and Leary released his first solo album The History Of Dogs while beginning to cement a reputation as producer (Daniel Johnston, Meat Puppets etc). Capitol brought in Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones to produce 1993’s Independent Worm Saloon, a turn of events that eventually led to Pepper topping the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1996.
“God bless Beavis and Butt-head, and David Letterman,” says Leary.
What do you think is your legacy?
“I shudder to think about it. We never started out with any intention of having a message or influencing anybody. We made a living off of being stupid and I don't know if there's a legacy to be taken from that. Maybe, stupid stupid stupid people can make it too if you just keep at it. Stupid, lucky people.”
