For thirty years The Melvins have been combining the ideas of performance art and rock n roll. Recently the band passed through my town, allowing me some time to sit and chat with Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover. Here is the result of that meeting.
CRAVEONLINE: So is this the Everyone Loves Sausages Tour? Is the whole show just covers?
BUZZ OSBOURNE: Nah, we’re not doing any of that stuff. This is just the end of our European tour. We did two weeks of Melvins Lite and we brought Big Business, the rest of regular Melvins, with us. They opened. We were playing the Maryland Death Fest, and then later the Scion fest in Memphis.
We didn’t want to fly home for two weeks and then go play a show in Memphis. So we set up these shows to take us from Maryland to Memphis. Tomorrow we’re recording at Jack White’s studio in Nashville.
CO: What are you doing there?
BO: We’re recording a live album in some weird way he records. I don’t know what it is.
CO: What’s on the live album?
BO: Songs from the set we played at the MDF, but not as long. It’s two 20-minute sets. One side is the song “Charmacarmacat”, and the other is a variety of songs that make sense together.
CO: You ever get tired of touring?
BO: It’s part of the deal. Some nights are better than others. John Lee Hooker did it his whole life. Whenever the Stones can drag themselves on stage they do.
CO: You’re starting a 30th anniversary tour. How does it feel to be at this for 30 years? What’s changed? What’s remained the same? Why do you think the Melvins have been around so long? Do you remember your first show or first tour?
BO: 30 years, Jesus…. I’m happy about all of it, really, and I don’t think I would change a goddam thing. I feel better about everything then I ever have, life is good and the streets are paved with gold. Ha! I have no idea why things for us have lasted this long but it’s nice they have… I still like doing it so why stop now?
Our first “real” show was in Olympia, Washington in 1984 but the band officially started in 1983. We thought it would be cool to be able to play somewhere that had a stage with an audience of people who were like us. Mission accomplished I suppose. We did the show, and then wanted to do more. It wasn’t always easy but mostly it was a blast. We did a US tour in 1986 that went so badly we vowed to never do another, and we didn’t until 1989
CO: Is it harder to tour then as opposed to now?
BO: It’s easier for us to tour. I think its way easier to start a band now then it was 30 years ago. Information moves a lot faster. We can put all our tour dates up in one spot, and the whole world knows they’re there. That’s huge. You can put a song up and the whole world can hear it. I would’ve killed for the Internet when I was a kid.
CO: What about the down side of the web?
BO: Eh, the genie is out of the bottle. Nothing you can do. Special packaging maybe, but it’s a small percentage. I foresee a world where everything is free, and if you want to own it, then it’ll cost a lot of money. To be honest, record stores and distributors have had it good for a long time. I don’t really care if they all fail miserably.
CO: Back to the covers record. Whose brainchild was Everybody Loves Sausages?
BO: We did a lot of recording last year. We put out a five song EP for Scion, a four song EP of Melvins Teenage Dream, which is us with our original drummer, a full length with Melvins Lite, and Sausages. It was all recorded at the same time. We did fifty songs over the course of six weeks. Originally we thought we’d put it out as EPs, but we kind of realized that it was a pretty good record. Most of the songs we always wanted to cover anyway.
CO: Your choice of Jello Biafra for the Roxy Music cover was inspired. Who else could you find to sound that weird?
BO: Nobody. Biafra is actually more weird and eccentric than anybody thinks. As weird as you think he is, he’s actually weirder. He’s also a huge music fan, probably the biggest music fan I know.
DALE CROVER: He knows everything about bands, so many little unknown bands to.
CO: Dale, how come no five minute drum solo on the cover of Black Betty?
DC: We originally recorded that for the Super Bowl contest. They needed something shorter, more upbeat.
CO: Super Bowl contest?
BO: Yeah, they got a bunch of bands to do a cover of Black Betty and then chose one. They went with Jon Spencer. The weird part was, they wouldn’t tell us which bands we were up against.
DC: Turned out to be Dinosaur JR. We figured we’d do a split with the other band that lost, but Dinosaur JR didn’t do it, so we put out a split with Jon Spencer.
CO: Do you have any ideas on another full length? Will it be full Melvins or Melvins Light?
BO: The next album for us is already in the can and will come out in October. The line up this time is me, Dale and Mike Dillard. It’s Melvins 1983, but it’s new songs. It also includes the 4 song 1983 Melvins EP we did last year, and American Cow, and Dr. Mule. The rest of the album consists of new songs that no one has heard at all yet. It’s a fine album and I’m really proud of it. I’m glad we could do this with Mike
CO: At this point the Melvins can pretty much do anything. If you released an album of pushing Dale’s drums down the stairs in limited green vinyl, it would sell. Why? Why do The Melvins get away with things no other band can?
BO: I view what we do as more akin to performance art than it is to regular rock music. There’s also a lot more of a sense of humor than people would imagine. We’re called The Melvins, how serious could it be?
CO: I was always curious where the name came from.
BO: It was a guy I worked with in high school that I hated.
CO: Why do you think people miss the humor in what you do?
BO: Don’t know. Some people didn’t think Andy Kaufman was funny. My favorite inspirational characters are like, Howard Beale, Lenny Bruce, people like that. We’re a heavy metal band with Captain Beefheart. I didn’t realize it right away, but the performance art aspect became clearer as the years wore on and we wanted to do something we could call our own. I knew the music was certainly ours, but we needed to also look like freaks. Ha! Not hard to do, but certainly not common.
CO: Is there anything you guys wouldn’t do?
BO: Child porn (laughs). Nothing that would land us in jail. I don’t think there’s any kind of music that would be out of bounds for us.
CO: Looking back over thirty years. What are your five favorite Melvins albums and why?
BO: Colossus of Destiny, Stoner Witch, The Bride Screamed Murder, The Bulls And The Bees and Freak Puke. I think those would give people a good, well-rounded view into what it is we do.
CO: What are some things you look back on fondly and what are some things you wish you could forget?
BO: We had a blast making Stoner Witch but not so much with Stag. I think Stag‘s a great record but it was really hard to make. I wish none of the shit that happened to Cobain would have went down, but that’s how it goes. You play with fire you get burned.
CO: Ever thought about doing a Melvins movie? Not one about the band, but one written by you, and conceptualized by the band. Like The Monkees Head or something along those lines.
BO: We have a movie about the 51/51 tour we did last year that looks like it will be really great, but I think another kind of movie would be really fun. I’ll have to think about it.
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