There are legendary bands like Nirvana and even New Orleans’ own Eyehategod; and then there are the Melvins. Like the Pixies or Black Flag, the Melvins helped create a rabid, raunchy rock movement. And while it didn’t quite make millionaires out of founder Buzz Osborne and company (have you seen the video where Buzz tries to buy a 20,000 square-foot house with “street cred?” “I’m considered the Godfather of grunge!” He tells the incredulous agent), the Melvins have continued to tour and release when most of their musical offspring– some who did become millionaires– have died or disbanded. ANTIGRAVITY thought it a pretty sweet idea to ask Gary Mader, who currently plays bass for EHG (in addition to his guitar duties in Hawg Jaw and Outlaw Order) to call Buzz and chat him up, since Gary was there for the Melvins’ ascent into infamy. “The last time I did an interview was in 1990, for a fanzine (Indecent Exposure) that a friend and I put together at Kinkos, circulation 25” Gary told us when we asked him to do it. No worries, G: it’s a great interview and made us misty-eyed for the good old days of skinheads, indie elitism and pop-punk gang mentality. But what’s it matter when we’re nearly at the end of civilization as we know it… Or are we?
Your first show in New Orleans was 1986 with RKL [Rich Kids on Acid]. What was your first impression of the city?
Buzz Osborne: I had never seen anything like it because at that time I had never been to Europe, so now looking back on it, it has sort of a European vibe to it more so than anywhere else I’ve ever been… It’s got kind of like a jungle-y vibe to it.
What was the audience like back then? Were they receptive to your sound?
They were much more receptive to us than a lot of the places we played in the South. Actually, it was the most receptive audience we had than anywhere [else], other than what we had in NYC. People seemed ten times more open-minded than anywhere else. We played there and in Houston, but Texas was certainly not having any of our long-haired bullshit.
They hadn’t quite loosened up at that point?
Noooo… Then we went straight into Florida after that and they were really not interested in our long-haired bullshit. We had longer hair than skinhead hair always. I never thought any of that stuff made any difference; I never drew the line at hair length. I thought that stuff went out with West Side Story in the 1960s, but apparently that didn’t get through to most of the U.S. Skinheads were alive and well in the mid ‘80s; and the interesting thing is that after our ‘86 tour, we vowed to never tour again it was so horrible. Skinheads were pretty much the main reason for that… Then we toured around ‘89 to ‘90, right after our Ozma record came out. We went through the South again where everyone was very receptive to what we were doing and all those people had long hair and were wearing Sub Pop t-shirts. So we were like, okay, you’re fitting in one mold in 1986; you’re fitting another mold in 1990… Oh, how the worm has turned. We had people come up to us and say, “I was at that show in ‘86” and we were like “You were the skinhead guy giving us shit the whole time.”
Freebird!!!
Oh, not even. It was all Agnostic Front kind of stuff. And I never had any problems with any of those bands– I just had a problem with these total, total moron audience members; but you can’t blame the bands for that stuff. So things really changed after that, say ‘89 to ‘90, after a solid 6, 7 years of doing nothing, when things kind of changed for us. We put out Ozma and had a little bit more of a receptive stance all over the U.S. It just got better and better as time went on.
Around the time Ozma came out, the band moved to San Francisco. Most of what I knew about SF at that time came by way of Lookout! Records; bands like Crimpshrine, Corrupted Morals, Operation Ivy and then Neurosis, who were the hardest-sounding band on the label. How were you received there, being that you were exactly the opposite, musically?
Neurosis were always nice to us from the very beginning but the rest of those bands really had no interest in us. Zero.
Would you go as far as to say that it was clique-ish?
Oh, very much so. There was a lot of indie elitism at that point. They weren’t super interested in what we were doing; you know, the Lawrence Livermore [founder of Lookout!] kind of people. What we were doing was a much stranger animal.
Thanks, then, to Chris Dodge for starting Slap-A-Ham Records.
We always liked Chris because he had a more open mind than most of those people. When we moved to San Francisco, people like Tim Yohannan [founder of Maximum Rocknroll] ruled the roost, so you had one end with the Tim Yo-type of people, who felt like they knew everything; they had the moral high ground. Then you had heavy metal bands like Exodus that really didn’t know anything about the punk underground, so you had 900 different bands that sounded like Metallica or Exodus, which I didn’t have any interest in. I mean, it was okay. The thing about it is that stuff never changed. I’ve never wanted to be part of that stuff; I never wanted to be a part of any gang or group. I always felt like we wanted to do our own thing. Take a band like Gang of Four: I never felt like they joined a group; they were a part of something. Nobody sounded like them. They weren’t power-pop or anything like that. They were doing something that was weirder– that’s what I wanted to do. Or like Throbbing Gristle; they never sounded like they were a part of a gang.
They were their own gang.
That’s the kind of bands that I admire. Or Black Flag– who was Black Flag’s peer? Nobody that I knew. So when we started out in that area, we wanted to make our own mark, do our own thing. Then when the Sub Pop [era] happened, we got lumped in with all that stuff; but we never did any records for Sub Pop. We were on Boner Records to start with; all of our stuff is still available from them and Amphetamine Reptile. And then we went straight from that to Atlantic, then Ipecac after that. Ipecac is certainly the longest label we’ve been on. People have this false impression that when we were on Atlantic we were less free to do what we wanted. It’s like, did you hear those records?!
What turn of events lead to the addition of Jared [Warren] and Coady [Willis] to the Melvins? All of the bass players you’ve had in the past brought something unique to the table. But with Jared and Coady– especially live– there is an unmatched energy present.
It became obvious that we couldn’t work with Kevin [Rutmantis] anymore, which was after a disastrous show in New Orleans (believe it or not) because of his extra-curricular activities. Me and and Dale [Crover] really didn’t know what we were gonna do. We had always liked the way that Jared played (and the fact that he was a lead singer) and we had played with Big Business in the past. We thought that adding both of those guys and not just one of them was a good idea. We didn’t think we needed another drummer; we just thought it would be a cool thing to do… and not normal. Now with us playing with Trevor Dunn, we’re not going to do just that, we’re going to do both. So I’m really happy that we are settled with those guys.
What is your take on Mayan end-time prophecy?
The Mayans couldn’t predict the end of their own culture; what makes me think they can predict the end of the world? They couldn’t take care of themselves and now they are gonna predict the end of the world? Yeah right!
The Melvins play One Eyed Jacks on Saturday, April 21st with Unsane. They will also release their latest album, Freak Puke on Ipecac in June. For more information go to melvins.com
