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The Melvins

Subba speaks to King Buzzo in LA, to chew the fat about what's going on in the world of Melvins.

Buzz Osbourne of the Melvins (AKA King Buzzo) is something of a legend in many musical circles, and after years of listening to their varied and brilliantly innovative back catalogue it was a pleasure to check in with him at his LA home recently, to discuss their latest record ‘The Bride Screamed Murder,’ his lifelong love with the music of The Who, and his perspective on the future of the music industry.

Rob: Hi Buzz, thanks for your time today.
Buzz: No problem, thank you.

R: So, what are you up to at the moment? You guys are heading out on the road next month, over in the US...
B: Yes we are. We’re in rehearsals at the moment, getting ready for the tour; it’s the only way to get things down in the fashion that we would like. You’ve actually got to rehearse it (laughs).

R: Yeah, especially with the new material?
B: Yeah, and some of the old material that we’ve never played before, things of that nature. We’re playing songs with the guys that we’ve got now that we had never played, you know.

R: Have you to tweaked some of the arrangements of the older material since Coady (Willis) and Jared (Warren) came onboard?
B: Yeah we do, but then again we always have. If there are things that we don’t like on records, in hindsight, then we just go ahead and re-do them for the live shows. I don’t think that any of it is all that precious. We just do it the way that we want it.

R: Cool. Your new album ‘The Bride Screamed Murder’ comes out June 1st on Ipecac... the last studio album that you guys put out, excluding (remix album) ‘Chicken Switch’, ‘Nude With Boots’, was quite a heavy, rocky album, while ‘The Bride...’ seems even more experimental and left-field. How did you handle the writing process for this album? Do you tend to go into a record with preconceived ideas of what you’d like it to sound like, or is it more freeform for you?
B: Well, I had some ideas about what I wanted to do... I’ve had the first song on that record ‘The Water Glass’, the idea of doing that kind of thing, for a long time, the military cadence and military drumming in a heavy metal fashion to some degree. I’ve had that idea for a long time, and sometimes I’ll think of things but they’re a little too wild to get them down, to get them onto a record. That kind of happens, none of the songs are ‘brand new’. I don’t walk in and say ‘here’s a brand new song I’ve written’, they’re all things that we’ve worked on for, sometimes for a number of years.

R: Do all of you bring ideas to the table these days?
B: To some degree. Most of it comes from me; it’s not intentional, I just happen to have a lot of material. Umm, it’s coincidental. But there are things that those guys add, and sometimes they’ll bring in full songs, but I’m pretty open with how things should work. We let it happen naturally. Definitely. I trust them as musicians, which is one of the major steps. If you can trust the people that you play with you’ll be a lot better off.

R: Absolutely. Do you maintain overall control over the percussive side of things then, or do Dale and Coady kind of sort that out between themselves?
B: Well, being the guy who writes most of the material I have very distinct ideas about how most of it should work, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that is how it will end up. I usually have an idea for the song as a songwriter, and often if someone has written a song you should probably listen to their original vision of it, and then elaborate on that. That’s usually the case; I’ve usually thought about the song in terms of the whole band, you know? I’ve thought of it in terms of how the drums will fit with the vocals, the guitar will fit with the vocals, where the vocals should go... All those things before those guys ever hear it. Normally I’ll come in and tell them... Something that Dale is really good at is interpreting me saying ‘well, what I was thinking of drum-wise on this was, pretend like, Ginger Baker was playing with the guys from Gang Of Four, what that would sound like?’ He’s really good at interpreting that kind of thing: ‘A cross between the Allman Brothers and Devo, what would that drummer do?’And then see if you can do it without any crash cymbals, or without using your snare drum. He’s good at imagining those kinds of things, so one I’ve set that in motion we just take it from there.

R: Do you think that living in LA has affected the way that you write at all?
B: I don’t know... I like living here, I’m in a better frame of mind. By and large I don’t know how much difference it makes. I could write songs anywhere; could, I don’t know if I would, but I’m never moving from LA, I love it here. No way. Where are you at?

R: I live in a town just outside of Brighton, south east UK.
B: Ah yeah, the city that Queen made famous. There’s a band that we all really like, we’re still waiting for the modern day equivalent.

R: Yeah...do you tend to listen to a lot of upcoming artists these days, or more bands that you know personally, that you’ve been following for a long time? Whatever comes onto your radar?
B: It depends, you know. I’m not opposed to anything, I like old and new, and I think that there is probably about the same percentage of good bands in any era. Which means very few... a few, but not too many. That’s all OK, I don’t mind that, you have to go out and find them. I’m sure that there were bands in the past that I missed and I’m sure that there are bands now that I’m missing, but if there’s a new thing that’s really good, I want to know about it. It doesn’t happen very often, but it didn’t happen very often back then either. I’m pretty picky, and I really appreciate bands with ideas, that have really good ideas for songs, or have some sense about them, that you can tell that they’re somehow clever, or something. I don’t care about genres. It always intrigues me when I hear people say ‘I only listen to heavy metal’ or ‘I only like country music’, I think that that’s absurd. How could you only be interested in one thing? ‘I only like one kind of music,’... that’s nuts.

R: Closed minded.
B: I don’t think that people intentionally do it, they probably consider themselves as relatively open minded. I don’t know. I’ve always considered us severely individual... I don’t want to be part of any gang, some group mentality musically, or any of that shit. It’s of no interest. We have no brother bands, and we’re not part of any scene. And we don’t want to be. I’m too much of a Groucho Marxist, meaning I don’t want to be a member of any group that would have me as a member, no thanks. And if we are lumped into those kinds of categories then we do what we can to get out of them. Familiarity breeds contempt. The thing that I find funny about that kind of stuff is that people, who obviously have some problem with us to begin with, think that they know all about us. I’ve always loved that kind of stuff, ‘what we always do.’ I’m still trying to figure out that stuff, what it is that we always do. I don’t have a clue.

R: Back on the writing and recording front... Some musicians talk about writing as if it’s something that they’re compelled to do, that they genuinely do write all of the time. Is that something that you find, as you’re very prolific as a band, and as a songwriter?
B: Yes, yeah all the time. It’s not something that you can turn on and off, I can’t say ‘I’m going to sit down and write a song’, I have to wade through a load of garbage to get to something good. I always say that it’s easy if you don’t count all the hard work (laughs). It took almost no time if I don’t consider how long it actually took (laughs).

R: It’s how it goes with most things that are worth doing (laughs).
B: As they say, anything that’s worth doing is worth suffering for. And this is what I do. I want to make my living by playing music, and I work on it almost as hard as anyone does in whatever they do to make a living.

R: Given the fact that I’m calling from across the Atlantic this question is somewhat inevitable, but have you any plans to visit Europe this year, or in the relatively near future?
B: Definitely sometime soon. We have touring plans for this summer over here in the United States and then after that it’s up in the air. We did one last year, so I don’t know exactly when we’ll be back; we usually don’t wait too long though.

R: Cool. The new album includes a unique take on The Who’s ‘My Generation;’ how did that come about? Is it a nod to your roots and early influences, or would that be reading too much into it?
B: Not at all. From the time of my early teens I was a huge Who fan, and have remained a huge Who fan. I think that they are one of the best bands ever. I was always a big fan, I’d say right from the mid-seventies, since I initially became aware of rock music. When I was thirteen or fourteen I became a big follower of that sort of thing, all of the bands from that era, and I really liked the ‘Kids Are Alright’ movie, though I’d been into them before that. Seeing that movie, seeing all the eras of The Who, watching them play so much of that stuff live in that movie, I was a fan for life, a severely dedicated fan for life. I always thought that Keith Moon’s drumming was unbelievable, though I never got to see him with them live... I saw them on the AD 1 tour of the States, I think it was with Kenney Jones playing, and it wasn’t anywhere near as good. Keith Moon has always been a massive influence on how I consider that drumming should be, massively. He’s second to none. And on the ‘Kids Are Alright’ soundtrack they do a version of My Generation that’s similar to what we’re doing; it’s called ‘My Generation Blues’, and we thought that was a good way of doing it. Our version is a little different to that, but that’s kind of what we were looking at.

R: Awesome, I’ll have to check that out.
B: A little while ago we played with The Stooges in South America, with Nine Inch Nails headlining and The Stooges right before them. I’ve never seen a band get more annihilated by an opening band than Nine Inch Nails did by The Stooges, it was a brutal stomping (laughs). Anyway, all the bands were staying at the same hotel and I ran into Ron Asheton (Stooges guitarist). I asked him ‘when you were living in Ann Arbour, before The Stooges, what bands did you like?’ And he told me that he’d seen The Who playing in Ann Arbour in the mid-sixties, and that he actually still had a piece of Pete Townsend’s broken guitar from the show. I remember thinking ‘that makes sense; that’s what’s going on.’ So I imagined that stuff, The MC5 and all that stuff... what would people think, what would the logical extension of all this be, and I think that those guys were doing a really strict interpretation of that, crossed with James Brown, crossed with Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, all of that stuff. I thought that was pretty significant, the role that The Who probably played in the mentality of a lot of that stuff, because man, to be as weird as The Who were in the mid-sixties, in somewhere like Ann Arbour, I don’t know what you’d have to do now. People must have thought that they were from another planet, and so I always loved that about those guys. Rebellious beyond belief, with what I consider to be amazing songwriting and great musicians to back that up. I think that Pete Townsend was the odd one out in that... He was a great guitar player, Keith Moon was an amazing drummer, all heart, and with a bass player that was second to none... to interpret everything that he was doing, there’s nothing like that, there’s nobody close now, certainly nobody close now. So anyway, I’ve always been a big fan of all that stuff, I just tend to assume that everyone else is into the same kind of thing that I’m into, it’s pretty funny. I’m a huge fan of that, along with a load of other stuff.

R: It’s interesting that you’ve talked about being a big fan of The Who, as you guys in Melvins have always had a very passionate audience worldwide, very loyal... do you get to experience that firsthand, people’s appreciation?
B: Oh yeah, we have very appreciative fans. I like all that kind of stuff, I think that it’s all really great. I’m not in a position where I can’t recognise how wonderful that is. I’m glad that people like our band, I’ve always liked our band, and I feel like people should like us (laughs). I’m a big fan of continuing to make music that people will like, because we like it too. That’s it. As long as I do it from the perspective of what I would like other bands to do, not musically but in the mentality of it... I appreciate stuff like that. I appreciate bands like Public Image Ltd, their ‘Flowers Of Romance’ record, that’s what I cut my milk teeth on, The Sex Pistols and all of that stuff. That’s what I always wanted to do, that was the mentality that I had.

R: Awesome. Today’s music industry seems to full of commentators either screeching about the death of the music industry, or enthusing about the ‘exciting new developments in the delivery of music,’ and suchlike. In your experience, have things always been quite turbulent in the music world? How do you view the way that music is presented and delivered these days?
B: Well, with the internet and things like that there’s probably more opportunity now for bands to get recognised, certainly than when I was a kid. When I was a kid and mail-ordered albums I’d have killed to have the internet, that would have been a dream come true, if I could have gone onto YouTube and found all these bands that I was missing, all these wonderful things going on. That certainly wasn’t my experience. I think that a teenage music fan right now has it pretty damn good, you know? If I’m talking about The Who and somebody reads this article they can go onto YouTube and find fifty videos of whatever era they want. Or any band for that matter, The Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd, you can find it all on the internet. It’s amazing, amazing amazing amazing. I’m an information junkie so I love all that kind of stuff: ‘I want to see The Allman Brothers Playing ‘Whipping Post’ live with Duane Allman,’ and boom, there it is, ten seconds after you decided that you wanted to see it. ‘I want to see Evel Knievel jumping and wrecking his motorcycle, boom, there it is. It’s a wonderful time to be alive, it really is. So I don’t look at it as the end of anything. I think that it’s amazing, wonderful, and better than ever. And as far as the industry goes... well, the genie’s out of the bottle, they’re not going to put that back. Our record leaked two days ago, and there’s not much that we can do about that. What’s going to end up happening is that the day is going to come, and relatively soon, that making albums just isn’t viable. We maybe have one more album that we’ll make in a traditional sense, and after that we won’t be able to make any money on it. If you can’t make any money on it there’ll be no one willing to give you the money to make one, even a small advance for a recording. Those days will be over. Nobody seems to understand that; I understand it, and I’m not worried about it. That means that we go into a more boutique type of experience with our music where we concentrate on packaging, cool things that you can put in your hands, and become more artistic along those lines, we’ll continue to play live, it won’t hurt us any. We’ll just have to think outside of the box.

I’m not going to bitch or complain about internet downloading as that’s something that we can’t do anything about, there’s no use complaining, but the end result of that is the death of music as we know it. Now whether that’s a good or a bad thing is anybody’s guess. I tend to think that it will have a good side and a bad side. One thing that the guy who masters our records says, and he’s been mastering records since the sixties, he says that at this point in time, right now, with all of the home recording and people doing things on their own, he is mastering what is the worst music of his entire career, quality wise. Because people don’t know what they’re doing. Sonically it’s not getting better, but worse. So I don’t think that people really understand that either; maybe they do.

R: Yeah, whatever happens over the next few years, it’s certainly going to be interesting. It’s difficult to predict.
B: It’s difficult to predict, but I tend to think that it won’t be the way that people think (laughs). It’s going to be different. It won’t be easy, but once the availability of making a profit from making music is gone, things have to change. And maybe not for the better. But we’ll see. I’m not too worried about it, we’re relatively established so I’m not too worried about all that stuff.

R: Brilliant, cheers for your time today, it’s been a pleasure.
B: Thank you, I’m glad that you have the interest, and I hope that you like our new record.

Melvins’ new album ‘The Bride Screamed Murder’ hit stores on June 1st, via Ipecac

Melvins’ site

Thanks to Lauren Barley at Southern

Rob Sayce