Part 1: http://decibelmagazine.com/index.php/2007/09/24/bonus-feature-mark-deutrom-part-1/
Part 2: http://decibelmagazine.com/index.php/2007/09/25/bonus-feature-mark-deutrom-part-2/
:shock:
"If you wanna ride, don't ride the white horse." :toke:
Quote from: jzacs71 on December 22, 2008, 11:47:28 PM
"If you wanna ride, don't ride the white horse." :toke:
:lol:
That's the most canny shit I've ever read.
The Melvins are awesome & Mark D is awesome.
Shit happens,talk is cheap.
I didnt think buzz ever shot up but ah well
"huge oral history of the melvins that appeared in issue #3"?
has someone posted scans of this?
best part about the mark d interview:
"Sure enough, when we got to Amsterdam, Buzz and Lori disappeared off into some housing project or squat and came back to the hotel and started shooting up right in front of me with some homeless guy they picked up. ... This homeless guy they invited to stay in the van with us stank like a pirate
funny/touching/dramatic interview. me rikey.
did anyone scan this? no longer online. also how seriously are we to take D's comments on Buzz and Lori?
Quote from: joelk on July 19, 2015, 02:56:01 PM
did anyone scan this? no longer online. also how seriously are we to take D's comments on Buzz and Lori?
Just glad that this band isn't like a Wino project. They put things out on time. Make it through customs. Make it to tour dates.
QuoteThere's a huge oral history of the Melvins that appeared in issue #3 of Decibel that isn't online, probably for the same reason that the Hall of Fame features aren't online. We want you to buy back issues of our magazine, ok? Putting these things together is always a bear, especially in the case of the Melvins piece. We ended up with something like 15-20 hours of tape when the dust settled, including about 2 hours worth of conversations with former Melvins bassist/producer and longtime associate Mark Deutrom. Mark hadn't spoken to anyone about the Melvins for years before that, and probably hasn't since, but he had a lot to get off of his chest during that interview. Since we're in a Melvins kinda mood, here's part 1 of an excerpt of the conversation; part 2 follows tomorrow!
db:Very early on, you put out Gluey Porch Treatments on your own Alchemy label and you also produced Ozma. Is that how you came to know the Melvins?
MD:My business partner Victor Hayden went up to Seattle, saw the Melvins, and came back and said, "They were crawling up the wall!"And he played me a tape of them, or played me there first ten song thing on C/V, and I thought it was good, so we decided to do a record with them. They came down from Aberdeen and we started working on Gluey Porch Treatments. Before that, my band with Lori Black, Clown Alley, played a gig in Olympia with the Melvins and Greg Anderson's first band — he was only 16 at the time!
Years later, Buzz told me they had wanted to prove to themselves that they make this record without drinking any beer, which they actually did, much to their credit. At the time, I didn't realize it was, you know, that much of a mountain for them to climb, but they did it and credit to them. We recorded in the record in Sausalito, where we got some really cheap time at a studio that Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston were doing tracks at. And there was this incredibly huge room and it had moveable panels on the walls and that's how that monster reverb was captured on "Eye Flies." Another little piece of trivia is that I took the picture on the back of Gluey Porch Treatments; that's the living room of the house that Lori Black and I were living in at the time.
db:Do you have any sense of what the general impression of the Melvins was when they were still based in Aberdeen/Seattle/the Olympia area, and was there a general awareness in that scene of community of the group moving to the Bay Area?
MD:In 1984, you had Van Halen, punk rock was dead, and the only thing that was really cool and kind of cutting edge was crossover metal bands or bands like Black Flag or Bad Brains, you know, stuff like that. But it was still totally difficult if you had a band and you weren't doing hair metal. But locally it was just like it's always been, you know, people despised your bands, you went out and played a gig and there were always some pissed off people there who would just go to the gigs to yell "fuck you!" Bands were very isolated from each other. When the Melvins left, they left before everything got really huge in the Northwest, so it's funny that they're still considered the godfathers of grunge or whatever, because they were out so far ahead, they were out of Aberdeen, so far ahead of that whole kind of major label feeding frenzy in the Northwest that they weren't even really part of it. I think of them as more of a San Francisco band, really. When you're in an isolated community like Aberdeen, which is the end of the Earth you know really, there's nothing to do there but drink and smoke weed and just pray to God that there's some way out before you kill yourself. Who knows what would've happened to the Melvins if they had stayed there
db:They'd be dead.
MD:They'd still be sitting around their front porch like drinking OE and smoking bud, you know. And I can relate to that, because I grew up in El Paso as a teenager, and that was like the end of the world, too. They were literally, like, if they could have burned that town to the ground, they would have. If they could have gotten away with it, they would have burned that town to the ground and left, laughing as the flames shot up in their review mirrors, you know.
db:You were living in England when the Melvins played at the Reading Festival, right?
MD:Yes. I think it might have been '91; it's the only date Nirvana played at Reading Festival. The Melvins were the opening band, and of course there were 20 bands and then there was Nirvana at the other end, so the irony was not lost on me at that. That was a really brutal gig. All these British people were completely hung over and they staggered out, it was pouring with rain and there was a sea of mud and the wind was blowing about 50 miles an hour, and here's the Melvins playing, It was kind of apocalyptic and interesting
db:I read that for the show, the organizers dubbed the Melvins "the worst band ever."
MD:Yeah, that's true. With Reading, it's a tradition to have...I mean, its run by the British, they've got all the stupid flavor of the month bands up there. Before I did that tour with them, I knew that Buzz and Lori were using, and I was like, "I'm not interested in doing this if you guys are on drugs." Sure enough, when we got to Amsterdam, Buzz and Lori disappeared off into some housing project or squat and came back to the hotel and started shooting up right in front of me with some homeless guy they picked up. And, of course, I've done my share of drugs, too. And I said, "You know what, I think I'm going to stay and just do dope with everybody else, because at least then I won't be pissed off."
But I wasn't strung out yet at the time, so I could get away with it. This homeless guy they invited to stay in the van with us stank like a pirate's graveyard and I told Buzz, "You gotta get this guy out of here, it's like carrying a corpse around." After that, the tour sort of fell apart. Lori got sick and I don't know where Buzz went, he went back to San Francisco or something, I'm not sure, but Dale ended up staying at my place in London for about a week and I just kind of took him aside and said, "Look, you have people in your band who have a problem here with drugs. You can do whatever you want with that information but you can't say where it came from." And he was appalled and flabbergasted, he couldn't believe it.
All this rumor mill dust! It does make me wonder why Buzz hasn't publicly addressed this issue, if it is in fact true (which it may not be, I have no idea).
P.S. Thanks Butthole! Do you have part 2?
Quote from: joelk on July 19, 2015, 03:56:21 PM
All this rumor mill dust! It does make me wonder why Buzz hasn't publicly addressed this issue, if it is in fact true (which it may not be, I have no idea).
P.S. Thanks Butthole! Do you have part 2?
Sadly, no.
I'm confused. So the reading festival they played was in August of 92, so that means Joe was on bass I'd think. But mark and Lori were there apparently. Maybe I'm tired and forgetting my Melvin history but can someone explain this to me, who was playing bass at the reading festival and why Lori and mark were there. I'm probably slipping up with my facts i thought i knew. Also talk about awkward that buzz and mark both were with lori. I had read that somewhere but forgot until now
Quote from: Buzzinthebox on July 20, 2015, 12:05:55 AM
why Lori and mark were there.
Mark was doing the live mixing for them for a while, I think.
The only reason I find any of this interesting is because of Buzz's staunch old-man rhetoric regarding substance abuse. I feel like, if Mark D's comments are valid (and I have no idea if they are), there is some cognitive dissonance at play for Buzzo. It would be one thing to openly admit the errors of youth and then to take shots at others for not getting their shit together--but Buzz seems to act like he's always known it's a bad idea.
Again, rumor-mill whathaveyou, and probably not very important at bottom. Interesting though if you want to get deep into the band's long and storied career.
Times changed
Quote from: Satchel Paige on July 20, 2015, 02:28:20 PM
Times changed
Um, sure? I don't eat sheets of acid anymore either, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in acting like I never did--or that I'm somehow superior to those who still do.
The only thing I think he publicly admitted to doing back in the day was drinking and smoking pot. Like Joel I have no idea if he did anything else or not and what his extent of using was or for how long.
i dont have anything to back this up and I cant remember where I read it so this is probably horse shit but I thought buzz had a little bit of a heroin problem way back in the bullhead era??? he went to rehab and has been clean ever since?
Mark D mentions rehab in the Decibel interview:
(http://thesickos.free.fr/mark-d-quote.png)
"People in your band who have a problem with drugs".
:-k 3 members.....
Quote from: anaconda on July 22, 2015, 01:04:09 AM
Mark D mentions rehab in the Decibel interview:
(http://thesickos.free.fr/mark-d-quote.png)
yup thats the one.
No idea if anyone is still interested, but here's part 2 of the excerpts that were posted online:
The Melvins are famous for pissing audiences off. Do you have any memories to share?
Anybody who has seen the Melvins will tell you there's a point where they're going to test your attention span, even to die hard fans. Prick would be a prime example of that — things you can't really listen to. There's a certain amount of arrogance and pride in that, and of course I took part happily in that type of attitude when I was in the band. Some of the more notorious examples of that are when we played in Dallas with Nine Inch Nails and we opened the set with a 9+ minute long instrumental. Nine Inch Nails fans don't want to hear that stuff, so the audience melted down and ripped up the seats in this minor league hockey arena and threw 'em at us. The old Melvins standby is to just let the feedback rip for 15 minutes. It's as much of a trademark for the Melvins as Gene Simmons blowing fire is for KISS. It's just part of the band, and if you love the band, then you kind of look forward to moments like that just to see how people who haven't been exposed to the band will react.
You joined the band for a bunch of releases that everybody seems to be able to agree upon like Stoner Witch and Stag, as well as all the material that came out on Amphetamine Reptile, which is stuff that no one seems to be able to universally agree on. How were you approached to join the band?
Buzz and Lori both had this situation where they were still involved with each other, they both went into rehab, they came out, and they started getting interest from major labels. I'm not even sure if Lori recorded her parts for Houdini. If she did, it was all wiped. It became evident that Buzz was going to split up with Lori and kick her out of the band, and he was looking for somebody new. They had finished recording Houdini in '93, and I wasn't doing anything, so when they asked me to join the band, I said, "Okay." It was basically Buzz and Dale on that record, and I think maybe Kurt Cobain played some guitar, I'm not really sure; the whole idea of him producing anything is interesting. He just really didn't do anything on that record except for kind of show up and pass out, but people...Cobain was addicted to heroin. He couldn't have produced a crap after a cup of coffee at that point. You know, with all due respect to him, he had no experience producing records. It was kind of one of those sort of mismatches that I think Atlantic came up with or Kurt told the Melvins that he wanted to be there, and all the sudden he's producing the record.
Can you give me an account of what happened wherein you severed ties with the Melvins?
You mean when they kicked me out of the band?
Yes.
Because make no mistake, they kick people out of their band. Our contract with Atlantic was up, and there were a couple of labels that were interested in us doing demos, but Buzz was like, "I'm not going to do anything for those motherfuckers, there's no way I'm going to audition for them." He looked at it purely as an insult, you know, and felt that he would kind of be selling out or being untrue to his own direction. We never sat down and had career move meetings between the three of us. The main thing I felt was "take advantage of everybody as much as you can for as long as you can and then get out." And that was kind of the attitude we developed, there was certainly a type of mercenary sort of ruthlessness that we had.
My attitude was like, "Sure, we'll make some demos for you; give us five grand or whatever." They give you five grand, you go and record an entire record, you give them a couple of songs, and then if they don't like it, you just put the album out that you've recorded on AmRep or Man's Ruin or whatever, and then basically then you've got an album out of the situation for free. So you're ahead. But I think he interpreted that as me wanting to become some band like Metallica or something, which would be completely ridiculous. Having known the Melvins for like 12 years at that point, I understood exactly what the commercial potential of the band was.
What would bring closure to the situation, what would need to happen for that to happen?
I don't know, probably apologies or whatever. I'm not sure; I can only speak for myself. For me, it's just kind of, I've been in plenty of towns where they're playing and I always mull it over: should I go down there and talk to them? I'll give full credit to Buzz in creating something that's utterly unique and he created that whole thing by himself. There's nothing like it and it's respectable, it's good, and you know, I was glad to be part of it, seriously. I had my own problems at the time, I had a great deal of depression in my life that started when I was a child, and so they had to put up with that. And I didn't manage to seriously address it until a few years ago. I'm glad I got a chance to be in the Melvins. That's it, really.
Amazing! I think about this interview a lot, I was afraid part two had been lost to time. Thank you for posting this.
Huge thanks! Most of this is totally new to me
I wonder how Buzz and Dale would react if they bumped into Mark again or he just met up with them unannounced. I like to think they would be friendly but maybe i'm wrong. It's a shame Mark felt (being that it's a 20 year old interview) that way and like things were maybe left unresolved between them.
best third Melvins ever
Mark D is such a stand up dude. I would love it if any and all burnt bridges could be rebuilt as Mark D was the MAJOR secret weapon of the Melvins for many years. I am betting Mark and Dale would be super easy to get things going again as they are both super friendly, really nice people. Mark and Buzz might be trickier? It seems like when Buzz is done with something, he is done.
By the way - Mark D has a brand new track up on his Patreon from his band Bellringer.
It is the best Patreon account I have run into.
Gotta give shout out to his YouTube as well. He has a lot of great stories.
https://youtu.be/pG0BtGmpUcc (https://youtu.be/pG0BtGmpUcc)
https://youtu.be/yJyvZ6v_fMU (https://youtu.be/yJyvZ6v_fMU)
Quote from: John Schuller on May 19, 2023, 11:42:24 AM
I am betting Mark and Dale would be super easy to get things going again as they are both super friendly, really nice people. Mark and Buzz might be trickier? It seems like when Buzz is done with something, he is done.
sure! And Buzz should relax a bit