Buzzo interview on westword.com

[black stallion]

http://blogs.westword.com/backbeat/2012/09/interview_buzz_osborne_of_melvins.php

In an interview with Gibson a while back you mentioned how Black Flag was more of an influence on your guitar work than Black Sabbath. How did you first get exposed to the Flag, and what albums would you say had the most impact on what you do?

I got exposed to them in the early '80s, before Damaged, maybe during Jealous Again. To me, it was an extension of heavy metal stuff. What I admired most about heavy metal was the drumming. Some people only appreciate guitar players like Steve Vai; that's not my thing. That's not my world. I like things that are weirder than that. I don't really like things that are too pretty. Once in a while, I agree. I generally like guitar players that are more like Jimi Hendrix and a piledriver. Greg Ginn was like nothing I'd ever heard before. I really liked it.

Basically, Black Flag played pop music. Just weirder. After that, I got into bands like Gang of Four, Public Image Limited -- Flowers of Romance, Solid Gold, Metal Box. Those records are all very strange. Compared to that, Black Flag was playing the same kind of song Chuck Berry was -- verse, chorus, verse chorus -- you know.

But there was something about his guitar playing that was exceptionally good. They never seemed to realize what was good about them. It's possible. The whole thing seemed to degenerate into a bunch of evil hippies after that. My mom is always laughing about that, too: "You always hated hippies." [She's] right, I always have. I'm like Cartman on South Park. Pretty much.

Alice Cooper was the kind of hippie I liked. Alice Cooper, John Waters, Charles Manson. Blue Cheer. Alice Cooper described it best as driving a stake through the heart of the peace and love generation. That never stopped. That's one of the things that attracted me to punk rock, other than the massive intimacy of the whole thing. There was an attitude that spoke to me. I liked all those bands from then, X, TSOL -- all those punk bands were really good. Sex Pistols, the Clash -- all of it has a rebellious air about it.

Which is still what attracts me to heavy metal. At least they're rebels, you know? I would much rather listen to the rebellious nature of music as opposed to bands that are "nerd gets his heart broken." I can't handle that shit. It doesn't do it for me, unless it's really exceptionally good, which almost never happens. To me the story should be, "Nerd gets his heart broken and goes to girlfriend's house and cuts her fucking head off." Now that's a song! Not this whiny ass crap.

Is there anybody you've found in that category that you've found exceptionally good?

I think the Cars did a pretty good job of that on the first two records. That's pop music that I can agree with the masses on. Queen, to some degree did that. Once in a while, I agree with millions and millions of people that something's good. By and large, just because it sold millions and millions of records doesn't mean I'm going to like it.

But I also don't perversely dislike it as a result of them being popular. There's not enough good music for me to be that picky. I want every record to be good. I want to turn on the radio and have every song be something I like. It just doesn't happen. As I've gotten older, I've had less and less tolerance for any of that stuff.

It's not about getting old. I hated children when I was a child. I didn't like teenagers when I was a teenager. I didn't identify with them. "You're older now, and you don't get it now." No, no, I didn't get it then. I still don't get it. I never had a golden age of getting it. I was an uncomfortable weirdo when I was with people my own age or older people. I have no interest in trying to be young. I'm my age and here's what I offer.

If someone wants to be involved in something where they only believe eighty-year-old blues men or fifteen-year-old pop stars, that's their thing, not mine. If people only want to be into me because I'm too old or too young, I really have no time for it. They're into something that has little or nothing to do with music. I'm very much, "What have you done lately?" Tom Waits, I think his new album is one of the best records he's ever done. What is he, 62? It's one of the most inventive albums that he's ever made.

He's definitely someone who has pushed himself to do different things across his entire career, which is, to anyone that has been paying attention, exactly what you've done.

Oh, I couldn't be more happy about a statement like that. That's exactly what I want to do.

Yeah, your catalog kind of speaks for itself. For example, you did an album with Lustmord.

A lot of that stems from the fact that most people don't -- and you brought that up with the Black Flag over Black Sabbath -- know I liked Black Sabbath okay, but I never cared for them as much as I liked other stuff. I was just as much into Deep Purple as I would have been Black Sabbath. If not more so. People don't see that, though. I don't know. Weird.

Our influences and what we like as musicians is vast. We've been into music for a long time. I'm a fan of music. I'm always interested in music I haven't heard yet. Now I like about the same amount of bands I ever liked. A few new bands make it through, but that's always been the case. If you go back to 1980, it was the same percentage of bands I liked then as new bands now: Very few. Once in a while.

As far as changing, certainly in the last fifteen years, my attitude has been I want to be Captain Beefheart, George Clinton and Tom Waits going through a Mixmaster playing heavy metal. Captain Beefheart sensibilities. We're very serious about all of that. Like a record like Colossus of Destiny -- that's one of my favorites, and that's the one I'd tell people to listen to. It's a live noise album. It's not really a noise album, and it has a meter and flow to it, and it's very much planned out. I like stuff like that, like Throbbing Gristle or whoever. Or Lustmord, who was in SPK. Or Whitehouse and all of that stuff. It's all good.

How did you come to work with Lustmord?

I met him through [a friend], and then I hit upon the idea that what he was doing was really cool and that it could be a good combo. So it truly was a collaboration in that there were things that we gave him that we used that we recorded and gave him to do with whatever he wanted. There were things on there that were just him, and there were things that were just us, and we didn't tell anyone which was which.

It was really amusing to listen to people say, "That was a Lustmord part," and think, "Lustmord wasn't on that part." They're always vastly wrong about everything. I think it was one of our best records. It was universally accessible, but none of our records are. By and large, it got good reviews, though.

For this tour, you're trying to set a record for the fastest tour of the fifty United States plus D.C. Why did you want to set that record?

It's a publicity stunt. That's it. We just wanted to do something weird. I don't care about playing fifty-one shows in fifty-one days. I don't give a shit about that. What I care about doing is something that's strange. It's something to do. It's like in Cool Hand Luke where he says, "I can eat fifty eggs." Plus it's a three piece line-up, and it's not as much gear, and we're more likely to be able to do something like this in that scenario.

This has been a big year for us. We did a five-song EP with Scion with the regular Melvins line-up, we did a full-length with Melvins Lite, and we're also doing a four-song EP for Melvins 1983, which is with the original drummer, Mike Dillard, and Dale playing bass. That's three different releases with three different line-ups of the band. I don't think anybody's ever done that either.

Why are you starting the tour in Anchorage? It's probably safe to assume you're not driving to your next show.

No, because we can get there the day before and play and leave at 2:45 in the morning by plane. The Hawaiian show, it would take a very special kind of car to get all the way there.

You'd have to get the car the Dead Milkmen joked about in "Bitchin' Camaro."

Yeah, yeah, exactly. The rest we're driving. Hopefully nothing will happen. Now we just have to do it. We've done a lot of touring this year already. We did a tour of the U.S. with the regular Melvins line-up. Melvins Lite did a big tour of Canada. We already went to Europe, and this will be a big capper on the whole thing ending the tour in Honolulu. I'm not a big beach guy, so I'm probably just going to come home the next day. I've never been there so it would nice to go once.

The Warlock Pinchers had that reunion shows a couple of years ago. How did you meet those guys, and do you have any Pinchers stories to share?

We met The Warlock Pinchers a long time ago in the '80s. They were on Boner Records, as were we. So then we remained friends after that ever since. They were all just in college, and we were all working a shit job at like record store. Now they've moved on in their careers, and that's great. To me, that was some of the smartest punk rock music. Those guys were really good at that. I still think that record's amazing -- Deadly Kung Fu Action. It's right up my alley. It's funny. It's well-executed. It's great and it's really good music.

They did something that a band like the Beastie Boys never could. First off they were a band, and second off, their songs were better. They had a good sense of humor, and they didn't take themselves too serious. It was perfect. The only thing I'm bummed out about is that they didn't get bigger. Why did the Beastie Boys sell millions of records and not many people cared about the Warlock Pinchers? Because the world's not a right place. That's the main reason.

To me the Beastie Boys is super dumbed down Warlock Pinchers -- Warlock Pinchers for Dummies. I never bought into that crap. I always thought that stuff was just garbage. "Paul's Boutique is such a great record." No. No it isn't. It's not a good record. It's good if you're into crap. You can't get famous throwing beer around and being the soundtrack for date rape and all of a sudden be socially conscious. Sorry, you're not passing the background check, I don't believe any of your shit.

Why do you consider the Who one of the weirdest bands ever?

All you have to do is listen to the Sell Out record. You listen to that album and realize it came out in the 1960s. Now imagine doing something with the equivalent weirdness today. What would you have to do to be as weird as they were then? To me, they are one of the greatest bands ever up to By Numbers. Even that has a couple of good songs on it. They were, by far, the best live band from the '60s. No one comes anywhere near close to that. There's a direct correlation between the Who, the Stooges, the Sex Pistols -- it's all in a line. Jerry Lee Lewis, Jim Morrison -- all of it is in a line from the Who.

I love finding out what people are into. When I was a teenager, that's how I got into lots of music. I got into the Sex Pistols in '77 and found out they did a cover of this song "No Fun" by this band the Stooges. Then I found out what the Stooges are. I love that kind of stuff. Fantomas happened to play a big festival with the Stooges.

I met Ron Asheton and asked him what kind of stuff the Stooges were into before the Stooges started. He said the band that influenced him the most and their stuff was the Who. He said he saw the Who in Ann Arbor in the mid-'60s, and he still had a piece of Pete Townsend's broken guitar from the show. So he was obviously front and center.

So if you think in those terms and take '64, '65, '66 and somewhere in there, and you're a kid in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the Who plays there, what could you play the equivalent now that would be that weird? That's what I mean. They're weird along the lines of how Jerry Lee Lewis is a freak. No question.

A lot of the stuff, out of context, sometimes doesn't seem very weird to people who have come along since it happened and benefited from how that music changed what came after. Like if someone thinks a band of the '80s, like Black Flag for instance, or Sonic Youth, is mainstream, it's usually a lack of perspective involved, because that's been around your whole life, and older people have tried to shove it down your throat as something cooler than your generation will ever do.

There's smart young people out there, too. They're always there. Young people are and always have been stupid. Not all of them, but the vast majority of them. That's nothing new. My audience isn't those people. If you want to find the Melvins, you have to go looking for them.

We're not mainstream. We are successful on an underground level despite that kind of stuff. Without any help from those sorts of things. Because there are people who don't enjoy 4/4 beats all the time and things spoonfed to them. Those people all imagine that they're individualists, and they have all this thing going on, but that's one of the oldest theories in the book. "Don't tell me I'm not free," you know? "Millions of people can't be wrong." I disagree.

[(((O)))]

That was one of the more fascinating Buzz interviews i think.

[pinkyslim]

i wish i could have Buzz do all my thinking.

[smokey]

Cool interview. Thx for posting. Idiotic comments from their readers though.

[jonE5]

Great interview

[jonnyginge]

Ok. First off, I've been a fan of The Melvins' music for a long time. However, I found Roger's Beastie Boys comments absurd. He comes across as either a bitter old friend of Warlock Pinchers or someone who has differences with one or more of the Beastie Boys. Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion however, to put it in such a vicious way is bizarre.
"They did something that a band like the Beastie Boys never could. First off, they were a band, and second off, their songs were better." That sounds like someone that doesn't know much about the topic they're talking about. He makes a point then tries to back it up but it comes out as nonsense. How exactly were the Beastie Boys NOT a band? Did each of them not play at least one instrument? And "second off" they are good. In MY opnion anyway. Surely that counts as much as yours?
"Why did the Beastie Boys sell millions of records and not many people cared about the Warlock Pinchers? Because the world's not a right place -- that's the main reason." Hmmm, could it not possibly be that they were BETTER than the Warlock Pinchers? Just an alternative to your notion.
"You can't get famous throwing beer around and being the soundtrack for date rape and all of a sudden be socially conscious." Ok, this is a good one. Yes, they did throw beer around as a gimmick at the very start of their hip hop career. The Warlock Pinchers don't use gimmicks at all do they? No women dancing on stage, no fake blood, no trashing the place. Come on! "...the soundtrack for date rape..." WTF are you talking about Roger? This one needs an explanation. And probably an apology too. Incidently, do you listen to Bad Brains at all? H.R., now he's a socially conscious guy. At least he was in the 80's. I believe he just loves San Fran. Anyway...
Having read & re-read the interview I reckon I've found out the root of your disdain for the Beastie Boys. Good old fashioned jealousy. You said it your very self Roger. Regarding the mighty Warlock Pinchers you said, "The only thing I'm bummed out about is that they didn't get bigger." Here's MY opinion Roger, the Warlock Pinchers were not very good at what they tried to do. That's why nobody has heard of them. Maybe they'll have a better crack at it this time with the Beastie Boys now defunct, our man Dale drumming for them & you bigging them up any chance you get. They need all that help.
The rest of the interview was good though.
Cheers! Have a good one y'all.

[black stallion]

i wouldn't take too seriosuly what buzzo says in interviews..he loves to shock people and mix up things a bit

[BlueBob]

the Beasties remark kinda surprised me too. jonnyginge has some good points.
maybe the beasties punk side rubbed buzz the wrong way?

[Hortense]

So the fact that Buzz spoke his mind now turns you off to his music even though you begin your post by stating you are a fan of the Melvins?

Why do you have to pick a side?  You can't like both?  Who gives a hoot if he doesn't care for the Beastie Boys.  He has a point about the Beastie Boys pretending to be socially conscious.  It's completely hypocritical.

I think Paul's Boutique is a pretty good album.  I'm not a huge fan of the Beastie Boys but guess what bud, YOU can decide what's best for YOU and Buzzo can decide what's BEST for HIM.  Chances are you may not see eye to eye with many other bands you dig. 

I'm just sayin'.  Different people have different opinions about all sorta things, amigo. 

[redcarpetsuitman]

Neither band is as good as the Melvins. .

[MrLuck87]

So the fact that Buzz spoke his mind now turns you off to his music even though you begin your post by stating you are a fan of the Melvins?

Why do you have to pick a side?  You can't like both?  Who gives a hoot if he doesn't care for the Beastie Boys.  He has a point about the Beastie Boys pretending to be socially conscious.  It's completely hypocritical.

I think Paul's Boutique is a pretty good album.  I'm not a huge fan of the Beastie Boys but guess what bud, YOU can decide what's best for YOU and Buzzo can decide what's BEST for HIM.  Chances are you may not see eye to eye with many other bands you dig. 

I'm just sayin'.  Different people have different opinions about all sorta things, amigo.

I wasn't expecting the Beastie Boys comment either.  I do agree that their lyrics aren't good but I typically don't care what bands sing about anyway. 

How many of you stopped listening to Motorhead after Lemmy's dipshit comments about The Melvins?

[(((O)))]

I would go as far as to say i love them but generally i like the Beastie boys. Much less so than Melvins but still i like them.

I was listening to 'She's On It' last night and the riff in that is super addictive!

[black stallion]

So the fact that Buzz spoke his mind now turns you off to his music even though you begin your post by stating you are a fan of the Melvins?

Why do you have to pick a side?  You can't like both?  Who gives a hoot if he doesn't care for the Beastie Boys.  He has a point about the Beastie Boys pretending to be socially conscious.  It's completely hypocritical.

I think Paul's Boutique is a pretty good album.  I'm not a huge fan of the Beastie Boys but guess what bud, YOU can decide what's best for YOU and Buzzo can decide what's BEST for HIM.  Chances are you may not see eye to eye with many other bands you dig. 

I'm just sayin'.  Different people have different opinions about all sorta things, amigo.

How many of you stopped listening to Motorhead after Lemmy's dipshit comments about The Melvins?

didn't remember that,what did Lemmy say?

[(((O)))]

didn't remember that,what did Lemmy say?

He said the Melvins did the worst version of The Green Manalishi he had ever heard.


Lemmy was so wrong there it was insane.

[danimal]

Of course, everyone is entitled to their opinion however, to put it in such a vicious way is bizarre.

I think it would be more bizarre to read an interview where Buzzo didn't mock a band.

I also hate the Beatie Boys and everyone always brings up Paul's Boutique so I'm glad to hear that someone thinks they're shit.