[Q&A] King Buzzo of Melvins rants about the end of the music biz, the radness of writing endless awesome riffs and how dead Kurt Cobain still is
We ran a feature in this week's paper where Buzzo opined on the band's legacy and his view of the current state of indie music. But we thought it was worth showing the full conversation in its full glory, so you could see the flow of the talk, and how it went from a relatively polite chat about the band's art to a somewhat unhinged rant on the state of things. Anyone who is familiar with Buzz knows that he doesn't mince words, and he gloriously lets loose at a number of targets here, while oddly sticking up for the major label system that briefly invested in his band in the early-to-mid-90s. Say what you will, but the man calls it like he sees it, and it's refreshing hear an artist who isn't afraid to let the public know that it's hard work being a band nowadays and navigating the changing tides of the business.
What was the motivation for this particular tour? For that residency, were you playing the same records? It must be weird, revisiting that much of your discography all at once like that. Does playing an old album in whole like that force you back to the circumstances that the record was made at all? It’s interesting, to me, to see you guys playing your albums like this, if only because so much of the Melvins live experience, over the years, has been kind of confrontational: you guys have constantly tried to frustrate expectations, especially with the way you mix up your different musical styles. VIDEO
Sure. But at the same time, have you felt a push and pull with what you want to do, and what you experience people wanting you to do-- and has that changed at all over the years? Totally-- I’ve always gotten that from you guys. And you guys have always been about displaying your taste and aesthetic apologetically-- does that seem like an accurate description? VIDEO
Most people seem to form bands in order to fit in with a scene and find their sound within that-- but you guys seem to have really gone against that, especially in the punk world you started in, on through the decades of rock that you have consistently positioned yourself on the outside of. I can see that-- and it seems like your musical weirdness is relatively organic. You don’t seem to be straining to be weird. [laughs]
In the early 90s, you guys were definitely “in” a certain scene, or at least it seemed that way to the untrained eye, as you were lumped in with a lot of things going on. Was that a disorienting experience? And it feels like it, definitely. And yet, you guys are still doing what you are doing, in 2011, even when most of those bands either aren’t around, or are dead, or have the occasional reunion or whatever. You mention that you guys work a lot-- and it’s true, a lot of your persistence is due to continued hard work. When you formed the band, did you envision the band having this work ethic, or was it something that formed over time? The ascendancy of The Melvins happened at a really strange time for metal, and I feel like when you guys first started getting big, so many bands were really not upfront with being influenced by metal, or being metal. But you guys have always been unashamedly metal-influenced, while at the same time having a kind of subversive influence on metal itself. You love metal, yet you’ve always avoided a lot of metal tropes. You guys have played shows or tours where you were too metal, others where you were not metal enough, and I imagine that must be a strange position to be in. Sure-- but at the same time, you play a show like that, playing Ozzfest or opening for Nine Inch Nails or Tool or Primus or whomever, and you must be interested in finding out what the experience is going to be like of playing that show, right? [laughs] We’re not really concerned with selling our band that way anymore.
But you were at one point, right? Of playing big stadiums and all that? VIDEO
Was it important for you guys, at a certain point, to try these bizarre situations out to see what would happen? That seems like a big part of the Melvins’ M.O.: “Why not?” It seems like humor is a big part of the whole Melvins deal, a part that people kind of overlook sometimes. It kind of seems like your general aesthetic is one of not taking the whole thing seriously. VIDEO
Was that ever a worry? [laughs] But I wanted to make sure that we had a band name that was weird and couldn’t be branded as one thing, and on and on from there. But I guess I was never too concerned with the details from there.
But at the same time, you take your music super seriously-- not just the work that goes into it, but the music itself is serious. [laughs]
With every album, you guys slowly shift your signature sound-- you have never been afraid to change who you are, musically. It must be odd going back to your old material for these shows when you are so constantly in the now with your new stuff. If one were to describe what you guys sound like to someone who had never heard your music, most people would say “Oh, Melvins, they’re really sludgy and heavy and slow,” even though a good 50, 60, 70% of your music has absolutely nothing to do with that sound. Do you think that part of your plan with The Melvins has been to slowly make people more ready and willing to accept the wide variety of musical styles that you want to make, to be a part of? You’ve had the four-person Melvins lineup for three albums now, and it’s been pretty stable. What do you think works with this particular lineup? Challenging in what way? Have your songs in this line-up come about in a different way? Because correct me if I’m wrong, but you were always the prime songwriter-- Ok-- so how have things changed with this lineup, do you come up with different types of things before you present them to two drummers? As your band progressed, and especially once you had major label money, you were able to really expand your style from your early days. I think your singing, especially, went in a lot of more melodic places and has continued to. But having a major label involved must have changed things, at least with the production budget? Houdini , there was a song “Set Me Straight” that was one the first songs we ever wrote. It certainly wasn’t affected at all by us being on a major label, especially at that point.
Well, Houdini is definitely a pretty all-over-the-place record, it definitely doesn’t sound like, you know, “Here’s their major label debut!”... It must be weird for you guys being involved in the music biz nowadays-- what with the demise of the industry, there is less of a gap beetween the big superstars and the so-called little bands, the weird bands. What do you think of all that? Yeah-- music is in a weird place right now, kind of on the cusp of the death of the traditional album and whatnot-- [laughs] Yeah! What planet? That whole thing is over. That whole thinking is over. It’s moved on!
What are bands supposed to do, then? What’s next? I’d guess that the people who we’re talking about, the fan who buys these records, it’s a different audience than the great unwashed that bought records before, right? And I guess if you look back on previous eras, like the 80s and 90s, at the whole major label system and how wrong-headed it was-- The major label system-- Well, just the way it took things that people were legitimately into and put its fingers in and warped everything and-- It seems like the future is going to be a different kind of patronage situation, where instead of labels it will be individual people with money, or something far weirder. VIDEO
But you’ll still of course be able to write stuff, come up with music-- Well, that’s just records, though: the brand of the band, The Melvins, I’d imagine, will always mean something, to people, right? [laughs] You know? You get something that’s amazing, you get a hyper-limited edition really cool package, something that we made, more on the art end. The music’s free! What’s the most important thing? The most important thing is the music. That’s it. And you’re getting that for nothing. So fuck you!
Yeah-- I mean, to me, I hear you, and I’m thinking about how you guys have survived so much already-- --and when you guys were done with the major label thing, that whole thing is barely a blip on your discography.
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