by Drew Fortune
I went on playing, and the first opportunity I had, when I wasn’t playing anything, I pulled my shirt open and looked down. The first thing I noticed was something that looked like a little piece of string. I pulled it, and out came a bloody tampon. I had been hit by a freshly-plucked tampon. I held it up so the audience could see it and threw it over my shoulder. I kept going, but as the show went on, I was thinking how extraordinary the whole thing was, as this blood was wet, so it wasn’t like someone brought an old tampon to throw.
This was spur-of-the-moment, and the mental process that someone went through to do that really impressed me. I was also blown away by the incredible accuracy of the throw, as it hit me square in the chest. It could have deflected off my pants or something. Like the urine, I had to think of it as an act of enduring love and adulation. A woman was sharing her most intimate, personal elements with me on stage. I suppose that if I was being cynical, I could look at it as something quite nasty. They didn’t really like me, and that was the ultimate insult. Come to think of it, I’m not quite sure how I feel about it now. I’m not aware of the tampon culture in North America.
Those two things did happen back in the seventies and haven’t happened since. I’m actually curious how many artists have had experiences with flying tampons or pint glasses of piss dumped on their heads. I know that guys like Tom Jones and Englebert Humperdinck used to get underwear thrown at them, but I’ve never personally gotten any undergarments thrown at me. It’s not a Jethro Tull thing. I suppose our audiences have usually been a bit more well-behaved. I’ve heard of girls lifting up their T-shirts to expose their breasts to performing musicians, but that’s never happened in my experience. The best I get is maybe a flicker of a smile from the ladies, but that’s about it.
Drugs and alcohol were never part of my story, but it’s part of my story growing up. When I was at art college before I became a musician, the guy sitting next to me in class had heroin needle marks on his arm. I had to ask what it was, as I thought he’d been bitten by some strange creature. It always filled me with fear that addicted people were caught up in something that didn’t make them better painters or artists. When you read about the history of art or music, particularly jazz or blues, there are constant references to drugs.
It plays a major part in artist’s lives and a very major part in their downfall. Many people that I’ve performed alongside came to a sticky end. I remember we were on a show with Graham Bond in 1968, and when the sax player took a solo, Graham shot up on stage. He didn’t even shuffle off to the side to do it. He stayed at his keyboard and just turned his back a little bit to the audience. He wrapped a leather strap around his arm and shot up. To a young lad like me, that was deeply shocking. I saw him twice more in his life, with the last occasion being just a couple weeks before he threw himself under a tube train in the middle of London. That was a very sticky end…because it was messy.
A year later, in 1969, we did a few shows with Jimi Hendrix. When I first met him, he was a very polite, quiet, calm guy. The next year, after we did the Isle of Wight Festival, he was found dead of an overdose just a few weeks later. In such a relatively short time, he went from some presumably controlled habits to a straight downhill run. Those are the object lessons in life that these people taught me.
You’ve got to have a lot of luck on your side to dabble with serious drugs and get through it. There are those that get through it, and people who make the mistake of thinking, “I can be like Pete Townshend and do serious drugs. Then, I’ll just stop and be cured.” They think they can be Steven Tyler or Elton John. It was never difficult for me to say, “No, thank you,” when someone offered me a joint or some pills. If someone presses a glass of single malt whiskey in my hand, I’m probably going to drink it. That’s about it for me.
There’s a fairly good chance I’ll spend my last days on a morphine drip, so I’ll experience what Class A drugs are all about when that happens. I’ll let you know if it was worth the wait.
30
TUNDE ADEBIMPE
(TV on the Radio)
It’s hard to think about the early 2000s without TV on the Radio on the soundtrack. Actor and performer Tunde Adebimpe takes us back to that heady time, when cocaine and free love were the main course in post-9/11 NYC.
I’m gonna go chronologically with my embarrassing stories. We’d been signed to Touch and Go Records around the end of 2002. Usually, the way that Touch and Go did things was to see a band live and make the decision whether or not to sign them. Corey Rusk had already heard what we were doing because Dave Sitek was roadie-ing for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. 9/11 had happened, and no one was going outside. During that time, we made an EP that sounded like an actual record. He played that for Corey, who loved it. He signed us right away, and we were the first band that he’d signed without having seen us live.
There’s a big difference between sitting in a bedroom studio and putting things together piece-by-piece versus having an actual live band. We didn’t have the live band because I was singing and using a loop pedal. Dave had a sampler, and our first shows were at this club called The Stinger in Brooklyn. Those early shows were essentially just a free-for-all. We had a monthly residency there, and all the shows were basically a big fucking mess.
We would take song suggestions, and the shows would sometimes end with complete strangers onstage holding microphones, totally drunk, while trying in vain to play our instruments. We’d be sitting in the booth watching them, saying to whoever cared, “That’s TV on the Radio.” It was more like poorly rehearsed karaoke. We’d leave the drum machine on, and it’d be a bunch of drunk, coked-up white kids trying to rap over it. We were not a polished live act.
Kyp Malone joined the band right as we were getting signed, and we decided to go out and play the whole EP a cappella. We hadn’t rehearsed enough for any of it to sound good, so our live show was an even bigger fucking mess than before. It was three guys behind briefcases with microphones, and it was horrible.
We took it to Chicago, and our first show playing for the label, we were opening for The Fall at the Empty Bottle. Corey was really excited and kept saying how much he loved our EP and how talented we were. Five minutes into the set, and it was already a complete mess. Ten minutes in, it was even worse. People were touting us as the next big thing, and you could see the wave of disappointment as it washed over the crowd’s faces as we kept playing. One of the keyboard stands went down, fell into the audience, and we were scrambling to set it back up. It was ugly. You could tell everyone was wondering how we could have had such hype behind us. Afterwards, we went up to Corey and sheepishly said, “Yeah, that was kinda rough.” The look on his face was a mixture of terror and confusion, and you could almost hear him thinking, What have I done?
Corey had to admit that he’d give us another shot. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, we had to walk past Mark E. Smith from the Fall, who basically told us we sucked. If that guy says you’re a mess, you’re a big fucking mess. There’s a strange sense of calm that comes when you’re onstage and realize that you’re totally failing. You just have to keep your head down and finish. The worst thing you can do in that situation is stop. If you finish, there’s at least the hope that people might think that what they just witnessed was exactly what you intended. People might think it was some weird, stylistic choice to go up there and completely suck.
Quite magically, sometime around 2003, it was like somebody landed with forty barrels of cocaine and began distributing it all over Brooklyn. I was suddenly being offered this shitty eighties drug every night. It wasn’t my thing, but everyone was doing it and suddenly becoming talkative assholes. One night we were playing at this place called Star Foods on the Lower East Side, and the place had that coke vibe, where everyone was going crazy.
I remember seeing two people sitting on one of our monitor amps on stage. It was really crowded in there, so I figured they had climbed up for a better vantage point. At first, it looked like they were making ou
t, but I quickly realized they were having sex on our amp as we were playing. I got away from that side of the stage pretty quickly. It’s not like you tap someone on the shoulder and ask what they’re doing in that situation. The crowd realized what was going on, and we all just kind of watched the couple go at it. It was kind of like a freak show, where you know you shouldn’t be watching it, but you can’t look away.
There was no S&M-type vibe to that place either. It was more like an eatery, but that’s just what was going on at the time. There was a lot of public sex going on post 9/11. The vibe was that if we were gonna die, we might as well be getting laid in the streets. One time after a show, I remember standing on a street corner and hearing this chain-link fence rattling behind me. I turned around, and it was two people who had just left the show going for it against the fence. That was Brooklyn in 2003.
On our second tour of Europe, we were playing a festival in Rotterdam, so, of course, we had to stop in Amsterdam first. It was still so mind-blowing that you could legally purchase weed, and we really went for it. We got some really powerful stuff and got high before going onstage at Rotterdam. This was the last time I ever got high before a show because I was so stoned that, after playing only three songs, I thought we were done. I thought the show was over. I just walked off the stage and left everyone behind. No one had a clue what I was doing or where I was going.
I left the stage and walked right out of the venue. I strolled down some avenue and went and sat down in a park. I sat there and watched these kids run around the playground. I was thinking, Man, that was a crazy show. I hung out in that park like a weirdo for the better part of an hour. Eventually, I walked back to the festival. Everybody was yelling, “Where were you? What the hell happened?” I was so confused and sputtered, “Well…we were done, so I left.”
They said, “Uh, no. We weren’t done, and we were all standing onstage, wondering what happened to you.” They thought that maybe I had gotten hurt, and they were all looking for me backstage. Our manager was completely freaked out and was off searching for me. We went to Sweden after that, and someone came up to me and said, “We heard the rumor that you smoked too much powerful marijuana in Rotterdam and walked off the stage!” I really wish there was somehow video of me in that park, having this introspective moment—this weird, sweaty man, watching the kids play.
31
AL JOURGENSEN
(Ministry)
After my interview with Al for the book, I immediately googled “Al Jourgensen + Overdose + Lollapalooza 1992.” Nothing came up about the overdose, so I contacted his publicist, who was blown away. We had never heard the story, and Al had never shared it publicly. Prepare for the craziest of the crazy, folks. It’s a doozy.
Let’s start out in 1981, which was the last hedonistic days of the castle that was Studio 54. It was probably one of the last shows that the Studio hosted, and it was one of Ministry’s first. How we got that gig, I have no idea, but I do remember this: we were completely freaked out to be playing this really famous place. The show was on a Tuesday night, and there were only four of us in the band at that point, so we had backup tapes with us to help fortify the sound. Backup tapes back then weren’t on computers, but on a four-track tape machine, and those tapes were our bass sequencers and other sounds.
At that point, this show was going to be the most important gig we’d ever done, even though it was in the complete decline of Studio 54. They were gonna be shut down within the year, but to us Chicago guys, having only four or five gigs under our belt, it was a huge deal. We knew about Warhol, Grace Jones, and all the famous people that hung out there, so we were completely freaking out. We were working with a new monitor guy that night, who was recommended to us, but he was really cocky. He kept saying, “I know how to run the tape machines!” He totally looked down on us, and it was obvious he thought he was slumming it with us rookies. He was a real asshole.
Before the show, Andy Warhol came backstage, so we got to meet him. He was on coke or some weird inhalant, but he was cool and exactly how I imagined he’d be. We get on stage, and there were only four tracks on our tape machine. One was a click track that was specifically for the drummer. The other was a bass synth, and one of the others was some sparkly sound effect. The new, cocky, asshole monitor guy put the fucking tape on backwards. The click track was now blaring at 120 decibels to the crowd. All that anyone could hear for our first song was basically a really obnoxious-sounding cowbell, played in reverse.
I realized it right away, and I kept yelling and motioning at the guy to cut it. The guy flipped me off! The pit in my stomach was the size of the Grand Canyon. My first time at Studio 54, and Ministry’s first time in New York City, and I bolt across the stage and dove like fucking Superman into the monitor pit. I literally started strangling the fucking monitor guy. The great thing about New York and Studio 54 at the time was the audience thought the whole thing was some kind of weird performance art. I had one hand on the guy’s neck, and I finally shut the tape off with my other hand. Then, we fought for another minute or two.
I finally popped back up, and I grabbed a guitar tech who actually knew how to run the tape machine. He switched the reels, played it forwards, and we soldiered on, none the worse for wear. But man, what a fucking let-down. It was the most embarrassment I had ever felt in my life, but I don’t think the audience cared. I think they honestly thought that every Ministry show started with me beating the shit out of the monitor man.
That fear has never gone away. Forty years later, I’m scared shitless before every show. These people have paid good money to see us, and I want to represent why they bought that ticket in the best possible way. Starting out, I had no idea what to expect every night. That suspense made an already anxious person like me, anxious on steroids. I really fucking hated those early years playing live, and I’d probably live to one hundred if it wasn’t for those early days. The stress alone probably took twenty-five years off. That’s why I gravitated to downers and psychedelics, just to get out of my own head. The other part was after being on the road for three months. What do you do with the other nine? Keep self-medicating! It certainly helped, because anxiety is debilitating. To have people judging you while you’re baring your soul on stage is fucked up. So, I was medicating a lot, which brings me to my next story.
In 1992, Ministry got added to the Lollapalooza tour. I was a full-blown fucking junkie. I was doing at least eight-to-ten shots a day, with a $400 a day habit. We were scheduled to play right before the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I was in the dressing room doing my pre-gig heroin shot. This particular batch of heroin I had scored in St. Louis, or somewhere off-the-radar, and I wasn’t expecting a huge level of potency. It’s like today with that fentanyl crap. I’m telling ya, this stuff was heavy, and I went down like a rock. I shot it ten minutes before the show, and usually, it would just calm my nerves. This stuff deadened me, and I was barely breathing. I wasn’t dead, but whoever ran the tour back then didn’t want the hassle of calling the paramedics or dealing with the publicity. To try and get me onstage, my tour manager had to buy some crack. He had never done crack before, but he was inhaling it and blowing it into my mouth to wake me back up.
Those festivals run like clockwork, so if you’re not onstage, you’re fucked. If you miss your set, your career is fucked. It’s not necessarily true, but they make you think that. So, my tour manager is working on me, blowing crack into my mouth, while I’m lying prone on the dressing room floor. The Red Hot Chili Peppers roadie, I forget his name but God bless him, had long dreads like me. He took the cowboy hat off me, went onstage, and sang the first three songs of Ministry’s set as me. Nobody in the crowd knew the difference. He saw me on the side of the stage after the third song, after they had resuscitated me and quickly gave me back my cowboy hat. If anyone was paying close attention, they would have seen that suddenly I was wearing completely different clothes. The show kept going, and it turned out to be a really good one! That guy saved the show—and
probably our career—by pulling it off.
I don’t think Perry Ferrell had any clue what was going on because two days earlier, I had thrown him out of my dressing room. We got there around 5:00 p.m., and we were set to go on at 8:00. Perry was in our dressing room alone, wearing only a bath towel, shooting heroin. We had a very heated exchange, and I haven’t seen Perry since that day, when we almost came to blows. I was a junkie too, so I understood, but pick somebody else’s dressing room!
I want to end on a positive story. It was the last show of our first Australian tour, in Perth, sometime around 1995, on the Big Day Out Festival. As we went onstage, it was right as the sun formed a half-moon on the horizon of the ocean. It was an outdoor venue that looked right out at the ocean, and this gigantic sailboat was cruising past this burnt-orange sun. The crowd, about 30,000 people, had lit this massive bonfire in the middle of the mosh pit and were dancing around it like Lord of the Flies. I remember looking over at the band and saying, “It doesn’t get any better than this.” There are so few goose bump, spine-tingling moments like that. It had all come together, and it all made sense.
The next morning, we had to fly to Japan. I had decided I didn’t want to go, so I handcuffed myself to a railing in the Perth Hilton. I had thrown the handcuff keys out the window into the shrubbery. My poor tour manager had to dig around in the bushes to find it and get me out of there. That moment on stage in Perth was so perfect that I didn’t want to leave. I was set to live there for the rest of my life. The road crew tackled me, opened up the handcuffs, and pushed me into the plane. Our plane landed on the day, on the minute, on the second of the Kobe Earthquake of 1995. The plane started veering all over the place as we touched down, shaking violently. We had to stay in that airport for twenty-four hours, as the venue had been destroyed. I knew something bad was going to happen because the most beautiful thing had happened the night before in Perth.