Carpe Noctem Interviews - Volume 1

by Carnell, Thom

  You said CD covers. Who have you done CD covers for?

  Quite a lot now. I did a lot for Michael Nyman, if you know him. Machinehead. Testament. Tori Amos. Alice Cooper.

  It’s neat because that list of people is, again, all over the place.

  It really is, yeah. I did something for Bill Bruford’s Earthworks, which is sort of jazz.

  Man, is Bruford a monster player or what?

  I think Bruford’s great. And something for Bill Laswell. So, I mean, really all over the place. I don’t know why I do tend to attract a lot of “death metal” bands. I don’t go out of my way to do this, but I do seem to be popular and they’re usually really good. They don’t often have a particular image in mind. They’re quite happy with me to get on with things. They’re very easy to work with.

  Do you feel that the artistic side of comics is being set aside by a business sensibility? I mean, when they start doing variant covers and books that stop becoming books and start becoming projects.

  All of that stuff is nonsense really, and unfortunately comes out of there suddenly being lots of money on the table. There’s nothing like movies coming in to say “Oh well, we’ll do this, that, and the other, and we’ll do big budgets.” As you say, stories become properties and people become characters or copyright units. There’s nothing like that to [keep] something that was driven by people really wanting to do interesting stuff and communicate from becoming just a money making-machine. To be honest, I really see all that as just the bullshit side of life and try not to get involved in it. I haven’t seen any sort of movies from comics that I’ve liked. I mean, there’s been a few comics creators like Jeunet and Caro in France who did Delicatessen and now has done City of Lost Children who are great, but that’s because they are creating films, they’re not making comics and then selling properties to a film industry to bugger them up. It’s become very much a business like any other business, but there’re still people doing great work.

  Do you think that great work is done in spite of the whole business thing?

  Yeah, I do. Maybe that’s the only good thing that comes out of it. It does mean that comics get seen more widely, so, more people get interested. Inevitably just by the statistics alone that means that there will be more good work available. It also means there will be an enormous amount of rubbish, but if you’re prepared to sift through it all, then that’ll be more good stuff. And I think that’s certainly the case, I’ve seen more really interesting comics around in the last five years than I had before. Yes, you really have to look for it. I don’t envy anybody who’s interested and goes into a comic book shop from scratch, not knowing anything, trying to find the good stuff amongst all that. I think I’d give up in a few minutes. If you know where to look, or if you know the people to follow, that stuff is around.

  What is your opinion of the market’s current fascination with collectible cards and do you see it as an opportunity for people who normally wouldn’t pick up an artistic piece to be able to do that now in the form of a little tiny card? I mean, for a lot of people the Sandman deck was their first exposure to your work.

  I suppose that’s not a bad thing. If it takes cards to get people to look at the work, well again, I guess that can’t be a bad thing. Personally, I can’t stand them. I think they’re really horrible things. They’re these tiny little postage stamps. I thought they were gum cards and you don’t even get the gum anymore. Personally, I don’t get the point. I’m putting all the Sandman covers together into a single book at the moment for DC. I would much rather people would try and get that when it comes out, because at least then the things will be reproduced at a decent size and you can see them and they’ll be in some sort of format that has some quality to it, some tactile quality rather than these nasty little cards. I guess you’re right. I hadn’t looked at it that way.

  You mentioned the Sandman cover collection. Will that be without mastheads?

  Yes, that will be without type and everything. I think with maybe a couple of them the type will have to be in there, but it’ll certainly be without the DC logo and the Sandman logo, or whatever.

  A lot of the projects that you choose are just slightly “left of center.” I mean, I don’t see you doing a Fantastic Four book. I see you doing a whole different level of things. Do you choose projects that you think the audience isn’t expecting or is it just something you see and you like the story and want to do it?

  It really is the latter. If I have to work on something for however many months, four months, six months, or in Cages it’s been years, it has to hold my attention, because if I get bored with it, it’s obvious. I think the audience would see that I was bored with it. So, it really has to be something that I have some sort of personal commitment to getting done, just to get it done because it’s such a big amount of work. I don’t have the style or the temperament to plow out a page or two pages a day. I really have to be motivated to do it. I wouldn’t know where to begin if it comes down to trying to guess what an audience wants, because I just have no idea who my audience is. I think it’s because I’m writing Cages. It must be that people don’t think artists can read, because I never used to get letters when I was just illustrating. Now that I’m writing Cages, I get lots of letters. It’s, again, right across the board. It’s men and women, all ages, all sexual groups. I would not like to second guess who my audience is, and I think that if I did, I’d be immediately jettisoning a major part of the people who might buy the book. So, where do you begin? I think that ultimately the only place to begin is [with] stories you like yourself, and you hope other people will jump on board and like as well.

  If you had complete autonomy to do whatever you wanted, what would it be?

  It would be a film.

  Is that ultimately the direction you want to go?

  Yeah. I am absolutely desperate to make a film. I’ve written a film and, as I’ve said, I’m doing these CD ROM projects within a company that is also looking to do films at some point. So, that might be good. I would really want to make a short film first just to get my act together, as it were. There have been a couple of versions of Kafka’s “The Trial,” so it maybe wouldn’t be “The Trial,” but something along those lines. I’m such a huge Kafka fan. I’d love to do a comics version of “The Trial,” or the first short story that I read and just really loved was “Repent Harlequin,” the Harlan Ellison story. I actually even started working on a version of that when I was at art school and had some ideas for that.

  Finally, what can we look forward to next?

  Well, the collected Sandman book covers will be out beginning of next year and it’s called Dust Covers. Hopefully the first CD ROM will be a version of Mr. Punch.

  What company is producing that?

  At the moment, the company is called Artemis and the label will probably still be called Artemis, but it might be within another company by the time the thing actually comes out. It just takes such a lot of money to get these things done. It used to be the case where the distributors would help with development costs, but there are so many people trying to do CD ROMs now, they just don’t need to do it. I have a book of short stories called Pictures That Tick and that should be around sometime next year.

  Who’s publishing it?

  Don’t know yet, I mean it’s such an odd book. It’s a, sort of odd collection of avant garde short strips that just try and play with what exactly comics are; and because it’s so odd, I feel kind of guilty trying to sell a publisher on it before finishing it. So, I want to get it done at my own pace, with no pressure, and then once it’s all finished, I’ll take it around and see if people want to commit to it, because it is an odd one, and there’s no guarantee that it’s going to sell much at all. Obviously, the collected Cages will be out at some point, and hopefully, this Major Arcana book.

  GWAR

  We got a call from GWAR’s publicist inviting us to a nearby venue for a show. The prospect of an interview was broached and we hungrily agreed. Th
e first part of the interview occurred at a bar between the lovely Slymenstra Hymen and me. I found her to be absolutely hilarious, frank, and a ton of fun. We had a few drinks, talked, and I escorted her back to the venue. Gwar tore the place up that night. The floor of the rapidly emptying venue was coated in fake blood, urine, and semen. At least I thought it was fake. The PR person came out to let me know the great Oderus Urungus had agreed to sit with me. To my abject horror, I found myself being led onto GWAR’s tour bus. Immediately, I conjured mental images of my bruised and battered body being found in a ditch somewhere outside of Bakersfield. But I quickly put those thoughts aside and climbed aboard. What I found sort of surprised me as I entered the back area of the bus and found the band taking off their costumes and cleaning up. Some of them sat nearby playing Magic: The Gathering. Off to one side, Riki-Oh: The Story of Riki played on a television. As we sat down to talk, Oderus (and every other member of the band) proved himself to be thoughtful, considerate, and quite friendly.

  ~ * ~

  Deep in the Valley of the Shadow with GWAR

  ~ * ~

  If we put GWAR in a room with Yanni, Kenny G, and John Tesh, who would be left?

  Beefcake: GWAR.

  Oderus: No. I wouldn’t want them dead. I’d want to make music with them.

  Really!?!

  Beefcake: We’d capitalize on their success.

  Yeah, GWAR and Yanni at The Acropolis.

  Beefcake: Then we’d kill them.

  Oderus: Gwanni! Night of the Igwanni.

  ~ * ~

  “GWAR GWAR GWAR GWAR!” It is the chant of rabid fans immediately prior to the band’s taking over of the stage. Enthusiastic packs of teenage boys, with their outdated OZZY shirts, their “ooo, look at my cool long hair” cuts; young males all jostle against each other, fighting for a spot closer to the stage. We think of the unsurpassed stage show. Loud, violent, and incredibly gory. The first thing you notice is the blood. There’s gallons of it. Everywhere. You are in a press of people and you’re moshing whether you want to or not. And there are these figures onstage playing some of the most raw and aggressive music around, and still managing to rip the heads off of errant audience members. And it’s hot. And loud. And a hell of a good time.

  GWAR, in a live setting, is nothing short of brutal. The crowd is aggressive. Your adrenaline starts pumping. There’s almost a carnival feeling to the air. The band is earsplitting. The band is tight. Too long dismissed as merely “rock theatre,” their music is solid, proficiently played and superbly presented. GWAR is a band which actually delivers on its promise. It is going to kill you. Where else are you going to see a decapitated OJ, the corpse of Jerry Garcia being harvested and eaten, a pair of aliens masturbating the lead singer’s giant penis until gallons of Oderus’ bodily fluids spew all over the crowd, and the lone female in the band, the flame-spewing Slymenstra Hymen gyrating like some voodoo supplicant. We think of a band who, as their alteregos, Ex-Cops, opened an entire tour for themselves. People uneducated to the cult of GWAR only think of those two fictional teenage losers, Beavis and Butthead. But the one thing that you never, never hear of is what is usually the most important thing for any band, and that is the music.

  GWAR is in fact, a group of extremely skilled musicians, on top of being one of the most demanding presences to ever take the stage. From Scumdogs of The Universe to their latest and tightest recording yet, Rag-Na-Rock, they have always been on top of the field musically. They take no prisoners, on stage or on record. They don’t care if you are offended, GWAR sticks to what works for them artistically, and bend for no one. I was recently able to sit down with three members of the band: Oderus Urungus, Slymenstra Hymen, and Beefcake The Mighty. So, to the fainthearted, be warned. Learn it, love it, live with it, because this is GWAR.

  ~ * ~

  Do you think you’ve been treated fairly in the press?

  Oderus: We’ve been universally slagged. We don’t care though.

  Beefcake: As long as they mention GWAR and spell our name right, any press is good press.

  O: GWAR is pretty easy to spell so it works out well.

  B: We got a lot of press. They totally ragged on GWAR. They don’t give GWAR any credit for actually playing instruments at all. They can’t see past the costumes. Reporters think the costumes are ridiculous and are therefore going to think that everything about GWAR is ridiculous. But who cares? As long as they write about us, it’s like I said.

  Slymenstra: I don’t think we’ve ever been marketed in the press properly. I think we’ve been interviewed by a lot of people who weren’t intelligent enough and didn’t have enough of an education to really understand a lot of the subtle nuances of GWAR. So we were never sold as a smart of a thing as we really are. We’ve been sold as a bunch of blood-thirsty meatheads. So I think that has turned off a large amount of our audience, whereas, if we would have all along had different types of magazines across the board – not just heavy metal magazines – writing about us and written about in a different way to those people. Alternative people read an article that’s written by a heavy metal meathead idiot and it turns them off. GWAR is something that shouldn’t turn them off. Everybody should be into it because it’s such an incredible form of art.

  Do you think the tie-in between you guys and Beavis and Butthead helped you or hurt you?

  O: How could it do nothing but help us? Made a lot of pimply-faced little kids who’d never dealt with GWAR before accept it as reality. In the minds of Beavis and Butthead, GWAR is the coolest thing ever; therefore, to kids who emulate Beavis and Butthead, GWAR is the coolest thing ever. It’s having a worldwide effect. I talked to this guy from Japan the other day who doesn’t know much English at all, and he learned most of his English from Beavis and Butthead. One of the first words he learned was GWAR. That’s gotta be good.

  Seeing how you are all musicians, do you feel that you are being dismissed as just a bunch of guys in kooky costumes?

  O: All the time, sure.

  B: It seems like lately we’ve been getting better press with people starting off their record reviews by saying things like, “GWAR finally learned how to play their instruments” which I think is cool that they say that, but…

  O: They say that every album.

  B: GWAR has always been able to play their instruments.

  O: They finally got the shit out of their ears.

  S: We’ve always had very talented musicians. That was a myth that we never had good music. Some people say our earlier stuff wasn’t as good. They obviously haven’t listened to it. Some of the earlier stuff is even more complex than the newer stuff. It also has a lot to do with how the records were produced. I remember Scumdogs of the Universe was everybody’s favorite album. I fucking hated that album. The songs sounded fifty times better live than they sounded on record, and people loved that record, and I think it’s our shittiest record. [laughs]

  Seeing how you have mostly played smaller venues as headliners, would you ever consider playing backup for another band in a bigger venue?

  O: That’s not the problem. The bigger bands would never consider us being an opening act for them.

  B: Too messy. The stage is drenched. The crowd is ragged out. It would take a really big band, willing to spend more money so that they could clean up the stage in between acts. We take up a lot of space back stage with all the costumes and stuff. There’s a lot of little things like that which would add to reasons why other bands wouldn’t want us to open up.

  O: They’re pussies and scared. If any fucking huge band out there had any balls, they’d put us on tour opening up for them, but they’re all like, “Ah gee, well, William Morris doesn’t think it’s a good idea, so…” The bands have the power. They could do it. No one out there is cool enough.

  B: They’re scared of our rubber.

  O: Scared of our giant rubber pythons of sodomy.

  Have certain characters in the band remained constant and you just changed the people doing it?


  S: It’s been mostly all the same characters for ten years. I’ve been doing Slymenstra ten years. Dave’s been doing Oderus for ten years. The only character that changed has been Flatus because we got a new guitar player and Beefcake because we got a new bass player. The characters stay the same. They have only changed once.

  Where do you see GWAR in five years?

  O: Probably we’ll have five more albums out by then and people will still be going “any minute now, GWAR is gonna be huge.”

  S: [I’d say] in the video realm. Virtual GWAR. [laughs] We won’t have to perform anymore, just sit at home and collect royalty statements while you guys go to Virtual GWAR show. Then I won’t have to work out any more. I can be fat and fix it all up in the computer. [laughs] I see myself as a movie star in five years. I’m gonna be a big movie star and continue to build ladders out of men and crawl up them at a rapid rate. [laughs]

  What can you tell us about the comic?

  O: There’s one out already. Slave Pit Funnies #1 and it’s a forty-eight page full color thing all done by Slave Pit artists.

  You guys got picked up by Diamond; that was a big thing then?

  O: Well, it seems to be getting some publicity. A lot of people are asking questions about it. I don’t know how many we’ve sold yet.

  How do you pick the bands that open for you?

  O: We have tons of ways of communicating with all kinds of different sources of information, tons of bands we like personally. We check it out and see where bands are strong. A lot of thought and effort goes into putting the bills together.

  B: It’s real important we take bands we like and get along with. If we took a band just for the draw power, it wouldn’t be a fun tour for us. Why do that when you can find a cool band who can draw, you can get along with, sounds good every night, and you can stand listening to every night?

  S: Well, this year, we’ve had the most awesome line up. For all of you out in press land, I say do acid and go to this show. This is the acid show of the year. It’s good because Brutal Juice is young and energetic and they are a very live band. They were friends of ours so they got on the tour, and then Neurosis are friends of ours and we liked their visual element and we chose them. We tried to get them last year, but they weren’t ready to sell out yet. [laughs]