I got a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a rhythm box at home, so I wrote this song “I’m Falling,” which was kind of like the Cure or Joy Division, with these swells of noise and fake British vocals. I played it for Jim and he freaked out. He said, “Holy shit, is this your new band?” And I said, “No, it’s just something I threw together.” And he said I needed to do more and get a band together so I could tour.
I wrote this song “Cold Life” to try to emulate the kind of funk-pop shit I was listening to. When you’re a young musician, you don’t have your own identity yet, so you’re just stealing and borrowing anything you can find and putting it together to form your own thing, and all the while you’re praying you don’t get called out for the thief you are. I put together the first Ministry lineup with keyboardists John Davis and Robert Roberts and drummer Stephen George. It was funny because John was a friend who had never played an instrument, so I said, “Go out and get a keyboard and let’s see what happens.” With a few pointers, he was in the band. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my friend Paul Taylor was going to be in the original Ministry, but he got sick and bowed out, but not before introducing me to Robert. We had a couple drinks around Thanksgiving at a club called Neo. He told me he was a multi-instrumentalist, and I said I needed a keyboardist. So he auditioned and played along with us, and it seemed to work out. I don’t know why Stephen wanted to join the band; he could really play drums and is the only one of us who has gone on to have a big, successful career in the music industry, engineering and mixing people like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Britney Spears, R. Kelly, and tons of others. In the beginning I had no interest whatsoever in singing for Ministry. But after we tried out twelve vocalists who all sucked, I figured, “Fuck, I might as well do this myself and save myself the pain of listening to some other knucklehead who isn’t as good at sounding British as I am.”
With all the pieces in place, we went into Hedden West Studios and recorded “I’m Falling” and “Cold Life,” which had a funk baseline, disco guitars, and these gothic keyboards along with my antiseptic vocals—again in the lame British accent that I had trouble getting rid of for a while. Jim and Danny loved the songs and wanted to release them as the third single on Wax Trax! But they wanted a third song, so I put together “Primental,” which was this real cheeseball, dancey instrumental with a drum machine, handclaps, and moog keyboards that sounded like some of the atmospheric stuff I used to write for Shannon’s performance art. The song also featured a trumpet player from this band, the Book of Holy Lies. To everyone’s surprise “Cold Life” went to number forty-five on the US dance charts in 1981. We celebrated by doing too much coke and getting fall-down drunk—you know, the usual.
The only problem was that I didn’t love the music. I loved the acceptance and the acknowledgement that I could actually write music, but I still liked Skynyrd and Zeppelin. I loved Shannon, though, and she’s the one who’s really responsible for launching my career. I was all of twenty years old, so I didn’t really know shit, but I thought I had all the answers. The two of us were living in a shithole studio apartment that was about twenty feet by twenty, and she totally stimulated my mind as well as my body. We’d sit side by side and read constantly. Then we’d talk about what we had read. It was sweet and innocent and good. And that’s when I learned never to expect things to get better when they’re going well; that’s when weird shit starts to happen.
We decided to get married in civil court. We didn’t want any fancy ceremony or expensive wedding gown—none of that shit. We wanted a simple service and a party with our friends. Of course, that didn’t happen. Two friends of mine threw me a bachelor’s party at their place in Silverthorne, Colorado, which was this bumfuck town outside of Breckenridge and Frisco. And I fucked up everything—as usual.
I drank two bottles of Mescal and swallowed both worms. I was off-the-charts shitfaced. My friends ordered this giant cake, and two strippers jumped out. In my delusional state I must have thought they were a premarriage gift or something. So I brought them home so they could have a foursome with Shannon and me. I figured that’s a good way to end a bachelor’s party. I guess I thought she’d go along with it. Instead, she got pissed, grabbed my arm, twisted it behind me, and face planted me onto the steps outside. She called me a cunt and slammed the door. These two strippers were freaking out, so they split and I slept out there all night with a broken arm. I had to go to a hospital the next day to get my arm fixed, and Shannon called off the wedding. We stayed together for three more years, but it was never the same. She went off to Haiti and Cuba to do research for her master’s degree, and we grew apart. She traveled the world, doing anthropological studies in Haiti and India. Now she’s a professor and writes books and essays. Good for her. I have no ill feelings toward her, even though she’s the only woman who has broken my heart and my arm.
After Shannon called off the wedding I did what I always do when my personal life’s a mess: I went into a deep self-destructive depression and then snapped out of it and focused my energy on music. There were three different versions of the “Cold Life” twelve-inch. The first pressing came out on Wax Trax!, and then Situation Two put it out in Europe in 1982 with an extended dub version of the song and a six-minute outtake of it. I think they wanted everyone in Europe to think we were gay because the cover art had four naked dudes lying on their stomachs like they’re sunbathing or something. When we went over there to do press, all these journalists asked suggestive questions, and some of them started coming on to me. I was like, “Get away from me—I’m not gay.” Thanks a lot, Situation Two. But we sold 350,000 copies of that single, which is crazy because I just wrote it in the beginning to show Jim and Danny what kind of stuff I could do. I didn’t think they’d actually sign me or release that exact song. And I definitely didn’t expect it would sell a shitload of records.
When we got back to Chicago I got a call from an A&R guy at Arista Records saying Clive Davis, the head of Arista, wanted to sign us. I met with him, and he made me all these pie-in-the-sky promises and claimed he could make Ministry the next Joy Division, which is kind of what I wanted to be. But he had no intention of doing that. Right from the start he envisioned us as this gay, teeny-bopper pop band. So basically I signed my life away with a handshake and got a stack of cash. To be fair, the money was good because it allowed me to leave the apartment I was squatting in while Shannon was off in Haiti. I literally was living in squalor. I had a friend whose place was going to be demolished. There was no electricity or anything, so we had to go to Ace Hardware and shoplift extension cords. We’d put them under our pants and walk out the door. We’d do that a couple times, and then we’d string them all together so we could plug them in at a construction site down the street. And there was a hole in the roof, so when it snowed we’d have to shovel out our living room. We kept our space heaters far out of the way of the dripping water so we wouldn’t get electrocuted or start a fire. The idea of having some money to get out of the ghetto didn’t seem so bad. But I seriously had no idea of the shit I was getting into or what the stipulations of the contract were. Suddenly these industry big shots, Elliot Roberts and Steve Berkowitz at Lookout Management, were managing me, and they kept telling me I was going to be a big star.
I moved to Boston and started recording at Syncro Sound. I gave them a bunch of songs I had written, some of which ended up on Twitch and The Land of Rape and Honey, Clive fucking hated them. I told him, “This is the kind of shit I want to do—really dark electronic stuff with an edge.” But he was laser focused on making sure that I fit this Milli Vanilli mold he had cast for me. He saw me as this white guy playing dance clubs and getting as huge as Flock of Seagulls. That’s what he wanted—and I had no control. At first he’d just call me up and sing lyrics and suggest parts. Then he appointed these producers, Vine Ely, Ian Taylor, and this engineer David Wooley, who didn’t give a fuck what I said and molded all the songs. There were backup singers I didn�
�t hire and musicians they brought in who I didn’t want. It was ridiculous. When they finished I was like, “Clive, I don’t want this album out. I’m not going to promote it.” But he had a hard-on for me, man.
They flew me to England to do a video for “Revenge” with the Cure’s video director, Julian Temple. I felt totally used. I thought, this is not who I am, and that’s when I really started hating life and when my real spiral of depression and self-loathing began. I did that album clean and sober, and after that it was straight downhill. I got a really good lawyer and sued Arista, claiming they didn’t follow their contractual obligations and took advantage of me as an artist. Even after he knew I was suing him, Clive Davis still tried to keep me on the label. He even got the Thompson Twins to call me. It was so gross. They said, “If you just listen to what Clive says, he’ll make you lots of money. You’ll be big.” They were selling millions of records at the time, and he actually got them to call me to ask me to drop the lawsuit and stay with the Arista program, saying that Clive would take care of me. I wonder how much he had to pay them to make that call?
I was doing drugs before all this shit went down, but I think I first tried heroin when I was twenty-two because I couldn’t deal with all this manipulation and bullshit. Before that it was strictly coke. I just thought there was a line that maybe I shouldn’t cross, and I guess I was right. They say with age comes wisdom, and maybe when you’re forty that applies, but when you’re going from your teens to your twenties, fuck that. Someone at a party turned me onto it—I honestly can’t remember who—and when I first did it, it was the best fucking high in the world; it takes you off of this planet. It was like waving goodbye: “See ya. I hate this fucking place.” There was a complete feeling of calm and serenity. I was nodding off and dreaming all this crazy shit, but it was nothing like an acid hallucination; it was way more enlightening and freeing. It was like the pure comfort of being back in the womb or something, feeling completely encapsulated, secure, and content. Just bliss. That’s your first shot. Your next ten thousand shots, not so much. I spent twenty years trying to recapture that same high, but it never happened. At first I was a weekend warrior. I didn’t get hooked at all. I just used it recreationally.
And it helped numb the pain. I hated Boston. These corporate parasites were taking over my career. The city was this snooty place run by pod people. I had a brownstone apartment in Back Bay, which was nice, but every time I’d step outside I’d get these ugly sneers from people. The only good thing about being in Boston was hooking up with Aimee Mann. She was in a band called the Young Snakes, which is how I met her, and she was a total sweetheart. She was my first real girlfriend after Shannon. The way we hooked up was strange. She was living with her guitar player, and they were together on and off, so it got kind of weird. I tried my hardest to get her to be the original bass player for Ministry, but she wouldn’t go for it, so we just had a bunch of sex and jogged a lot up and down the Charles River. She was really into running and keeping fit. That was never really my thing, so we’d run through the park for about a half-mile together, and then we’d stop and have a romp in the bushes. Then she’d finish her run and I’d go home.
She split her time between her place and mine, which got kind of dicey for two reasons. First, she never broke it off with the guy she was living with, so he’d get mad when she came over. Second, my place was haunted as shit because some lady threw herself down the elevator shaft there in the ’40s. I looked it up at the library in the newspaper and found the clip about the suicide. This ghost lady hated other women. Aimee and I would do the little bumpus and humpus and be basking in the afterglow and all these books and bottles would go flying off the shelf and smash into the wall. That really freaked Aimee out. I can’t say that’s why she broke up with me—I think it had more to do with her living situation. But what we had was more than a fling, and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. She told me the hit song she did with ’Til Tuesday, “Voices Carry,” was about me, which is really flattering even though it’s kind of about a fucked up relationship. But I guess maybe that’s what we had. What else could we have? Pretty much everything about being in Boston was fucked up. I even met my fist wife, Patty Marsh, there.
She was managing the Blackouts, a band from Seattle that had relocated to Boston. They were also on Situation Two Records; we were the only two American bands on the label. So she and I immediately had a connection. She worked as a bartender at a club called Spit, which was right by Fenway Park, and she lived in Dorchester, which was a really shitty suburb of Boston where you could hear gunshots most any time after 5 p.m. I would drink at the bar and stare at her. She had Elvira-type dyed black hair, but then somebody told me that she was a redhead. I had a thing for redheads—I still do. So I started going to the bar every night and asking her out. She’d say no, and I’d ask her out again, and she’d say no. This went on for a while. Finally she went out with me—probably just to shut me up—and we hooked up. For the first year I was with Patty I’d risk my life to get to her place in Dorchester, and we’d fuck under an eight-foot large poster of Peter Murphy that was on the ceiling. To this day I don’t like that guy because she was infatuated with him; I was like second-class meat. Peter Murphy—Grade A sirloin. I’m banging her, looking up, going, “Jesus, really?” It was a turbulent relationship from the start. We only started getting along after Peter Murphy called me to come produce his stuff. I didn’t do it because I was in the States and didn’t want to go to England, but just the call got her to take the poster down and view me in this new
light.
With Sympathy was out, and I didn’t want to promote it. We did about thirty shows while I struggled to get off Arista. They were pretty good gigs. We opened for the Police, Madness, Culture Club, Flock of Seagulls, and Depeche Mode. Audiences seemed to like us, but most of the headliners wouldn’t talk to us, and I hated every fucking minute because I despised the music I was forced to make. And somehow I was still broke. When we were playing in New York with Depeche Mode I literally dumpster dove behind a theater to grab popcorn to eat. A big five-pound bag would feed the whole band. We were all living in a van scrunched up with our equipment. There was us, our driver, a roadie, a bunch of equipment, and popcorn. That’s all I remember—eight people in a van living on popcorn. Not good.
Robert Roberts left at the end of 1983 because he wanted to focus on his own band, One Love Lost. I don’t think he liked the heavier direction in which I wanted to take Ministry, and there was a major period of uncertainty while we were off Arista, which didn’t set well with Robert. So Patty, along with a couple other guys who would come and go, played keyboards, and I still had Stephen George on drums along with a new guy, Brad Hallen, on bass, who Patty found somewhere. But I hated the whole thing. We didn’t make any money with Ministry between the time I left Arista and when I went to Sire. So after a year in Boston Patty and I moved back to Chicago, and I went back to Wax Trax! Jim and Danny gave me a job working the register, and after three days I jumped over the counter and decked some kid who was taunting me: “Oh hey! Big rock star now working behind the record counter. Look at you now.” They were afraid of lawsuits, so they put me in the back, where I had to shrink wrap vinyl all fucking day. I was by myself behind this machine. They wouldn’t let me out in public except to close the store. And that’s how I met Robert Plant.
In 1983 Zeppelin played Chicago, and the store manager said I had to keep the place open because this really famous person was gonna come in after hours—he won’t shop during the day. At that point Patty and I had somewhat of an open relationship, and I had a date that night with a girl who loved ass-fucking—it was gonna be my first ass-fuck, and I’d been excited about it for days. So I was like, “Godammit, I gotta run the counter and possibly miss my date.” At about 11 p.m. Robert Plant comes in, and he keeps me there for almost five hours. I was looking at my watch the whole time thinking, “Can I still meet this chick?” No. Robert Plant’s th
ere, and he’s got me playing records for him before he’ll buy them—all this stupid shit about hobbits and dwarves. So I’ve blown my date and now I’m pissed, but I’ve gotta be polite. When he’s done listening to everything he’s interested in, Robert Plant comes up to the counter with a stack of vinyl two feet high, and he wants it for free! It was my first week on the job, and I’m like, “I don’t know if I can do that, man. Let me call the owner.” I called Jim Nash and put him on the phone with Robert. I had to go through another hour of “This record’s 20 percent off for Robert. That one’s 10 percent off. This one’s 5 percent off.” He could have easily reached into his pocket five hours earlier, grabbed a wad of bills, dropped them on the counter, and left and not have missed a single penny. But, oh no, the rock star needs special treatment. I had to figure out all this math shit, and I’d blown my date. I’m with this wanker in these bell bottoms with his shirt tied off at the navel. I was about to explode. He’s the biggest wanker I’ve ever met in my life—a total fucking asshole. But it’s funny: A couple months later there was a Robert Plant interview in Details magazine, and they asked him if he liked any new bands. He replied, “I like Ministry. Ministry’s great, and Al Jourgensen rules.” Someone might think that he was being nice because he put me through this heartache at the store. No, he didn’t know that was me. God, I hate that guy. And he owes me an ass-fuck.
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