Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  While we were there we shot the video for the single “Over the Shoulder,” and that was total chaos. We hired Storm Thorgerson to shoot the video, the same guy who did the cover art for Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon as well as Led Zeppelin’s Presence and all these other famous albums. He hired two kids to steal a Mercedes and filmed it. I had no part in it—it wasn’t me. But they actually stole the fucking car and he filmed it. Then he had us go into a grocery store to film. We asked if we could shoot there, and they said, “No.” So he had the same kids who stole the car break into the fucking grocery store and trash it. Then the next day we went in and asked again if we could film. We told them we’d pay them, so they said yes because they had losses and damages from the break in. We shot it during the day while there were shoppers buying food. I’m being wheeled around on a cart with all these old ladies looking at me. It was really ingenious how he got them to change their mind and allow us to shoot and how he got the kids to steal the car. Everything that happened on that video was criminal. I have a couple other criminal videos, but that’s the first one, and it set the bar really high.

  After a while I got really fed up with London. Even if I was escorted across the street from my apartment to the tube and taken to a bar, it was a disaster. I’d order a screwdriver and there’d be no ice—just warm orange juice and vodka. I was like, “Give me some fucking ice cubes,” and the bartender would take one small cube and put it in there while he sneered at me. I would tell him, “No, motherfucker, I want some ice with my drink.” So that would end up with me getting in a bar fight because I was the stupid Yank. Then I would go to a restaurant and they would give me this brown vinegar to put on top of everything. And I would say, “No, I want some fucking ketchup. I am American. Help.” And I wound up in fights over that! I was constantly in fights. It was ridiculous. It got to the point at which I was so cranky that I was yelling at the Brits about the Revolutionary War. That was all I had left. I thought, “Fuck you. We won the war. Fucking Limeys!” The final tipping point that made me decide to leave London was when I went to a fish ‘n’ chips shop and they wrapped the food in newspaper. I unwrapped it and read the sports page on my fish. I was like, “This can’t be healthy—there is ink all over my deep-fried fish.” I decided I had to leave that place before it killed me.

  But before I left London I had the honor (note extreme sarcasm) of meeting the abundantly talented (note even more extreme sarcasm) Chris Connelly, who was in this shitty Scottish dance band Finitribe. This motherfucker was a spineless parasite who latched onto Revolting Cocks, Ministry, PTP, and Acid Horse before I was finally able to extract him from my bowels in 1993. I met Connelly while I was in London working on the songs for Pailhead, a project I did with Ian MacKaye, the singer and guitarist for Minor Threat and Fugazi and who owned the Washington, DC, label Dischord Records. Ian hadn’t come over to London yet and I had some down time, so Connelly took a train down from Scotland just to meet me. I showed him what I was doing and he asked if he could be a part of it. I was like, what the fuck? Ian’s not here yet. So Chris went into the vocal booth and sang these crazy lyrics about raping a nun. It was seriously disturbing shit, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go in that direction. Then he left and called up later to tell me he’d gotten arrested robbing a liquor store and wanted to know if I could help him with his bail. I found out later he’s a total con artist, a charlatan, and a poser.

  I was a little nervous about working with Ian, who is this real straight-edge icon. He doesn’t drink or do drugs. I didn’t know how we’d get along. I had a stash of cocaine and heroin that I had been doing and I kind of couldn’t stop. Ian was at the studio for a business meeting because his hardcore band Minor Threat was being distributed in Europe on a label owned by Southern Studios, which is where I did Twitch and the 1,000 Homo DJs project. I didn’t want Ian to know I was doing drugs because I had heard he was really pompous, so I told him I had a bladder control problem. Then I’d go to the bathroom, shoot up or snort, and come out either sniffing or with blood trickling down my arm. After about the tenth time I came out of the bathroom with white circles under my nose, Ian said, “Dude, I know what you are doing. It’s okay. Do what you have to do. Just don’t lie to me about it.” I thought that was so cool of him. To this day I think Ian MacKaye is an awesome guy, and we have a mutual respect for each other musically. The first track we did together was “I Will Refuse” for the 1,000 Homo DJs. And we agreed to work together on a project later when we were both in Chicago. That’s when we did Pailhead.

  After I worked with Ian on that one song I was thinking back about my meeting with Chris Connelly and his fucked up lyrics and alleged arrest at the liquor store. I decided this guy was crazy enough to be a RevCo (Revolting Cocks) singer. Years later, after I invited him to join the band, I discovered he was a big charlatan. His lyrics about raping nuns were bullshit, and I found out he was never arrested for robbing a liquor store. He made that shit up.

  I left London and went to Brussels, Belgium, for six months to work on Revolting Cocks. I had talked to Front 242 programmer Richard 23 back in Chicago about doing a project together (we were on the same label), and we agreed to meet up when I finished the Twitch sessions. After recording all this electronic body music I wanted to do something that didn’t sound like disco. I wanted it to be booming and spooky. It’s funny how it’s gotten turned on its head over the years. Now Ministry is the heavy band and Cocks are this stupid frat band. Ministry’s for fighting; Cocks are for fun. The name Revolting Cocks came about after a bartender in Chicago insulted me and a bunch of guys I was with for being too rowdy. He kicked us out and called us “a bunch of revolting cocks.” I thought that was awesome and wanted to thank him for the insult, but he seemed pretty pissed; I didn’t want him to kick my ass.

  We did the first RevCo album, Big Sexy Land, in 1985 at ICP Studios in Brussels. It was me, Richard 23, and Richard’s friend, multi-instrumentalist Luc Van Acker. It was a wild session because in the next room the Ramones were recording Animal Boy. They drank beer like motherfuckers. I’ve never seen anyone consume that much beer. That’s really the first time I started seriously drinking beer. I’d go raid their chest, drink their beer, and the locals hooked me up with ecstasy, which I had never done. For the first time I started getting addicted to a pattern for creating. Before I’d just get drunk and work on my four-track at home. Now I’d do some ecstasy, drink some beer, take some Wiz, and do a Cocks record.

  I got the name Big Sexy Land one night when I went over to Berlin to finish up Twitch with Adrian, and I saw this giant strip club right by the Wall that separated East and West Berlin. Back then West Berlin was free, westernized, and capitalist, and every night was a party. Directly on the other side of the Wall, East Berlin was this communist bombshell that looked like it never recovered from the war. The first Cocks album was titled Big Sexy Land because there was this giant flashing neon sign three blocks long, and all East Berliners saw from the other side of the Wall were these three giant words: BIG SEXY LAND. It was the ultimate piece of propaganda, and I just pitied all those poor fuckers on the other side of the Wall while I was standing there drinking beer and watching naked chicks pole dancing. It was like the biggest capitalistic tease, the ultimate fuck you.

  I thought the Big Sexy Land bar would be the ultimate place to do our first RevCo show, so I talked to the owner and told him that Revolting Cocks would love to play our first ever show at Big Sexy Land. I explained to him that I was in Ministry, which he seemed to understand. He nodded his head and said, “Ya, 20,000 Deutsche marks.” I was expecting a 2,000 or 3,000 Deutsche marks guarantee at most, so I was thrilled. We shook hands and agreed on it and I left. I went back to London, where I started getting calls from Luc and Richard 23 asking me what was up with the gig. I said, “We’re doing it. I shook on it. 20,000 Deutsche marks.” Richard was skeptical because that’s a lot of money, so he said, “Well, you better call him
and schedule a date.” After five tries I finally got through to him. I said, “Well, do we get a deposit? What’s the deal? Do we get a sound check? When do we show up?” I didn’t know much about booking a tour back then. And the guy said, “I don’t care.” I thought, “Well this isn’t a good sign.” Then he says, “I do care about you sending me the 20,000 Deutsche Marks.” He wanted us to pay him. So I had to call the Cocks back and say, “Uhhhh, the gig’s off.”

  We didn’t end up touring with RevCo until 1987. Before that Ministry toured for Twitch, which came out in July 1986. Patty was still managing the band, but she wasn’t playing with us anymore, and everyone else from the original lineup was gone. Brad and Stephen left to play in this new wave band Colortone, and they got their own record deal. Brad also played with Aimee Mann on one of her records, which is kind of funny. So Patty called up two guys from a band she managed, the Blackouts. Their singer left, so they needed a band, and I needed a bassist and a drummer. Their bassist, Paul Barker, and drummer, William Rieflin, came as a package deal. And here’s where perception conflicts with reality: Barker was in Ministry for seventeen years, so people assume we were friends and he played this huge creative role in the band, that we had this great partnership and that he had these amazing musical ideas that complemented mine. That’s total malarkey. It was more like an arranged marriage and it was always acrimonious. I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me. We somehow managed to make records that way. I mean, The Who did it. Barker was a shitty bassist and a pseudo-intellectual from the start. I was becoming a drug addict and couldn’t get rid of him, and he covered up my drug habit in the press. Most of the time we tried to stay away from each other. The relationship was completely codependent, but at least the lineup was more or less stable.

  Touring with Ministry was weird back then. The music was starting to get heavy, but we didn’t have a mosh pit or anything. People in the crowd looked at us like we were techno homos, and there were still some fans of the old band who wanted to hear “Cold Life” and “Revenge.” It was, in the words of Samuel L. Jackson, a real “transitional period” for Ministry. We had some barbed wire and sandbags onstage, but there were no insane props or confrontational video images because the music wasn’t that heavy yet. We didn’t have guitars, and I wasn’t using distorted vocals. But I was cutting myself during the show sometimes just to feel more alive. I’d bleed all over the stage and get blood in the dressing rooms. And then we’d shuttle off to the next town for the next show. Sometimes there’d already be blood stains in dressing rooms when we pulled in. The first time it happened I thought, “Oh, someone must have broken their nose or something.” But then I started hearing about this band Skinny Puppy that were doing the same kind of music as we were doing, except they were using fake blood onstage and getting it all over the place. At one point we were both touring the South about three days off from one another. I was like, “These guys are assholes.” We hated them even before we saw them because kids would come up to us and go, “Hey, you ever heard of Skinny Puppy? They’re kind of like you.” And I was like, “Fuck that. No one’s like us.” It never occurred to me that they were getting the same shit on the other end. They’d be slipping in my real blood, and their fans would go, “You ever heard of Ministry?” So I think they hated us too. Then I realized, “This is stupid. I gotta meet these guys who are messing up the dressing rooms.”

  We met at some event in Hollywood. After we were introduced their singer, Nivek Ogre, said, “So you’re the one who’s leaving blood all over club dressing rooms. That shit really freaked me out.” And I said, “You’re leaving fake blood everywhere, and I’m getting it on my boots and slipping on it backstage. What the fuck?” We both laughed about that and then we started talking about music, road stories, and drugs. And we partied with them and realized we had a lot in common. We became good friends, and Ogre ended up doing vocals later on a handful of dates with Revolting Cocks.

  The first-ever Cocks show was at the Metro in Chicago in July 1987, and I decided to record it for a live album. We rented a mobile truck and got a bunch of recording equipment. It cost us a ton of money—money that we didn’t have. And it was the ultimate FUBAR (fucked up beyond all repair). I’ve had shows at which equipment didn’t make it through customs or something broke, but this went beyond mere logistics. This FUBAR was like an act of God. The air conditioning went down, so the place was 130 degrees inside. When the opening act, called X Meets Y, came onstage, they had a woman dressed as a potato being escorted in a wheelchair and a male nurse holding a twelve-gauge shotgun. He handed it to her and everyone thought it was a prop, but it wasn’t. She started shooting down chandeliers in the venue. There were these huge gunshot sounds and shards of glass rained down on the crowd. People were covered in glass, and the audience started freaking out and scattering. Then X Meets Y, who had rounded up a hundred chickens before the show, let them all loose in the mosh pit. The chickens were dressed with black Annie Lennox masks on their beaks. People were screaming, the chickens were panicking and pecking at people’s ankles, and the band started to play the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” at half-time.

  The owner of the venue came backstage, red-faced shaking his fists. He yelled, “I’m not paying you because I’m going to get sued for this monstrosity of a show you’ve concocted!” So I said, “Well then I’m not going on stage, so fuck you. I knew you were a shyster.”

  He realized the danger of us not going on was far greater than the threat of a hundred chickens biting people. So while his staff was rounding up all the chickens, he went around to every single cashier at all the bars and pulled out money to pay me. About an hour after the band left, the audience didn’t know what was going on. The chickens were gone. The glass was swept up, and unbeknownst to everyone, this club owner was scraping together the money to pay me. In the meantime the potato-sack girl, who was doubling as a Revolting Cocks dancer now, did a bunch of Rohypnol in the dressing room and I was doing all this acid. Finally the club owner paid me with a huge pile of dollar bills, so we walked onstage and the soundman started recording the show. The first thing I did was throw the pile of money into the crowd—the whole thing. That caused another riot of people crawling across the floor to pick up the bills. It seemed like a great start to a first show to me. Of course I was tripping my balls off.

  We started the show with “Cattle Grind,” and the potato-sack dancer was staggering around the stage on platform shoes she had built out of two-by-fours. She was eighteen inches off the ground and totally wasted. Before we finished the song she tumbled headfirst into the kick drum. So that fucked up the recording. Her head was stuck in the drum. And I didn’t know at the time, but the other girl dancing onstage was fifteen years old. She was wearing this tube top and a miniskirt and dancing on these homemade platform shoes. She didn’t fall, but she wasn’t developed yet, and while she was dancing her top slipped below her tits. Then about halfway through the set I picked up a razorblade that was lying by the side of the stage and started carving up my arm. Under the circumstances it seemed like the right thing to do. I was bleeding like a stabbing victim. I raised my arm, and blood was pouring down over my shirt and pants, dripping into puddles on the floor. I’ve got scars I’ll bear for the rest of my life from that. Later, when we listened back to the tapes, Barker and Connelly thought we sounded terrible. They were all freaked out. I thought, “No, it’s perfect.” I can’t think of a more auspicious debut for a band than that. But they refused to release it. In a way they were right. Barker’s playing was all stiff, and the drums sounded kind of crappy. So we went into Chicago Trax Studios and redid the whole set and edited my onstage banter with crowd noises from Humble Pie’s 1971 album Performance Rockin’ the Filmore and released that on Wax Trax! as You Goddamn Son of a Bitch.

  I always knew Barker was an asshole, but I originally thought Chris Connelly was a sick fuck that I could relate to on a certain level. But as I said, it turned out that he was a tota
l pussy, a real poser. I had this house I was renting in Chicago, and one day Chris comes running over, sweating and all freaked out, saying skinheads attacked him. I grabbed some pepper spray and a baseball bat; I didn’t have a gun then. I go running outside to confront these skinheads who harassed my new vocalist. It was two ten-year-olds with crew cuts on their bikes. I asked him, “Is that what harassed you?” and he said yeah. I was like, “They’re ten-year-olds on bikes holding tennis rackets.” I don’t waste pepper spray on ten-year-olds.” So I went back inside and told him to chill out. That was the first time I saw Connelly’s true colors. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be the last.

  Chicago Trax was my home away from home for about seven years. When we finished the Cocks tour and moved back to Chicago it looked like I was going to be there for a couple years, so I found a three-story brownstone in a residential neighborhood, and nearby was this studio called Chicago Trax, which had nothing to do with Wax Trax! I met the owner, Reid Hyams, who was a complete bonehead. This guy had no business working retail let alone being in the music business. He was hyper and clueless and talked with a lisp, which made him seem like Sylvester the Cat on steroids. I went in there to work on a remix edit of “(Every Day Is) Halloween.” Back then you had to make all your edits on reel-to-reel tape using a grease pencil to mark your changes and use a razor blade to make the actual cuts. Then you’d splice the tape back together again. There were no ProTools or digital recording. It was primitive and tedious, kind of like typing a book on an electric typewriter and cutting and pasting sections from one part of the document to another with scissors and Scotch tape.