Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  Normally I wouldn’t care, but this guy clearly needed a hand. He was a mess—covered in puke, urine, and Dorito chips. Later I found out he got the Doritos from our backstage deli tray. He somehow stuffed two full bags of these things into two pockets. He had to crunch them up until they practically weren’t edible anymore to get them in there. Then he went to the bathroom, ate a bunch of them, tried to pee, and pissed all over himself. Then he threw up and passed out in his vomit and urine and these stolen Doritos. I immediately warmed up to him. I said, “Come on, man, get your pants on. Let’s go back to the dressing room. I’ll give you some food. You don’t have to eat urinal Doritos. You can say hey to Bill.”

  I got him back to our dressing room, and Rieflin wanted nothing to do with him. He was totally pissed, like, “I’ve never seen him before!” But seriously, how could I not bring him back with me? If you meet someone with their pants down around their ankles lying in vomit and Doritos, you’ve got to love that guy. I found out Rieflin was so mad at me because back when they were in high school together, Duce allegedly attacked Rieflin’s sister. When he saw Duce, Rieflin almost stormed out and bailed on the show.

  The Mentors wore masks and sang about incest and butt-fucking. But they weren’t all lunkheads like Duce. Their guitarist, Sickie Wifebeater, lives in Hawaii now and writes Apple software. He’s gotta be a freakin’ millionaire. He’s the only one who kept The Mentors going during the dark years—as if there were any light years with Duce around.

  The guy tried to fuck my mom. Right in front of my stepdad, Duce said, “Hey, that’s a pretty hot little bitch.” And he tackled my mom. It was the second show my stepdad ever saw me play. All my stepdad wanted to see was that I was making a living for myself, and this fat guy attacked his wife. Duce was on top of my mom, trying to hump her. I had to hit him over the head with a twelve-ounce beer bottle to stop him. I really had to cream him, not just give him a glancing shot—it’s the only way to put the rhinoceros down. So he was bleeding from this head wound and asked, “Hey, what’d you do that for?!” That was the first time my parents had ever gotten to talk to me at a show, and Duce tried to rape my mom. My dad was not happy. That was my intro to my parents about my new career: This is what I do now. Thanks, Duce.

  So of course, when RevCo toured for Beers, Steers + Queers I had to take The Mentors on tour because, as fucked up as it seems, in Duce I had found a kindred spirit. I hung with The Mentors more than my own band, who I thought were poser pussies. But with The Mentors I had never seen individuals so unabashed about the absolute horrific curriculum in their social life. When The Mentors went onstage, Duce would get behind the drums and sing and play for about three or four songs. Then he’d fall off his stool, puke, and pass out in his own vomit. It was kind of a major tour, and he was blowing it for his band. His bandmates got angry. Seriously. Sickie and the rest of them said, “Dude you have to get your shit together. You’re cut off from liquor.”

  So El Duce would go into a Walgreens or some other drugstore and steal Listerine or Scope because they have alcohol in them. He’d chug the stuff in the store, leave the empty bottles in the aisle, fill his pockets with more, and walk out, a free drunk with the cleanest-smelling breath of any alcoholic. A couple times he passed out in the aisle of the drugstore after stealing mouthwash. They’d arrest him, and then we’d have to bail him out for getting caught being drunk at Walgreens. You can’t tell me that’s not cool, man.

  I could go on forever about Duce. Later in the tour he met this girl in Cleveland and asked me, “Hey, can I borrow your bathroom?” So he brought this girl in, butt-fucked her, and then flushed her clothes down the toilet in our room, which plugged up the plumbing so badly that the toilet overflowed. We had water damage everywhere. This chick was wet and naked after El Duce butt-fucked her. Talk about someone with less self-esteem than porno fetish chicks who get paid to be pissed and shat on.

  We took the tablecloth off a backstage table, cut a hole in it, and made a dress out of it just so she had something to wear. The next day I saw this girl on the road, and she was still wearing the tablecloth and she was still with him. Duce told her that we were playing Dallas and we were going to meet Jimmy Page, so this chick was all horny about that. Except that Jimmy Page was a local promoter named Jimmy Page, not the Jimmy Page she thought she was going to meet. I overheard her talking on the phone with her mom before that, saying, “Well, I just decided to go on tour with my new lover named El Duce. Oh, he’s really sweet.” I thought, “Sweet?! He just butt-fucked you and flushed your clothes down the toilet!” A few days later I saw this girl still in the tablecloth dress, and she was handcuffed to the Mentors’ van. She followed him the whole tour and didn’t get to see any of the shows. He kept her handcuffed to the van until he played his three songs, puked, and got booed offstage. Then he would come out, unlock the handcuffs, and fuck her in the van. He promised her that he had this great place in LA and that she could move in with him when the tour was over. In reality he was living in a cardboard box. So this girl had visions of wood floors and swimming pools, and she ended up moving into a cardboard box after being handcuffed to a van, wearing a smelly tablecloth dress. Those two really deserved each other.

  The fun with Duce never stopped. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Patty decked him when we were onstage. The venue we were in was a gay club for most of the week, and then they had the punk rock night. Well, Duce found out it was a gay club and freaked out. He wouldn’t play; he just went onstage and told gay jokes. The crowd got angry and started throwing shit at him, and eventually he was dragged offstage without playing a note. Then we went on, and the show was great. I went backstage after the gig, and Duce went up to Patty and said, “I need to get paid.” She said, “You didn’t do a show. You got thrown off stage. You’re not getting paid.” He repeated, “I need to get paid.” She ignored Duce, but he was tugging on her shirt as though she didn’t understand what he said to her. Patty turned around and Duce spat in her face. So Patty punched him right in the liver, which must have hurt her hand, because his liver had to have been hard as steel—just a giant oil refinery down there. Duce went down and then got back up and asked, “What the hell did you do that for?” He seriously couldn’t understand why she slugged him! Finally I intervened and said, “Okay, look, you are not going to get paid for telling fag jokes. I’ll tell you what. Since you don’t have any money, we can all shack up in the Motel 6. We’ll put you up for a night.”

  That night we threw a big party with drugs and booze and invited all these hot chickies from Boston. Duce was telling really hysterical stories, and we were all laughing our asses off. In the middle of this one story he mumbled, “Hjrsfrs,” and passed out. He was gone. So I told the girls to take off their pantyhose and nylons while we took off his pants, and then we dressed him up like a transvestite. We put lipstick on him, rolled him underneath the ice machine in the hallway, and left him there. Then we went back to our room to continue partying. About two or three hours later I heard this screaming from the hallway. It was these two Filipino maids. One of them was hitting Duce with a mop, and the other was spraying him with some kind of cleaner. We ran out, and Duce was waking up and trying to fend off the blows. Then he looked down at himself in the fishnets and said, “What are you hitting me for? I look goddamn good today!”

  The Mentors signed with a Metal Blade Records offshoot, Death Records, in 1985 and did two shitty records in a studio. Then Duce got a budget of $20,000 to record the next one. But he insisted he get paid in $20,000 worth of beer. The label dropped it off at the rehearsal hall. I was there. It was a Miller truck, an eighteen-wheeler, dropping off all these cases into the hall where The Mentors rehearsed. They were so shitfaced when they recorded that they never got all the way through a song. Halfway through they’d have to stop, and then they’d record the second half later. And they did this for every song. And they recorded the album on a fucking microcassette, the kind that used to go in answeri
ng machines. That’s what they sent back to Metal Blade as their album. They didn’t last long on Metal Blade after that.

  El Duce was my hero. He was the stupidest man I’ve ever met and one of my best friends. He even went out a stupid hero. On April 19, 1997, he got up in the morning to buy some beer in Riverside, California, and some kids recognized him by the railroad tracks and called out, “You’re El Duce!” He was so proud that they knew who he was that he tried to impress them by playing chicken with an oncoming train. He put down the beer, and as the train came up he started sieg heiling it. Then he tried to get off the tracks but his foot was stuck under the rail. He tried yanking it out, but he couldn’t. So he figured, “Well, I’m going to die anyway,” so in his last moments on earth he gave the train a few more sieg heils before it plowed him over. That man was the megagod of stupidity—the dumbest guy I’ve ever met. I love him so much for that and I miss him.

  Looking back I call that period with RevCo the Total Debauchery Tour. Besides all the drugs and fucking, I almost got my cock pierced. In addition to The Mentors and Skatenigs we played some shows with Genitorturers, who are this Orlando heavy-metal S&M band that does genital piercings on their fans during the show—hence their name. The singer and ringleader of the group was Gen, who’s this really smart, articulate girl who used to be a pre-med student. I liked her a lot. When we were in St. Petersburg, Florida, forty people in our depraved carnival decided to terrorize the city. They vandalized and broke shit, got into fights, and exposed themselves in inappropriate places.

  There were twenty-four arrests that night. It was a massive crime sweep-up, and I’m sure the police department of St. Petersburg felt important that night. They were arresting people on seventeen or eighteen charges, and they rounded up a whole bunch of us. When they got to me I said, “Look, I don’t fit any one of those categories you’re listing. I didn’t show my dick—that was Phildo. I didn’t steal anything or break anything. Really, I’ve behaved myself.” They let me go and busted Phil and a bunch of people in the Genitorturers camp. So I paid a bunch of bails and got everyone off. When we got back to the bus Gen decided then would be the perfect time for me to get a Prince Albert, which is a penis piercing in which you put a big metal ring through the piss hole of your dick and out the side, so you have to make a hole right where the shaft meets the glans, the part that looks like the back of a little helmet.

  I was wasted. I had my cock out and Gen has some ice, a potato, and a big-ass needle she was going to poke through the tip of my dick. I took a swig of Bushmills and a deep breath and said, “Okay—do it.” Then her husband, David Vincent, the singer for Morbid Angel, walked in and freaked out. He thought I was fucking Gen. I’m like, “Dude, how can you think sexual thoughts when you’re getting a needle poked through your dick and into a potato?” Seriously, it wasn’t sexual at all. I mean, I love Gen, but I’ve never wanted to fuck her. We’re friends. But that Neanderthal husband of hers is still convinced something was going on. He threw a shit fit and dragged me out of there. It was very educational to see how domineering he was over her and how he torched me like I was some hedonistic pagan. He was talking shit and threatening me, but I didn’t want to fight him—there was no point. So I just said, “I never fucked your wife, dude. We’re friends. We do the same kind of kooky artistic shit for a living. Chill out. Relax. It’s all good.” She just wanted to pierce my dick. No big deal. Shit happens. You wake up with a new tattoo; you wake up with a new piercing. “I must have had a good night”—that’s what you say in retrospect. But as it turned out Gen’s husband did me a favor, because I was talking to a guy later who has a Prince Albert, and he says he has to sit down on the toilet like a girl to pee because the piss splashes everywhere. So that’s a warning to any guy thinking of getting his dick pierced: You’ll never pee straight again.

  When the RevCo tour got to Cleveland, Ohio, everything and everyone was wrecked. We were in Cincinnati the night before, and I spilled a beer into the four-track recorder we used for the backing track when we were onstage; I wrecked the thing. It was toast, and that was a big problem because pretty much the whole show was on the tapes that we played over the PA. At the time we basically lip synched the whole show like Milli Vanilli. I said to the promoter of the venue: “I don’t think we can do the show because our four-track is gone.”

  Someone said, “I know someone with a four-track, and he’s a big Ministry fan. Just get him into the show, and he’ll let you use his machine.” So this kid named Trent came in with his four-track, and he looked kind of skeptical. It was exactly the same four-track we were using, so it was perfect, but he said, “You’re not taking my four-track. You already wrecked yours, and I need mine for my music.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll pay you for it. How much do you want?” But he refused because it had some sentimental value for him. So I said, “Okay, look, you like the band. We need the four-track. Why don’t you come on the road with us and travel in our bus in exchange?” So he agreed. And that’s how Trent Reznor became a Revolting Cocks roadie before he started Nine Inch Nails.

  He probably regretted it because we tortured that poor kid. Maybe it hardened him to the road. I don’t know. But it was his first time on tour, and we called him “Mama’s Boy” and whipped Black Cat firecrackers at him all the time. We used to throw these things in his bunk to wake him up, and he’d jump around like there were poisonous snakes in his bed. He’d try to keep up with our drinking. We wouldn’t let him stop, so he’d puke and pass out, and then we’d draw dicks and pussies and the word “fag” on him in permanent Sharpie marker. Eventually he got sick of the abuse and said, “Oh, my grandmother is sick. I have to go,” and he left the tour. But we kept the four-track. Looking back I really think going out with RevCo was good for Trent. It was a trial by fire—no frying pan, directly into the fire. He earned his stripes. If you can survive a Revolting Cocks tour, you can survive the music business.

  I didn’t see him again for a number of years, then out of the blue he called me up and asked me to produce a cover of Queen’s “Get Down Make Love” for a Pretty Hate Machine B-side. I don’t know why he came back to me after we put him through so much crap, but I was happy to hear from him again, so I invited him to Chicago Trax, where we put him through another few days of hell—and I really like the guy. We were just fucking with him, which is what we did back then with people we liked. We had a pact during the session that we would work all hours of the night and that no one could fall asleep. Anyone who fell asleep would get their head shaved. And then, of course, I put Rohypnols in Trent’s and drummer Chris Vrenna’s drinks so they passed out. It was kind of like a Vegas game there, man. I was tilting the odds—doing lots of coke to stay awake and giving them drugs to make sure they passed out.

  As soon as they fell asleep I broke out the clippers. I shaved their heads and their eyebrows. I got through Vrenna really fast. And then I stared on Trent. Shaving his head was no problem. And I did one of his eyebrows completely but only got halfway through the other before he woke up. He asked, “What the fuck are you doing?!” And I said, “I told you, man. No one’s allowed to pass out.” He didn’t know what I did exactly, so he ran to the mirror, saw what I did to him, and started screaming like an eight-year-old girl. The next month I saw a photo of him in some music magazine, and the caption read, “Trent sets a new style.” Ha! It neglected to mention the part about him passing out from Rohypnol and me butchering his hair. That’s the new style! But seriously, I think Trent is really talented, and I have no problems with his success. I’m happy for the guy.

  Even though I was pretty much always fucked up, I toured a lot with Ministry and Revolting Cocks. When we were in Amsterdam with the Cocks we went to this sex shop and bought inflatable-sheep sex toys because we thought they were hilarious. I mean, who would make an inflatable-sheep sex toy? And who would buy one? We bought the whole store out—girls, sheep. We had to go through customs to get back into England for a show at the B
rixton Academy. They inspected all our shit, which was nothing but inflatable dolls and sheep. They thought we were the biggest sicko perverts in the world. They treated us like diehard sex offenders. These stuffy British officers confiscated the inflatable sheep. That’s typically British. Leave the inflatable females—just take the sheep.

  I wonder what kind of crazy sicko took the sheep home as a marital aid. I’ve always loved meeting people who were crazier than I was, and I succeeded the night I met Butthole Surfers vocalist Gibby Haynes at a Holiday Inn in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They had just rolled in; we were supposed to play the next night. My tour manager at the time was a great guy, and he always tried to do things for us, but sometimes he just made things worse. He was kind of like that dude in Spinal Tap who carried the cricket bat around and smashed things when he didn’t get his way, only he was Irish, not English. After booking us into this hotel he came up to me and said, “I upgraded you, lad. Don’t worry—you’re gonna love your room.” I didn’t know what he meant by that, but when I got up there, there were all these fucking handles and poles and shit around the bed. I thought it was some kind of sex room, where you tie chicks up to the poles. Only I didn’t have any chicks with me that night—I only had Gibby, who is hands down the second craziest person I’ve known in my life. We did about an ounce of mushrooms between us, talked, and cracked jokes. And then I decided to find out why they put me in the hotel sex room when I didn’t have a chick with me.