Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  Eventually we said, “Fuck this” and started having people drive the dope up to Wisconsin for us. There were these skanky dealers hanging out in Shade Tree, which didn’t make the owners too happy. The place belonged to Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen, who became a good friend and is an honorary Revolting Cock and was a member of Buck Satan & The 666 Shooters. The studio was pretty awesome. Guns N’ Roses did their first record there, and after we finished touring for Psalm 69 I bought the place from Rick—the entire studio for $666,666—and brought all the gear back to Chicago Trax!. Then R. Kelly recorded there and ruined my grand piano. He’s a scumbag. He and his posse pissed in my piano and trashed it. Not only that, he totally freaked out my daughter. At the time I was living in one of the studio bedrooms with Patty and Adrienne. I heard her scream, so I grabbed a suitcase and hit R. Kelly over the head with it. I had to fight my way out of his posse with the suitcase, swinging it at anything that moved. That he’s not in jail is a travesty of

  justice.

  The Book Club was pissed that I still had drug connections and was still going down this path toward the abyss—that I would teeter on the edge but not fall off—and that, ultimately, Ministry was still my band and I remained the creative force behind it even when I could barely keep my eyes open. Even so, there came a point when I could no longer be the voice of the band, when everyone wanted to talk to the mad geniuses behind “Jesus Built My Hotrod” and other children’s classics. At that time I handed the reins to Barker. For three years I stopped doing interviews. And during this period Barker became the face of Ministry, my partner in crime, the yin to my yang. That’s fucking horseshit. He was never more than a mediocre bass player. I was just so doped up it took me seventeen years and a few solid ass-rapings to figure that one out.

  Mikey’s thrash-based riffs saved most of Psalm 69. I just added my production and some movie samples to make it cool. And then on the song “Just One Fix” I got all these cool spoken-word parts from William Burroughs, from readings and speeches he had done. We were all set to release the album, but it got delayed two months because Warner Bros. told me Burroughs wouldn’t give me permission to use his stuff. At the time everyone was all nervous about getting sued for illegal sample usage, and getting clearance for all this shit became more important to the labels than the music itself. I told Rolling Stone that our album was delayed because Burroughs wouldn’t let us sample him, and Burroughs’s manager, James Grauerholz, saw that and called me up and told me, “Nobody asked us. We never said you can’t use that stuff. As a matter of fact, why don’t you come to Lawrence, Kansas, where Bill lives, and we’ll do new stuff.” I called up Howie Klein at Warner Bros. and told him he was an asshole and made plans to road trip from Chicago to Kansas.

  We had instructions on how to get to the house, but we showed up three days late without telling anyone. Keeping William Burroughs waiting for us for three days was probably a bad move. Everyone was freaking out, sitting there with Bill, looking at their watches every few minutes, saying, “I’m sure they’ll be here soon.” There were a couple reasons I kept Bill waiting. First, I had to finish up a Revolting Cocks mix that I was already late doing because we had been working on Psalm 69. So the whole Ministry camp went out early. The band and the crew, the video team, management, publicists, label representatives—this was a big deal to them. I was supposed to fly out on the twenty-third of that month, but I don’t fly on the twenty-third because I am very superstitious. There is an old saying, twenty-three skidoo: If you travel on the twenty-third of any month, you’re toast. That goes back to the wagon-trail days of the Wild West: If you set out on the twenty-third to go from Missouri to Oregon in a wagon, you were sure to die. So I still don’t fly on the twenty-third. I don’t even like to travel on the twenty-third. But it was the twenty-third, I was three days late, and everyone was waiting for me. So I got a friend who owned a bar in Chicago to drive me to Kansas.

  We stopped off in Kansas City, knowing we didn’t have enough dope. My friend was a dope addict too. Two cops chased us out because we were two white guys in this dodgy ghetto area, and it was pretty obvious what we were trying to do. So finally we said, “This is crazy. We have enough dope for ourselves.” We figured Bill would probably want some, so we scoured the area and got drummed out of town. So we said, “Well, we tried. Fuck it—let’s just go to Bill’s house.” We had directions, so it wasn’t hard to find the place, even though it was out in the country. I have to admit that it’s not exactly what I expected. It was a wood-paneled red house with an enclosed porch area in the back that led out to a small, unkempt yard filled with petunias and lots of weeds. It was modest and looked more like the home of a small store owner than a legendary writer. But Bill liked his privacy.

  We finally got there at about two in the afternoon and knocked on the door. Bill answers, and the first thing he says is, “Are ya holding? Where is it? I can smell a junkie a mile away.” My friend and I only had enough dope to keep from getting sick, so I said, “No,” and before I had the chance to say anything else, Bill slammed the door in our faces. So we drove twenty-five miles back to Kansas City and cruised around the ghetto that we were chased out of earlier. This time we found a kid on a corner who sold us a shitload—probably about $800 worth—of dope. We went back to Bill’s house, and he opened the door and said, “Oh, it’s you again.” He knew he had to do a video with us, and he had already agreed to it. But he wouldn’t do it without drugs, so we said right away, “No, no, we scored.” So he said, “Come on in.”

  We go into Bill’s living room, and he heads straight for the bedroom. At the time Bill had stopped doing heroin. He was a on a strict methadone program that James monitored. But James had the flu and was in bed, so Bill was like a giddy kid because he got to break the rules. When the cat’s away, the mouse will play. We take out the baggie of heroin, and Bill comes downstairs with this 1950s leather belt and these big, thick hypodermics and needles from the same era, all of which he’d lovingly wrapped up. We had our little Udex normal needles, and Bill had this elaborate set up. I was on an old leather couch, and Bill was in his favorite chair. So we all tied up with the belt and shot up. We pass out for a while. I still haven’t said anything to him and he hasn’t said anything to me except that he could smell a junkie a mile away.

  When I woke up I noticed there was a letter on the living room table that had a seal from the White House. I noticed it was unopened. Bill woke up and I said, “Hey, Bill, you got a letter from the White House.” And he said, “Eh, so what? It’s junk mail!”

  I asked him if I could open it, and he told me to do whatever I wanted to do. That was Bill; he didn’t want to be bothered with questions. So I opened the letter and noticed it was from Bill Clinton, inviting Burroughs to speak at an event at the White House. That really impressed me. And Burroughs said, “What? Clinton who? Who’s president now, anyway?” He didn’t know and he didn’t give a shit. And there was no way he was going to fly from Lawrence to Washington to appear at some prestigious event. He never went—never even acknowledged it. The only things he wanted to talk about were raccoons and petunias.

  He kept telling me that raccoons were fucking up his petunia gardens and that all he had to try to shoot them with was a pellet gun. He wasn’t allowed to own a real gun because he accidentally shot and killed his wife Joan Vollmer in 1951 while he was trying to shoot an apple off her head like William Tell. He would try to shoot the raccoons with the pellet gun, but it didn’t fire fast enough, so the raccoons kept getting away. He was really riled up about it. So I asked him, “You’re on the methadone program, right?” And he said, “Yeah, so what?” And I said, “Well, why don’t you put out methadone wafers for the raccoons to eat. That way, maybe it’ll slow them down enough so you can get them with your pellet gun.”

  I could see he was thinking about it, but he didn’t really say anything else. So when we were done shooting up I went to the hotel to meet the band and vide
o crew, and I left Bill alone in his house. The next day we show up at the shoot location and Bill’s not there. He was four hours late. Well, I was three days late and he was four hours late, so I figured I didn’t have any right to be upset. But we were all sitting around waiting. Finally he comes in, smiling. Now, William Burroughs was the grumpiest bastard I had ever met. He never seemed happy about anything. But he was in a great mood from the moment he walked in. He comes up to me and says, “You’re an astute young man. Your idea was magnificent. I shot two stoned raccoons today!”

  Right away I was on Bill’s friend list—and that was a short list. And all because he took my suggestion of feeding these raccoons methadone wafers so he could slow them down enough to shoot them. Up until the time of his death he would call me about once a week and we’d talk. But the real reason for his call was to bitch at me for doing coke. His exact quote was: “Why would a person do a drug that keeps you up all night twitching? Keep to heroin, kid.” He was hilarious. I tried to talk to him about literature and the Beats, but he didn’t want to talk about any of that. He’d say, “Fuck that. It’s a bunch of shit.” Grumpy old bastard.

  The shoot for the “Just One Fix” video went really well, but the next day Bill laid into me pretty heavy: “I was just sitting there with my shotgun . . . kept me waiting for three days. . . . Asshole!” I figured, okay, I owe him. You don’t keep a legend waiting three days. I saw in the local paper that Jim Rose was coming through town. I knew Jim through some mutual friends, and he did a freak show that was pretty impressive. He’d swallow swords and eat glass and razor blades. He had a guy who would lift cinderblocks from a piercing in his dick. I figured this might interest Bill. So I took Bill to the show. I drove and didn’t tell him where we were going. We walked in. Bill had his cane and was whacking anyone who got too close. We paid for the tickets, sat through the show, and afterward I said, “Okay, let’s go say hi to Jim.” So I grabbed Bill by the arm and he whacked me in the ankles and grumbled, “Do we have to go? This is bullshit.”

  We get backstage, and I’ll never forget the look on the circus guys’ faces. You could hear a pin drop. I sat Bill down, and anyone who got too close got whacked in the ankle. Finally Jim went up to him and asked, “What did you think of the show?” And right away Bill said, “I didn’t think too much of it. I once knew a man in Morocco who could simultaneously swallow three snakes, all different colors. Then you’d pay him a dollar and you’d tell him what color snake you would like him to regurgitate. That guy must have made $100 a day regurgitating colored snakes. Now that’s impressive. You guys eating glass and putting nails in your head—seen it.”

  By the time Psalm 69 came out I was such a mess that I would have been way better off if it had tanked and fans hated it and decided they didn’t want anything to do with Ministry anymore. But of course, that didn’t happen. Everyone lost their shit. The reviews were almost universally positive, and we were invited to play the second Lollapalooza tour, which meant more money and more drugs. It was way too much for me, and I just wanted to retreat into my netherworld and die. Everyone wanted something. I had to show up here and there for this and that, and I was just this irresponsible junkie. I could barely get my shit together enough to make it onstage every day, let alone attend promotional functions. I threw my hands up and let Barker do that. I went in the opposite direction a responsible adult should have gone. I said, “I’m over this” and just shot up more.

  Shit got so out of hand that we booked hotel rooms for all the guys in the band and crew and then a separate room for all our drugs. Our clean needles, cotton, spoons, heroin, coke, pills, acid, ecstasy—all that shit was stuffed into our drug packages, and it went into its own room so if we got busted, nobody would be able to pin the drugs on us.

  The bus rides were just as bad as the before- and after-show routines. Mikey and I weren’t allowed to go in the front of the bus, and Barker, Connelly, and Rieflin couldn’t come in the back. Mikey and I sat in the back of the bus the whole time with acoustics, just jamming and shooting up. We’d keep shooting up when we got to the venue, like every hour or so—whenever we woke up from our nod—and then five minutes before we went onstage I would give the set list to everyone and say, “This is what we’re doing. This is the order of the songs. Deal with it. I’m out of here.” And then I’d get fucked up again and go onstage.

  During the Lollapalooza tour there were these mobile homes for dressing rooms, and we shared our trailer with the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow. The event itself was a big success. The main stage featured us, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ice Cube, Soundgarden, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Pearl Jam, and Lush. And Jim Rose was on the side stage with a lot of other bands. We were out from July 18 to September 13, 1992, and most of the bands were cool. The only artist I had any beef with was Ice Cube. One night near the beginning of the tour we were backstage, and Cube’s posse ran out of beer, so they raided our dressing room. We had Shiner Bock or some kind of Texan beer, and I think he wanted Heineken. So he started complaining about our choice of beer while he was stealing it. I had just gotten off the stage and was getting ready to take a shower. So I was naked when I heard Ice Cube causing a fuss. So I said, “Fuck it.” I ran up to him, swung my hips, and started smacking him with my dick, trying to get him to put his hand on my cock. He freaked out. He had a bodyguard named Sugar Bear, and I thought I was gonna get me a beatdown, but Sugar Bear was laughing so hard he didn’t even try to beat my ass. And there’s Ice Cube, this totally homophobic rapper, being slapped with my limp penis. I think his head was about to explode. He ran down the hall as I chased after him, and then he locked himself in the dressing room. We didn’t hit it off at first, me and Cube. But by the end of the tour we were good friends.

  The turning point came when we played Charlotte. We were at a bar, and there were racist rednecks giving him shit. Just on principle, my crew and I jumped in and started wailing on these pinheads that were heckling Cube. I didn’t like him that much at the time. I mean, the guy came into my trailer uninvited and stole my beer! But racism is wrong, so we got into this big brawl with these white-trash pieces of shit. One of our roadies broke his arm in the fight, all for Cube, who, if you listen to his music, should have been packing a nine or something to show these scumbags who was boss. But that didn’t happen; instead, Al’s team of pirates and perverts were the ones who saved the day once again. After that incident, though, Cube had a new respect for me. He said, “You guys are awesome. You didn’t have to do that, and you stood up for me. You can come into my trailer and drink my beer and fuck my bitches any time.”

  Most of the shows we did for Psalm 69 drew some majorly hot chicks. But our backstage area during Lollapalooza looked like a cult full of crazies—like some serious Jim Jones shit, only with chicks that looked like lesbian bikers. One day I was standing there with Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell, and we were all complaining about the backstage area. Chris said, “Look at all these posers in my dressing room.” There were all these kids with new leather jackets with Soundgarden spray-painted on the back. He said, “You can hear the leather squeaking, it’s so new. I hate that.” And Eddie said, “Yeah, look at my dressing room. It’s all teenage girls and their grandmothers—not even their moms.” Everyone was all happy, and Eddie went, “Gah, this is gross.” And I said, “Hey guys, come look at my dressing room,” which we shared with The Jim Rose Circus. There was Mr. Lifto carrying luggage dangling from his balls. People were throwing bottles at each other, and security was wrestling freaks of all stripes to the ground. There was a one-legged chick with a patch over her eye. She asked, “Hey Al, who are you gonna vote for?” And all I could think to say was, “Are you a girl?” So she punched me and walked out. Thanks, Perry Farrell, for your “alternative culture” festival. There was no way I was gonna find hot chicks in that mess unless I went on the Chili Peppers’ bus, but then I risked getting arrested for getting it on with an underage groupie.

  Gibby showed u
p a couple times to do “Jesus Built My Hotrod” with us, and we had a blast. I love that guy, but he’s completely shameless. He would come around, steal my coke, and shoot it up right in front of me. And after he’d shot up my coke he’d help me look around to find the coke that wasn’t there anymore—that’s typical Gibby. He’s smoked crack in the front seat while we were being chased by cops and refused to put it out or hide it because he didn’t want any of it to spill. And it was my crack. Mikey and I finally got pissed and kicked his ass. And even while getting a beatdown he was reaching for the pipe. We were like, “Fuck you for taking our crack”—while he was taking the crack. That’s a crazy person. He’d steal shit all the time. He is nuts. Gibby was with us the day our bus blew up . . . or, rather, the day we blew up the bus. But that one wasn’t his fault.

  We pulled in to fuel the bus, and this toothless guy who smelled of urine and coffee came up to us and said, “Hey y’all, you wanna buy some fireworks?” I replied, “Sure,” and the dude sells me this giant thing that looked like a missile. It was a fucking howitzer, and it was supposed to explode in the shape of a giant pirate ship. I was happy about my new purchase, and we passed it back and forth to check it out while the bus headed back out on the highway. We were all wasted, and we thought this giant phallic pipe bomb was the funniest thing ever. I don’t know why, but I took out my lighter and lit the cord. It was a long fuse, so I figured we could squeeze it out. But it was an underwater fuse, so you had to cut the cord and no one had a pair of scissors. So we started playing hot potato with this thing. I passed it to Gibby; Gibby passed it to Mikey. And some guy from Alternative Tentacles Records wound up with this bazooka at the end. It started going off and we scrambled for our lives. Gibby and Mikey dove into their bunks and covered themselves with blankets. Finally it blew up for real, and I went flying five feet and into the door of the back room. It was great because it totally fucked the Book Club up. They didn’t know what the fuck was going on. The firework shot toward the front of the bus, then bounced into a bunk and started a big green and orange fire. There were all these weird colors spinning out of it, and the seats and bunks started going up.