Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  Rieflin burned his hands putting out the fire in his bunk. We had to use a rental drummer the next day, which didn’t hurt the band at all. The rest of the Book Club was yelling at us, and we were laughing our asses off because we were happy just to be alive. We were like, “Man, this is cool. Look at all the colors and the smoke. The bus is on fire!”

  By that time the driver realized the bus was on fire so he slammed on the brakes and pulled over. He came in back and yelled at us. We had got a keg of beer in the back and were listening to Buck Owens, pretending we didn’t do anything. Then the driver freaked out and made us all get off the bus. Mikey and I grabbed the keg so we’d have it outside. We were all standing there at the side of the road, and the Book Club was being all pompous and lecturing us while we’re laughing. We were pouring beers, waiting for the cops to arrive and arrest us. The Book Club wanted nothing to do with us, so they wandered off and sat on a hill, and it turned out to be an ant hill. When the cops came the Book Club were clawing at themselves and scratching their legs because hundreds or thousands of ants were biting them—which was great! Gibby, Mikey, and I looked like the only sane ones because we weren’t hopping around.

  The cops finally got there, saw the green smoke pouring out of the bus windows, and asked, “What’s the problem here?”

  The driver said, “I’ll tell you what the problem is. These musicians just blew up my bus and I want you to arrest them!”

  And the cop said, “Well, what’dya expect? This isn’t a classical orchestra. This is a rock ‘n’ roll band. Now get this bus off my highway.” The Book Club was really bummed because they were hoping the cops would arrest us, but instead they got chewed up by ants. The driver was pissed. The fires were all out and the bus was still functional, so he drove us to LA. He radioed the other drivers at Lollapalooza ahead of us to explain what happened because the bus was damaged. And when he pulled in there were all these guys holding up signs with point ratings on them, like 10.0, 8.5, 9.5, like it was an Olympic competition. They were grading the destruction of the bus, which pissed off the driver even more. When he saw that, he quit. He was just like, “I’m never working with a band like this again.”

  One of the highlights of Lollapalooza for me was playing Phoenix, Arizona, and meeting Hall of Fame baseball pitcher and rock ‘n’ roll fan Randy Johnson. Randy played for six different teams during his career and won the Cy Young Award five times. He was one of the only guys back then who could throw a fastball one hundred miles per hour. Now there are a bunch of guys who can do it, but not with Randy’s finesse. Between 1989 and 1998 Randy played for the Seattle Mariners, and during that time he became friends with Eddie Vedder and the guys in Soundgarden. He came backstage to hang out, so we started talking. He actually came onstage with Ministry and stood in on drums. Afterward I sent him a Ministry T-shirt, the old-school one with the gold and black pyramid. He wore that under his Diamondbacks jersey every game in 2002 and won the Cy Young Award again that year. After that season he e-mailed my manager and said, “That T-shirt is worn out and falling apart. Can I get another?” And I replied, “Of course!” We sent him a new Ministry T-shirt. He then had season-ending arm surgery and the worst year of his life. He never, ever put that shirt on again.

  Another interesting run-in came when we played in LA. I used to get two bottles of Bushmills on my rider, and for extra kick I’d put hits of blotter acid in one of them and let it dissolve. In LA, when I got offstage, there were two kids there, and they said, “Man, that was awesome. God!” It was kind of like that moment in the 1979 Coke commercial when Pittsburgh Steelers defensive tackle Mean Joe Green hobbled off the field after a bad game and this little kid followed him and told him he thinks he’s the “best ever” and gave him a Coke. Then Mean Joe tossed the kid his jersey. Well, I handed my bottle of Bushmills out to these dudes, forgetting it was the one with the acid in it. It turned out to be the guys from Tool, and this was before they had released anything. They told me later they tripped for two days and were pissed. Before long they were huge and came to Austin. They were psycho-dialing me, asking, “Are you coming to the show? Are you coming to the show?” I was like, “Okay, I’ll come.” Their tour manager met me out in the parking lot with twenty hits of acid, saying, “I know you really love acid, and the guys wanted to get you some. I’m sorry but it’s really shitty acid. You’ll have to do a lot of it to feel anything at all.” I did five or six hits because it was really bad stuff—NOT. The stuff was awesome. I was tripping so hard I was getting all crazy. Flaming Lips opened the show, and during their set I climbed the PA stack and jumped into the crowd over and over until security threw me out. I had a Toyota twin-turbo Supra with a wing in the back that would do about 180. But I was so high I couldn’t remember how to shift gears, so I drove the 60 miles home at 35 miles per hour in first gear, wasted out of my mind. The engine sounded like a sewing machine.

  But the absolute best part of Lollapalooza—and the thing that made up for all the shitty times when I just wanted to crawl into a corner and die—was when I met Timothy Leary. He came to see us because William Burroughs called him up and said, “You’ve gotta meet this guy. He’s nuts.” He came backstage after the show, and we hit it off immediately. Tim was the first adult who explained shit to me—not the birds and the bees or that you have to do things this way; he encouraged me to open up. I lived with him years later, and he opened up new corridors that I never knew existed. It’s like the doors were painted over and built into the walls so I couldn’t see them. Tim had the key that allowed me to be able to go through those doors and accomplish a bunch of crazy shit that I never would have done if not for him. I have one photo in my wallet. It’s not my grandmother, my daughter, my wife, or my dogs—it’s Tim. He was, by far, the most important person in my life. But more about Tim later.

  Madonna briefly re-entered my life around the time we were getting all this attention for Lollapalooza. She had started her own label, Maverick, and wanted to have dinner with me to talk about having me producing all of the bands she would sign. I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to things like this. It would have been a great opportunity to sit and produce bands I had no personal investment in and not have to worry about having to create under pressure and tour all the time. I could record my own stuff whenever I wanted. It seemed perfect. But all I could think about was how Madonna smelled like dog shit. I was on tour and rooming with Mikey and told him, “I can’t do this. That girl stinks like fuck. There is no way I could sit through a dinner with her; I would puke.” So I said, “Why don’t you go? She doesn’t really know me. We met once. So you be me and report back.”

  Mikey agreed. He was excited to meet her because she’s famous. So he went to this fancy restaurant they’re meeting at and ordered three or four bottles of Cristal champagne and a bunch of appetizers and then started talking to Madonna. She asked him some production questions, and the first thing out of Mikey’s mouth was, “I don’t know—I got to ask Al.” So Madonna realized it wasn’t me at the dinner. She got angry and walked out, and that was that.

  There was another point during Lollapalooza when I bumped heads with record-label royalty, only this time it was the other head. Partway through Lollapalooza I learned that Sire wouldn’t give us the tour support that we needed. And we really needed it—not just for drugs but because there was a $20,000 fine at every show if you went over 90 decibels, and we regularly clocked in between 125 and 127, so I knew we were going to get fined. And I figured I’d rather get fined than have to turn down the volume and sound like shit. My manager, Jonny Z, the same guy who signed Metallica and put out their first album and later managed Anthrax, argued my case with our label rep, Howie Klein, who said they would pay for the fines, but they didn’t. So I beat off into a Ziploc baggie and mailed it to Howie at Sire. I called him up the next day and asked, “Did you get my package?” He’s like, “Yeah. What is that, some kind of drug? It smelled horrible.” I laughed my ass of
f and said, “No, it’s my sperm, and if we don’t get our tour support, every member of the band and crew will be sending you body fluids every week.” We got our support back.

  By the end of Lollapalooza I didn’t feel victorious. I wasn’t inspired. I was strung out and miserable, and to add salt to the wound, I was in trouble with my daughter’s teachers. Adrienne was seven years old and had been to see Ministry play at Lollapalooza. Being the ever-responsible father, I had her stand on the side of the stage and wear the kind of headphones you put on at shooting ranges so you don’t damage your hearing. When she got back to school it was jobs day, when all the students talked about what their parents did for a living. “My dad’s a doctor. He makes sick people better.” “My dad’s an electrician. He fixes people’s lights when they break.” When it was Adrienne’s turn she said, “My daddy’s away most of the time, and he screams and spits a lot.” At the time she didn’t understand what being a musician was all about, and when she saw me onstage I looked like I belonged back at the mental hospital. Not only that, but she also said, “My dad’s a hockey player,” because when I’d come off tour the only thing I’d do at home was play Nintendo hockey; it was the only videogame I’ve ever played. I’d play the Czech Republic vs. Russia vs. United States over and over, just sitting there, noodling my thumbs, before I’d nodded off. The teachers were confused and horrified, so they called me in for a meeting with the PTA to see if there was any sort of abuse going on in the house. Sure there was, but not child abuse—drug abuse. So Patty and I both wore long sleeves that covered up our track marks and talked the teachers down, explaining to them that I played video games sometimes and was in this little rock ‘n’ roll band that traveled the world.

  And traveling the world sucked because it meant kicking dope. I wasn’t about to cross the border with the amounts of cocaine and heroin I needed. So I’d go cold turkey and get sick and go into withdrawal. I’d curl up into a ball and scream and cry and want to die until I sweated the drugs out of my system. Then I could get on a plane and get shitfaced on whatever alcohol they had. On Halloween 1992 we started touring Psalm 69 in Belgium and then played Germany, France, Italy, Holland, and the UK. All the gigs had to be scheduled near our drug connections. The heroin and coke were advanced to our hotels. The band was split down the middle—half of us were complete junkies, and the other half were complete snobs. The junkies won out because if you don’t take care of the junkies, there’s no tour.

  When we got back to the United States we still had about twenty-one shows to do. In Dallas, at the Sportorium, on December 15, 1992, I had a bottle of Tim’s liquid LSD. I was planning to do a drop before I went onstage, which was more than enough to enhance the evening. Then bassist Casey Orr, who was also in GWAR, came out of the bathroom and accidentally hit me with the door as I was taking it, and six or seven drops fell into my mouth. That was too much. Everyone was yelling, “Spit it out! Spit it out!” And I tried. They were putting lime and sugar and all sorts of shit in my mouth to dilute the acid, but it didn’t do anything. We were going onstage in thirty minutes, and I had to get away from everyone right away or my head was going to explode. I walked off the bus and down an alley, freaking out at how high I was while giggling at the same time. I was completely lost, but I felt like I needed to find some sort of life preserver to hang onto while the multicolored waves washed over my head. I found this round nine-foot-tall propane tank and climbed on top

  of it.

  There were no hooks or ladders, so I don’t know how I got up there. But I sat upright and took deep breaths of the fresh winter air. I was only a block away from the venue, but no one could find me, so the show was late. They were scouring the neighborhood. Finally they found me, coaxed me off the propane tank, and guided me back through the bathroom dressing room. There was an ornate chandelier hanging there, so I tore it down and wore it as a hat. I went onstage with this giant crystal chandelier on my head, and during the first note of the first song “NWO,” we blew out all the electricity. There was a red wagon in the dressing room, and we had a keg of beer from our rider. So I got on the wagon and rolled it onstage, still wearing my chandelier hat. And for about an hour I sat and drank beer with the fans while they fixed the electricity. It worked out great because by the time they got the PA fixed I was more drunk than tripped out, so I was more in my element.

  A week later we played San Francisco at Bill Graham Auditorium with Sepultura and Helmet, and Metallica guitarist Kirk Hammett asked if he could join us onstage. So we arranged for him to come out and play lead guitar during our cover of Black Sabbath’s “Supernaught.” Mikey and Louis Svitek were Ministry’s touring guitarists at that point, and they were cool with it. So we started the song, and Kirk came out and started wailing on guitar. He was really getting into it. I don’t know if there was a fan blowing or whatever, but he looked like he was in a fucking ’80s pop video.

  After finishing the rest of the US dates we somehow recorded the Revolting Cocks album Linger Fickin’ Good. We actually started that thing in 1990 and worked on it in Chicago on and off over the years. Chris Connelly did most of the vocals, and I was too wasted to argue. I said, “Yeah, do whatever. I’m gonna crawl out the door and see if I can find some clean needles.” The Book Club liked that because they finally had creative control, even though ultimately everything had to go through me, and I ended up changing a lot of their shit, sometimes out of spite. When it was done it was a goofy record and a change of pace from the drudgery of Psalm 69. So that wasn’t all bad.

  There were a lot of guest musicians, including Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison and Louis Svitek, who also played with Ministry for a while. And Tim Leary came in and did a spoken-word part, which was cool. The best part about him being there back then was he brought a batch of his top-shelf liquid LSD, which was a well-needed escape, because heroin and crack had become just maintenance. There was no enjoyment left in any of it.

  I was such a mess back then that I couldn’t keep my shit together. Barker was trying to take over the band; my marriage was a sham. Everyone in Chicago hated me. So my record company and management talked me into going into rehab. What really did it was my friend Curly. He was a Scotsman and my part-time tour manager. He put his hand on my shoulder, looked into my half-open eyes, and said, “Lad, you need help.” He walked me through admissions and into rehab. It was at the same facility my parents threw me into when I was fifteen. Only this time there were no nymphos and no free drugs. They put me on the second floor, which was full of people detoxing—they were yelling, screaming, and had tubes in their arms. I couldn’t go to the rec area on the fifth floor or the library. They had me there for two weeks, and I relapsed immediately after leaving the hospital.

  chapter 10

  Welcome to the

  Lone Star State

  Drive Friendly—the Texas Way

  After the Psalm 69 tour I relocated to Austin, Texas, because I was no longer welcome anywhere in Chicago. I lived in an apartment for a little while in 1993 while I looked for a better place. Back then the 6th Street scene was pretty cool. There were lots of bars and clubs that had good bands playing jazz, blues, and country music, plus rock venues. I spent a lot of time hanging out there with Gibby and Phildo and not staying clean. Then George Bush got into the Texas governor’s office and ruined everything. He made it a police state, and the cops turned into arrest machines. If you went to a bar on 6th Street on Friday or Saturday, you’d get arrested for, like, swearing or talking too loudly, and you’d have to pay the city a fine. The cops would come in with horses and hoses to corral people at 2 a.m. and randomly arrest them. You’d be out by the next morning; it was just a scam for the city to make money, and it was Bush’s idea. I hated getting arrested.

  For the most part 1993 was a whirlwind of decay epitomized by the siege at a compound in Waco, Texas. That whole thing started when cult leader David Koresh, the heavily armed head of the Branch Davidians, stated th
at the apocalypse was nigh and ordered his followers to gather in his compound. Fearing a Jim Jones–type mass suicide, the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms planned to infiltrate the place. Gunshots erupted sporadically over the next few months, and although Koresh released a bunch of children, he claimed God ordered him to stay put with the rest of his followers. The whole thing went belly-up on April 19, when three huge fires erupted on the grounds, killing seventy-six Branch Davidians, including Koresh. The government said the cult started the fires; survivors insisted the blaze was caused by gunfire on the compound. In any case, it was a headline-grabbing spectacle, and while the whole thing was going down, Revolting Cocks were a mile away, shooting a video for our cover of Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?,” which was on RevCo’s 1993 album Linger Fickin’ Good.

  Mikey went to high school with the video’s director, Tom Rainone, in Dallas, and the guy worked with Wes Craven, so he had credentials. His brother is this survivalist with all these weapons and planes that he stores in a big warehouse, and that’s where we shot the video. The whole thing was like a Fellini movie. We had all these chicks dancing around with guns, and we hired a rat lady, who trained rats to hang all over her. They seemed well-enough behaved for rats, but it was freaky staring into their beady, red eyes and razor-sharp teeth. It was by far the weirdest video I’ve ever shot. I thought “Jesus Built My Hotrod” was crazy, but this was psycho. And right down the street there was this real survivalist camp that was about to self-destruct. We would go over there every night and talk to the FBI agents. “Are you going to storm the Davidians tonight?” They’d say, “Nope, not yet. We gotta wait.” They liked us, so they would spill the beans on everything. The night before the raid they said, “Tomorrow’s the big day.” Fortunately, they were preoccupied with the job at hand.