Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  One time we were there we went to visit one of their doctors because Phildo and I had fucked the same girl at a party and both developed matching

  herpes sores on the exact same places on our cocks. This doctor put us in a closet and shone a flashlight on our dicks and said, “Oh yes, herpes.” So he wrote us a prescription after giving us all of our downers. He sent us to this pharmacy that he owned, and the woman behind the counter gave us this foot medicine. It was in a tin flask with some Spanish writing on it and a picture of a foot. I was like, “I don’t know about this.” I put it on my cock and it hurt like hell. But the fucking herpes was gone the next day. It’s pretty sad when loading up on prescription downers and curing herpes with burning foot powder are highlights of the week. Once again, there aren’t a lot of sunny days when you’re a hopeless junkie.

  During one of my more interesting moments, Creem magazine paid for Gibby and I to fly from Austin to Boulder, Colorado, to review a Pearl Jam show. I thought, “Okay, I like those guys. We hung out on Lollapalooza and had a good time. No problem. This should be cool.” We checked into this old haunted house; the place reeked of ghosts. It was like The Shining on steroids. We walked in, and there was some ruckus at the front desk, so we couldn’t check in. I didn’t have the proper ID or maybe they didn’t like the way I looked. I eventually got my key after the guy behind the desk called me and Gibby “incompetent assholes.” I ignored him and turned around to leave, and I see that the guy behind me in line is Ronald Reagan Jr. He had flown in to see Pearl Jam. I turned to him and said, “Hey man, it’s a pleasure to meet you. Here’s my room number. Come up if you wanna have a beer and party.”

  We get to my room. Gibby was smoking crack by the boatload, and the whole floor reeked of the stuff. I was like, “Dude, we’re gonna get arrested, and we’re on a mission here. We’re getting paid.” I felt like Hunter S. Thompson on some super–top secret assignment. At about 4 p.m. someone knocked on the door. I opened it, and a guy told us that Pearl Jam canceled. About ten minutes later Ronald Regan Jr. came by, but I openly smoked crack. I didn’t care. But I thought, “Well, maybe I can salvage this experience. Seeing that I’m not going to get to do a Pearl Jam review, maybe I’ll interview Ron.” I mean, this was one of those freak circumstances in which there was a breach in the cosmos, and I had Ronald Regan’s son sitting in the same room with me and Gibby. I had to take advantage of it. So we chatted for a bit. And then I asked, “You were in the White House for eight years of your life. Did you ever get on the red phone and tell Russia we’re about to bomb them to shit while you’re whacking off? Because that’s the first thing I would do.”

  He laughed and said, “Nope, didn’t have access to the red phone.” And I said, “Look, dude, you must have whacked it somewhere while you were there. You didn’t put on Nancy’s pantyhose and whack it?”

  He had a good sense of humor. “No, never did.” I felt like I was hitting a nerve, so I persisted. Walter Cronkite would have been proud of me. I said, “Man, if I grew up in the White House, I would go to every single room and get out the Astroglide and start whacking my pecker. And if I’m ever invited there, that’s what I’m gonna do. I’ll be beating off in hallways, bedrooms, everywhere.” He denied any of that. Eight years with no whacking. I won’t go any further into that interview, but he said some whack shit. I thought the guy was super cool.

  Intervention 7

  Butthole Surfing with Locust Abortion

  Technician Gibby Haynes

  If it’s a rule that like attracts like, it was just a matter of time before Al Jourgensen intersected with Butthole Surfers’ frontman Gibby Haynes, the singer for the primo alt-freak rock ensemble Butthole Surfers. Haynes formed the band in 1981 with drummer Paul Leary in San Antonio. The Buttholes dropped six albums before landing a minor college radio hit in 1993 with “Who Was in my Room Last Night.” The closest Haynes got to the mainstream was performing the maniacal guest vocal on Ministry’s 1991 single “Jesus Built My Hotrod.”

  The song set the stage for the lunging beats and incendiary metal riffs of Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs, which came out the following year. Although Haynes didn’t perform on any other tracks on the album, he and Jourgensen became partners in grime—drug buddies—during the early nineties, when Ministry was a money machine and narcotics were as much a part of the morning routine as orange juice for both individuals. They bonded most strongly over country music, acid, and crack, and they spent many wasted days and nights together when Jourgensen lived in Austin. The toxic friendship reached a peaked in 1996 after both were invited to live with Timothy Leary and underwent some of the acid guru’s psychedelic experiments.

  Al has many colorful stories of his days hanging out with you, whether it be setting off a firework on the bus during Lollapalooza or trying to outrun cops while smoking crack. You must recall some equally interesting experiences.

  gibby haynes I got a few. They are mostly about spiders, but were they real or imagined?

  That’s funny because Al talks a lot about spiders, usually involving drug experiments that Tim Leary conducted on him.

  gh Yeah, I got that too. When he hooked me up with Tim Leary a lot of weird situations happened. We got kicked out of a Johnny Cash concert at the Viper Room because Tim was heckling Johnny Cash. The killer one was waking up in Tim’s study and seeing him feverishly typing three feet away from me. I was so hung over that I had pissed in his kitchen. He was nervously typing, like I shouldn’t have been in the room, and I discovered my dick was hanging out of my pants and was warm and moist.

  Errr, what caused that?

  gh Who knows? I guess when you sleep in Tim Leary’s study your dick comes out of your pants and gets warm and moist.

  Maybe you pissed yourself?

  gh I definitely pissed in his kitchen. Oh, and I let his blind dog shit in his living room. In the middle of the summer the sliding-glass doors to his house were open. I shut them in the middle of the night. I didn’t know you were supposed to leave them open because of his blind dog: It was the only way he could go outside to poop in the middle of the night. Not only did I urinate in his kitchen but I let a dog shit in his living room. I was not the consummate houseguest.

  Is that why Tim kicked you out of his house?

  gh The urine thing wasn’t really my fault. I was like, “Dude, your entire kitchen is white. That screams toilet to me.” There were probably three times I got so drunk that in the middle of the night I got up and randomly urinated. It usually involved the color white. I peed on a couple one time, in their bed in the middle of the night. Their room was white.

  Were you a Ministry fan before Lollapalooza?

  gh A little bit. Their very, very early stuff was a little too disco. Then they did “(Every Day Is) Halloween.” That was okay. But I really got turned on to their metal stuff. That is the way I rolled with Ministry. To be honest, I know two or three Ministry songs, but that is more than Al knows of the Butthole Surfers. I think the only song that Al knows of mine is “Hey.” For some reason he was fascinated with that song. It just goes, “Hey, Hey . . . ” He really liked it; I think it was his Central Plains roots.

  When did you first hook up with Al?

  gh It was in Chicago about ten minutes before I recorded “Jesus Built My Hotrod.” I knew Phildo from the Skatenigs, and he had worked with Al. Ministry was on Lollapalooza in Chicago, and we just figured we would rent a limo and drive to the backstage area. When you drive a big limo into the backstage area they will usually let you in, and they did.

  What do you remember about recording “Jesus Built My Hotrod?”

  gh I remember getting fucked over. I obviously did the lyrics and I got credit for song writing. But in the early 2000s I got a phone call from a temporary worker at Warner Chapel publishing company who somehow got my home phone number, and she asked me if my percentage of ownership of that song was zero to
30 percent. I was like, “Well, 30 percent.” And according to the records, for a year and a half after that song came out, I owned 30 percent, and then my ownership changed to 0 percent until 2002, when my ownership reverted back to 30 percent. Somebody fucked with my percentage of ownership during the lifetime of that song. It wasn’t Al, I can assure you. It was probably someone else in the camp that Al has had publishing problems with.

  Are his initials PB?

  gh I don’t know who you are talking about.

  Was that an eye opener about how sleazy the music industry can be?

  gh I’ll tell you what was an eye opener. Ministry’s manager at the time, Jonny Z, and their then lawyer called me in Austin. They wanted to talk about publishing for “Jesus Built My Hotrod.” I wasn’t there. It was a conference call and my voicemail picked it up. What they didn’t realize was that my answering machine was recording the whole conversation. I guess they thought it had disconnected. So they’re having this three- to four-minute conversation about how useless and unimportant any of my contributions to “Jesus Built My Hot Rod” are. They were saying things like, “Who the fuck is that guy? Who does he think he is?” It went on and on. After that I was on a panel at SXSW about the need for music lawyers. I took a ghetto blaster with that cassette tape of Jonny Z and this lawyer talking shit about me, and I played it over the microphone at the panel. It was well received because it was hilarious. It’s like, “Do you really need a lawyer if they’re going to help you like this?” Huey Lewis was sitting next to me on the panel, and we totally bonded over our hatred of lawyers.

  What was the actual recording session for “Jesus Built My Hotrod” like?

  gh I was really wasted and blurted it all out. I think I came back the second day after I was going to add something and I wanted to visit Al, or maybe just do some of his blow. Al was asleep in the studio control room on a couch in the back. I walked in there and I said, “Dude, wake up.” Barker was like, “No, no, no!” I had no idea, but they were so happy Al was actually sleeping so they didn’t have to deal with him.

  Did you and Al hang out regularly after Lollapalooza?

  gh Nah. I’d occasionally see Al, then he moved to Austin and got that place out in Marble Falls. I was busy at that time, but I visited that place. It was amazing. Then the FBI raided it and he had to move. Al’s compound came on their radar because Mikey Scaccia fell asleep at a Kmart.

  In the middle of the aisle?

  gh Fuck yeah—standing up. He was on dope in the middle of the Kmart. That was the beginning of the end.

  On one occasion, according to Al, he was speeding and cops chased him, and you refused to put away a crack pipe.

  gh That was great. Al had just gotten a Toyota Supra. They might have been twin-turbo-charged rocket ships. We were at some bar in North Austin getting drunk. Then we got pulled over twice in one night. The first time was a non-event. We explained our way out of it. Then in the second one, coming back from the bar at 1 a.m. the cops pulled us over and said, “Dude, spell the alphabet.” He said it really fast, and they were like, “Damn, that was good.” Al kept on talking. I was like, “Al, shut the fuck up.” He kept on talking, just babbling. I said, “Al, shut the fuck up!” Finally the cop goes, “Listen to your friend, Al.” They let us go, and we were fucked up out of our minds with ten years in prison worth of dope in our pockets.

  He said you would steal his crack, smoke it, and then say, “What happened to your crack?”

  gh That’s what everyone who smokes crack says. I could say the same thing about him. If a guy is trying to help you find your crack, you know he’s the guy who stole it.

  What’s the craziest memory you have of being with Al?

  gh There wasn’t an apex of insanity. It was like Chinese water torture—pretty steady. Nontolerable level of intoxicants. It was like, “Woo!”—all insanity. There was a forty-eight-hour period when we made up newspaper headlines about clear spiders. Back and forth.

  What are clear spiders?

  gh Sometimes they’re a quarter-mile wide and lurk in the sky above you, and sometimes they’re small and burrow into your scalp, where they lay eggs. Sometimes they influence powerful political figures what to do. When you’re under the influence of everything, clear spiders can be pretty evil and indestructible.

  Anything more tangible than clear spiders come to mind?

  gh Yeah. SPIN magazine gave him some money, and we went to Boulder, Colorado, to interview Marilyn Manson. Their show got canceled, and we ended up in a hotel room with Ron Reagan Jr., a few members of the Denver Nuggets, and someone from Pearl Jam. We got these girls to go into Denver to score us some dope—not that we were dope sick, but back in those days it was required to do a speedball upon takeoff in a commercial jetliner. That was an amazing journey. Especially the Denver Nuggets part. I had never really done that, where it was girls, hotel rooms, girls, blow jobs. There were so many girls and so many drugs, so much nudity. I was lying on the floor, and Al glanced over at me and went, “Nice cock, Haynes.” I was like, “Aw man, no one’s ever told me that before.” That’s so sweet. It might not be true, but it’s nice to hear.

  chapter 11

  Filth Pig—Dirt, Degradation,

  and the DEA

  Bands that take more than five years between records are often berated by journalists who seem to think their favorite musicians are obligated to entertain them with a new record every three or four years. Nine out of ten of these groups will say they were touring for most of the time and then took a few months off before they started writing again. The writing period took a few months, and then they entered the studio. So it was really only about a year that they had been out of the public eye—as if working on an album for more than two years is a crime against their fans. That’s all well and good, but the real problem is that bands care too much about what their fans think. Sure, if it weren’t for the fans, artists wouldn’t have expensive cars and indulgent lifestyles, but bowing to the nebulous force that brought you riches is a mistake. If I listened to my fans, I’d still be making nauseating synth pop with no guitars and no soul. Yeah, lots of people actually liked drivel like “Cold Life” and “Revenge.” That’s fine. They can listen to that and Flock of Seagulls too. It’s a free country. I’m just saying that I never would have grown and evolved as a musician—for better or worse—if I listened to what people wanted me to do.

  Except for that sonic abortion With Sympathy, everything I’ve done has had its time and place. When I was done with a project and allowed it to leave my grasp and enter the hands of the record labels and then the masses, I was okay with what I had handed them. But I never wanted to repeat myself and become a human photocopy machine. It was like I was a pastry chef and the fans proclaimed, “Oh, we love your cupcakes. Never make anything again but cupcakes.” And the restaurant says, “Yes, your cupcakes are divine. From now on you will specialize in cupcakes and we will make a fortune.” I just said, “Fuck you. I’m sick of making cupcakes. I want to make cookies, Rice Crispy treats, éclairs, and baklava. I want to try everything. Don’t restrict me to making cupcakes.” After Psalm 69 even the fuckers in my band wanted cupcakes, and that’s the last thing I was gonna give ’em. I was pissed. I was depressed. And I was tired of using samples. There would be no Psalm 70.

  I never begin making an album with preconceptions. I turn the machines on and roll with the chaos. Whatever comes out comes out. But after Psalm 69 I knew what I didn’t want. Chris Connelly was gone—I was doing all the vocals again. I was pissed and depressed. Patty was living with her new boyfriend and only stayed at the Marble Falls compound occasionally. We were planning to get divorced. I had oppressive managers and band members who were relying on me so they could stay successful. I just wanted to pass out. I didn’t feel up so I wasn’t going to make upbeat music. I was cooking up and shooting speedballs twenty times a day just to feel nothing. And my dealer
was my wife’s boyfriend, so I’d have to drive sixty miles to get my drugs, and then I would see Patty shacked up with this guy and my daughter running around this crack house. I’d just get my shit and split. My habit was still $1,000 a day, and I was supporting Mikey and Gibby and all these people, whose drug habits were supporting mine. Even though I didn’t officially OD, that’s the closest I’ve come to dying. I didn’t care—I wanted to die. I did everything to accelerate the process. I’d have a needle in one arm and a bottle of Bushmills in the other—a lethal combination. I’d mix it with downers. The only thing I didn’t do was put a loaded gun to my head and pull the trigger.

  The music I was making for Filth Pig was slower, heavier, grimier, more self-loathing. It was mean; it was ugly. It was music to kill yourself to because that’s what I was trying to do. And it definitely reflected what I was feeling. It was probably the most personal, vicious, savage stuff I’ve ever written. Was it any good? I don’t know. I don’t remember being inspired by it. Hell, I don’t even remember making it. And everyone around me hated it. My engineer quit. But I didn’t care. I was too far gone. Then the door got kicked in—literally.

  On August 29, 1995, thirty-two people raided my compound. There were guys there from the ATF, IRS, DEA, and FBI as well as local, state, and county authorities. Clearly they thought they were going to make a huge drug bust and find a thousand pounds of dope, illegal firearms, and maybe some abducted teenage girls chained up in cages in the basement. After seeing my collection of bone sculptures I think they wouldn’t have been surprised to find human remains in the fridge.