Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  One of Tim’s greatest disappointments in life was that Aileen turned down his marriage proposal. He proposed to her in Vegas, and I went along. He was hoping it would be this big, happy event to celebrate forever, and I was there for him. We flew to Vegas, he got down on one knee and popped the question. She said no, which crushed him. She was sick at the time. He said, “I don’t want your money.” She said, “I will be your friend. I will be your lover, whatever you want. But I’m not going to do this. I’ve got my money, you’ve got your money. Just relax.”

  We were stuck in Vegas, and there isn’t going to be a wedding, so what were we going to do? Get wasted and gamble, of course. I’m not a gambling pro. I kinda suck, actually. So I’m losing, as usual, and I hit this one table, where I just had a good feeling. I have a theory—and this may sound racist, but it’s not. I have really bad luck with Asian dealers; I have really bad luck with sourpuss people. I always go for a gay guy, who is flamboyantly gay, or a lady with a beehive, like Marge Simpson. We were at some cheap hotel. It wasn’t a Trump casino, I’ll put it that way. I was losing all fucking day with this Asian dude, and then I found this beehive lady at a blackjack table. I had fifteen and she had a king out. It was the end of the night, and we had to get to a Hustler party I had been invited to. So I was like, “I’m going to hold on this—fuck it—because you’re going to bust.” She loved it. That’s why you go to the old beehive ladies: because they have been in Vegas since the ’60s and hate the casinos. They hate the corporations, so they want you to win. I think the Asian dealers are trying to prove themselves, so they are very meticulous. They are very good, and they kick your ass and smile. It’s a bad vibe. I want the vibe of some old lady hating Vegas who wants me to win; after all, it doesn’t come out of their pocket. So I held on fifteen and she busted. I don’t know if she did it on purpose or what, but you don’t hold on fifteen. I did and won $24,000. On my way out the door I put half the money on black on the roulette wheel, and I won that. Lucky night.

  We flew from Vegas back to Los Angeles, and I had $36,000 in my pocket when we got to this 25th Anniversary Hustler party at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. For some reason Tim wasn’t on the guest list nor was Aileen Getty. It was just me and my girlfriend at the time, Lydia. Can you imagine that? Timothy Leary, one of the most legendary figures of the counterculture, and Aileen Getty, who belongs to one of the richest families in the world, are left off the list. So I said to the guy at the door, “Fuck you. I’m not going to leave Timothy Leary outside. That’s lunacy.” At the time I didn’t realize he and Larry had a feud once so they didn’t like each other. But after a lot of arguing and threatening to piss in the entranceway, I got Tim in. We went inside and my girlfriend started freaking out because there were all these naked chicks with fake tits running around.

  I guess she had reason to be paranoid: I had been drinking all day and was wasted. We all sat down for dinner and were at a table with the Nelson twins, Frank Stallone and his wife, and Ron Jeremy. They served us lobsters that were undercooked, so Tim and I threw them as hard as we could; they thudded off a table about fifty feet away and landed on the ground. No one said anything or seemed any the wiser. The waiter brought me another lobster, and it was also almost raw. It tasted horrible. So I threw that one too. We were throwing lobsters all over the place, and people started to throw them back. I guess they didn’t like undercooked lobsters either.

  In the middle of this food fight Ron Jeremy turned to me and said, “Hey man, I thought I recognized you. You’re Trent Reznor. I’m a big fan.”

  That was the last straw. I laid down on the table, dropped my trousers, threw my legs over my head, and started blowing myself right in front of Ron. I said, “Fuck you! I’m not Trent Reznor. I can do this. Trent can’t blow himself!” That was one advantage to heroin and other painkillers: They dull the receptors in your back and spine, so an act I usually couldn’t perform, like self-fellatio, was no problem.

  Ron laughed it off. He’d certainly seen stranger things on the set. But this porn star Savannah, who went out with Slash for a while, was impressed. The situation calmed down for a bit, and everybody was drinking wine and talking again. Then Savannah came over and whispered in my ear that my big “fuck you” to Ron Jeremy turned her on. I don’t know if it was because she liked seeing me stand up to Ron, who had probably blown gallons of sperm in her face over the years, or if she was such a horny piece of ass that she wanted my cock. Whatever. We started making out while my girlfriend was in the ladies’ room. But then she came back and saw us, and those two got into a knock-down, drag-out cat fight. It was pretty exciting to see hot chicks fighting over me, but I broke up the fight. My girlfriend stormed out, and I went to the bathroom to do some coke to clear my head. That was the last time I saw Savannah. She eventually committed suicide by shooting herself in the head after injuring her face and breaking her nose in a car accident. But I had nothing to do with that.

  While I was cleaning up in the bathroom, this guy asked me who I was, and I told him. He said he was with the FBI, so I put away my coke, punched him in the face, and ran out. It turned out he was one of the Copeland Brothers, who runs the FBI Booking agency. I thought he was trying to arrest me, because he was part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and I didn’t need any more trouble with the government. As I was running out, a big entourage came in with Robert Williams, the artist who did the first Guns N’ Roses album cover. I was so freaked out about the whole FBI thing that I puked all over his brand-new blue suede shoes. He had just bought them that day, and there was vomit everywhere. He was cool about it, though. He wiped up the vomit, autographed some napkins with vomit on them, and handed them back to me. I thought that was pretty classy. I stayed there for another hour, and everything kept going downhill. Someone from Mötley Crüe was there with a member of Guns N’ Roses. I was too fucked up to know which ones they were, but one of them pissed me off. So I took a swing at him, and then the security caught up to me. But they didn’t want to drag me out, get puke on them, and have me cause a scene. So they tied a bottle of wine to a stick and lured me out of the place, dangling the bottle in front of me. I’d go to grab it, and it would hop away and roll down the hallway, which I couldn’t figure out. I was like a cat going after a catnip toy. They lured me outside with this bottle and closed and locked the door behind me.

  When I realized I was duped, I got pissed. The hotel had a three-tiered fountain in front of it. Because I couldn’t get back into the party, I climbed the fountain. I had to take a shit, so I clambered up to the second tier, dropped my pants for the second time that night, took a dump in the fountain, and wiped myself with the water.” Then I saw Tim, Aileen, and Lydia running out after me. Tim said, “I think we ought to get out of here.” He called a cab, and as we got in and pulled away from the party, multiple police cars with flashers on pulled into the hotel. I narrowly escaped being arrested.

  That was the last big adventure I had with Tim. I went on tour with Ministry and we talked on the phone a lot, but when the band got to Europe in 1995 Tim was sick with prostate cancer. He sounded awful. We had to do a couple more shows in the States, so I told him, “Tim, hang on for me. I am coming back. I want to see you. Just hold tight.”

  He was still alive when we played the Palladium in LA, and Tim came to both shows with Aileen. That was a couple weeks before he died. We hung out with Joe Strummer and Captain Sensible, and the four of us did more cocaine than you can fit onto a picnic table. Tim had a good time, and I gave him a big hug at the end of the night. Something told me it was his way of saying goodbye. I went back on tour, and the day we got off the road I got the call that Tim was dead. It was a dark, dark day for me. I felt like I lost my best friend and my father at the same time. Before he died Tim arranged for seven grams of his ashes to be buried out in space on a rocket that also had the remains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, a space physicist named Gerard O’Neil, and a rocket scientist Krafft Ehrick
e. The ashes went onboard a Pegasus rocket on April 21, 1997. The spaceship was in orbit for six years before it burned up in the earth’s atmosphere. What’s even cooler is that Tim told me he put a clause in his will saying an ounce of my ashes will go up in space on a future rocket after I die. It’s already paid for, which is totally an honor. He was a special, special man.

  There weren’t many bands that could get me to leave my house in 1996, but Anthrax were one of them. They were playing San Antonio, so I drove my Supra twin-turbo to the show. By then Anthrax were no longer sober, so Lydia and I partied with them all night. I was wasted by the time we left to go back to Austin. I got lost somewhere in San Antonio and was thinking, “I’m really too drunk to drive all the way home.” So we decided to find a hotel and crash for the night. I was doing 105 down a side street and Lydia screamed, “There’s a hotel the other way!” I tried to spin the car around and hit this giant curb. The car rocketed into the air, flipped, and went directly into a light pole, which took out half the city’s electricity. We careened off of that, back across the road, and into a concrete bus stop park bench, which further crunched up my car. Then we pinballed directly across the street again. By now the car was right-side up again, the airbags were deployed, there were pieces of glass, metal, and plastic everywhere, plus the stuff we had in the car. We went over another curb, which sent us airborne again. I landed and realized I was in this empty parking lot. Then I saw an eighteen-wheeler gas tanker in front of us. There were no brakes left; the front of the car was gone. Impulsively, I was slamming on the brakes anyway because we kept getting closer and closer to this parked eighteen-wheeler. We stopped right in the nick of time, six inches from the truck. If I had piled into it, the gas tank would have exploded and we both would have been dead.

  After we stopped I took a deep breath and then took inventory. Lydia had a fucked up wrist. I had crushed my chest and broken a bunch of ribs—again. But miraculously we were both still alive. I kicked the car door open, and the police were there immediately. This cop came over to us and said, “I saw the first two of your hits. I was right behind you.” For once I was happy to see a cop. We were so shaken up that I seemed absolutely sober. I didn’t even have to do the alphabet backward. Then I did something really stupid: I peed on the road right in front of the cop. He just figured I was in shock and he was so freaked out that we survived that crash that he refused to put on the accident report the fact that we had eighteen empty beer bottles in the back. He just went, “Well, I’m not gonna make your night worse.” I didn’t go to the hospital because I know they can’t do anything for ribs. I had already broken my rib cage a few times previously; they just put me in plaster or some debilitating bandage and said, “Here are some pain pills. Just deal with it.” I already had pain medication—lots of it. Even with all the accidents and debilitating situations I was in, I played almost every single show that was scheduled.

  Tons of bands scrap a week or two of dates every time the singer comes down with a sore throat or whenever someone gets hurt. I have to be literally incapacitated not to play because I know it’s my job and people have paid money to see me. I guess it’s that work ethic thing I got from my dad. The first show I ever canceled in my career was the Peoria, Illinois, Sphinctour date. That’s the only show I canceled in thirty years before Paris 2012 on the European Ministry tour. In Peoria I got laryngitis and lost my voice. I didn’t give up so easily either. I had a doctor give me a steroid injection through my neck and into my esophagus just as a short-term fix to get me through the night. On the 2003 Ministry tour, I also lost my voice before a Paris show, but that time the steroid shot worked. By the way—it hurts like hell. But this time the doctor shot me up. Nothing. Mudvayne was supposed to open for us, and it was their first show ever. They were completely psyched. They were in high school and right out of rehearsing in mom and dad’s basement, and they went from going, “Really?! We get to play with Ministry?” to having to tell the crowd that Ministry canceled. No one had heard of them, and their singer, Chad Gray, went up to the mic and announced, “Uhh, Ministry’s not gonna be able to play. We’re sorry. But we’re gonna do an extra long set.” BOOOOOOOOOO! They got pelted. Angry fans slashed the tires on their van. They were heckled through their whole set. Poor bastards. They thought it would be the time of their lives; instead, they had to dodge debris and pay to get their tires fixed. Welcome to the crazy world of rock ‘n’ roll, kids.

  Years later, after I had kicked drugs and married Angie (more on that later), we were in Europe in the 2003 FornicaTour, and Mudvayne opened for us at a festival in Germany. Afterward Chad wound up on our bus and we were drinking and talking. He was shitfaced, and suddenly he said, “Uhh, I gotta go.” He walked off, and I thought he left. So our bus left to get to Copenhagen for the next show. We were driving through Luxembourg, and I was in the back lounge with Angie. I was drinking, as usual. Then, Angie started getting all these calls from management, a promoter, and, finally, members of Mudvayne. They’re all asking, “What happened to Chad?” I said, “Nothing. He was hanging out and then he left. He’s probably passed out somewhere near the Mudvayne bus.” By this time I was really drunk, and people from my team were coming up to me, asking, “Where’s Chad? What did you do to him?” I got grilled about this about fifteen times in ninety minutes. I started to get mad. Finally I said, “Look, this is not my problem. Here’s not here.” At nine o’clock the next morning we started hearing these weird rumbling noises that sounded like a sasquatch coming from one of the bunks that we didn’t use; we just threw our gear there. So these noises continue, and Chad crawled out from between these road cases, where he had passed out the night before without anyone knowing.

  We were in Luxembourg. Fortunately Mudvayne was scheduled to perform in Luxembourg that night, and we had a day off. Chad was still wasted, completely incoherent, and on our bus, so Angie and I walked over to the venue where Mudvayne was scheduled to perform and hung out in their dressing room before the band even arrived. I drank all their wine.

  chapter 13

  Dark Side of the Spoon

  Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Meltdown

  I think the lowest point I ever reached came in 1998 when Ministry was doing Dark Side of the Spoon. Tim was gone. Burroughs, that cantankerous fuck, had just died. Before we started I found out that William Tucker, who played with us on the Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour, committed suicide by slitting his own throat.

  I dealt with the loss the only way I knew how—by getting smacked out of my mind. When I wasn’t getting any work done Barker and everyone else in the band would get pissed at me. So I’d have to shoot up a bunch of coke just to get in work mode. Those fuckers were totally judgmental; they weren’t sympathetic in the least. They didn’t care that two of my best friends were dead. They just wanted me to wake up, write a hit or two, and make them some money.

  Maybe my mind just blocks out most of that period of my life because it was too much of a downer. I was using constantly. The methadone and heroin had completely destroyed my body. I’d bite into an apple, and a tooth would come out. I was battling Hepatitis C, so my liver was all fucked up. My stomach was a mess from not eating right and drinking all the time. And if that wasn’t enough, I had to have my toe cut off.

  The toe thing happened because I was a compassionate junkie. I would always break my needles off before I threw the syringe in the garbage. I didn’t want people sharing my shit and getting Hepatitis and whatever else I might have been harboring. One time I broke the needle off and I threw it into the garbage by my bed, but I missed and it went into my boot. I didn’t notice, so when I put my boot on the next day the needle went right into my big toe. I was still anesthetized by the narcotics, but it still hurt. So I took off the boot, checked it out, and didn’t see anything. I had stepped down so hard that the needle got embedded inside my big toe. I didn’t even see the tip, so I had no idea why I was in pain.

  I gutted
it out, and about a week later my entire toe was black and crumbling. It had become gangrenous and was going to fall off. I went to the hospital and they said, “You need to have the toe amputated. There’s no other choice.” So I said, “Alright, take it off.” Goddamn butchers. As far as we’ve come with technology and medicine, the first thing they want to do is remove body parts. So they take my big toe off. After the surgery I woke up, and there’s Gibby Haynes. He’s the first visitor. Does he ask, “Al, how are you feeling?” or “Can I get you something?” No. He asks, “Hey man. Got any crack?”

  I said, “Yeah, unless they confiscated it from my shirt over there.” Gibby went and found my shirt, and sure enough the crack was still there in the pocket. He helped me get up with my IV unit. I grabbed that, which, fortunately, was on wheels. And he dragged me into the bathroom and then we smoked crack for about five hours. It was ridiculous. I was sitting on the toilet with a missing toe and in a stupid robe with my ass hanging out and my IV tree trickling fluids into my veins while I took massive crack hits. It’s a good thing I had a private room or we would have had to share my drugs with some old man with cancer or a pregnant woman who’d just delivered a baby.

  When I left the hospital I went back to my apartment in Austin, which I could barely pay for because Barker was handling the business and had had management put me on a stipend, which was supposed to stop me from being able to afford drugs. That worked really well—NOT. Just try to keep drugs away from a junkie. They’ll bet, lie, cheat, steal, and murder to get their fix. When I wasn’t in the studio getting high, I was at home trying to find oblivion.