Ministry

by Jourgensen, Al

  Once Raven said to me, “Al, I love you, man, but I can’t keep playing for you for nothing. I’m always broke.” I said, “What do you mean? I’m giving you a good salary. It’s just that every time we stop the bus, some chick comes up to you and you empty out your pockets for her.”

  He sighed and said, “Yeah, man. You’re right. Hey, can I borrow ten dollars for a sandwich?”

  Along with Raven we had Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison, who is one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever met. He’s a monster drummer, and he’s an even better guitarist. He knew we didn’t have a drummer lined up, and he practically begged for the gig. He told me he grew up in Iowa with a poster of me above his bed. I never heard that before. I grew up with a picture of Led Zeppelin above my bed. So that was flattering to hear. But Joey walked into our cove with an attitude, all four-foot-five of him, saying he’d sold millions of records and been on the cover of Rolling Stone. None of us were impressed. Raven, Mikey, Tommy, and I are cranky old bastards who have been around the block, so when Joey acted like a snot-nosed little kid, we tortured him. Even our drum techs and roadies sarcastically called him “Mr. Fucking Rock Star.” Raven and Tommy taunted him constantly: “Fuck you, you little rich kid.” We put him through Ministry boot camp. Mikey was like, “No one gets away with pulling an attitude here, you prima donna little midget.”

  When we were rehearsing, I put Joey through hell. He’d barrel through something, and if he didn’t nail it, I’d be on him like a Rottweiler on a raw steak. “No, no! That’s so off. I don’t care if you’re Mr. High Fallutin’ million-seller guy. I know when there’s supposed to be double-kick and when there’s not, so get your fucking shit together or leave!”

  He’s the leader of Slipknot and a musical virtuoso. He’s not used to being talked to like that; he’s used to being coddled. And it’s funny because when you meet him you just can tell he grew up this weirdo midget kid who all the bullies picked on. So we just hazed him like a nerdy college pledge who’ll never get in the frat he’s pledging. He was so freaked out that, within four hours of his first practice, he was sitting on the drum kit weeping. After about four days of complete torture and crying we eased up on the guy. We had humbled and humiliated him and put him in his place; it was time to accept him. After that only Tommy was still hostile to Joey—probably because he was jealous.

  One time, when we were going down the Autobahn in Germany on a double-decker bus, Tommy was binging on Joey’s coke. When Joey ran out, all of a sudden Tommy was a complete asshole to him. So Joey turned to him and said, “Fuck you, man. I’ve been covering your bills. I’m out of blow. So what?” Tommy insulted him again, so Joey picked up an orange from the fruit plate and threw it in Tommy’s face. Tommy got up very calmly. His eyes rolled back in his head. You couldn’t see the pupils. He grabbed Joey by the scruff of the neck and body slammed him. It was like a killer whale biting into a fucking seal. Tommy was so nonchalant about it. He had Joey pinned down. Joey was wriggling around, and every once in a while Tommy took a whack at his head. It was strange how detached he was while he was destroying this little kid. We all just sat there and watched, waiting to see what would happen next. Then Angie came running down the stairs, screaming, “Oh my God! Leave him alone!” She grabbed Joey, who was barely coherent, carried him up the stairs, and put him in a bunk.

  Joey’s face was fucked up pretty bad, but he wears a mask in Slipknot, so we told him it didn’t really matter. He was so freaked out that he wanted to catch the next flight home from Europe, which would have been a problem because RevCo’s drummer couldn’t handle the Ministry beats. Fortunately Angie was able to talk Joey into staying. And I gotta say that, after that, I had more respect for Joey. He went through Ministry boot camp abuse and came out a Marine.

  Intervention 10

  Tour Manager Holger Brandes

  Ministry Teaches Industry Veteran

  the Rules of the Road

  An established German tour manager, Holger Brandes has worked with artists ranging from teenage pop groups to arena metal bands. But nothing could have prepared him for the summer he spent on the road with Ministry in Europe.

  How did you become a tour manager for Ministry?

  holger brandes In 2008 I was asked to be the tour manager for the European leg of Ministry’s C U LaTour. Because it was a long tour, that means a good income. I was totally interested in doing it. I started working with the band on June 22 in Tilburg, Netherlands, several dates into the tour. This was all confirmed a couple months in advance, and every time I mentioned to someone that I was going to be the tour manager for Ministry, people in our business told me, “Don’t do this tour. These guys are absolutely crazy, and it’s a nightmare to work with them. They are known for randomly starting fights with other bands on festivals, and they are all horrible drug addicts.” Having heard this a couple times, for some reason I honestly was even more interested in doing it. I wanted to find out if they were really as horrible as people said and if I would be able to handle them.

  Did you meet them before the tour?

  hb No, and when I arrived at the O13 venue in Tilburg, Jörg [Michal, drummer for Stratavarius], the tour manager I was taking over for, and I did the regular business routine of passing over contracts, files, and money. In the early evening Jörg said, “Okay, let’s go and meet Al. He’s in a hotel, and we need to pick him up for the show.” We walked over to the hotel and went into Al´s room. He was almost ready to go but obviously quite intoxicated. Because Jörg had already told me about Al’s drinking habits, it was obvious to me that he was drunk. We said hello, I looked in his eyes, and contrary to his wild appearance, which didn’t really impress me because I have worked in this business for quite a while, I saw a shy person smiling to me, trying to look sober and sorted. We left the hotel and walked to the venue, and I saw Al’s wobbly way of walking and his slightly disoriented waddling. The whole time Al was joking, and he also tried to entertain the people we met on the street. The other thing I remember thinking is, “What the fuck? This guy doesn’t need a road manager. This guy needs a nurse.”

  Were there any mishaps during any of the shows?

  hb The second show I did with them was in Tolouse at the Havana Café. After the show started I had to do the settlement with the local promoter in the venue office. I had to walk through the crowd to get to that office, and it was unbelievably hot in the venue. I had just finished the settlement and was on the way to the bus to drop the money when the band suddenly stopped playing, and band and crew were rushing out of the venue. People were screaming, holding their eyes and faces, and trying to get hold of water. Somebody in the venue had thrown a teargas-bomb. We packed everything as fast as possible, got on the bus, and left Tolouse. That night everybody was happy to be on the bus, and crew and bandmembers were exhausted and happy to get some sleep.

  Was that the end of the day’s chaos?

  hb No. I was already in my bunk when I heard Al screaming and swearing. I got up again to see what was going on and found out that the AC system of the bus had sprung a leak just above Al’s bunk, and his whole bed was soaking wet. After we sorted that situation somehow, I fell into my bunk, hoping to get some sleep. Unfortunately the bus driver woke me up at 4:00 a.m. He told me that the bus had a breakdown and that I had to wake up everybody, because the police were coming in a couple minutes to drive us somewhere. I got off the bus, and a couple policemen were already waiting there with two or three vans, and they yelled at me to get everybody in these vans. I woke everybody up, and after a short and rude discussion about Al taking alcohol into a police car, they drove all of us—and two wine bottles—to a miserable service station in the middle of nowhere in France. I couldn’t believe it; I wasn’t even on that tour for forty hours, and now I saw this bunch of people I barely knew, sitting on the tarmac, not knowing where we are.

  What did you do?

  hb I talked to the locals in the truck stop to find o
ut where we were, figured out which city was close, and, with the help of some good business contacts, I managed to book hotel rooms for everybody twenty miles away from where we were. I called cabs, and we were all lying in comfortable beds approximately two hours after we were woken up. Luckily we had no show that day. The bus company managed to get the bus repaired during the day, and we made it to the next show in time.

  Was that a sign of things to come?

  hb No, because these first two days were definitely the hardest part of the whole tour. From that point everything ran pretty smooth. We toured Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Serbia, Poland, and Ireland. Apart from the daily road manager’s routine, I had to control and pace Al’s drinking with regard to the show times. Playing a lot of festivals with different show times every day mixed with club shows with a totally different schedule was a challenge, and we had to make sure Al was in good shape to do the show every day. One time we played a really nice festival up in the mountains in Slovenia and were supposed to play at something like 10:00 pm. Unfortunately a thunderstorm stopped the whole festival for a couple hours, and we had to postpone the show again and again.

  We ended up with a show time at 3:00 in the morning, and it was not easy to get Al on stage, as he spent the time he had to wait drinking. When I tried to get him to do the show he didn’t want to do it. The discussion about getting on stage or not went back and forth, and all of a sudden Al blurted, “I’ll only play this show if I can do it naked.” I told him that was fine with me and got him to move to the stage. I think on the way to the stage he realized that it was bloody cold and wet, and when we entered the stage he didn’t mention this idea anymore and played his show fully dressed.

  Were there any other snafus?

  hb The second-to-last city on this tour was Warsaw in Poland, and we had to do a long drive from Serbia to get there. We arrived in Warsaw late at night, and unfortunately the local promoter booked a scruffy, depressive east-bloc hotel for us, and we had no chance to change anything because it was way too late when we got there. In the morning Angie Jourgensen called me and told me that Al was getting really depressed in this hotel and that she would like to get him to a nicer place. I called my travel agent in Germany, and half an hour later we were standing at the front desk of a five-star hotel in the center of Warsaw. Because the booking of this room was done in Germany a couple minutes before we arrived there, I had to sort out the billing details with the hotel staff. While I was doing this I saw the staff’s disapproving glances and heard words of disrespect. This made me very angry, and after I got Al and Angie to their room I had some serious words with the hotel manager. When I left the hotel and recalled the past twenty minutes, I realized why these hotel people made me so angry: This tour might have been stressful here and there. Al might be an unusual guy to deal with. He might look weird; he might be an alcoholic. He might polarize people, but for me he became a real friend, and his intelligence, his humor, and his warmth for the people around him deserves respect and appreciation.

  chapter 17

  The Last Sucker

  A Storm’s a Brewin’

  By 2007 I had been clean for five years. I was writing some of the best songs of my life and we had rebuilt Ministry from a band nearly everyone had written off to a group that had a new life and was capable of drawing large crowds. Fans liked the anti-Bush theme that started with Houses of the Molé and built in intensity and ferocity through Rio Grande Blood. I knew I needed to do one more album of Bush-bashing to complete the trilogy, so I wrote The Last Sucker. It was packed with brutally heavy songs and biting lyrics, mostly about Bush and his cronies.“Watch Yourself” was about the Patriot Act, “The Dick Song” addressed an incident in which Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot seventy-eight-year-old Texas attorney Harry Whittington while on a quail-hunting expedition, “No Glory” pinpointed the dangers of capitalism, and the title track was about the end of the Bush administration.

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t really feeling it. Mikey stepped out to do some work for Gibson guitars as a product specialist and couldn’t join me, so I got Tommy Victor to play all the guitar parts, which was cool. I love Tommy, and he, Raven, and I sat around drinking and talking when we weren’t working. I programmed all the drum parts, so I didn’t have to worry about a prima donna drummer who thinks he’s the highlight of the show and wants to overplay all the beats and fills. Everything was under control, but my ulcers were acting up and causing me a lot of pain and unexpected trips to the toilet to throw up and shit blood. I soldiered through it, and maybe my health issues fueled the anger of the record. But it’s funny: By the time I was getting ready to record the album I was feeling sorry for Bush. I didn’t really want to trash him so hard anymore.

  I felt like Cheney and the oligarchy was running the country, so why was I railing against this guy? He’s just a pawn. One day I realized that he was way over his head, and then I actually pitied this overindulged rich guy who stole one election and led us into a war to create easier access to an international oil pipeline that would benefit the richest people in the world. That’s kind of weird. But I didn’t whack off for about a month thinking about that. Not only was Bush a puppet; he was an idiot. I knew that dolt when he was governor of Texas, and I saw what he did to Austin. So I wasn’t happy about that start. When he went national, my attitude was, “Okay, I’m gonna fight you with every ounce of energy I have. You’re going down.”

  But by the end of The Last Sucker I imagined Cheney holding high-power meetings and Bush playing with crayons and Tonka trucks. He came to El Paso once. We went to picket him. As a photo op, he went up to a taco stand and said, “I’ll have one of them there enchirritos. I want an enchirrito, please.” The poor guy selling food said, “Sir, I’m sorry I don’t know what an enchirrito is.” And Bush repeated himself more slowly, like the guy didn’t understand because he was speaking too quickly. No, the guy didn’t understand him because enchirritos don’t fucking exist [editor’s note: except at Taco Bell].

  To me, that’s appalling, and it just illustrated how much the president has to learn. He’s just a figurehead, like the Queen of England. That was disheartening. I wanted Bush to be this evil, malicious guy who deserved all the ire I had been directing at him. But no, he was just another moron.

  I only wish I had the money of a Super PAC guy. I’d know what to do with it. But I know a lot of political people, and what I’ve found is that they’re not that bad as people. They’re usually more intelligent and more innovative and more involved in society than the people protesting against them are. I like some of the political people, but then there are those who toe the party line and just go Republican or Democrat. They’re not intelligent; they’re just sheep.

  I don’t think we’ve ever had another president in history like Bush—just a complete doofus with a megaphone, basically making all the right talking points. I vote Democrat, but in principle I’m against both sides of the aisle—but especially Republicans. I really don’t like those people. I like raccoons; I don’t like possums. Raccoons are the Democrats; the possums are the Republicans. If I saw a possum, I’d shoot him right between the eyes, only there’s not much room between the eyes to shoot a possum. I’ve actually done it—possums are hard to shoot. That’s a Republican. Consider the Democrats as raccoons, kind of like the Cure’s Robert Smith—big fat rodents with eyeliner.

  The Last Sucker came out great, and I figured that was a good point for Ministry to end. I felt like shit, my arch-nemesis was out of office, and I didn’t hate him like I used to. I just thought, “Let’s tour for this thing and be done with it.”

  Of course, nothing could be that problem-free. A month and two days after the album was released, Raven died of a heart attack in Geneva, Switzerland. He had flown there to work on a new album with the French industrial band Treponem Pal. He went out drinking with the band. Then drummer Ted Parsons found
him sitting up, dead in a chair the next day. When Raven was at my house working on The Last Sucker he was only drinking. And on tour he’d sit and smoke pot in the front of the bus until the driver had a contact high and could barely breathe from all the smoke. But he never did drugs on our bus, ever. When Ministry finished touring I think he replaced some of his pot smoking and did some coke and had a heart attack. He was overweight and fifty years old. I know the people he was with, so I’m sure he probably did a few lines and his heart couldn’t take it.

  Angie and I were at home when Treponem Pal’s singer, Marco Neves, called at 5 a.m. and told us the police were in his room and Raven was dead. We were the first ones he called, and he was freaking out. I was scrambling around in complete disbelief. Angie and I had to get on the phone, call Raven’s family, call Killing Joke. So we started all of that, and the authorities called us. The whole day was a nightmare—5 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the phone. I lost my good friend. I was numb.