Rock My Monkey: Hello, you are listening to the Rock My Monkey netcast on RockMyMonkey.com. Today we are speaking with Dave Wyndorf of the band Monster Magnet. How are you doing today, Dave?
Dave Wyndorf: I’m good, man. What’s the monkey?
Rock My Monkey: What’s that?
Dave Wyndorf: What’s the monkey?
Rock My Monkey: Rock My Monkey?
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah.
Rock My Monkey: Well, it’s actually kind of a little bit of a, little bit of a sex joke I think in there somewhere.
Dave Wyndorf: Okay. Okay. That’s what I thought.
Rock My Monkey: Basically when you listen to a cd you go, hey-at the end of the review I usually end it with something like-
Dave Wyndorf: It rocks my monkey?
Rock My Monkey: Did this cd rock my monkey?
Dave Wyndorf: I getcha.
Rock My Monkey: To start off, to start things off, are you totally clean from drugs, happy, healthy, and ready to rock?
Dave Wyndorf: Oh, yeah. I’m totally clean from drugs. You know, the most embarrassing thing about this whole thing with my addiction to prescription sleeping pills was the fact I wasn’t a drug guy before that. I’m not a party-I don’t party. I haven’t drank in, god, over ten years. I mean, contrary to my image, I gave up drugs when I was a teenager. To have this happen to me so late in the game was really bad.
Rock My Monkey: From what I understand it was actually more driven by you being driven, and trying to make sure you are well rested and ready to rock when you hit the stage every night.
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, absolutely. Although all I did was sleep. All I really wanted to do was sleep. We’ve been touring for fifteen years. I was running around in Europe. Go to Europe for a couple weeks, come back here, then go to Australia for a couple weeks, come back, Japan, back and forth. And after a while your sleep schedule just goes nuts. Well, no sleep equals no voice. And no voice, no good. So I go to a doctor and I’m like, look, man I want something that’s going to put me down like a wild animal. And the guy, like a good American doctor, goes, ‘I’ve got just the thing for you, Dave.’ And gives me all this stuff, and I’m off on my way. It worked fucking awesome, like really, really good. But unfortunately when anything works that good, there’s a downside to it. Just as a footnote to this, my doctor just went to jail.
Rock My Monkey: Oh, jeez.
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, the DEA, the Feds. Federal indictment.
Rock My Monkey: That’s not the same doctor that Ozzy had, because I know one of his doctors actually just went to jail for that.
Dave Wyndorf: Really? Wow. I guess it’s a trend. It’s all the rage, you know what I mean. This guy, basically what he was doing was he was prescribing stuff that legally couldn’t be prescribed for more than say-well, one prescription, and then a return visit. He was prescribing like three right off the bat. So the stuff he prescribed me, which is like a benzodiazepine was addictive. Now that I’ve done all the research on it. It was really addictive only after about three or four doses, your body would get totally addicted to it. We’re not talking Lunesta, or any of this. We’re talking serious, like benzo, it’s the active ingredient in Xanax and stuff. It’s like a super Xanax. So what I didn’t know what I pretty much addicted to it within a couple of weeks after I first started taking it. But it was working great, and I’ve got a crazy life, and I just run all over the place. So I just kept going back. I’d go back in every couple of months. ‘How are you doing?’ ‘Well, I’m doing great.’ ‘Okay, here’s your meds.’ And I was like ‘Cool.’ Next thing you know after a couple of years of this I run into a situation where I’m extra busy, extra time zones, like super duper time zone, back, forth, back, forth. I went from taking one on the plane so I could walk off the plane and go to a show, to two on the plane, and then to three on the plane. Get to the thing, aw, feel kind of tired, think I’ll rest some more. Oh, I can’t sleep. I wonder what’s wrong? You know? What’s wrong is my body is getting used to pills. I think I’ll take a couple more pills and go to sleep. Well, after like one three month period, a hard summer going back and forth, I was in, and it was bad. It was really, really bad. And of course I didn’t tell anybody about it, because I was too embarrassed. I was, aw, I gotta take care of this. It’s like Lloyd Bridges in Airplane. ‘I picked the wrong day to quit taking sleeping pills. I got too much to do. I got an album to do. I’ve got a business to run.’ All that kind of stuff. It’s just like some crazy executive, like ‘mother’s little helper’ story. It just got worse, and worse. The less I talked about it the more I internalized it until finally I was like Frank Sinatra in the Man With A Golden Arm looking at himself in the mirror, sweating, ‘I’m on drugs. What am I going to do?’ Bad scene.
Rock My Monkey: Well, I’m thrilled to hear you’re so clear headed and so over all that.
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah. Really.
Rock My Monkey: I actually recently found out my little brother actually died of a drug overdose.
Dave Wyndorf: Oh, it’s horrible.
Rock My Monkey: It’s wonderful to hear when people are totally clear off of any of that, prescribed or otherwise.
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah. I’m sorry for you. I’m sorry for that, man. It’s like, you know, drugs are such a weird problem. It’s every person’s right to abuse themselves any way they want to, as we know. And everybody needs time off, or whatever. But boy, if there’s some way you can get to heart of what makes you happy without them, it really is the way to go. Because it’s Russian roulette playing with that stuff. I don’t care what anybody says.
Rock My Monkey: On your new cd, 4-Way Diablo, it sounds like you are moving back to the more space rock style of your older releases. Was that intentional?
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if it’s space rock, because it just is like rock and roll, like garage rock. There was some-I’d written a handful of songs that I put together, and it just kind of turned up that way. As soon as the songs presented themselves I realized how the record should actually be put together. It should be recorded in a slightly lower fi than before. And the difference would be, well, I’ll take the rhythm section, and really kick back on the beats a bit. Try to make it more sound like a natural rock and roll situation. I guess after I did all that stuff, it did kind of sound like older stuff.
Rock My Monkey: Do you think that you’ll ever go back to the hook laden feel of Power Trip, God Says No, and Monolithic Baby?
Dave Wyndorf: I don’t know if I’ll do that as a decision, as ‘here’s where we’re going to go.’ But yeah, I can’t stay away from hooks. I love hooks. Hooks are great. I know that for some reason the stoner rock and the metal community seems to think they’re a bad word, but without hooks you just get Ten Years After, you know what I mean? You just listen to ‘meedley meedley meedley medley’. You gotta have hooks, man. What I think is I’m going to stick all my hooks on my solo stuff. I’m going to make weird little records of minimal volume and different instrumentation. And it’s going to be weird, and it’s going to have hooks in it. As far as Monster Magnet is concerned, like the Power Trip thing, I don’t know if I’m going to go back to big rock that much, just because I don’t plan on touring a lot, and when you write songs like that, you should be able to go out there and deliver it. You know what I mean? There’s kind of like this secret bond between songs like that and live performance. These songs are written to be played live. They don’t really come alive until they’re delivered personally. And if I’m not going to tour that much, then I don’t think I should write them. Maybe I’ll write them for other people.
Rock My Monkey: So you’re actually thinking on doing a solo album apart from Monster Magnet?
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah. Yep. You know, over the last couple of years I’ve put out these records and there’s always a certain contingent of Monster Magnet fans who say ‘Why? Why is this hard rock record ruined, or somehow interrupted by these slower songs, or mellow songs?’ and stuff. From my standpoint, when I was a kid people always wrote albums that had a lot of variety in them, and I never had a problem with it. It seems that in this day of niche, of over-niched categorization, that people get upset. ‘Oh, what’s this?’ So I was like, alright, is this what you want? Okay. I’ll make a Monster Magnet record and it’ll be wall to wall. Like the next Monster Magnet is going to be wall to wall space rock. And all the slow songs I would usually put on a Monster Magnet record, and even more, will be collected and I’ll put it out as a solo. And I’ll do them with different instrumentation. Piano. Acoustic guitar. Weird sitars and stuff like that. And that seems like the best way to divvy up the stuff, because a lot of people unfortunately just don’t like the variety. Weird.
Rock My Monkey: To me that’s actually a bummer, because that’s one of the things I like about Monster Magnet is it’s a roller coaster ride. You go one song that’s big, bad, bombastic, hook laden rock tune, and then another one that’s kind of a little bit more ‘I talk to planets, baby’ kind of feel. To lose that depth, as a fan I actually find that a little bit of a bummer.
Dave Wyndorf: I agree. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I want to have a little different head space to present some of this stuff that’ll make me finish it better, or collect it all together, those kind of slow songs all together, and work a project like that. But I always was totally into variety. And tell you, the whole time I was on a major that was a main complaint from all the people I worked with at major record companies. ‘Maybe you want to give a little less variety.’ I was like, what the hell kind of world am I living in? Less variety? Oh, I’m sorry. It’s weird. But, and this may be crazy, or something, but that’s what I think I’m going to do. But never fear, for people who listen to Monster Magnet and like the variety, I’m not going to just put out a record-when I say wall to wall, what I mean is wall to wall in that style. I probably won’t take as many left turns as I did. Maybe make the record, the Monster Magnet record slightly shorter, and more contained into whatever vibe that is put out. I’ll definitely save a couple little songs for Monster Magnet records, too.
Rock My Monkey: One point that I want to make is your old major label was telling you less variety, and all I’ve got to say is, where are they now?
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, really.
Rock My Monkey: That’s all that needs to be said.
Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, you’re right.
Rock My Monkey: As the writer behind some of the best rock poetry around, do you feel that great song lyrics shouldn’t make sense, at least on the surface?
Dave Wyndorf: For me, I can’t put a blanket statement or anything, but my favorite lyrics when I was a kid were always records that danced in the realm of ambiguity. There’s a certain poetry, right, to ambiguous words, to writing in metaphors. I like ‘em not to make complete sense to me. I like to listen to lyrics that sound like they make sense to the person who’s singing them. So if I listen to a T-Rex song and like Marc Bolan’s going like ‘I’ve never, ever kissed a car before, it’s like a bumblebee’ I’m like ‘What the hell is this guy talking about?’ I don’t know, but it sounds really cool. And my mind tends to lean into it to wonder what’s going on. Now, there’s a line that you can go over, and then it’s just ‘this is plain stupid.’ But I tell you what’s even stupider is listening to a song over and over again that is completely, blankly, flatly stated. A song that has absolutely no innuendo whatsoever lyrics. Why would I listen to that? Unless it’s the Magna Carta. Unless it’s the Constitution. Unless it’s a Kennedy speech. These people just aren’t that good speech writers. Songs I don’t think should be speeches. I think they should be poetry. I mean, it can be shitty poetry, but it’s poetry nonetheless. I hate it when people just say exactly what the mean, and there’s nowhere else to go. And no fun to write, either. It’s no fun to write.
Rock My Monkey: What was there about the Rolling Stones classic 2000 Light Years From Home that made it the perfect choice for Monster Magnet to do a cover?
Dave Wyndorf: You know, it wasn’t even, it wasn’t planned out. My bass player, Jim, had mentioned, ‘Hey, we’re not doing a cover on this record. I thought we always did covers.’ And I had enough songs for the record, and I was like, ‘You know, I didn’t even think about it.’ I just completely lost it. It just went beyond me. I wasn’t even thinking. So he suggested 2000 Light Years. And the first thing I said was ‘Oh, I love The Stones, man.’ It’s kind of hard to do The Stones and not be laughed off the map. But we tried it. And it was really fun to sing, and these guys nailed it. Monster Magnet the band, they just totally fucking nailed it, in about a half an hour. It was like, ‘It sounds just like The Stones, which is really cool. Let’s track it and see if it works.’ And then when it was done, I listened to it back and said, ‘You know, this is from The Stones only real psychedelic album, so I think we can fit this into Monster Magnet land.’ So we put it on.
Rock My Monkey: Right on. What do you think Matt Hyde brought to the cd as the producer that would not have been there otherwise?
Dave Wyndorf: I think he brought a, like Matt always does, especially now even more, because he’s really on top of his game, he brought a general, really, really positive attitude in a situation that was not positive at the time. I was fucked up. I went in there and I just did-I arranged the songs with the guys and then I just pretty much bagged out when they recorded the basic tracks. I was vegetating like a benzodiazepine withering withdrawal in a hotel room down the street as the guys went in there by themselves. And Matt was there for them, and he just totally did it. He also understood when I talked to him in the beginning how we were going to not over-fi the record. This was going to be a natural, try to be as natural as possible, and trust our instincts. Which is something that people who make records don’t do all the time, because the instinct is contrary to technology. And a lot of people who make records now tend to want to play it very, very safe, and they’ll trust technology first. And sometimes that makes for boring records. So Matt, he’s a guy that he knows old school recording, and he’s a master of new school recording, and he’s really good at making the calls when to lay back and just let it out, and when to fine tune it with technology. He’s a really, really talented guy.
Rock My Monkey: Is there any plans for a video single for this release?
Dave Wyndorf: Right now there’s no plans for a video. Like a told the guys on the website, go out there and knock on SPV’s door and see if you guys want to make a video or not. They’re being real weird. All the record companies in the world are just freaking out. They don’t know where to spend their money. I just told them recently, ‘You know, let’s not make a video. Why don’t you just give me the money you would make for a video, and I’ll make videos out of my house and put them on YouTube.’ You know what I mean? I’ll just film like a cat walking across the floor. What they say to me, and I kind of believe them, is there’s really not much market for rock videos. They don’t do anything. They don’t sell anything. So for them it doesn’t seem to make as much sense. I mean, right now videos are just holding their own in the world. They’re like an affirmation that an album is out, but they don’t sell. So that means to me is they’re not going to give me the money to make the kind of video I would like. I love making cool videos if it’s possible, but I’m not going to get involved in that unless these guys want to give me the dough to make a cool video. And so it goes round and round in circles. Rock videos have always been kind of touchy, because while they should be a direct extension of the creativity of the band, of the band’s ideas and the songs and all that stuff, they’re often usually just beaten down into a commercial by all the people that are involved in selling it. So if I have complete control over a record and how it’s going to sound from the beginning to the end, I go out and make a video and I don’t have that control. There’s too much other people’s money at stake. It’s like making a Hollywood movie. A writer and a director going ‘Hey, we got this idea’ and the next thing you know there’s twenty guys ‘Well, I think it should be this.’ So I’d rather bag out, unless they just give me a bunch of money and let me do it myself.
Rock My Monkey: So basically it’s up to the fans to put together their own videos and upload them to YouTube and MySpace then?
Dave Wyndorf: That would be really awesome. I watch YouTube. I see what’s going on. Why not? It’s like the best idea of at all.
Rock My Monkey: Will you be touring at all for this cd?
Dave Wyndorf: I told everybody just give me like six months from the time of release, and I’ll see if I’m going to tour or not. The first instinct I had after finishing the record, which was in May, I just finished it in May, was to write more. So I figured I might as well go with my strengths right now, rather than, rather than do something that I’m not totally 100% into. That’s the thing. In Monster Magnet, through Monster Magnet’s whole life, I loved playing live. That was everything. And I don’t feel like I want to do it as much, so why would I fake it? I don’t want to go out there and fake it. Basically I just don’t want to go out there and phone it in, as they say, and basically kind of half suck. Because people smell that shit. And believe me, no matter what our fans say, ‘No, no, it’s okay.’ If I went out there and wasn’t into it, the next day they’d be like ‘It sucked.’ So trust me, that’s what I’m saying, trust me, you don’t want to see me live right now.
Rock My Monkey: When playing live, what do you think is more important, getting the notes right, or making a memorable show?
Dave Wyndorf: Memorable show.
Rock My Monkey: I had a feeling you’d answer that.
Dave Wyndorf: Completely, yeah. I mean, no question about it. That’s why live is so cool. Live is live. Live is like, one minute, at ten minutes into the show, at minute ten, something happens, minute eleven is affected, minute twelve is affected, minute thirteen. If something great happened at minute ten, you could die onstage and be resurrected and nobody would ever notice it. Live means live, like now. It’s live second by second, minute by minute. It’s really, really cool. If anybody’s a rock and roll fan like me, who went to a million-all I did was go to shows when I was a kid. It was just me and a big bag of pot, and fucking-I worked at the car wash, and that’s all I spent my money on was albums and shows. I’d go to three shows a week. I was totally addicted to the show, because there is nothing else like it. But it’s got to be good. It’s got to be really, really good. The moment is way, way more important than the notes. Sometimes when people fuck up it’s even better. There’s been a really disturbing trend in a lot of rock bands in the last ten years of just putting so much stuff on tape that it’s crazy. I mean, go out there watch a Rob Zombie show. It’s all on tape! It’s like, why the fuck would I want to go see this more than once if I know it’s going to be the same show? It’s like watching a movie. I like it when people fuck up.
Rock My Monkey: I actually watched the Rob Zombie/Ozzy Osborne tour this year, and everybody was extremely disappointed that the tape of Ozzy was actually louder than Ozzy himself.
Dave Wyndorf: You know, it’s just like, come on, you guys. What the fuck? Are we really that far into ‘on demand’ society that people are just going to say ‘Yes, I just want to see it and watch it on the Jumbo Tron and hear it on a tape’? It’s like, what the hell is this? ‘I’m going to go to a show.’ ‘And what are you going to do?’ ‘I’m going to stand in the back and watch it on the Jumbo Tron.’ ‘Oh yeah? Is he singing?’ ‘Sometimes. But sometimes it’s on tape.’ Hello! It’s stupid. That’s why I love Europe. Europe has shows all the time. There’s really low insurance rates on the clubs. People love live music. They love to fucking go in close and see it. They have a big festival circuit, but it’s not like here where they have to cram all like minded bands together to get the poor drunken hoosiers out to see the show. America is in a weird state right now where they just, they don’t really care that much. They could give a fuck. Obviously if you’ve got hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that don’t complain that people are lip syncing on a regular basis, then there’s something wrong. Are we that far away from the Milli Vanili affair, which happened, what, like twenty years ago? Where everybody’s like ‘My god, somebody’s lip syncing!’ Now it’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Fuck that. I ain’t paying no money to go see nobody lip sync. It’s bullshit. Stay home, grandpa.
Rock My Monkey: What song on your new cd is your most personal song?
Dave Wyndorf: This one’s got a lot of them, but I think the most personal one for me is a song called Little Bag Of Gloom. It’s the last song on the record. It’s just me pretty much looking at myself in the mirror after the whole pill incident, just going ‘What did you do? You idiot! What have you done?’ You get to that point in your life where you look at yourself and go ‘What the fuck, man?’ It’s really personal.
Rock My Monkey: As a huge comic book fan, have you ever thought of having a Monster Magnet comic book where you play a superhero that talks to planets and save the universe?
Dave Wyndorf: (laughs) No. I like the imagery, and I like to be kind of a nod to that imagery, but I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to put myself into that, into a comic book character, just because I think it would-I don’t know. I can’t compete with Captain America. Too much competition. Too much competition. Too many people that do it better.
Rock My Monkey: This is the time in the interview I like to call The Lightening Round. I’m going to name something popular in the news and in pop culture, and you sum up your thoughts in one short sentence.
Dave Wyndorf: Okay.
Rock My Monkey: Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul?
Dave Wyndorf: Uh, duh. That’s my answer. Duh.
Rock My Monkey: The NBC show Heroes.
Dave Wyndorf: Never seen it.
Rock My Monkey: The iPhone.
Dave Wyndorf: Why not?
Rock My Monkey: President Bush.
Dave Wyndorf: (laughs) Our dumbest. Our dumbest ever.
Rock My Monkey: Fox News.
Dave Wyndorf: One sentence. Great commercial.
Rock My Monkey: Recording Industry Association Of America.
Dave Wyndorf: Desperate.
Rock My Monkey: I do have one final question. Every year we do choose one final question that we ask every single band from classic rock legends to the most extreme death metal bands at the end of every interview, partially to stump people, but also to see who wusses out. This year I’m asking people to look into their crystal ball and predict what political figure, world leader, musician, celebrity, anybody world wide famous, who do you think might die before the end of the year?
Dave Wyndorf: (laughs) Who’s going to die? I don’t know. Don Rickles.
Rock My Monkey: Don Rickles. Alright. I thank you very much for doing the interview. Anybody that’s listening to the audio version can go to RockMyMonkey.com for the full featured version with clickable links, readable text, and many more wonderful features. I’m asking people to click on the album cover above and below this interview to purchase 4-Way Diablo by Monster Magnet. And I do hope to see you guys up on tour in the Northwest sometime soon.
Dave Wyndorf: Right on, man. Thanks a lot.
Rock My Monkey: Thank you very much for your time.
