News4U Online

King Buzzo on… everything

Listen to the interview here

When the opportunity came along to talk to Buzz Osborne, founding member of the seminal band The Melvins, I had a geek-out. After all, it’s not every day that you get to talk directly to someone who’s given not only you, but millions of others, the inspiration to get down in the sludge with a guitar, live life on your own uncompromising terms, and be goofy because you simply have to.

            So I called him up to talk about The Melvins’ new tour and album (a bizarre collection of remixes called Chicken Switch); things went weird right from the get-go. And I couldn’t have been happier with the results.

Buzz Osborne (pictured top right) weighs in on, well, everything.

N4U: Hey, is this Buzz?

BO: Yeah. Who’s this?

Dylan Gibbs with News 4U magazine in Indiana.

Indiana? Never heard of it. Is that some place down south?

Racecars? Basketball? Corn?

Doesn’t ring any bells. Is that one of the 50 states?

It is a state, not a commonwealth. Sort of boot-shaped.

You’re thinking of Italy, aren’t you?

They do both start with “I,” however our history doesn’t go back as far; we don’t have such a rich array of architectural treasures.

Your written history doesn’t go back that far. We can write our own history.

We can start from scratch, which wouldn’t be a bad idea…

Is that where Woody Hayes was a coach?

No. We had Lou Holtz at Notre Dame and Bobby Knight at IU.

I don’t know nothin’ about college sports. I only know Woody Hayes ‘cuz he punched that kid in the throat.

So what do you want to talk about?

What do I want to talk about?

Yeah. I have a bunch of questions, but I thought I’d see what was on your mind this morning.

Well, we have a new record coming out; that’s probably the most important thing. It’s a good one. It’s really weird. It’s strange; I’ve already seen one bad review. One review said that it was an ‘unnecessary’ record, which I find really interesting, because that raises the question that there are necessary records… that basically we’re a heavy rock band and that’s all we should do.

Apparently the Jonas Brothers are really necessary right now.

Never heard ‘em. But they’re popular, so we wanna do a collaboration.

So… what’s your first music-related memory?

I don’t know. Probably singing in grade school or something. There was a song called “Thunder Road” about moonshining when I was a kid. Robert Mitchum did a movie called Thunder Road. My parents liked Clearance Creedwater and stuff like that.

That sort of segues to something I read about you: Is it true you started out playing covers of The Who and Hendrix?

No. We’re going to get around to playing Who and Hendrix covers.

So that’s total bullsh*t. I did read it online.

Surprisingly enough… from the Internet, you know. The thing is, I love the Internet. I think it’s great. But I also don’t spend any time correcting it. I just let it have a life of its own.

That’s really cool; a lot people get uptight about that kind of stuff.

A lot of people get really uptight about everything. What you should do, is drink more coffee, and get more exercise.

Speaking of which, there’s kids at your shows who weren’t even born when you first started out. What kind of advice would you give them?

I stopped giving advice to kids a long time ago, because they don’t listen. They go on their own journey; I believe people dig their own graves. I haven’t had one single kid ever listen to one single thing I ever said.

I have to challenge that a bit; you’re a big influence to a lot of guitar players, whether you like it or not.

I don’t mind it at all. I like my influence on music; I’m very happy about that.

Let’s talk about Chicken Switch. How did you collect together such a weird and wonderful group of musicians and DJs for the project?

We wanted to do something really strange, and we knew those people would be up for the job. A friend of ours from Atlanta named Jesse helped us do it, and it was all good.

So you gave them free reign and said, ‘here’s the stuff, go for it?’

I believe in artistic freedom. I made no suggestions whatsoever. I don’t believe in that kind of thing. If you hire somebody to do something… if you hire somebody to paint a picture of your wife, you’re not going to stand over his shoulder and tell him how to paint it. You might as well do it yourself. I trust their vision. I’ve already made these records; I’ll let them do something else with them, even if it means gutting them and tearing them apart.

You’re with Ipecac Recordings, which does everything great; what’s it like with them, opposed to say, working with Atlantic Records when you guys were with them?

It’s always interesting to me, because people have asked this a million times. I say, ‘we did three albums with Atlantic; when you listen to those records, do you really hear record company meddling of any sort?’

No.

None. I would say Ipecac’s doing no more meddling or less meddling than Atlantic did. Atlantic let us do whatever we wanted.

Do you think that if you were with Atlantic or Sony or whoever today, you’d have that same sort of freedom?

I wouldn’t be on ‘em if I didn’t. No one is going to dictate to me what to do. Ever. Certainly not musically. They can shove it up their ass. I’m not taking orders from somebody. There’s plenty of bands out there that are willing to be led around by the nose. People shouldn’t think that we’d be one of those bands.

It’d be nice if more musicians were able to throw caution to the wind and do what they want.

They are able to. It’s not that they can’t; it’s that they won’t.

Why won’t they? Is it for money? For lack of guts?

They want to be big stars… great. I have no problem with that.

I saw an interview with you and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame came up in the conversation – you said something to the effect that fame was the worst part about the business.

Yeah. Fame gives me nothing. Fame does nothing for me.

So is it baggage, like it’s annoying when people come up to you and…

That’s not a problem; that’s fine. I just mean… ‘ooh, I wanna be famous.’ So what? Charles Manson’s famous – what did it do for him? I’m very appreciative of the people who come to our shows; I’m always nice to them unless they’re assh*les. But I’ll never ever ever fault someone for being a fan of ours or wanting to talk to talk to me. But fame in and of itself is worthless. What counts is what you have done. I’m striving to be a good musician, and hopefully people’ll like it. Grandma probably doesn’t know who I am…

There’s probably some groovy grandmas out there rockin’ Stoner Witch as we speak.

We won’t hold our breath.

I have to ask about Nirvana and Kurt Cobain; there are so many bad biographies out there. Since you knew him so well, what’s something that no one else knows about him?

Nobody knows where his ashes ended up. Knowing Courtney Love, they probably ended up in the Hoover, you know?

(Laughing uncontrollably) That’s incredibly awesome. There’s just so much drivel that’s been written and said about him.

Tragic story. There was no happy outcome. None. There’s no good side to it. None. Nothing, you know. It’s horrible. And I’ll never get over it.

Any new songs or shows planned with Fantomas?

Who knows? It’s all up to Mike [Patton]. He’s in Faith No More world right now, so…

But the phone could ring at any moment?

I’m not gonna hold my breath.

From here, the interview dovetailed into a discussion on parenting, the movie ratings system, the government, censorship, personal responsibility, babysitting, The Exorcist, and boring people.

The Melvins will be near-ish on September 6 in Knoxville, September 21 in Indianapolis, September 25 at Pop’s near St. Louis and September 28 at Expo Five in Louisville. Their new album, Chicken Switch, comes out September 29. The 15-track CD is different from most remixes; each artist on the album was given a full album of Melvins material to work from; each of the song titles were chosen by the remixer.

_______________________________________________________