Interviews : Monster Magnet (Dave Wyndorf) – 16/7/2009

Dave Wyndorf has become synonymous with the stoner rock scene, with his band Monster Magnet. His formidable vocals have become a benchmark for the genre, as he is currently the only remaining original member of the band. Infusing both elements of psychedelic and grunge rock, Monster Magnet has created a unique blend, in this somewhat underground genre. Metal Obsession recently had the chance to speak with David about the bands upcoming Australian tour, his musical influences and his personal thoughts of drugs.
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Dave Wyndorf: Hey.

Metal Obsession.net: Hi Dave how are you? It’s Megan from metalobsession.net.

Dave Wyndorf: Hi Megan, how are you?

Metal Obsession.net:I’m good, and yourself?

Dave Wyndorf: I’m good, thank you.

Metal Obsession.net: Are you looking forward to the Australian tour?

Dave Wyndorf: No. In fact I’ll have to fucking kill myself, to go all that way just to have you guys throw dead wallabies at me? Jesus Christ, it’s going to be horrible! (pause) No, I’m only kidding, I fucking LOVE Australia! Australia is awesome, it’s one of my favourite places in the whole world, it always has been. It was one of my favourite places before I was even there, to me Australia was an exotic and still is a very exotic place.

Metal Obsession.net: This will be your second Australian tour in almost ten years. You’ll be here early September and it’s been a long time between drinks so we assume that the Australian fans will be treated to an amazing show?

Dave Wyndorf: Well, I hope I can give it to ’em, I love playing Australia because the history of rock over there is really cool. There have been a lot of really cool bands there over the years, I remember listening to The Scientists years ago, all the way up to now, all the way up to Wolfmother. What happened to Wolfmother, they broke up didn’t they?

Metal Obsession.net:I think so.

Dave Wyndorf: Stupid. Not a good idea.

Metal Obsession.net:Depends on who you talk to, there are as many people here who disliked them as they had fans.

Dave Wyndorf: Why do you think people dislike them?

Metal Obsession.net: I don’t know, but there was even a joke circulating here, “How many Wolfmothers does it take to change a light bulb?” “None, Led Zeppelin did it 30 years ago!”

Dave Wyndorf: (laughs heartily) That’s pretty funny. But that record sounded really good, and I don’t care what anybody says about it. If anybody says “It’s not new”, well guess what? There’s nothing new. There’s no such thing as new music. If it sounds good, it sounds good. Those guys sounded great! Dave Sardy did that record. Really good producer, sounds awesome.

Metal Obsession.net:There will probably be a few new fans turning up at your upcoming shows. Would you be able to give a description of the band’s sound and style to familiarise the newbies?

Dave Wyndorf: I would say, our sound is psychedelic hard rock. It’s oily, it’s fuzzy, it’s gnarly and it kinda like, tries to grab you on the ass and then tries to kiss you on the face and then it shows up behind you and tries to pull your hair, and then it tries to pour bourbon down your throat!

Metal Obsession.net: I like the sound of that!

Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, it’s good. But it’s friendly, in the end it’s friendly, it won’t hurt you too much. Hopefully.

Metal Obsession.net: Has there been much discussion about the set list?

Dave Wyndorf: What I’m trying to do is a thankless job of trying to make everyone happy. I’m doing the hardest rock and the most psychedelic rock at the same time. I’m not paying attention to what record or what era, I’m just picking the songs that I think work  best together for the best possible thing, so I think people are going to be happy, it’s a nice cross-section of Monster Magnet’s stuff, but it’s not trying to promote one record or the other. So it’s not like “Oh, they came and they only played their new record!” it’s not that at all. It’s going to be like a ‘greatest hits’.

Metal Obsession.net: So will we get to hear classics like ‘Spacelord’, ‘Medicine’, ‘Negasonic Teenage Warhead?’

Dave Wyndorf: Hell yeah!

Metal Obsession.net: Dopes To Infinity album is probably my favourite.

Dave Wyndorf: Nice. Yeah, we’ll be doing lots of stuff from “Dopes…”, Actually, a lot of early stuff. A lot from our first couple of records, and probably a little less from some of the later ones, but not by much. I think they’ll be happy. I hope, anyway.

Metal Obsession.net: With the tour dates, Brisbane on 5 Sept, Sydney 6 Sept, Melbourne 8 Sept, Fremantle 10 Sept. There’s a couple of gaps in between, are you planning on doing some sightseeing or are these for recovering from the hangovers the night before?

Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, if we have the time, we’ll be hanging out. It depends on what happens the night before, we’ll be out and about, sightseeing or whatever we can do. It really depends on what happens after the show. If things go haywire, and goes crazy and we stay up all night, then we’re going to sleep all day. Some days we have to travel or whatever. But by no means I don’t think anyone’s going to hide. They’re going to be out and about.

Metal Obsession.net: Your last release “4-way Diablo” did reasonably well, and moreso with your current label SPV. Recently SPV have been experiencing financial strife and many bands on their roster have had to resort to touring to redeem the current situation due partly to the financial crisis. What are your thoughts on the situation and are you confident that SPV will be able to bounce back?

Dave Wyndorf: Well, as far as the bands touring to make their money, that’s not just SPV, that’s the whole world. Nobody makes money from selling records any more, nobody. Not even the biggest bands make money from selling records any more, it’s over. As far as SPV goes, I could smell those guys going bad eight months ago, I fired them eight months ago.

If I fire them, they’re over with us. I’m out of  the contract with them. I have been for about eight or nine months ago. I can smell that kind of shit a mile away. I’m sure they’ll still cruise with this record, but three months from now, I’m going to own that record completely. It won’t belong to them any more. I have absolutely no confidence in SPV  whatsoever! It’s tough times for record companies.

Metal Obsession.net: Yeah, but with downloading would have been a big sting.

Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, well downloading kills everybody. The only people that win from downloading are listeners. Everybody else dies. The artists are the first to die from downloading, record companies are the second. And I don’t know why people seem to think “No, it’s cool for the artists” but it’s really not cool, man.

Metal Obsession.net: Well I can see it from a band’s point of view – they spend all this time and money recording an album, paying an artist to do the cover artwork and so on, only for someone to upload it to a site like uTorrent and then all these people download it.

Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, it’s brutal. It really is brutal, but you can’t really do anything about it, it’s just the way the world is now. I just keep figuring out how I can do my records really cheap, and still sound really cool. That’s the problem, if I had the money to make a record now, I’d want to make a BIG-ASS record. In a lot of ways, it probably makes the artists think better and think tougher. In some ways I think the downloading thing has scared a bunch of people away from making cool records. I think it’s scared people away from making good music. I think it’s scared people away from being a musician in general.

Metal Obsession.net: And it’s created this breed of substandard bands that are just… crap.

Dave Wyndorf: Tell me about it! There’s a lot of it… “Hey look at this, I’m on YouTube!” (blows raspberry) “Look at me, I’m on YouTube!” I don’t know what’s going to happen. In the old punk rock tradition, the good people will fucking rule and will take over. And that’s what I thought was going to happen with the Internet. But like you said, instead, it seems like a lot of sensitive people moved away and it’s now filled up with substandard crap and lots of it!

Metal Obsession.net: With YouTube, suddenly everybody’s become a filmmaker, but that doesn’t mean you are a GOOD filmmaker!

Dave Wyndorf: I know. It’s almost like we’re victims of majority rule. Maybe we should bring a little snobbery back, and we can up the quality of some of this stuff. I would never have guessed in my whole life though, from when I was a little kid, that I would grow up and the entertainment world would favour really, really bad stuff and lots of it, with absolutely no redeeming factor whatsoever.

There’s no mountain to climb. Even in the old system, the old record system, which was fucked in a lot of ways, but at least it made people climb a mountain to get better so they can get up there and kick ass. Now there’s no mountain to climb, everyone gets out a little, there’s no ‘next big thing’ because everybody is the next big thing. And stuff comes out, and it just falls flat.

It’s almost like you see everybody’s unfinished crap. You see everybody’s blog instead of a book. There’s a lot of people who couldn’t give a rat’s ass about rock any more, because they just don’t know how good it can be when people are really into it, and how good it can be when the bands are into it and the clubs are into it. Live music has taken a hit… I think people need to be trained into how good things can be. It’ll turn around, I think. I hope!

Metal Obsession.net: While we’re on the subject of new things, will there be a new Monster Magnet album on the horizon?

Dave Wyndorf: Oh yeah, hell yeah. I got no worries about putting out a record, one way or the other we’ll put out a record and it won’t be printed on cardboard. I can see someone going, “Oh, no! They lost their record company!” but I’ll find a record company. But I plan on going into the studio in 2010 probably sometime in the late Spring [northern Spring – around March/April] and make the record. Perhaps I’ll just sell the record after I’m done with it, I’ll be making my own money, and it’ll be cool.

But we’ll see what happens, and if I have to sell it myself, I will. The thing I’ve learned about being on a bunch of different labels is that it’s really not hard to make a record and to make it look professional. I’ve done it before, I’ve designed records, I’ve designed videos and stuff, and lucky for me I was part of the old system! But before its last dying days, the old rock system, I saw how these guys do it. I’m just going to worry about making the best record possible, and after it’s done, I’m going to sell it in any way I can.

Metal Obsession.net: Is there something that you haven’t tried yet on a Monster Magnet release that you would like to do on the next  release?

Dave Wyndorf: I always say that there’s probably minute, weird combinations of stuff that I haven’t done. But then I don’t really plan on writing that way, because that means I have to write with some sort of physical thing in mind, like, “I have to put a trumpet on a song because I’ve never put a trumpet on a song before!” You know, “I gotta put on a… an orchestra!” I worry about that kind of stuff after I’m in the studio, after the songs have been done. All that I know is that lately, I’ve been writing a lot of mellow songs as well as rock songs and I don’t know what to do with the mellow songs. I could release a totally mellow Monster Magnet record…

Metal Obsession.net: Or you could release them under another name.

Dave Wyndorf: That’s what I’m going to do. It’s strange, It kinda sounds like Monster Magnet because I’m singing it, but the instruments don’t sound like it. I also wanted to do a Monster Magnet Unplugged tour, I actually worked out some of the stuff with the [Monster Magnet] guys, and it sounds really cool. It’s got sitars and stuff. No power chords, but a lot of power.

There’s fuzz bass, acoustic guitar, very strange and bluesy but it sounds like blues from outer space. It’s really fucking cool. If that works out, and we get some attention with it and people dig it, then we’ll put a record out like that. I have to do it live first to see if people like it. I think they will, I hate to say ‘unplugged’ because it’s really not completely but that’s the closest thing I can relate it to. It’s way more powerful that it sounds.

Metal Obsession.net: I recently heard that you are starting up a new project. Could you give some insight into that?

Dave Wyndorf: That new project I was talking about was that I wanted a place for all those really weird, mellow songs. I haven’t found a place for them, and if I have to call it my solo record, I will, but I’m still holding out, if I can find a cool-ass girl to sing these songs, I will totally give all this stuff to her. I would love to hear a girl sing these songs. I’m a man, you can only do so much with a man’s voice [mimics death growl] but I like the beautiful sounds of a woman singing this, so I’m holding out where some of these songs can be the project.

Metal Obsession.net: I read some time ago about you current stance on drugs. You are quoted as saying that drugs are not an inspiration nor a gateway to creativity, yet all the musical influences tied to Monster Magnet appear otherwise, depending on the listener. What are your current thoughts on drugs (be it prescription or illicit) in this day and age?

Dave Wyndorf: Well, my stance on drugs and creativity has always been the same. Just because I OD’ed on drugs last year doesn’t mean I’m like some anti-drug guy, but I gotta say that my stance on drugs and creativity has always been, Never write while you’re high. Write while you’re straight, listen to it while you’re high! If you write while you’re high, you’re going to end up sounding like a really bad Charlie Parker record or an Iron Butterfly record. There’s a romantic notion, and I can see how this gets started amongst people.

It’s gone on forever, is that somehow these maniacs that have their minds on drugs have some sort of key to their id that other people don’t but it’s not. Drugs really are a distortion. They’re a fun distortion, they can be fun, they can be not fun and they can do all kinds of stuff but they definitely do not unlock creativity. Real creativity is in the uninhibited brain. If a person can release their inhibitions without drugs, it’s going to be a clearer form of absolute inspiration. Drugs distort the truth. My stance on drugs is the same as it’s always been. I got high when I was a teenager, I was part of the stoner culture, my musical influences are from a culture that was about drugs but the music itself was just music of its time.

That’s all that is. I write about my life, and if my life includes drugs, then the music will include drugs. If my life includes jumping out of an airplane, then it will include that too. But to tell you the truth, the most insane shit I’ve ever heard is usually from people that are straight. Because they are not hiding behind drugs, it’s clear sanity looking at them in the face!

Metal Obsession.net: Are you hoping to check out some of Australia’s grunge, stoner and other musical talents while you’re here?

Dave Wyndorf: Bring it on! Yeah, totally.

Metal Obsession.net: Are there any Australian bands that you’re a fan of or otherwise see as an influence on Monster Magnet?

Dave Wyndorf: I always thought, and this goes back a really long way, but I’ve always liked a band called The Scientists and they had this song called ‘Solid Gold Hell’. I don’t know if you’ve heard it but it’s really cool, it’s very psychedelic, it’s hard rock. I’m so old I actually saw Radio Birdman play in New York in 1979, but I’ve always been a fan. In the later years, even last ten years, I’ve been buying Psychedelic Cops, an Australian band from the 60’s who were awesome, and like I said before, I really like Wolfmother. Now I’m probably going to get a bunch of people going, “Fuck you! They suck!” Yeah, I know they sing about unicorns, but they sound good.

Metal Obsession.net: This just about wraps up the interview, is there any final comments you’d like to say to the Australian fans before we finish up?

Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, keep your dick in your pants! You hear me? Stay in school, you punk!

Metal Obsession.net: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us.

Dave Wyndorf: No problem.

Metal Obsession.net: And wish you the best of luck with the upcoming Australian tour.

Dave Wyndorf: I hope I see you there, and maybe we’ll go to the Cherry Bar on ACDC Lane, in Melbourne?

Metal Obsession.net: Go to the show, then go to the Cherry Bar afterwards and get photos with the sign above our heads.

Dave Wyndorf: Yeah, see you then.

Band: Monster Magnet
Date: 16/7/2009
Origin: New Jersey, USA
www.myspace.com/monstermagnet

Interviewer: Megan Masters (w/ contributions from Anwar Rizk)
Interviewee: Dave Wyndorf (Vocals)

Make sure to check out Monster Magnet on their upcoming Australian tour this September.

Monster Magent – Australian Tour, September 2009
Sat 5th Sep: The Hi-Fi Bar, BRISBANE – www.thehifi.com.au
Sun 6th Sep: Metro, SYDNEY – L/All Ages, www.ticketek.com.au
Tue 8th Sep: Billboards, MELBOURNE – www.billboardthevenue.com.au, Missing Link
Thu 10th Sep: Metropolis, FREMANTLE – www.bocs.com.au, 78 Records