TONY SLUG INTERVIEW
from Mortaja #13Interview by Danimortaja
When did The NITWITZ start?
In March 1978, and we were probably the first band that was really into playing fast. The first punk thing was experimenting with making strange sounds, we were more like a rock thing, very Chuck Berry: verse-chorus-verse-chorus-lead-double chorus, very very basic.
How was that second wave of punk like? There were other bands like the EX..
The EX, yeah, they still play. They've been together for about 20 years now. They're doing kinda industrial-experimental stuff with lyrics from Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. The music these guys are playing isn't really for me, but they're still doing all those things that they and the Nitwitz used to do back then, like a lot of benefit shows for squatters and benefits for political things; and on the other hand they also play some really elitist free-progressive-jazz clubs where they make a lot of money. I dont like their new stuff but it is ok with me if they wanna do that, and I'm sure that their intentions are totally for real, that they are not bullshiting into that.
There were a lot of other bands in those days, but not many got a lot of attention except if you go a few years later, the hardcore scene in Holland was pretty dominant in Europe for some time with bands like LÄRM...
How was to be a punk in Holland, back in 1978?
In 1978, 1979 and early 1980, we were a very small group of people, and you really had to run for your life a lot of times, with all the disco kids trying to beat you up and stuff. And then, 1981, the scene got a little bit bigger but at the time there was no communication between different countries in Europe, there were languages barriers, there was no press, magazines like Maximum Rock'n'roll (MRR) didn't exist yet. Everybody was looking to England, and in England at the time you got this Oi! thing that took hold over Europe, so now you got all those skinheads who also attracted a lot of fringed characters like violent machos, fighting guys...
That's what you talk about in "Bloody Suckers", the BGK song, isn't it?
Yeah, 'cos I went to some shows and there was blood from wall to wall, and the people who were doing stuff in the late seventies, they were all like, "Oh, get out of here; punk is over". We were always in it for the music but on the other hand we didn't like the glorification of gang violence either, like all those English songs "fighting in the streets", "razors in the night"... it was all about some tribal-macho-fighting bullshit and we wanted to do something else. At that time, a lot of clubs were closing, so we started with some other bands a place called FunHall, wich was a squat, and we thought "We'll let the bands play here, all those bands that we like who don't sing about "razors in the night". Also we wanted to have more females involved in doing stuff, 'cos a lot of girls just didn't want to go to shows; it was just really mean stuff going on. And at that time, or when I was at school back a couple of years, we were listening to the SAINTS, from Australia, The STOOGES, Mc5,... The WHO...
RADIO BIRDMAN?
Yeah, RADIO BIRDMAN... stuff like that, and then suddenly, I got a record from the DILS from America, and it blowed my mind. At the time, American bands were not popular at all, there was no way of getting information about them. The GERMS record, CIRCLE JERKS first album, there were maybe three copies in the whole country, and I picked them up; and my friends in the States... I had some friends that told me to listen to BLACK FLAG, and I got the first BLACK FLAG single and it was something different, you know, and also, the CIRCLE JERKS dressed like us, they didnt have a lot of spikes or mohawks, didn't matter what you looked like, and it doesn't matter, you still could be a punk rocker and even look like Milo from the DESCENDENTS, you know, it doesn't matter. So that scene was more attractive to us and also more... the English bands were always saying, "oh, Europe, you can't play punk rock, we invented punk rock", and the American bands were more like "oh, we are into the same, you do this, great" and there was more mutual respect. So we wanted to have those bands there in our own squat, and then the skinheads would come down and at that time we organized, if they show up this time they are not going to ruin our place, so that was pretty much what this song ("Blood Suckers") was about: now we are organized, if you wanna come here with forty guys there's two hundred of us, so then they went away, 'cos we knew all the troublemakers and we didn't want them at our place... there's also... there was a black kid who was murdered by skinheads, and then the whole skinhead thing pretty much disappeared.
Tell me something about your record label, VÖELSPIN.
It wasn't really a record label, if you do a record and make it yourself it has to have a label for the plants to identify which record it is. We didn't want to be a label that signs bands; what we did with the NITWITZ was: we made maybe 750 or 1000 copies, 'cos we were one of the bigger bands at the time, but I must remind you that distributors didnt touch it, you know, we sold it much at the shows. Maybe we'd leave at a record store five copies and it didn't even sell and we'd have to take it back. And also we had the maximum price thing, similar to CRASS, we tried to keep the prices low, and still we maybe sold a thousand of each. But it wasn't a real label in a sense that we would go out and sign bands. Personally, I wanted to do that, but the other guys said "No, we can tell them, we will give them the information and then they can make their own label", and a lot of guys did that too. But at the time there were no distribution, no fanzines all over Europe with advertising, that didn't exist.
Alternative Tentacles has put out "The Complete Works of BGK" wich is great but I would like to have "The Complete Works of The NITWTZ". Are there any plans about it?
It's gonna be difficult, it's been 20 years now and people have gone separate ways. For instance, our old guitar player is not doing too good and he lives on the street, he's schizophrenic. We had planned a reunion tour in 1995...
Yeah, because of the Dutch Punk book.
Yeah, there was a book about Dutch punk, and these guys who made the book, they work for Epitaph, they are our age, you know, they are not into kiddy-punk, they just have jobs there, and they said "Well, maybe we could get a deal for you with our label, we would like you to stay together and make a record for us..." and we said "yeah, sure", and then Bret Gurewitz, who was in rehab, 'cos he was on heroin and he didn't like the title "Dark Side of the Spoon", he didn't think it was very funny, so nothing happened then. At the time we were practicing we made a demo with Jack Endino that was never released.
Yeah, are you gonna put it out?
Hmmm, I doubt it, 'cos the band's changing all the time, every time someone leaves, and it takes me months to teach them the new songs. Theo was in, then Theo was out, now Theo is in the HYDROMATICS... so it's a big cross-fertilization thing, but I think we have a new lineup with a singer called Mike Dogshit who is in BREZHNEV, a Dutch hardcore band. He's a good singer, so now we are a five piece.
After The Nitwitz, you started BGK (Balthasar Gerard Kommandos); why did you choose the name of Balthasar Gerard? I'm not really into history but I believe he was a traitor to the protestant Dutch revolution and he assassinated William The Silent because the king of Spain offered him money.
The band name just sounded funny, in an anti-monarchist kinda way. I think they tortured the fuck out of BG and that it took him four days to die. They stretched him from all limbs with horses slowly pulling him to shreds. Yikes!
BGK were one of the fathers of an international HC scene, as you already said, you invited bands to play your squat, you played squats all over Europe, you played USA, you evolved while the scene were growing and you did a lot for that scene to grow.
Yeah, it was sort of a "personal network", we were probably the first Dutch band to tour all over Europe and definitely the first Dutch band to tour America. At the time we had some connections from Tim Yohannan from MRR and he had friends who helped us out to tour in the States. In Europe it was more the work of our so-called manager, who was in touch with many people. A lot of HC bands who played our town, we would go back to their towns and play their towns.
I must repeat that at the time there was no network yet, it was still being built; and now it seems so bad that the NITWITZ can't tour, 'cos there are too many American bands coming all the time and, without press you're nothing, like you don't exist. So times really changed, we got the HYDROMATICS, who are basically a band for our personal enjoyment, this is what we listen to and this is what we play. That's why we are here, we like it.
Back in the Hardcore days, there weren't many HC bands that really rock'n'roll. Most of them were just noise, like LÄRM. There were also great bands like TOXIC REASONS or UPRIGHT CITIZENS, though...
Oh, yeah, TOXIC REASONS, they've been to Amsterdam many times and they were a real hard-working band and they never got what they deserved. I think they should be as huge as, at least, D.O.A., a band that plays and plays everywhere. There were just too soon, it took a couple of years before everybody got "Hardcore!! Hardcore!!!" by the time the Straight Edge thing started, I was just not interested in HC anymore, and the bands at the time... you got all that metal thing, you got punk bands going metal and metal bands going into punk, and everything sounded the same. And there's a lot of people in Amsterdam that don't like that about me, "Oh, you changed your style", fuck off, you know, I just don't like it anymore when you just see ten bands going: uarghh-uarghh-uarghh!!. But I like HC. I went to the first BAD BRAINS show in Holland and it was like "Uhh?, What the fuck is THIS!!" It blowed my mind, and I still think that BAD BRAINS are one of the best HC bands ever, I mean, they were so different, especially in contrast with all the English stuff at the time, that was really sloooow... oh-oh-oh-la-la-la, bands like VICE SQUAD and all this crap; we liked the DEAD BOYS, The STOOGES, a few English bands from the '77 like JOHNNY MOPED or The LURKERS but none from 81-82, ONE WAY SYSTEM and that stuff. We weren't interested in that, it was just a different style of punk.
There are many songs by BGK that talk about Palestine, Lebanon and there are sentences like "they are the bad ones, we are Ok" that seem so similar to what is happening today, what do you think of Bush?
What do I think of Bush? Well, I'm not a big friend of Bush obviously, but I don't feel the need to talk about it in any song anymore, there are a lot of bands to do that.
Sure, but I just want to know your personal opinion about what is happening in these days.
Well, I think Bush is actually a complete asshole who wouldn't win the election democraticaly if didn't he just tell us what his advisers are telling him to say in public. But in these days you got all the republicans and the democrats together saying "let's have a war", which is probably not a good thing. On the other hand the terrorist attack was pretty outrageous and the US is not going to leave things like this, they are gonna retaliate and they are gonna retaliate very hard. The problem is you can't start bombing a country that has been already bombed and kill a lot of people who have nothing to do with Bin Laden. That's the big dilemma. Maybe they should just send in some sort of special commando, but it'll be difficult and maybe it'll just escalate... I don't know.
Other songs by BGK like "Soylent Green" or "Freeze Me" talk about death or life after death, was that a matter that you worried about?
No. "Soylent Green" is actually a metaphor; there's a movie called "Soylent Green". It's a science-fiction movie, in the year whatever all the seas are dead, all the trees are dead, so there's no more food, except for two foods you could buy from the government: soylent green and soylent red. And the whole world is polluted, everyone lives in one big city, so...
Is that the one with Charlton Heston?
Yeah!
I've seen it but it has a different title in Spanish..
Right, so all food is from humans, so one guy finds out and then he got to fight the big corporations who are trying to keep the people stupid and not telling them what it's made from.
So that was a metaphor. "Freeze Me" was more about this strange phenomenon, the cryogenia. And maybe I just wanna be dead forever!
So people wanna be frozen for 50.000 years, you know, it's not natural, it is crazy, but people are seriously working on it...
There's another one about walking on radioactive sands, that's what they actually did. They let some soldiers walk right in the Nevada desert and they all died from cancer.
That, you know, occupied most of our time, it was pretty... not really naive, but it was kinda slogan-like, but our intentions were alright. But, you know, now I'm 38 so I don't wanna do slogans all the time anymore.
After BGK you did LOVESLUG, and it seems that back then there were a few killer-rock'n'roll bands like LOVESLUG or UNION CARBIDE PRODUCTIONS, or even the FLUID in America, bands that although didn't get a lot of atention at the time, were the seed for the present "Jihad of Rock'n'roll" you talk about in your column. A lot of bands (from NUEVO CATECISMO CATӌICO to HELLACOPTERS) see LOVESLUG as a big influence, doing back in the mid-eighties the kind of straightaheadrock'n'roll that seems so popular today.
Yeah, that was in the mid-eighties or maybe later, the late eighties. And yeah, The FLUID were great. FLUID were just incredible, we played a whole tour with them, 30 or 40 shows, and those guys were totally doing the Iggy thing, which is great. And the people were saying "Oh, they are doing grunge", and I said "grunge???!!, listen you suckers!!!", they didn't understand it, and now they sadly broke up after their first major release on Hollywood records wich is owned by Walt Disney, and they failed, so, you know, the record company pumps up the money but they didn't sell enough, 'cos they were "grunge"!!!, and then they got thrown off the label and then split up. It's a shame 'cos they're really nice guys and they got a great band. James, I think is a snowborder now, and John, the singer, is a model, he does stuff for fashion magazines, he's really a nice guy, I like all of those guys. And then, the drummer was in a band called SPELL that moved to Seattle, and he's the only drummer I've ever seen in my life with blood running down his ears and still playing. Literally, I mean, he played so loud, there was blood coming down; I said, "hey, you got to see a doctor" and he went "no, no".
Do you think we are in a good moment for rock'n'roll? What do you think about the HELLACOPTERS?
Yeah, I mean, if it's good, it's good. But right now there are a lot of bands that use all these flames, and naked girls, fuzzy guys, fast cars... you know, I'm so sick of it. So our tour holds no devil chicks, no hot rods. It just counts the rock you work, and some bands don't even rock.
It's funny you mentioned the HELLACOPTERS, 'cos when LOVESLUG played Sweden in '88 or something, we were playing in the middle of the tundra, in the middle of nowhere, and there were forty kids, and there were two young guys like 16 or something jumping from the stage and landing on their backs and then got up and start slam dancing and going crazy, and later they formed the HELLACOPTERS, they were Kenny and Patrick, the manager for the HELLACOPTERS, so it is a very funny coincidence, you know, how that all works. But then, at that time Nikke was listening to metal. But I think with the crossover thing that maybe got some of the right people into the rock'n'roll-punk thing.
Tell me something about your tour with SHOT GUN RATIONALE.
How do you know that?
Well, it ain't a big secret, you played Spain.
You are very well updated. It was a kinda funny thing. I'd rather don't have anything to do with Sonny anymore, I'm not going to play with him anymore. That tour, he needed a band, and basically he collects people around him and lets them play his songs and you just follow him around for ten weeks or something and in the end you just go "why did I do this?" It was a disaster.
He played with a group from Bilbao, the SAFETY PINS, and they say he ripped them off.
Oh, yeah, I got ripped off too, I think he rips everybody off. Kike knows more about that money part but I didn't get paid for 10 weeks of work. The tires got slashed four times on one tour. It was such a disaster, one problem after the next. And he is completely un-organized and he would get people from the audience to drive for us, and I wanna be sure that my driver is not gonna drink or do something crazy. He works in a different level wich is the "Sonny method". I wouldn't advise anyone to start a band with him.
I've heard there's gonna be a new HYDROMATICS album soon.
There's a new one coming in probably two weeks. It should have been out now.
On White Jazz again?
No, it's a new label from Italy called Freakshow, and these guys have only two more other releases: MERCY from CHROME CRANKS and the other one is a half Italian, half French band called SONIC ASSASINS who were the back band for Deniz Tek in the last tour.
I've been told that you once played with Scott Asheton.
No. Scott (Morgan) did. He was with Scott Asheton in SONIC'S RENDEZVOUS BAND. We were looking for a drummer and we thought maybe Scott Asheton would wanna do it, but that's just unrealistic because we like to play a little faster than Scott can do right now and do also demanded an outrageous sum of money. But then this young kid, Andy, who is a friend of Scott Asheton and plays exactly the same style as he does, was really into playing with us, and we got him to Amsterdam to record the record that's called "Powerglide".
How did the first one, "Parts Unknown" sell?
Well, we didn't really have a contract with White Jazz, so I don't really know, but they did send us some royalties and I think we got the nine percent and they have the 91% after they got all the costs recouped so we didn't make much off it, but we did make enough to pay for rent of the van for this tour. So we are here without a record, just doing it.
I'm not sure, I guess White Jazz sold the company to another bigger company and I'm not really sure how that works. I mean, we don't have a contract, I got to ask them, if they say it sold a million I got to believe it, if they say it sold a thousand, there's no way of proving it.
Last question. I've read that your personal heroes are Handsome Dick Manitoba, L.F. Celine and Rijk De Gooijer. Who is the third one?
How do you know that? He's an actor, and, well, Dutch cinema is really bad, is very bad, and this guy is been around for a long time and he always plays the bad guy, he's always like a German soldier or an SS guy, and he's really good!, he looks really mean, and he's a total asshole. It's the same in the real life, in the real life he's just like that, a complete drunk and fuck up. He's got that jet set parties with all the people from TV and cinema and radio, and he's invited all the time 'cos he's famous but then he starts a fight or he gets really drunk and he shits in his pants, stuff like that. He's like 75 years old now but he's actually a punk rocker, so we are pretty much influenced by him. There's a movie called "Soldier of Orange" and he plays a Dutch collaborator, he always does roles like that, and he's really mean, and horny, he is really horny. But he's a scumbag.
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