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Minutemen interview from Flipside #46
Musically, the MINUTEMEN have very little in common with most hardcore bands, or any other rock bands for that matter. An eclectic mix of jazz, funk and punk, the mini songs of the San Pedro blazes a unique and challenging trial in the ostracized sphere of X's "Unheard Music". But if the qualities of individualism and risk-taking mean anything in hardcore circles (and I think they mean quite a bit), the Minutemen may be THE model punk band of the 80's.I talked with Minutemen bassist Mike Watt back on March 2nd, just after the band's late afternoon soundcheck at UCLA's Ackerman Ballroom. This had been a busy day for these self described "corndorgs from Pedro". Earlier in the day the band (Watt, vocalist-guitarist D. Boon and drummer George Hurley) had played an afternoon Alliance for Survival benefit at Cal State L.A. The evening gig at UCLA was billed as SST night, as the best little lable in America marched out some of its big and little guns for an evening of terrific, sonic fireworks. The bands that performed were: The Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Meat Puppets, Saccharine Trust and SWA. The only thing that was missing was the hit or miss metal-punk ring leaders Black Flag.
Mike proved to be as nice a guy as you'd ever want to meet. Even though he was frantically trying to repair D.'s failed guitar pickup in time to "save the show," the fleet-fingered bassist was courteous and cordial...
Jon: Where did you get the trumpet player? (The band's mini tour featured a trumpet player).
Mike: Oh he lives in Pedro. He plays on the song "The Product" on "Buzz or Howl".
Jon: Do you plan to use him on future records?
Mike: He's on the new record in fact. It's called "Project Mersh", it's a six song 12 inch 45. It's our tenth record. So we decided to have some fun and shake up people's sensibilities.
Jon: Is your New Alliance label still going?
Mike: Yeah. We also put out "Politics of Time" on that label. It's like a little version of SST. You do the most with what little you have.
Jon: The sound you guys get is incredible. It's a real mixture of different musical styles. You have the jazz improvisational element, the funky bass sound and all of it's thrown together with punk rock intensity.
Mike: Our roots are actually early 70's. Alice Cooper. BOC. We're 27 now, so we grew up in the 70's, unfortunately, Creedence too.
Jon: I noticed you guys covered a Creedence tune on the last lp.
Mike: Actually we did a couple of them. We also used to do a funky version of "Fortunate Son". We learned off of records how to play. It wasn't like punk rock where you wrote your own songs. You copied people, which I didn't like. But in our town Pedro, that was the only way you did it.
Jon: You must have been influenced by some jazz artists as well.
Mike: Not when we were young. When we got into our twenties that's when we started listening to jazz. Yeah, I appreciate it a lot especially Ornette Coleman's stuff.
Jon: I guess you were also influenced by Steely Dan and Van Halen. On "Double Nickels" we get "Katy Lied" and "Ain't Talking About Love" back to back!
Mike: Steely Dan was my 70's pet band. It was the intellectual band for me. I just wanted to pay tribute to them.
Jon: I was surprised to see the Minutemen at Cal State L.A.'s Alliance for Survival Benefit this afternoon. I didn't even know you were going to be playing there. So I guess after this weekend is over you'll have played 4 times in 3 days.
Mike: Yeah, and we play tomorrow as well as record a single with Black Flag with both bands jamming together. It's going to be a benefit single.
Jon: Is it going to be just an instrumental record?
Mike: No. There will be singing too. So it'll be Henry and D. Boon. D on the right channel and Henry on the left channel!
Jon: With all these gigs and projects going do you find it hard getting up for every show?
Mike: We got the band together so that we could do gigs. So I don't really look beyond that. I like playing. But sometimes it is hard getting up for it.
Jon: Yeah a lot of bands get tired of touring and they hate soundchecks and the problems that arise like broken guitar pickups...
Mike: Yeah, no roadie and no road manager and stuff like that.
Jon: Do you guys like traveling?
Mike: Not for two months. We did a two month tour last summer and that's too long.
Jon: Do you go by bus or car?
Mike: No we have a van. We don't sleep at hotels. We sleep at people's houses. Our tours make money because we live very cheap. Econo we call it. We do that most with what we got. That goes for everything. We did "Buzz or Howl" for about $150. We did the double album for about $1200. But it doesn't matter. That's how much we got so we go for it.
Jon: I like the album cover for "Double Nickels On The Dime". Whose idea was it to have pictures of each of you in a car?
Mike: We had an album recorded already. This was November of last year. And then we heard the Huskers had a double record. So we said "What?" So we recorded a whole record worth of songs. But we had no concept to link the two. So we made one up -- our cars. It's kind of a joke.
Jon: So each one of those is your individual car.
Mike: Right, you hear the sounds.
Jon: Yeah, I love that you hear the engine sound of each car starting at the beginning and end of each side.
Mike: Right. What happened was we had all 45 songs ready. Then all three of us picked songs. George picked a song, then D. and then I picked a song... and then all the songs that were left were on side chaff. You know when you thresh wheat the chaff's the stuff you don't use. And on that side all their cars are battling it over! (Laughs).
Jon: That's real clever.
Mike: That's as far as the concept goes. We didn't have a unifying theme. It's strange. I think one of our problems with radio is that we don't write a song we write rivers. We're more of an instrumental band. We play against each other, guitar and bass, we don't set up a background for our narrative. The words are almost like our lead guitar.
Jon: That's why I think of the band a lot in terms of jazz.
Mike: Right.
Jon: I've read a lot of articles on the Minutemen that refer to you as the thinking man's band. There's a strong message in a lot of your songs. Do you like being thought of in that way?
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| PHOTO: MURRAY BOWLES |
Jon: I don't want to hear those either. "Political Song For Michael Jackson" is interesting...
Mike: I really wanted him to sing that.
Jon: It sounds like an anti rock star syndrome song...
Mike: Not really. Say Michael Jackson says "Oh Mike Watt, I'll sing one of your songs. What do you want me to say to the world if you think music's so powerful and important?" And I say "OK Mike sing this to them". I was taking myself out of the Minutemen. When I'm in Minutemen I kind of think no one's listening almost. Especially live, they can't hear the words hardly.
Jon: "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs" is one of my favorite Minutemen songs...
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| PHOTO: MURRAY BOWLES |
Jon: Do you get a sense that the kids are taking what you're saying and digesting it in a serious manner?
Mike: I don't.
Jon: Does it bother you?
Mike: No, because when I was that age I didn't. Some of them do. Some of them are a lot brighter than I was at that age. We hope to shake up the young guys because punk rock doesn't have to mean hardcore or one style of music or just singing the same lyrics. It can mean freedom and going crazy and being personal with your art. Our words are a stream of consciousness thing and I don't know if a 16 year old guy can relate to it because we're 27. We're playing and I look into their eyes and sometimes they're going right over their heads. But I really like them. They have a lot more balls than we had in the 70's. We never tried gigging. We thought you were doomed if you didn't make records. We went to the forum and saw huge shows. It was nothing like being up close and seeing the guy actually sweat. I like the way it is now. What I don't like is the regimentation of hardcore.
Jon: When I saw the Minutemen at the Palladium I got the strong impression that most of the kids weren't keying into you at all. Does that frustrate you when hardcore fans don't key into what you're doing?
Mike: I feel like a dick. Like we're some strange art experiment. Greg Ginn never played off records. Black Flag was his first band. He never did records like we did. To him that's art and nobel; to us it's old hat. For us to do that would be a pose. I don't think it's a pose for him. The kids, it's hard to key into them because I don't know if they're sure what they want. They look at their friends and they say "Hey is this cool?" They're not really in control yet of what they really like.
Jon: I like that sense of individualism with the Minutemen.
Mike: Yeah, we try to be that wing of the SST army.
Jon: Would you say you make records for the average guy?
Mike: We are playing for the average guy. We play for the hardcore too because that's what the kids are who are old enough to come to our shows. It really hasn't gotten to the colleges yet. Most of the colleges I've been on the trend is right wing preppy, young republican thing. Our audience is mainly college but right now all we got is high school and a couple of colleges.
Jon: How has college radio treated the Minutemen?
Mike: What I've found that in the case of a lot of college radio stations like KXLU, you go on campus and you find no one really listens to the station! They're listening to KROQ. It's usually a small minority that gets in there and gets control of the radio. But nobody on campus really listens. This is the trend. A fad.
Jon: Do you feel you fit into the hardcore movement in any way?
Mike: We were liberated by punk class rebellion. Like hippies. Middle class kids who don't like their parents' values. Me, D. Boon and George, we come from working class backgrounds. My dad was a sailor, D.'s dad's a mechanic, Georges' dad's a machinist. We never wrote anti-parent songs. I don't reject their values. I've lived in an apartment all my life. I've never had a house or a swimming pool. I don't plan on getting one but I don't have any rebellion against that. I'm not damning it. I think it's a natural cycle.
Jon: What do you think of some of the music of the popular hardcore bands like Suicidal Tendencies?
Mike: I don't think it's music.
Jon: What do you think of fashion and rock n roll. It always seems to play such a big role.
Mike: That's why we went flunky. At first there were all sorts of punk bands. Talking Heads, Throbbing Gristle. It was hard to tell what was punk. The Sex Pistols, the Clash, Blondie and Devo. You don't know. Then it got real narrow. One punk. Now heavy metalers wear punk rock clothes. Now that's all it is is the clothes.
Jon: I noticed you guys cut your hair again. Is that a way of not getting pigeonholed as representing this or that fashion?
Mike: It was to shake up people. It sounds like a real hokey idea but it really blows peoples' minds because here we are the most hardcore looking bunch out there and our music is the furthest from it. That's what we're trying to tell people, it don't matter what the fuck you wear. It doesn't matter what style of music you play. It's what's in your heart that counts.
Jon: Did you ever consider writing a six minute song?
Mike: I wrote a six minute song, one chorder for the record. These songs are three and four minutes and they have choruses and fade outs. It's designed to shake people up. It's our tenth record. I don't think it's our best though. It's different.
Jon: What do you think is your best, "Double Nickels"?
Mike: "Double Nickels", and I like "Buzz or Howl" after that.
Jon: I remember I first started getting into the band around "What Makes A Man Start Fires?" and your big epic was "The Anchor" which clocked in at 2 minutes and 10 seconds. I noticed that more of your songs are breaking the 2 minute mark.
Mike: Our next album in the summer, we'll have short stuff again.
Jon: What made you decide to write short songs in the first place?
Mike: It was rebellion. But it was also making the most of what we had. We heard Wire too and they influenced us. You didn't have to have the old format.
Jon: What music are you listening to these days?
Mike: Wire, Captain Beefheart, Rocky Erikson, Meat Puppets, Pop Group. Of recent guys SST bands. I can still listen to X. I listen to Prince songs. I like some of the new John Fogerty records. It'll take him a couple of albums before he's real hot again.
Jon: Do you guys see yourselves together in five to ten years?
Mike: Me and D. Boon have been together since we were 13. George came in about 7 years ago. So I could see us together in 5 years.
Jon: So when you guys were 13 where did you play?
Mike: In D.'s bedroom. That's why we used to get drummers because we never had a place to practice. So if the guy had a shed he was in the band. So we found George!
Jon: So you guys just played covers?
Mike: Never wrote a song until we heard punk rock. It was the mentality of the times. That's why I say you're never just an individual. You're also part of a culture.
Jon: You're on quite a few critics polls for 84. Does that mean a lot to you guys?
Mike: We're lucky. What do you say? They're on control. They get the free records. We're thankful. But like this Rolling Stone review it's too patronizing. "They deliver the promise of hardcore." We never had anything to do with hardcore. Why can't we compete with Bruce Springsteen? Why do we have to keep in the garage?
Jon: Yeah I notice that. They had you reviewed with Hüsker Dü, as if to stay this is the punk rock corner.
Mike: That's one thing I don't like about the critics.
Jon: You sort of expect that from Rolling Stone though.
Mike: Here's another example, they had a photographer shoot shots of us and he wanted to do it against the sunset. He gave Rolling Stone the pictures and they said "This is too commercial. Do it in the garage with graffitti." It wasn't commercial. If you looked at us we weren't commercial at all. That's why I don't like their attitude. They tried to ignore this music for years. Siince that didn't work they said "Ok, you can exist but only here". Jon: Rolling Stone has really sold out. You look at the ads and stuff and it's almost like rock for yuppies.
(enter D. Boon)
Mike: Oh D. Talk. Yeah D. Boon!
Jon: Yeah D. you have anything to say?
D.: Uh. Oh gosh.
Jon: What's your favorite color?
D.: Green.
Jon: I always wanted to know what "D." stood for.
Mike: Dennis.
D.: I used to sign these paintings "D. Boon". It started from that.
Mike: D. paints really well. He's an artist. George draws, but D. really paints good. He's done a few of our album covers: "Punch Line", "Politics of Time", the new record. And I don't have any talent.
D." I used to sign it that way and eveybody started calling me that. When we were the Reactionaries we had all these punk rock names like Mike What...
Mike: George picked G Man.
D.: And I stuck with D. Boon becuase it sounded like a funny name.
Mike: We were really into Blue Oyster Cult and it sounded like E. Bloom (of BOC).
Jon: Do you play a lot of colleges?
Mike: Yeah, as much as we can. Like I said that's our potential audience. With younger kids the music and lyrics go right over their head. Like you call it jazz. To us it's not as jazzy, it's more rock.
Jon: That's the whole thing. It brings in all different elements and it's really hard to pinpoint just what it is. It's everything together.
Mike: That's what we try to do. But you know how it is, a kid will hear jazz and it's an immediate turn off.
Jon: A lot of bands like the Paisley bands, and I like quite a few of them, you can detect a direct antecedent whether it's the Jefferson Airplane or whatever.
Mike: That's the easiest way to do it. Since it's already been done all you have to do is get the cop right. Us, we can fail because we're trying things that haven't been done. But in another way we're more free so one one can compare us.
Jon: Getting back to the conservative trend here, I noticed you've been really good about campaigning against Reagan before the election and just speaking your mind politically on stage.
Mike: But that's a dangerous thing again because we wouldn't want no Nazi bands to spout off. It's kind of weird. But it's the way we feel and we don't like to pull punches.
Jon: Do you get any hostile reactions from neo-conservative rockers?
Mike: Yeah, we do get animosity. Some people say, well, you shouldn't say that.
Jon: I think with a lot of kids it's not so much that they're such political reactionaries as it is just being unaware of what's going on. They just say I'd just rather watch television than have to think about political and social issues. They really don't know the difference between conservative and liberal thought.
Mike: They don't. It's ignorance. We're trying to shake them up. The decisions they've made are important ones. They're not as light as they think. Me and D. Boon are aginst posing. This grandpa's got our destiny in his hands. Or the people he's deligated power to.
Jon: Along the same lines as the political rocker, what do you think of Springsteen?
Mike: I like some of the sentiments of his words. But his music is just too pop for me. I can't handle it. But I like the song "Atlantic City" and I sort of like "Born In The USA". That's a biting satire.
Jon: At the Springsteen shows here it was clear that a lot of people interpreted the song as a kind of patriotic anthem.
Mike: They don't really know. It looks like he's pissing on the flag on the cover. I think he wanted to make it ambiguous in that way. After all he works with veteran groups and they've been shit on.
Jon: How do you guys go about writing songs. Like you said it almost sounds like you're jamming in a way.
Mike: One dude brings the riff and plays it for the rest. And the words are added later. There's no choruses so it's almost like a lead guitar.
Jon: Do you guys have a favorite performance. You had that one gig on the boat. What was your favorite?
Mike: I liked that. My favorite though was in Philadelphia. It was crazy. There were about 20 kids on stage singing with us new songs they had never heard before. Whatever they wanted to sing they sang. They thought they knew the words I guess. They were "Double Nickel" and the album wasn't out yet. It's great when you can inspire someone.
Jon: Do you guys all still live in Pedro?
Mike: Yeah, all within 10 blocks of each other.
Jon: Do you guys really seem to like the area...
Mike: Yeah. I was born in Virginia and I moved here when I was nine. I like it because the air's clean. And it's kinda nice because it keeps you insulated so you don't become fashion conscious. But we're still close enough to do gigs in Hollywood.
Jon: Is there much going on there musically?
Mike: No. There is a heavy metal club called the Waters. Yeah, bad news. Heavy Metal is the most marketable rebellion I've ever seen.
Jon: You guys are working for SST now...
Mike: Yeah, me and D. Boon are. I worked for a lawyer until about a month ago. But at SST we do ship and receiving and help the company in whatever way we can. We're workers.
Jon: So you were working for a lawyer...
Mike: I graduated from college too, with a degree in electronics. It's better working for SST because it's more flexable.
Jon: I guess the electronics degree explains why you can handle broken pickups.
Mike: Yeah. It's better than working for a bomb factory like Hughs. Doing that you almost have to sell soul.
Jon: What else have the Minutemen got planned besides the ep?
Mike: Well we've got a live Ep with 4 songs coming out with "Ain't Talking About Love", "Green River", "Red and Black" and "Lost".
Jon: Are you guys big Van Halen fans?
Mike: No.
Jon: You just like the song I guess?
Mike: It's ok. I wouldn't pray to (Van Halen). That's way back in our set. It was kind of a joke. Since so many bands have gone hard rock we thought it would be funny if the Minutemen went hard rock. The other two Steely Dan and Creedence, those are more tributes.
Jon: I guess that about wraps it up.
Mike: No, I think I've just about said it all. Thanks.
(interview by Jon Matsumoto)
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