SUICIDAL TENDENCIES
from Flipside #36, December 1982
MIKE MUIR, the lead singer for Suicidal Tendancies was interviewed over the phone by Al on Nov. 18, 1982.
Suicidal Tendancies are a very notorious and very popular band - but they've had a lot of bad shit happen to them. The Penthouse article is the big one, but it seems like every time something happens the name 'Suicidal Tendances' comes up. Here's what Mike had to say about that stuff and other things:
Al: How long has ST been together?
Mike: I guess about 2 years, but it's been in different stages with a lot of different people. A lot of times we were a band in a sense but we weren't playing because, like one time our bass player got his finger cut at work and had is finger in a cast and couldn't play for a month or so, and our old guitar player got in a fight and got hit with a bat and got a concussion - his head was all split open and his wrist was messed up so we couldn't play for a couple of more months and then we would switch people and stuff. So there was like 6 months that we didn't even play but like twice.
Al: You just went thru another change.
Mike: Yeah, we just got it all straightened out. We thought we had some people but they didn't work out. The band now is Louie, he plays bass, our drummer's name is Amory and our guitar player is Rick.
Al: What was that deal with you guys signing with Capitol Records?
Mike: Yeah this dude that worked at Capitol, but that's a thing in the past, that was before we split up. The thing was he wanted us to get a new bass player, but the bass player happened to be my friend and I didn't want to do it 0 so we got in an argument with the band and we split our separate ways and we got a new guitar player and drummer. Plus to do the record we'd have to partially go commercial pretty much - the emphasis of the album would be a different style of music and it was nothing I wanted to venture to.
Al: Sounds like a sell out deal...
Mike: That's what it is but I didn't want to say sell out, it was a good opportunity but, I'm 19, I'm young, I can repret it later but might as well have fun while I am young and do what I like.
Al: Who named your band?
Mike: I did. A couple of people used to to think I was pretty crazy and they'd say "Yeah you're gonna get killed, you're killing yourself," so, well Suicidal Tendancies man.
Al: All this shit goes around about the "Suicidal Tendancies Gang"...
Mike: I don't know anything about no gang you would have to cite instances...
Al: Well like this weekend where someone got a guitar stolen and it was blamed on Suicidal Tendancies.
Mike: Yeah, Glen told me about that one. No, that was the Music Machine up to their little things again because they've decided we're good scapegoats. Like the last time they said at a Circle Jerks show that a memver of ST was mad at them because they wanted to play a show with them and hit one of them with a bottle. Some ridiculous story like that. They won't let anybody in the Music Machine tat has ST shirts on. (Lots of details about the Music Machine using ST as scapegoats.) I'm basically tired of this stuff and if I have to I'll play the law game and call up and tell the police that that place has the back door fire escape locked, I'm tired of getting fucked around.
Al: You have quite a few fans in the Santa Monica, West L.A. area.
Mike: Yeah. We play a lot areound here and the family name's known pretty good so people know about us - when people know the band is local they are more likely to give it a chance.
Al: What did you think about that Penthouse article?
Mike: It was pretty good from a fictional point of view, it was interesting but it was all lies. The magazine isn't out there for articles, so the articles they have they have to make interesting. The stuff I supposedly said I didn't even say, it goes right back to like that National Enquirer... and a lot of the stuff he had other people saying, I said. I was pretty funny. This guy when he first came up to me, I agreed to do it but I didn't get paid or anything, nothing I could appreciate, when it came out it did make me look pretty bad. It was a farce. That guy went to one show and tried to be an authority. If I was reading it I'd be scared and make my kids stay at home. That was my first experience with the press, otherwise I wouldn't have done it... it came out like over a year after that guy talked to me 0 he only came over with a little notepad so he couldn't really quote me verbatum anyhow...
(Talk about more crap like punk on CHiPs and Donahue. Then more about ST rumors...)
Mike: We played one party and these guys I knew came just to party and they ended up getting drunk and offended some people so they chased them down the alley and I guess the guy got beat up pretty bad or something and the rumors started how he died, then it was in the paper and stuff. You know how it starts off, "someone got killed" then it's "the gang fight where 7 people got killed" - they have some really weird stories going. I've died like three times now. We got shot at in a park we used to hang out at one night... the only problems we have up here is people think it's a gang and stuff but that's pretty funny, that was the same thing when we had like the Mercenaries... people like to tell stories and they like to add it up.
Al: What are some of your songs about?
Mike: Well, I used to work at the Times delivering the papers in the morning, so I used to get up at 2 in the morning and it was like you had to do something to keep your sainity, so I'd get these weird ideas in my head. So our first songs are like, uh, "Incinerate me, I'm a Jew", "Parents for Adoption" and all these things like that which had no meaning, just weird stuff. Now they're more political I guess, just saying how I feel. Not preaching in the sense of the Dead Kennedys because I don't appreciate when people exploit the fact that they're in a band, people like the music and they get up there and tell you you're studip and stuff. Or say this is the way you should be, if you have opinions that's nice, you have the right to express you opinion. My songs express, like we have this song "Two Sided Politics" and it deals with the hypocricies of the world like if you kill someone in a war you're a hero but then like if something happens - like right now I have these charges against me for fighting with these Iranians cause they were fucking with my friend... We have this other song that goes "I'm not anti-society, society is anti-me," they are the ones that are prejudiced against me, like those people on the Donahue show, I don't got nothing against those people, I don't think the world is the greatest but I have nothing against them, they are the ones that are prejudiced against me. They're the ones that think I should be locked up becauuse they can't understand the way I look. I just take the attitude on the world that I just laugh at everything - people don't like it when you're happy, they get upset when you're happy. When people call me up and tell me I'm gonna die, I just go, "Yeah, and you have a nice day too."
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