SUICIDAL TENDENCIES
Greg C interviewed Mike Muir, the singer of Suicidal Tendencies on, 3/27/85 before their set at the Ritz in New York City:G: Are Suicidal Tendencies on a nationwide or a worldwide tour?
M: Well, pretty much just the East Coast and then Canada, Chicago, Minneapolis, that's as far as we get. We're doing like 40 shows in 45 days.
G: That's pretty ambitious! Do you guys have any new recordings in the works?
M: Yes and no. But right now we've started a demo, and when we go back, when we finish the tour, back home we're gonna finish the demo and we're gonna shop it around and hope we get a label. We have all this new material and stuff, we got a lot of new material.
G: What label are you hoping to get on?
M: We're trying to get on a major.
G: Any label in particular?
M: Well, the whole thing with the band is like the music we play we like it a lot you know, I like it and I think it's good. The whole thing is we want to have as many people as possible be able to hear it. It's not any label in particular, we just want to have the album available so if someone wants to get it they can, and secondly, a label that will be able to promote it where they'll have the opportunity to hear it so they can make the decision whether they want it or not. So that's the whole thing. Where as like Lisa, well, Frontier Records, that's one of the best independents and stuff, with her she's still back ordered and the albums been out almost 2 years and she still can't get 'em out there and I mean there's people who still can't get the record and stuff. There's a lot of people who've just recently been exposed to it and still there's a lot of other people who've never even heard it. Where as if you were on a major anyone that wanted it, you know, it's in all the major stores so if they go there and they ask for it they can get it. And then we can have the promotion where people have the opportunity to hear it so they can make that judgement-decision whether they like it or not. So that's the whole thing, I mean we like what we're doing, we think it's good so we're planning for people to hear us.
G: Do you think originally your audience was a little limited because of the hardcore name tag? I mean now with the recent crossover of metal and hardcore bands such as Slayer and Metallica, do you feel this will help your sales? Let's face it, you guys definitely have a metal edge.
M: Well we have a big metal following and actually, we've sold more records then the bands you've mentioned. I think the speed-metal thing, talking about that, I think it's gonna be the next kind of "big thing", you can watch it rising from Slayer. They're in our video and stuff and those guys are great. With the speed metal thing it's new and people are into it. Like now punk has been around so long, there's so many different cliques. And you hear everyone's a poseur and stuff and even to a sense it's starting to get that way with the speed-metal thing but it's new and its taken basically what we thought were the best elements like the power of punk and the more skill of heavy metal and stuff. What we're doing is a little bit different, but then again, it fits right along with the lines and stuff and I see it's going to be able to go a lot further and stuff, the people are a little more into it. Especially now that hardcore is supposedly dead? I'll say yeah! Well it's not so much that it's the whole thing is that it says "metal" on it and metal is a good name and "punk" or "hardcore" is a bad name. So a lot of the music is very similar, I mean like Hellhammer or something, or Celtic Frost as they're called now, I think they're the worst band period. The whole thing is they're "metal" though and I mean they sound worse than the punk bands do. Then again, the bottom of the punk bands are just totally disgusting too, and you can get really cruel on everything. But they've got the Metallica's, the Anthrax's and all of the Slayer and stuff like that.
G: Do you have any musical influences or favorite bands?
M: Well we just, you know, we like the music we play and stuff but we're just trying to play stuff that's good in our opinion. We're just the judge and jury, it's either good or it's not. If it's not good we don't do it, if we think it's good we play it and then it's to the next point where I write the lyrics and we put lyrics to it. When we write songs it's like "yeah" or it's "no". It's not like "well, let's work on it" it's not like that it's either there's something there or there's nothing there at all.
G: Are you going to be doing a lot of your new stuff in your set now?
M: Yeah, we do like half and half. We have a lot of new stuff that we haven't even started playing because we have so much new stuff, it's just that at this point we're just waiting to get the next album out, and then we'll start doing the other stuff.
G: You have that much material backlogged already?
M: Yeah.
G: Do you write any of your material, on the road?
M: No! We don't have no time.
G: Yeah, I was gonna say 40 dates in 45 days. Are you guys flying to these shows?
M: Flying on wheels! We went from Knoxville to Tampa, then south to Miami, then Miami back to Atlanta, those are like 16 hour drives so it's like we play, load it up and we're out of there. And we get there in time for sound check.
G: Pretty ambitious, huh?
M: I don't know about ambitious.
G: How did you get involved in doing the video for "Institutionalized"? How did that come about?
M: Well, this is the short answer, is one, as far as the song, every place that it got played was like on the commercial stations it was one of their most requested songs. The thing I guess about the song is one you can listen to the radio and turn on the rock station and you play it and they'll go from one song to another, to DJ talking, to another song, and you can be back washing dishes, it just doesn't do anything, you know, and the thing is when that song comes on you just stop and you sit there and it does something. The whole thing is like with videos too, on the other aspect you watch MTV, and it's like you see this video and they're talking about one thing and them they're flying over World War II in Germany or it's something totally different and you're going "How does this fit?" The two things, one, the song, it's like the story was basically written and we just thought it was perfect for video, just follow it, and two, we go everywhere that its been played, its been one of the most requested songs and it's done real good so let's give it another chance for people to have the chance to see it because we think it'll do good it they have the opportunity to hear it so we saved up our money and did all that stuff.
G: What kind of production dollars went into the video?
M: A lot more than I have. The whole thing is, like I said, we like what we're doing and we think it's good and we have a lot of confidence too. So we just said "Hey", you know, we saved up all of our money and it was just a thing where as, you know, we just go "Let's do a video." We're very goal oriented, so that was our goal and so we saved all our money and we put it in and we were fortunate enough that the people like Mary Wernoff, she's the principal in Rock and Roll High School, and starred in the leading role and stuff, and the father was the guy in Eraserhead. And they all just donated their time, and we got a lot of people who simply, you know it was funny because the way we got these people to do things. Where simply we played the song and said we're gonna do a video for this song and the people literally, they get $l00.00 or $200.00 a day and stuff and they just said "I'll do it," you know, just because of the song. Which is fortunate for us. But still it's a lot of money. We got a lot of things that people really helped us out simply because of the song.
G: Any future videos planned?
M: Not for the album we have out right now but when we get the new one out we'll probably do quite a few.
G: How did "Institutionalized" come about? Is that a true story about yourself, or is it a satire on family life?
M: Yeah, it's both. It happened to me and then again it happened to you it's the same thing, I mean everything happened to someone you know, some of the stuff actually happened to me, some happened to my friend, then it happened to everyone. With that song there's literally a thousand people there, I mean, that's my story when I heard it I felt that was me, and to this day it's really weird, 'cause people identify with it and I sit there and what do I say? You know?
G: Do you guys get sick of that song?
M: I don't. The one thing, the only bad thing is that one, I used to have a lot of adlib, you know, it wasn't written you know, we went into the studio and did it kind of thing.
G: Just the chorus was written?
M: Yeah, and musically it's the same, but as far as lyrics and, you know, we've done things where people have like tapes, one time in Philadelphia, the first time we we're on tour we did this one and it just went off and it was like weird, people had copies of it and they would go "Wow, that's like the greatest thing I've ever heard." And now it's like people, you know, cause of the video and the air-play, I have to follow it and stuff where as before I could say what I felt, which is what I did at the time and now I'm more restricted and I kind of have to follow it 'cause that's what they want to hear. So that's the one sad thing about it.
G: How many copies have you sold of that album?
M: A lot. Well the thing with record sales is you ask somebody and everyone lies. The whole thing is I learned that there's this one band, I won't mention any names, but they're from L.A. and they go "How many records have you guys sold?" And at the same time there's two people in the band, one goes 5,000 and the other says 10,000, you know, and then they are looking at each other and everyone lies. We sold more than any other band ever on Frontier Records. The whole thing is everyone lies, it's inflated, if you told the truth it would seem bad, it would be impressive in a way, but everyone lies. I mean there was these bands that say they sold more then we had and I'm just going "Pffft, c'mon." I mean, what does it really matter? I mean, Michael Jackson sold how many records, it doesn't mean anything. I mean, to us it's flattering, if you're in the industry you know how many things have honestly sold. That's the thing, its done real good and I mean Lisa, the whole thing is it's been out almost two years and she's still back ordered and in a way that's great too because when our album first came out as far as initial copies it was the worst that she's ever done with an album.
G: It wouldn't move?
M: Not at all when it first came out and the whole thing is every month it sold more and more and more. Usually with records, the initial order goes and it just goes down. With ours it's just been, still to this day, is selling more than it has.
G: How long were you guys together before you recorded?
M: About four months. Even before we went into the studio, you know we've always been a goal-oriented band, and we came to a point where we thought we were ready to do an album and we were actually going to do it on another label. When we practiced we knew the order of the songs that were going to be on the album and we just went through it, right straight down on the album. We were doing that for two months before we even went into the studio. Consequently, when we went into the studio we went through it and we did it in one day and that's the one thing that really impresses people because they will go "Oh yeah, they spent all this time in the studio," all these bands. When you hear their production it's terrible and we did ours in one day and these people try to say "they spent three weeks in the studio" and we did it in one day. We went in one night and we were out in the morning.
G: That's the way it should be. You should have everything tight so you don't have to spend a fortune in the studio.
M: I mean yeah. We do what we want to do and that's the whole thing with everything, that's like with the video, that was our goal so we worked on it. Now we're doing this tour and it's important to us and we're working on this, when we get back we have the demo we want to finish. Everything is like a process. We have goals and we work on them.
G: How many songs will be on that new demo tape?
M: Well, we're doing five songs on the demo. But we're also going to record a lot of the new ones and stuff, but as far as the demo it's just going to be five. We actually did it. I just have to do the vocals and then the mix. We're going to do that and then get the next album out.
G: Here comes the question you've probably been tortured with most in your two year history. What's with the Suicide Boys and the gang violence that's been associated with Suicidal Tendencies? M: The simple answer is, you see five people and they have got mohawks and leather jackets, they're individuals. You see five people with Pendletons (flannel shirts), khakis and bandanas and they're gang members, you know? When we started off there was a lot of people, the funny thing is we get put down being I guess the creative or whatever, because when it first started out everyone like, if they're a new band, "oh the scene is dead, there's nowhere to play," this and that stuff, but when a big band comes there's a lot of people there. So why is some club gonna say, "Hey, oh you guys started a band? Come and play in our club." So we did cause we thought we were good. Then we rented out halls and we put on our own shows. Basically, the following, where we came from it's a minority, lower-income place so you got the people with the hand-drawn shirts like on the album cover and stuff and mostly minorities and stuff. So we went out and put on shows and we got a big following. So a couple of people started going to shows and people were going "who are these people?" And they look so they stuck out, they were different. So they go, "Yeah, they got a real big following, we'll put them on opening up the show." So we opened up the show with five bands, we brought in more than the other bands put together. We did it again — same thing. So we went from opening up to headlining. Now when we hear a band that's been about for three months and there's these bands that've been bands for four years and they're going, "Yeah, you got a show opening up for Suicidal Tendencies." They say, "What?! Suicidal Tendencies! Those guys! Fuckin' wetbacks!" That is the biggest thing, the fact is though, we bring in more people. We got a big draw 'cause we earned it and stuff and that was one of the things people were upset because we straight out worked and got a following and it hurt their feelings. They'd been playing the same stuff doing the exact same thing for two or three years and we'd just come out and we'd had a big following and we'd draw more people. Well as far as I am concerned, if there's a band that draws more than us, they should play above us. It's not like how long you've put in time or nothing, seniority has nothing to do with it. If I'm a boss and there's somebody who can do a job better, I'm gonna have him do it better whether he's 20 or 30, you know, it doesn't have anything to do with it. The other thing is in L.A. you do a show and you've got 16-18 year old white kids from the Valley, upper-middle class, and you go to our shows and then you see black people. You don't see no black people at regular shows, you don't see no Mexicans at regular shows, you don't see any minorities and stuff. You go to our shows and it's mostly minorities.
G: Out of curiosity, how old are you guys?
M: Between 19 and 22.
G: What do you think of the current hardcore situation?
M: (Laughs.) What situation? Straight out it's like I feel wherever we play I want people to go there because Suicidal Tendencies is playing. There's like these people going, "Support your scene," this and that, what good does it make for someone to come down here because, "Oh, there's a punk band I playing," or "There's a hardcore band playing, I have to go, I have to support my scene." Who are they? "I don't know but they're a punk band so I have to support my scene." What good does that do, you know? Really, what good are you doing, I don't understand that, you know? The whole thing is if there's a band you like you go, if you don't like us don't come. I mean, I can understand someone not liking us, it's logical, there's a lot of bands I don't like, but you should come there to have a good time. Not because "there's three shows this week, boy, I'm really putting out, I've gotta support my scene." This ain't a job, the whole thing is music should be something where people can get away and have a good time and fun, and if they have fun with us — great, I'm glad, it's flattering. If they don't, they stay at home and watch reruns of Gilligan's Island.
G: Earlier, I asked you what some of your influences or favorite bands are and we kind of got away from that question. Who do you like?
M: We listen to different things, everything from Stanley Jordan, he plays 10 finger guitar, to Anthrax, Slayer, stuff like that. And also Emerson, Lake and Palmer. There's a lot of things, even with the old 70's stuff that, I mean, progressive bands, musician-wise are really good. You should listen to it 'cause you enjoy it. We listen to a lot of stuff.
At this point we had to end the interview because Mike Muir had a sore throat and was beginning to have a tough time talking.
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