Monster Magnet's mastermind since 1989, Space Lord Dave Wyndorf has lived and breathed rock’n’roll for virtually every one of his 67 years. Heading back to the UK for a string of live dates in September to celebrate the band’s 35th anniversary, we seized the opportunity for a galactic ramble-chat with this charismatic motormouth, drawing out some salient pointers about creativity, Kurt Cobain and cowskin keks.
DON’T RUSH IT
“I don’t want to release anything that totally sucks – and that’s easy to do these days. The longer you’re in a band, the less your new material matters, because first impressions are strongest. It’s important to do what you want, and not just fill up the slot so you have an excuse to tour. Unless you don’t mind having a ton of shitty albums out, which a lot of people do. All my favourite bands only did, like, four albums – they all broke up pretty early – so I’m in the wilderness here. I never planned to do more than one! Rock’n’roll was not designed to last this long.”
ALL THINGS IN MODERATION
“As much as I like drugs and I did get into alcohol for a time, I never pushed drinking really heavy. For the longest time I had to quit drinking and drugs - well, I didn’t quit drugs – but by the time I was 25 I was done with all that stuff, because I’d done so much of it. Later on when things got crazier for Monster Magnet, I would indulge, and once again I learnt why I quit in the first place. I couldn’t do all the stuff I wanted to do when I was high. I was like, ‘What am I doing?’”
THE CHILDREN ARE THE FUTURE
“Younger bands have more to teach older bands than the other way round, but nobody’s created anything really new in the last 15 years. Nobody’s taking chances for whatever reason. I know I sound like a creep, but Western culture hit a plateau and went into decline. Rock, pop, TV, movies - flatline. Everyone’s still waiting for the next big thing, but what could that be? Probably something you and I don’t recognise at all. It’ll be, like, skinny bald-headed kids piping penny whistles through a computer, and we’ll be like, ‘Yes, that’s it!’ The future of music is not Taylor Swift. That’s just content.”
HOLD ON TO SOME MYSTIQUE
“Everybody’s so self-aware now, and nobody wants to offend anybody. Entertainment in general, because of social media and easy access, is now under the assumption that it’s an automatic duty to give the customer what they want. That’s fine with used cars, but it’s not true of music. Never give everybody what they want. Give ’em what you want!”
CURATE YOUR OWN UNIVERSE…
“You automatically brand yourself with your first couple of albums, and it’s really difficult to break out of that. If you try to reinvent yourself, a lot of people won’t recognise it and will say you’ve betrayed the brand. I totally get it, man, I’ve worked in that tunnel too - I tried to build something that was custom fit for me. I remember when I was going in to do my first record after signing to a major label, saying to somebody, ‘If I was a smart guy, I’d start making this band sound more like Metallica right now.’ But I didn’t know how to do that without embarrassing myself in the short run, so I kept going back to the well of stuff that I enjoyed most: mid-60s garage rock, psych, early proto-metal, and a whole bunch of other weird stuff.”
…BUT DON’T BE AFRAID TO BREAK OUT
“All the best stuff I ever heard took me a while to warm up to. I like to be surprised, and I know everybody’s got it in ’em. It would be great if everyone went totally apeshit and released albums that pissed everyone off, something so totally not them. Because anyone can see the silos we’ve created for music - it doesn’t cross over anymore. Everyone stays in their lane and works in their own little universe. What if everyone changed universes in their minds? What would happen if Lorna Shore did a Taylor Swift album? Not to replicate anything, but to do it with their sound and style. Do you know how insane that would sound?! I’d love to see it, because right now it’s Snoozeville.”
WRITE FOR THE COOLEST BAND YOU CAN IMAGINE
“When I’m writing, I never think in terms of me being in the band. I’m thinking about some other band, my ultimate favourite band - one guy from the Stooges, one from Sabbath, another from Hawkwind… When I start a song, it’s probably based on a weird, inbred memory of all the records I’ve heard, then suddenly the song takes over. The song starts telling you what it should do next; they finish themselves. It’s always a bit magical.”
YOU GOTTA WORK
“In the beginning of Monster Magnet, all the guys were six-to-10 years younger than me. I was in my late 20s and some of them were 18, and they thought they had all the time in the world. They were like, ‘Oh, it’ll happen’ – the stoner grunge attitude. I was like, ‘No, you don’t understand, you’ve gotta work hard.’ I was writing like a maniac, so for the first couple of records I had a backstock, but it kept coming really fast for years after that. It only slowed down after [1998’s] Powertrip. That’s four albums of stuff that had been dancing around in myhead since I was two years old, you know. You vomit out your whole life on your first few records, then you sit there like, ‘I got nothing left!’”
KNOW WHEN TO PUT ON YOUR LEATHER PANTS
“The first records were psychedelic mystery man stuff, but after a while I postured us as a big rock band, somewhere between GN’R and grunge landing. So when that boiled down to Powertrip, there was a decision by me: ‘Enough with the torn jeans: put the leather pants on, man.’ And goddamn if it didn’t work. I was shocked! And it kept working. After a while I was like, ‘Do I have to wear them forever now?!’”
COMMERCIAL PRESSURE SELDOM INSPIRES GREATNESS
“I was a high school drop-out; I had no backup plan. You’re on an album schedule, and you know that’s the difference between you being in the rock world or out of it, so you do that album whether you’re inspired or not. We were always on the verge of being big, so we had to work even harder just to exist. We did some records that I had fun doing but weren’t the most inspired. In retrospect I can say, ‘Yeah, you lost the plot here.’”
ATTITUDE MATTERS
“Kurt Cobain’s death bummed me out. It was the worst day for rock’n’roll I can remember. That was the worst message that you could see go out to kids: ‘Guess what? Rock is great, but it ain’t that great.’ Things got mixed up. The only people then who saw rock’n’roll the way it was originally seen were the hip hop guys. They came from nothing, so they’re gonna celebrate every dollar. Most rock music was middle-class white kids without direction on what’s cool. The old rock’n’roll attitude got replaced with a big wave of DJ culture.”
AI IS COMING FOR ROCK’N’ROLL
“The entire artistic creation of mankind is being sucked into a funnel. I predict bands will start writing with AI and not admitting it. That way you get to make more albums, faster, so you get to stay on the road longer. I’ve played with AI, it’s pretty fucking insane, man. I can tell it I want a Monster Magnet song using elements of [jazz guitarist] Django Reinhardt, and it would come back with something that’s maybe clumsy but it’s not a bad idea. Bands will use it to make their lives easier, and if there’s any artistic compromise I’m sure that’ll be forgotten, depending on how the records are received.”
STAY AROUND FOR THE FUTURE
“I can’t wait to see what happens. I don’t wanna go out thinking everybody just gave up and let the machines do all the cool shit. Also I don’t wanna keel over and the next day it’s like, mankind makes first contact with aliens. ‘He just missed it, man – the flying saucers arrived!’ Imagine if I miss that!”
Monster Magnet's 35th anniversary tour starts in Manchester on September 22.
