Butthole Surfers: The Weird History Of The Band Behind "Pepper" & "Who Was In My Room Last Night"
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- Опубліковано 5 жов 2020
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Today we take a look at the band Butthole Surfers.
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Today we’re talking about one of the weirdest
acts in Rock N’ Roll - the Butthole Surfers
and I've had a few people ask me to do this
topic and today we are finally going to tackle
it.
The Butthole Surfers started out as a drug-fueled
post-punk band from Texas. After all they
really had nothing to lose to lose. They were
like the bradley cooper of rock n’ roll.
What do I mean? Well they both found major
success much later on in their career.
Their live shows were an assault on the senses
- rumored on-stage sexual antics and disturbing
images projecting above the stage were all
standard. There was also an instance when
full-frontal nudity happened at an all-ages
show. Bassist Jeff Pinkus would tell Classic
Rock Magazine “I think we inspired other
people to be more debauched,”
In an interview with Kerrang online, Guitarist
Paul Leary talked about how frontman Gibby
Haynes went on a bender onstage in Rotterdam
in the Netherlands at a show where the Cult
had just played - he ended up in a dress and
threw chairs at the audience. Ironically though,
this was when the band really started to take
off in Europe! Leary couldn’t take all the
sound equipment back himself so he hid it
under the bushes overnight. At a February
1986 show in New York’s the band used “piss
wands” which were - plastic baseball bats
filled with, well you know, that were waved
around the crowd.
From the get go the band was single minded
in their mission. They wanted to do something
other bands hadn’t with guitarist Paul Leary
explaining to Classic Rock “We’d asked
ourselves what we wanted to see from a rock
band, something that nobody else was doing,”.
“We were influenced by psychedelic bands
so we wanted strobes. Soon we had shotguns,
walls of strobe lights and movies showing
penis reconstruction. It just seemed like
a kick in the ass to do. It helped that there
was no message we were trying to convey. It
was all kinda nihilistic.”
Their onstage behavior soon crossed over to
offstage antics. Leary would explain “It
was just a party every night,” “Gibby
was definitely our ringleader. We would go
into a new town every day, raise as much hell
as we wanted, get to drink beer for free,
act like lunatics, make a big mess and then
move on to the next town" he'd remember
One of their most ridiculous offstage antics
was touching their, uh hmmm, manhood to a
briefcase used by President Jimmy Carter.
And for a band that could be so visceral, they
were actually inspired by some pretty intellectual
philosophies.
Dadism also known as the art of the absurd) and
Fredrick Nietzche’s Nihilism both influenced the group.
Frontman Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary formed
The Butthole Surfers in 1981 in San Antonio,
Texas. Ironically, the band members had pretty
wholesome backgrounds. Hayne’s father hosted
a children’s program in Dallas called Mr.
Peppermint and Leary’s father was the business
school Dean at Trinity College in Dallas.
They were influenced by punk rock bands like
Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys,
In what should have been a clue for what lay
ahead the pair created a humorous magazine
called Strange V.D., which looked at bizarre
medical problems. Haynes was working at an
accounting firm at the time when he was fired
when his superiors after they found pages from the magazine
in the company printer. And it didn’t really
matter since the Butthole Surfers had already
formed. Leary would paint a funny picture
of what the band’s early rehearsals looked
like saying
“We’d go over to our drummer’s house
in the evening and start rehearsing,. “Gibby
would usually get off work late at the accountancy
firm, stumble into practice in his suit and
tie, and immediately start stripping down
to his boxer shorts while we were playing.
That’s how it got incorporated into our
live show. We’d play until the police came
and turned the power off."
The early to mid eighties were formative years
for the band. In San Francisco in 1981, the
Surfers met the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra
, who signed them to his Alternative
Tentacles label. King Coffey and Teresa Nervosa
joined the band as percussionists in 1983.
Jeff Pinkus joined in 1986 as bassist.
There was no one label to fit the band’s
music. The band blended elements of punk, metal,
psychedelic rock and just strange noises.
Fun fact- Paul Leary produced Sublime's self titled breakout album. Also I used to sell weed to him.
Pepper came out when I was in high school and I remember thinking at the time, "Man, this band is strange!" Little did I know then that THAT was their LEAST strange song!
My first concert was Nirvana, and Butthole surfers opened for them. I think I was 14 years old...kind of blew my mind.
'Debauched' spelled as 'debotched' honestly made my day.
Debauched, not debotched.
Butthole Surfers were unique. They were not just another juvenile, ADD, violent, nihilistic neighborhood act. They were strange, intelligent, sobering, and excellent exploratory musicians of sounds and melody mixed with mixed media performances often using crude or out-moded technology of the day. Imo, Butthole Surfers were the preeminent alternative punk-psych band of the 1980's to mid-90's and one of the scariest, most unpredictable live acts during this time.
The first Surfers album I'd ever heard was Rembrandt Pussyhorse via a cassette a friend sent me in the mail. I lived in a small town in Wisconsin and she lived in Minneapolis. Every few months she'd send me tapes of stuff I'd never heard before...Meat Puppets, Replacements, Husker Du. She was a really cool chick.
I only saw them once, at Lollapalooza '91. During Siouxsie and the Banshee's set, Gibby came out on stage in a dress and fired off a shotgun. Siouxsie seemed to think it was hilarious. In fact I heard they really got along backstage. She also got along with Ice-T. Go figure.
Huge props to this band for managing to still be a popular band with "butthole" in their name during a time when Beavis and Butthead were also insanely popular.
These go to 11.
Danny Divito was guest star on Letterman, the night the Surfers played. During his interview he mentioned seeing the band do their sound check/rehearsal.
"May I see your driver's license and registration?"
The Surfers combined LSD, avant-garde, & Punk! In ‘91 they changed my 16 year old life with “ Hairway To Steven “ (A Masterpiece!) Their music showed me anything was possible in music. PLAY LOUD!
I live in Australia, and nearly 30 years ago flew to Toronto, Canada, to visit my cousin and his family who I'd never met before in person. My cousin Arthur was a kool guy and we really got along. A few weeks into my stay, he asked if I wanted to come on a road trip for the weekend to visit the University where he was studying, and I agreed. An hour or two from Toronto, there was a small town whose name slips my mind, where his University was situated. I'd never seen a place like it before or since, in that it was a small town with two large Universities independent of each other. There was a friendly rivalry between them academically and most famously between their Football teams, that culminated after exams at the end of the academic year in an inter-university football game which heralded the end of year post-exams and graduation celebrations that went on day & night over a three day extended weekend. The town had one long & large main street lined with town houses, terraces, and all kinds of accommodations that were rented out exclusively for students to live in, with parties going on in every one. The entire town, it's residential buildings & houses, and all of it's businesses were basically set up to host, house, & service the needs of the students at both campuses. If you lived there, you were either a student, or a resident employed in one of the many businesses providing the products & services for the students, who represented virtually their entire customer base. There were a few hotels & motels that provided some accommodation for visitors, but even most of their customers were persons visiting friends & family studying in the town.
When I was in 7th grade this was around 86, an older girl on the bus took a liking to me and gave me a couple of their cassettes along with some other stuff. Before that I was a Statler Brothers and Bocephus man. That changed my trajectory forever. I still know the girl and still love the Statler brothers.
Cherub is one of the best psychedelic tunes ever.
Back in the day, I saw Les Paul on the Dennis Miller show, & when Miller asked Paul which guitarists he liked, he said "I can't say the name of the band he's in on television, but the guitarist is Paul Leary."
I’m so glad that Dan Mintz has time to make these videos when he’s not busy voicing Tina for Bob’s Burgers.
"Two sinister looking clowns" aka two clowns
The story behind the recording of Jesus Built My Hotrod is pure Gibby Haynes. If Uncle Al says you're wasted.....