Melvins

The core of the Melvins (singer/guitarist King Buzzo and drummer Dale Crover) have been playing together for more than 20 years. They’ve outlived most of their Northwestern peers and have grown more relevant with age. They’ve released 37 albums, are preparing to release their second record this year and King Buzzo says he’s got 10 albums worth of unfinished shit just sitting there. And they’re touring until the end of the year. So…what’s your band been up to?
    Now they’ve joined up with Big Business (singer/bassist Jared Warren and Drummer Coady Willis) to try something new: no easy feat for a band with the Melvins’ longevity. Lefty Willis shares a drum set with righty Crover, creating cavernous rhythms to carry Buzzo and Warren’s remarkable vocal and instrumental interplay. The resulting album, (A) Senile Animal, is as good as anything they’ve ever released. Before a recent show in Chicago, Buzzo commented on what keeps the and going.
 
Why have you survived and developed such a devoted following and cachet with modern bands, while many of the bands you came up with aren’t?
Maybe we were better than those bands. Plus, some of those people are dead…can’t say I’m sorry about that not happening. I don’t know if that’s a plus or a minus. Those bands were way more commercial sounding than us. It’s not like they sound like Throbbing Gristle.

Why do you think you ended up with such devotion from the metal scene?
What does “modern metal” mean, you know? Take us to Ozzfest and it’s not going to work…we couldn’t open for Korn. I mean, we didn’t set out to do that. I guess it’s where we ended up. I don’t feel comfortable about genres. I don’t feel like we have any brother or sister bands, thankfully. If we did, I’d probably have to do something about that. Something different.

How’d you end up working with Big Business?
We canned our last bass player, and Dale and I decided we wanted to do something that was different. So we thought about it for a while. We didn’t want to do what we’d done before…just get another guy. So we went another direction. We’d played with Big Biz before, and it lined up great. They were just bass and drum.

You’ve put out a lot of records and they’re consistently good. How do you stay so prolific?
It’s not that hard, really. Most people work 40 hours a week. If you spent three hours a week writing songs, even though you’re working far less than most people do, you’d be way ahead of the curve.

So it’s about work ethic?
Well, probably. I spend a lot of time doing [it]. Maybe not all of it’s good, but it’s there at least. Don’t trust bands that say they’re overworked. It’s not true. They’re lying. Talk to some people who really work for a living — coal miners, loggers — they’ll tell you what we do isn’t really shit. Whenever it says someone [in music] dropped from exhaustion, that means drugs and alcohol. It’s not that tiring. Despite what you might have been led to believe. It’s not that hard to do this.

Do you eat something special to stay so durable?
I’m an omnivore. It’s the way our heads are designed. We have three-dimensional vision, unlike plant eaters. So we can look for animals with eyes on the sides of their heads and eat them. I mean, we don’t have an owner’s manual when we’re born, and now we’re living longer than we ever have before. I think that’s a good thing; I’m into it. Regardless of what happens to anyone else. The quality of life is better now than it’s ever been in the past. We can’t really bitch. What would our biggest problem be? Life is beautiful and the streets are paved in gold through most of the world. Things aren’t perfect, but they’re more perfect than they’ve ever been. We haven’t had a world war in how long? We haven’t had a war in Europe for the longest time ever.

How have you and Dale coexisted for so long?
We still get along pretty well and like what we’re doing. And believe in it. We always say, “Has it only been 23 years?”

How would you describe what you do?
Super-cool, all-American and classy.



Is it weird playing with people so young?
Yeah, I’m sick of catching them smoking pot in the bathroom. Driving me crazy…they keep wanting to borrow my car and they bring it back with no gas in it. Most people quit playing music when they’re 35. I’ll at least keep doing until the end of this tour. I mean, I’m sort of committed, but who knows how long I’ll keep it up. Until I don’t want to do it anymore. 

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