INTERVIEW: MONSTER MAGNET

It’s a Jersey thing! Seriously. The amount of words exchanged during a twenty minute phone interview bordered on the absurd, but seemed normal to two Jersey cats talking about everything from music to being badass. Monster Magnet has taken their super trippy psychedelic sound from a small town in Jersey to absolute world domination developing a cult following along their twenty year journey. It’s a path dotted in line-up changes, record label swaps, an overdose, and varying levels of success. Resilience and a fan base wrapped around an unmatched vibe and sound allows Monster Magnet to crank out dark and sexy albums dripping in stoner rock with an ability to creep into your subconscious like a twisted nursery rhyme. Last Patrol due out October 15^th seems to be the epitome of original MM and an excited Dave Wyndorf spoke to RockRevolt Magazine about the new release, the current state of music, and why people from Jersey rock so hard.

Hey Dave, I’m calling from RockRevolt™ Magazine. How are you?

Hey what’s happening? Very good!

I’m an east coast senior journalist for RockRevolt™ Magazine and I’m calling you from Toms River, NJ! I’m kind of a part of the local Jersey music scene just like you. It’s a pleasure to get to chat with you a bit. I’ve met you guys a few times and I’m friendly with some of you so it’s a pleasure to be able to talk a bit about the new release and all the good things Monster Magnet has coming up. Let’s talk about the highly anticipated new album Last Patrol with a scheduled drop date of October 15, 2013. Your writing is sometimes like Shakespeare on acid trapped between the pages of a super trippy sci-fi graphic novel. Your words envelope the listener as a full body experience and I’m wondering if you hear the melody first and then write over it or if the words come first?

Usually it’s melody first but with a couple of words in mind, you know? There will be a word that will prompt a melody. There’s always stuff kind of floating around in my head! It’s like where and how is all this cool stuff going to fit together? It’s kind of like when you’re a little kid and you have all your cool shit in your room and you’re looking around and you’re like, “What would happen if I put G. I. Joe up against Barbie and they were holding a pentagram or something. That’d be fucking cool!” That’s the way it kind of goes.

I love that!

So melody is huge but visual evocation is huge as well. So, there has to be a word that triggers the sound.

Is it hard to sometimes capture all the words that are floating around in your head or do you have a pretty streamlined approach? Can you sit down and really focus or are you like me and always have a pen and paper with you and your jotting down things at a traffic light when they come to you?

It’s all different kinds of ways. I always try to get the perfect way and after all these years I wish I could tell you, “I’ve got it!” but you never have it. The best thing is pen and paper and you just jot down a couple of things. But you know the one thing I’ve noticed is that the stuff that’s important to you and important to people never really leaves their head. When you finally do sit down and try to focus, which is hard sometimes because you want it to be good and a lot of times I avoid doing it because I want it to be good and therefore I have to put myself to work which is not something I like to do, (work! laughs) but the important stuff tends to boil up. It tends to come out. If you really really push on it your brain just squeezes it out. The stuff that’s important, important to you anyway, will come out. You can’t hide it. And more and more as I go on I just deal with the stuff that seems immediate to me rather than going right to fantasy. It’s like, I don’t need fantasy. I get great fantasy from comic books and books, and what I need to do is get rid of my demons. But I’ve read so much fantasy throughout my life that the words and descriptions and the vernacular of science fiction and comic books is a really good way for me to describe my emotions.

Do you find music is also a good vehicle for escapism such as graphic novels and comics, and writing and literature, in general. I tend to find that if I need to get lost in something I turn to music or literature. Is your music a vehicle for your fans to escape and get lost in the song?

Yea, I mean it always was to me meaning that I could go into this vibe, for lack of a better description. That’s what I like about music and about really really good comics and movies. There are certain movies, comics, and music that have a vibe. It’s not exactly totally spelled out what it is so it makes you lean into it going, “What’s this”. You get pulled into it. It’s not telling you exactly what it is but its leaving a little bit up to your imagination. So, I would call that, what would I call that? Hmm. Responsible escapism! Not so easy that it’s like “Hey escapism! I’m going to give you a fucking script to the movie!” There’s not a challenge to watching the Marvel movies, but there’s a challenge to reading some of the comic books. That’s what I like about some music also.

It’s thought provoking and that’s what I like about your music. So, let’s go back to the process. When does the rest of the band get involved in writing the album? Do you bring it to them and they lay over it or do you come to them with a finished product?

I come to them with a sketch. Like, if I was going to speak like a comic book artist I would come to them with a sketch of the whole story and would have the whole script written to be determined later after the part is rendered (laughs) So, I’ll have the music sketched out and the drums, bass, guitar, melody line, and go, “Okay this is what I got.” I’ll go through it with each player and the part that they’re going to play saying things like “this is what I thought about this and this is what I thought that. This is where the excitement should happen and this is where is should lay off.” Then, those guys do what they do in their own style. I usually look at it and go, “Oh! That’s even better than I thought!” I’m like a movie director or writer who takes it to the actors and says, “You came up with something really cool too. Let’s go with that!”

So you’re in control of the theoretical construct of the song and album and then you bring it to them to conceptually piece it together.

Absolutely! Absolutely right. And those guys play really well! I can’t play for shit. So, I mean, I can talk a good game but I could never play this stuff!

No. Don’t undersell yourself, man. How’s the chemistry of this incarnation of Monster Magnet and does the talent is this group give you the confidence that they can not only envision your direction but also run with it?

Totally. Totally! I mean, all this stuff would just be like a drain in my head if I couldn’t put it down on tape or whatever (if I couldn’t record it.) So, talent is really important. And these guys are talented. I tend to use so many references from obscure times in music that are long forgotten. It’s not classic rock radio that I’m referring too. It’s not like, “Let’s do this like Hendrix” it’s more like, “Let’s do this like some weird band that had some weird album in 1971.”

Awesome! Those ‘one-offs’ are sometimes the best. They may never get their name in lights but they’re good to pull from and reference.

No, they don’t but that was an incredible time in music. And I think people are actually going back to it now. Kids today are like, “What the fuck was going on between ’71 and ’73!” I have a huge love for all different kinds of music and I can easily go, “Let’s make this sound like early Pink Floyd or this is sort of a Tori Amos thing from the late ’80s.” And they’ll look at me like I’m out of my mind but what they don’t understand I’ll explain to them and then they’ll interpret it in their own way. Then, we’re off to the races!

How conscious are you of the order of the songs on an album? So, for Last Patrol were you aware of how the songs appear on the album and what comes before what and what follows what?

Oh yea. Sequence is everything to me. I still tend to think in terms of long player. I tend to think in terms of the album experience as opposed to all the hits up front. I’ve done it both ways, but I really like an album experience. I really like to try and make the sequence of an album lead somewhere.

I think, when you think in terms of a comic book, you need something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It needs to have that ebb and flow. Music should take you on a journey from start to finish.

Exactly. This was more important on this one than the last one. On the last one, I got into the ‘hits up front routine’ because I didn’t feel I had a variety of songs to actually tell a story. So I put almost a rock and roll set together which was okay. Here’s a rocker and here’s another rocker and then it sort of pisses off at the end. Hopefully it didn’t piss off too much! But with this one I was not going to get into that situation again. I was going to keep editing songs from this collection until this thing sounds like a journey. I don’t care if it has to be two songs. We actually threw a lot of songs out. I think I actually wrote like 16 songs all for the record but it only came out with 9 because those songs worked as a piece.

Do you plan on recycling the songs that didn’t make this record somewhere else or once they don’t make the cut have they taken their last breath?

Oh no. Nothing ever dies baby! If it’s good, it may not be good for this but it may be good for something else. Never let it be said I’ve ever thrown a riff away! They all stay in some bucket somewhere. And you run out of time making records. It’s terrifying! What do we got! Look in the bucket!

I know you’ve got more than a few ‘chudders’ in the band, so can you talk about the equipment that was played on Last Patrol?

Chudders! Yea. We’re just into gear. For one thing I love all modern equipment. I think all modern recording equipment is like some of the best ever. The computers and stuff are fantastic! But tonalize though, for my purposes, I can’t seem to climb out of a certain era. I think there was a golden age of electric instruments and it was probably around the mid ’60 late ’60s and that’s sort of the stuff I go with. Vintage guitars, well they’re called vintage now but I just call them old. Old guitars! Call them ‘vintage’ and you can charge more for them. So, yea old Gibsons, old Fenders, Gretsch guitars. Amps! Little amps not big ones; smaller ones. Stuff that has a lot of character to them. They may not be as loud as modern amps but they have a tone. And when you’re recording, nobody knows how big the amp is.

I like that you said they have a character to them because they do. A lot of the older, vintage, classic, whatever we’re calling it, has a persona and feel to it. And when it is from a certain era, it’s not only blowing your music through it but also the feel of that decade and all that came with it.

It really does. Those amps break up in a way and they’re imperfect in their sonics and it’s those imperfections that give it character. A lot of modern music, dare I say metal, those guys are using really high tech super powerful amps and they put them on a record and they all sound the same. ZZZZZZ. Just a flat line. So, it’s almost too perfect. For my taste, it’s too perfect. So, I go with the old stuff.

You recorded at Shorefire in Long Branch, NJ right?

Yep. We recorded both at Shorefire and at Phil Caivanos Studio 13 in Red Bank, NJ.

Is there a sense that Monster Magnet needs to not only meet expectations but also continue to solidify their place in rock history? Do you ever feel the need to reinvent yourself?

Slightly. Here and there. There’s been times when I was like “Maybe I could get more attention if I do this”. Once, I put leather pants on and did the whole frontman thing. Put down the guitar and grabbed the mic and it was fun! But, I would never reinvent myself into something that I didn’t want to do, but at that point I did it because it was fun. It got us attention and that was during the last days of big corporate rock. I was glad I had made it. All that shits gone now. Those days where weird bands get signed and make it somewhat big are over. Now you know somewhat what you’re going to get. The majors aren’t going to have weird bands, ever. It’s just going to be stuff that sells and then on the other level there’s going to be kind of a pop metal thing that sells. And it’s really conformist music. There’s a lot of conformity to it. Even the stuff that people think is cutting edge is all conformity. So, to reinvent yourself, to reinvent myself every once in a while, it may not be a total reinvention but let’s say it’s a re-emphasis.

Do you ever see yourself not staying true to the Monster Magnet sound and maybe going more pop or commercial just to find your music more acceptable in mainstream radio?

I don’t know if I could do that. I could probably think about it and draw up a blue print but when you actually have to sit in the chair and play it and I didn’t like it, what am I going to do! Uhhhh I can’t do it! I could write for someone else. That’d be easy.

Is this album very reminiscent of the previous Monster Magnet albums or what’s different about this album?

This is the most psychedelic record I’ve done in a bunch of years. It has more to do with original Monster Magnet than it does with the middle periods. Not to say it doesn’t rock but it’s weirder and more vibey in the sense that it’s kind of dark and it’s clearly a Monster Magnet album. It’s kind of a turn away from the ‘fist in the air’ anthem and power trip and more into a darker psychedelic side.

Any music videos for Last Patrol?

Yea, we actually just shot one the other night! We’re going to shoot two music videos. This one is for a song called ‘Mindless Ones’. We actually shot it in the studio at Shorefire (Long Branch, NJ). We hung all these giant sheets and did like this giant psych-light show.

How’s Napalm Records been treating you?

Pretty good. Every company’s a record company. If those guys come up with the money and they don’t give me too much shit they are okay by me!

INDIE BAND OF THE WEEK – BREATHING ASHES

You’ve announced an American tour in support of this album. How excited are you to see the Monster Magnet fans that have been waiting for you guys to headline a big tour again and will it be a mix of new and old songs?

Oh, hell yea! We haven’t toured America like full on in almost ten years. Old and new stuff and probably even more on the old stuff. Heavy on the first couple of records and probably a lot of stuff from Powertrip and some songs from the new record.

Watch “Power Trip”
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What’s one big change you’ve seen happen in the music industry since you’ve been a part of it that you would like to see go back to how it was?

What I miss the most is the focus. The old school system, as corrupt as it was, like big radio and big record companies, pre digital, had a hard focus on people that worked hard to make their music heard. Right now in the digital age, which is awesome and extremely democratic, there’s just not a lot of focus. There’s a lot of genre and niche marketing to the people, but there’s not a lot of cross over between genres. So, it’s almost like it’s too good. It’s too easy for people to get what they want and sit there and never make a challenge or have to look over the fence. Even though you can easily look over the fence (laughs) but it’s just like anything, the Internet is huge and unlimited but it’s very limited because people only have so much time. I miss the old days of the focus and the simplicity of it. There was a time when people had to decide what was good and what wasn’t and now it’s kind of a race of music fans to find out what the next big thing is.

As far as the Internet goes, you can slap anything against the wall and see what sticks. So you’ve got people going online to see their favorite bands perform but not actually going out to the live shows anymore. There is nothing like seeing live music and being in the crowd of your favorite band.

And that’s the thing that’s going to kill it. Live music and the stage are in a hard spot. When I was a kid there used to be venues all over the place. A lot of bands you see on package tours now used to headline in places that were affordable and there wasn’t a hard rule on the drinking age and now it’s very tight in the states. That’s why I prefer Europe. Europe is very open minded. Lots of shows, lots of different venues, not a big insurance thing and people aren’t suing each other all the time. You go out and you rock! In the states the economics are just bearing down.

It’s tough when it’s the younger kids that go out and support the shows and their working on minimum wage, so to pay anywhere between $40-$80 for a ticket is unfortunate and their just going to go watch it on YouTube!

How can you have fun! Automatically your fun meter goes way down! “How much is that…eighty dollars?! Well there’s no way I’m going to have fun tonight.”

There goes your beer money! I don’t get a chance to talk to many Jersey guys, so I’m wondering what makes Jersey people so badass!

I think it’s because they’re stuck, or born in a place, where there are a lot of people and it forces you to be quick about their thinking. If you want to remain true to your art in Jersey there’s only two ways: One, you can be completely rude and an asshole, which a lot of people do, or you can learn how to speak and get your point across and made known in a short amount of time. That’s very particular to New Jersey.

I love that! I didn’t think I was going to get such a diplomatic answer. That was fantastic!

It’s all about politics, baby!

Thanks so much for taking some time to speak with me today, Dave. It’s been a pleasure and I’m so loving everything you’ve got going on! I can’t wait to see you again.

Oh man, it was my pleasure to talk to you! Thanks. See you soon!