For a leader of a band that is known for throwing fake blood, semen, and entrails at their audience, Dave Brockie (a/k/a Oderus Urungus) is pretty down to Earth. Before his show tonight in Portland at the Roseland, he was kind enough to sit down with melophobe to discuss a little bit about what's behind the spectacle that is GWAR and why he thinks the characters that his band and he have created will live on long after he puts the mic down.
melophobe: Do you think anything shocks people anymore? As someone that's kind of made a whole career out of pushing people's buttons.
Dave Brockie: Sure. I mean, I guess that's all in the eye of the beholder. I think as far as entertainment is concerned, it's probably a lot more difficult to shock people. I mean, personally I'm shocked at how mediocre and horrible most things are. As far as shocking me...I don't know, I think the same things shock me now as when I was a little kid. Hatred, war, and horror were always what shocked the shit out of me. It was never art or music. Sure, "The Exorcist" scared the shit out of me, but I always knew what the difference between reality and entertainment was.
So I don't know if people are more or less shocked now than they were before. I think we're certainly inundated with a lot more subject matter to deal with, and I think that in a lot of ways, that has made people kind of immune, callous, if you will, to shocking concepts. So yeah, I think it probably is a lot harder to do anything like that. We are never out to shock people just for the sake of shocking them. We always wanted to make sure there was at least a halfway decent joke behind anything disgusting that we did, so at least we would get a good laugh out of it if nothing else.
melophobe: Do you think it's important to push people outside the safe confines of the boxes they put themselves in?
DB: Sure! Yeah, definitely. Pushing yourself outside the box is the only way you ever experience anything new in your life. And if you're an artist, that's basically your job - to get people to experience new things and challenge their ideas about life, and in doing so, maybe come to a new understanding that makes things a little easier. Because anyone can look at the world and say, "Hey, there's a million things about it that can be better." That's what we're trying to do, I think.
melophobe: What was GWAR's mission when you first set out, and what did success look like to you?
DB: When we first started, our mission was to entertain ourselves. We were literally just coming out of the hardcore scene - in about '83, '84 - and we were getting kind of disenchanted with a lot of it. We'd started out with heavy metal in the mid-70s, and then we had gone through the whole punk rock thing, and then punk rock turned into hardcore, and this was before Metallica and Slayer redid the metal; we were kind of getting pretty bored with what was going on. So we invented GWAR to fill a need in ourselves to have something totally crazy happening in our lives. There wasn't a band out there that was like GWAR, so we just kind of made it for ourselves. And that was success for us. By always keeping our idea of what success was kind of low, it meant we were always successful.
Then the goals got different and what success was meant different things to different people in GWAR. For me, success was just always being able to make a living off of your art. If you could do that, then I figured that was really awesome. We've been doing that for a long time, and I just figured everything else would come along with it, and it did. And 25 years later, I would say that the idea of success has been achieved for a long time and sustained, so I guess the continuance of that 25 years later becomes success. The most important interpretation of whether it's successful or not is the quality of the art and the music. And that's the way it will truly be judged, and I think we've acquitted ourselves well on those fronts.
melophobe: On stage you usually go after political figures and celebrities. What makes you set your sights on a particular one?
DB: They pretty much suggest themselves. I think it's pretty obvious to everyone who we probably will be going after tonight. I mean, we've already done Barack, and you know we haven't gutted Sarah Palin yet, so I think she's going to be featured heavily tonight. The politicians are just...
melophobe: They kind of deserve it.
DB: They are the most reprehensible characters, and they fulfill no function that I see whatsoever except a bunch of bullshit like taking their phony baloney salaries and wasting tons of time. Every time I read anything about the way they work and what life is like for a politician, and our president, or the people that are in power, I'm like, "Oh my god, it's horrible." So yeah, they've always been a favorite target of GWAR's and you can tell that the audience loves it, as well. Politicians are hated, but for some reason we support their fucking government. So, I guess they're getting over on us pretty good.
melophobe: What's sacred in the GWAR universe?
DB: I guess our work ethic is pretty sacred to us. That's what we're most proud of. We probably have the hardest working group of musicians and artists consistently for 25 years, and it's a sacred "slave-oath," if you will, that we all take and we basically have traded our lives to GWAR - this greater thing.
melophobe: Do you think you have another 25 in you?
DB: I think there are another 2,500 years in GWAR, honestly. I think it's a concept whose largest days are well ahead of it, and I think it could go on just as long as there are good artists and musicians that are willing to back it. It has a lot more to do with Marvel Comics than it does with Warner Bros. Records. It has a lot more to do with "Cats: The Musical" than Black Sabbath. I've said all those things before, and I mean 'em. It's a production; it's like a fucked up Walt Disney is what the Slave PIt is. The Slave Pit is a production company that makes GWAR, and Oderus has a lot more in common with Mickey Mouse than he does with Ozzy Osbourne. He's a character. Ozzy will die, unfortunately, and bless his black heart, but Oderus will live on. Just like the Incredible Hulk will live on. Even if we decided to stop doing it, I think the GWAR characters would endure, because they are so awesome. People wouldn't just let Oderus go away; he's too much fun.
melophobe: Are there any GWAR tribute bands?
DB: I heard there is a GWAR tribute band in Japan! I hear there's a fucking group of westerners that do a GWAR tribute band. I've heard more than one person tell me this now, and it's very strange. We're trying to track these people down.
melophobe: There's no YouTube of it?
DB: No, not that I've seen, but there's lots of YouTube things of different cover band that have done talent shows and stuff like that. But no one's done a serious GWAR tribute band. They really should.
melophobe: What's the rowdiest thing you've ever seen when looking out at the audience?
DB: Consistently, every year, in Detroit at Harpo's. It's the classic rock 'n' roll venue, in a classic rock 'n' roll town. Detroit's one of the most miserable places to live in the United States, and they make up for it by really supporting the shit out of their music scene. And Harpo's is this big, cavernous club right in the middle of one of the worst parts of town, and every time we play there, there's just every vicious skinhead, every violent street gang, and it all comes out in the pit. I'll just always be completely appalled at the scenes of violence I see every year in fucking Detroit.
Oh wait a minute! There is one instance that does stand out, besides just the mass skinhead madness in Detroit...
melophobe: Like real-deal skinheads?
DB: Oh, most of them are. Sometimes they'll be skinheads that'll have a little bit of hair growing out to disguise the fact that they're skinheads, because the cops are after them or something like that. The most fucked up thing I ever saw in the audience--and was rowdy as shit was--I was looking out at the audience one time, and all of sudden I saw a fucking wheelchair up above the audience. Like the dude was in a wheelchair and they lifted him up above the crowd and they were passing him around. And finally he just fucking crashed into the fucking barricade and went spilling out of his chair. He loved it. He was so happy.
melophobe: I went to a Monotonix show the other day, and there was this guy in a wheelchair, and they were pushing him around and putting the mic in his face. He loved it.
DB: That's cool! They were actually crowd surfing with this dude. It was fucking hilarious, and he was not a small person either. They were easily hoisting 300 pounds up in the air, including the chair.
melophobe: Where do the tour themes come from? Where do those ideas originate?
DB: We just kind of kick it around until we come up with something that we're into. Sometimes it'll be ideas that have been around for years like the "Beyond Hell" thing - we always knew there was going to be a "GWAR goes to hell" kind of thing. And for the "Lust In Space" thing, we always kind of knew that GWAR was going to go back to space one day. We've kind of got it all planned out, we just tell it in little sections. So yeah, we have meetings once a week, and we work in the shop, and we smoke weed, and we have what we call these "stoned visions." Have these crazy bullshit sessions where we just kind of make up GWAR stuff as we go along and whatever sends us into gales of laughter is what we do.
melophobe: Is there a song that makes GWAR fans just lose their shit every single time?
DB: Oh yeah, it's "Sick of You." That's the classic GWAR song, and a lot of people would say that if there was a "perfect" GWAR album, that would be their main GWAR album - Scumdogs of the Universe - and "Sick of You" is the closest thing we've ever had to a "hit song" [he makes finger quotes] even though it's the most maddeningly simple, childish little ditty. We write these metal songs that are just storming, thundering, symphonic craziness, but the little three-chord punk rock song is the one that will always stick with GWAR fans, and we know that, and that's why we play it every night.
melophobe: If you could go on tour with anybody else, who would it be?
DB: Rammstein, because I'll probably never get a chance to see them any other way. I really want to see that fucking band!
melophobe: Yeah, I don't think they'd outdo you, but they'd probably give you a run for your money.
DB: They'd probably outdo us! I think we'd be happy to open up for them and then check out the show. Those guys are fucking amazing, and I have a lot of respect for them. They are one of the few "show bands" out there that gets me going. Most of the other ones, the Rob Zombies and Lordies of this world, I have nothing against them. Of course, Oderus talks shit about them, but that's just Oderus. Monsters talk shit about other monsters. They want to fight and kill other monsters. That's not Dave Brockie, but I don't really like what they do. It's very childish and juvenile. That's fluff, that's entertainment. That's to have a good time, go down and party y'all, Kid Rock or whatever. You know, I could see Rob Zombie doing a half-time Super Bowl show one of these days. And that'd be great, but GWAR's about a totally different thing. Even KISS to me...in fact I stopped being interested in KISS in high school. I really dug it at first, and then after three or four records I was just like, "This is just all about makin' money, isn't it?" There's no political agenda here, there's no social commentary, it's just four dudes acting like dicks singing songs about getting their dicks sucked all the time. That's cool for a little while, but there's gotta be more to rock 'n' roll to make it interesting to me.
melophobe: I'm with you, but you know, I think GWAR is more original than say, a Rob Zombie, because Rob Zombie is into that whole '50s horror thing...
DB: Oh yeah! That's derivative as hell! I've never supported art that's...obviously it's gotta come from somewhere. Yes, we took our cues from Alice Cooper, and we took our cues from KISS and we expanded upon them. Rob Zombie just went back and just took all kinds of different things from people that had done them already. A little Al Jourgensen, a little drag racing, a little classic monster imagery and a lot of schlocky music. That's how "hits" are born.
melophobe: As somebody that pushes things live, do the cops ever hassle you, or do you have to bone up on obscenity laws before you go places?
DB: [laughs] No. Generally speaking, since the old days when GWAR was just coming out, we did have the occasional problem - I was even thrown in jail one time for a day - but that's no big deal; we got over all that stuff. People pretty much have realized now that GWAR is an adult show. Sure, there's some obscene stuff in there, but it's comedic. And if we ever have problems with the cops now, generally speaking, they kind of know what's going on in advance. They'll come out and ask to look at stuff. Like we'll literally show them the cuttlefish [the prop dick he wears on stage], or some of the other props. And they'll be like, "OK, don't do that, don't do that." The worst that it ever comes down to is sometimes we'll have to put a little fur over our butts.
melophobe: They actually make you change things?
DB: Oh yeah. There's been times they've requested for me not to use the dick...generally they get upset when anything gets too sexual. You can be as violent as you want, which is something that I have always found interesting. You can knock the shit out of as many people as you want, including women and children, but as soon as anything sexual is brought in, it's like, "Ahhh."
melophobe: It's because it's a Puritanically-based society.
DB: Yeah. Completely. So violence is acceptable, but sex isn't. [starts cracking up] Which I've always found to be completely fucked.
melophobe: What kind of groupies does GWAR get?
DB: We don't get groupies. We are far too busy with our show; also people don't really know who we are. We get fans that are really open-minded, really creative...the groupiest people that we get are kids that want to show us their drawings. Like "Hey Oderus, I did this picture of you." I get a lot of fan art, which is really, really, really cool. Not so many groupies. Typical GWAR groupie would be a pimply-faced 14-year-old boy.
melophobe: Do you think anybody will ever be able to top what GWAR has been able to accomplish theatrically on stage?
DB: I certainly hope so. I really, really do. I would love to see another band do something just magnificently. Rammstein is a band that has probably topped a lot of things that we're doing. They're not as horror-oriented, more this industrial, flaming piece of mad machinery. It can be done. I think if somebody had a lot of money and a really amazing attitude and wanted to create some grinding flesh-mill thing that was spewing shit out constantly. I mean, I think the only people on block that are going to outdo GWAR is GWAR itself. If we can keep pushing ourselves and if we can ever get this band to the level of success that it truly deserves, then we can spend a million dollars fucking producing our show, then we can move into arenas and we can do a show on a Rammstein scale that will just completely fucking melt people's minds. And it's going to happen sooner or later, and if we don't do it, someone else will come along and do it in our footsteps, or our bootprints or whatever.
melophobe: And I can see you guys getting there. I mean, I see you on Fallon...you have pockets where you emerge. For instance, when I said I was going to interview you, people got excited and said, "Empire Records!"
DB: Yeah!
melophobe: That's a big one!
DB: That is a big one.
melophobe: "Empire Records," they love it, and a bunch of other people said, "Beavis and Butthead!" While others just said, "oh I know them!" It's interesting that there are these pockets, so I guess if you guys just keeping building that...
DB: Yeah, you never know. We've already established a cult following, I suppose, and it's always growing. It's totally different than any other band ever. I mean, I never used to think that GWAR could beat the level of popularity we had around the Scumdogs thing when we first came out, but now, it's bigger than ever. Especially with the media and the internet. It's all over the fucking place. I'm always looking for more, always seeing new directions we can go.
melophobe: Right on.