Dave Brockie

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Dave Brockie

Web site: www.oderus.com

Dave Brockie is the singer in Gwar (Beavis and Butthead's favorite band ). Dave and Michael Dean have been friends for over 20 years (even though when drunk he calls Michael "Mike"). Dave hit Michael in the head with a bass guitar at a show in 1983, and Michael still has the scar from the stitches. Dave is also an accomplished painter and writer. He is working on a play that he plans to present in Los Angeles in 2004.

Interview done in the parking lot of a show by a prominent Los Angeles prop rock band who remind me a lot of Gwar.

Michael Dean: So, Dave Brockie of Gwar, what do you think of "prop" rock?

Dave Brockie: Well, first of all, prop rock, in general, is bullshit. Unless you have the rock, your props are gonna suck. This might surprise people, but Gwar was never about making a visual statement. It was about using visual tools and musical tools in order to make some other kind of statement that we didn't know what we were making. If it's purely visual, it's like, it loses. It's decorative . It doesn't really have any bite to it.

I don't really see what these guys today are doing. I don't see the satire . I don't see the irony. I don't see how they're commenting on anything. I see how they're celebrating the artistic spirit by getting up there and making stuff and doing cool shit. And that, in itself, is good for people to be creative, but I just don't think anyone will do it as good as Gwar did it. Ever again.

Figure 18.5. Dave Brockie. Photo by Dave Brockie.

MD: What's the future of Gwar?

DB: Sit around and wait to see if someone can do it better.

MD: So Gwar started as a one-off joke at art school like 29 years ago or something?

DB: Yeah.

MD: How did it did you think it would last this long?

DB: No, not at all. We thought it would maybe go we never thought we'd put out a record, much less tour the fucking world. We thought, maybe it would go I mean you were there, Mike. You saw the very beginnings of Gwar. When we were .

MD: Michael.

DB: Michael, you were there. You saw what was happening with Gwar at the beginning.

MD: Right, it was like a joke in the middle of a Death Piggy set.

DB: Exactly, and then all of a sudden 500 people were showing up. All of a sudden, people were offering us money to play. We were literally people who were working in the dining hall of our college art school to try to make ends meet. And working at Labor Pro loading chickens into trucks all day for 20 bucks.

It was like, all of a sudden, "Oh, my God, we're able to do this and actually make money off of our art." That was the biggest thing and we were able to fucking roll with it for a really long time. And as far as the future for Gwar: There's a lot of things that Gwar hasn't done that I'd like to see them do. I'd like to see a Gwar video game. A really over-the-top, fucked up computer video game. XXX. Totally crazy. I'd like to see us get into Japan and some other places in the world that we haven't. But, you know what, Gwar has already done so much more than I ever, ever, ever thought it would. The one thing that I was always afraid of when I was a little kid, when I was reading The Agony and The Ecstasy , was that I would go through my life and I would never really be involved with an important artistic project. And something that really seemed to make a difference to somebody out there anyway. I'm not saying that I can die happy, like all basted up like steamed oysters or whatever, but I know that I was lucky enough to work with a bunch of really talented and incredible motherfuckers. For whatever it was worth, we did Gwar, and it really did have an impact that I don't think has been measured yet.

MD: What advice do you have for musicians who are starting out?

DB: The first thing I would say (and it doesn't matter what kind of band you're in), you have to be sure about the people you're working with. If you're not really comfortable with the people you're working with, then find people you're comfortable working with because that'll like . People who don't get along with each other in bands, it's like slow cancer. It might take three or four years of really good work for you to realize that your band sucks.

So, I would say find people that you enjoy making music with. It does not have to be a tortuous experience unless, of course, that's what your band is about. I'm sure that could work for somebody. But for me, once you've found good people, you really do have to work hard. It just can't be about partying all the time. You really do have to challenge yourself. Nowadays to try to do something new, I mean, artists , musicians who are looking at the same thing I was looking at fuckin' 20 years ago are so much more challenged because, in between now and then, there's been 20 years of development and evolution. Where everyone has been doing everything. Where everything has been re- hashed and re-invented. And we've got rap, techno, and industrial metal and everything is just all mashed up. It's like how many different ways can you write a rock n' roll song?

So, I would just say the best advice I could give anyone is just be fearless.

MD: How do you kick people out when you have to kick someone out of the band?

DB: Be cool about it. If the person's done things like steal money or is smoking crack when they should be rehearsing, it's no problem. You're gone, dude. Sorry, that's it. But if it's someone you love and it's a tough decision to make, you just have to be cool about it. But you do have to do it. That's one of the hardest things to do, and that's one of the things I had to do all the time as the leader of Gwar. It's like, "Oh, we decided we don't want this person. It's your job, Dave, to get rid of them."

MD: Did any ever sue you?

DB: No we've never been sued because we've always dealt with our members very fairly . First of all, there was no money to be forwarded anyway.

MD: How big is your nest egg? How many days can you not work before you have to get a job when Gwar calls it quits?

DB: Any money that I have saved up has absolutely nothing to do with Gwar whatsoever. We never really made any money off of it. The slave wage was $800 a month. From basically about Scumdogs of the Universe to Ragnarok , which I guess was about our ffifth or sixth album, we had a slave wage of $800 a month. And I made, as the lead singer and sometimes ad hoc manager, I made as much as the lowest slave. It got a little better on Carnival of Chaos ; we actually got it up to a thousand a month. You know, anyone who lives in this world can tell you that a thousand dollars a month is really not going to go very far, especially if you're trying to keep you're rig (amp) in shape or whatever. So you know it was always a labor of love. And we always knew that if we lost the penises and maybe we weren't quite so shocking, and maybe we weren't such assholes about what we did onstage, and if we didn't squirt blood everywhere, and this and that, that we might have been more commercially successful. But that was not really that was never, and was just for me, that was never the reason I got into that. Maybe some other people in the band would disagree with me, 'cause it was a true artistic democracy. But generally speaking, it was the person who argued the longest and the strongest who won and that person was usually me. I can remember fighting for the song, "Have You Seen Me?" The guys in the band were like, " Have you seen me?' How can you write such a fucked up song? It's about missing children." I'm like, well, I'm outraged about the fact that this country is so fucked up that we can't keep track of our kids and the way that we're gonna try and deal with it is by putting their faces on milk bottle cartons, you know. That outrages me and this is my way (of dealing with it). They're like, "Oh Brockie, shut the fuck up. You just think it's funny, you know you just think it's funny ." Maybe. Yeah, I do. It's a big fucked up mess but I know I don't molest children. I never kidnapped anyone.

I just feel that Gwar had a place in this world and an impact on modern society, on modern media, on modern music that people probably won't admit for another fuckin' 50 years. I mean I don't think . If we hadn't had Gwar, we never would've had Beavis and Butthead. We never would've had South Park. We never would've had Marilyn Manson. ^[2.] We never would've had Slipknot. We never would've gone to all those areas. When we started doing Gwar, everyone was into Nirvana. Everyone was into wearing lumberjack shirts and was total "anti."

^[2.] This would sound insane if it weren't absolutely true.MD

MD: You guys started before Nirvana.

DB: Well, yeah, but it's like there was no show. Besides Green Jelly out here, Green Jell-O, out here on the West Coast I'm just like I almost feel like when I look back at what we did, I almost feel like a spectator to a train wreck or something. And somehow I was able to jump out of it and not get slaughtered and destroyed by it. Some people in Gwar have been crushed, crushed by what we did. They can't really can't really deal with it. They think we should have gotten rich, or they should have gotten a Grammy, or whatever. But I think we gave, whether you're in music or art or whatever the fuck you're doing, I think we gave everyone a good kick in the ass.

MD: You're talking about it almost like it's past tense. Is it?

DB: Yeah, it kind of is now. It's like, I think I've gone as far as I can with Gwar. I do love Gwar. There are a lot of things I haven't done with Gwar that I'd like to do that I might now get a chance to do, like design a video game or computer game.

MD: Why don't you just find some programming nerd who wants to do a game?

DB: Well, we've spent a lot of time with people like that. We've really tried a lot to get in touch with people like this. We spent months working with people like that but, at the end of the day, to really make a game you have to have a development team that's backed by a lot of money. You have to have a lot of money behind that. Those people are too talented to sit around and do a Gwar game for fun. And you have to have a lot of people working on that. So .

[Some really cute young woman drags Dave away, and the interview ends.]

[Transcription of interviews with Janis Tanaka, London May, Dave Brockie and Ron Yocom by Richard Urbano. Ron Yocom interview appears on my Web site, www.30DollarMusic-School.com. Thanks Richard!]

Figure 18.9. Richard Urbano. Photo by Michael Dean.

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