For the last decade, Monster Magnet founder/frontman Dave Wyndorf has felt like the polar opposite of what passes for popular heavy music in America. Avoiding the continent – except for scattered shows in New York and L.A. – he’s kept his seminal stoner-rock outfit off these shores since supporting 2001’s God Says No (Monster Magnet’s last record on major label A&M/Interscope, and the follow-up to their gold-selling smash 1998’s Powertrip).
Not going quietly, Wyndorf has kept rocking out Monster Magnet albums (2004’s Monolithic Baby!, 2007’s 4-Way Diablo, and 2010’s Mastermind) while touring regularly all over Europe. Now the sole remaining original member from Monster Magnet’s formation in 1989, Wyndorf has brought the band back to the U.S. for their first full-fledged tour in ten years, supporting the release of Monster Magnet’s tenth studio album, Last Patrol, released last month. Just days after the release of the psychedelic new album, Wyndorf talked with Recoil via phone about Last Patrol’s carefully-planned freak-outs, Monster Magnet’s current live lineup, and why writing songs still makes the rock veteran feel like a kid again.
Recoil: Congratulations on the release of your new album, Last Patrol. How does it feel to have released your tenth studio album with Monster Magnet?
Dave Wyndorf: I can’t believe it’s been that many. I didn’t know I had ten songs in me, let alone ten records. I’m always like completely freaked out, like, ‘What the fuck?! Where did all these songs come from?’ I’m a creature of obsession, and I get obsessed on stuff probably like most modern people, and you get obsessed with something, and then the next second you raise up your head you’re like, ‘I’m not exactly sure how that happened, but I’m glad it did. Now let’s move on, to the next one already, you know. I make these things really carefully, especially this one was a lot more careful than the last one, and I get into it, and then start to plan on what’s going to happen next. It’s a lot of fun. I never get sick of making music. It’s really cool. So it doesn’t seem that long.
R: Does this one feel like something of a milestone? Or do you not want to rest on your laurels and consider it like that?
DW: That moment will come like later, because right now I’m just on this press train, and it’s a lot. Making a record, and selling a record, is like you plant seeds in the spring and then you hope the seeds come up later, and right now I’m like the farmer in the field madly throwing seeds around. I’m talking to people on the phone, and doing TV shows and all that bull shit.
R: Even though it’s carefully planned, with the completely psychedelic feel of the whole album, how much did you want to just let loose on this one?
DW: Yeah I just planned the freak outs. Like, ‘It’s all going to be done exactly like this until this part to that part, and everybody just freak out.’ And then I just stand at the bow of the ship and go, ‘More! More! Less! Less!’ Like a conductor. ‘That sounds fucking great!’ That kind of stuff. I’m a big fan of random happenings, but because of the time schedule you can’t just go random for the rest of your life or you’d just dithering off into infinity. So I try to set up the circumstances that can allow for random coolness.
R: The album plays like a classic vinyl LP. Did you have a set idea for how you wanted the album to play as a whole? I can’t help but imagine that you had long planned to close the album with “End of Time” and “Stay Tuned.”
DW: Yeah, I wrote those songs pretty close to each other, and if I didn’t write them close to each other, I’d look for like-minded songs and say, ‘What would sound cool at the end of that?’ Or like, ‘I really like this song, but I know it shouldn’t be the first song on the record. What would sound cool before that?’ And I start to write around that kind of vibe to make sure it does have that kind of atmosphere. Just like those old records. I listen to records all the time and my favorite ones are ones that you don’t want to necessarily take off. You know it’s like, I like records that done have [just] the same songs. I like mellow songs and heavy songs; I like them when they’re next to each other. I like all that kind of stuff, so I try to plan on most of my records, and especially this one, having that atmosphere. Like, ‘You know what kind of record this is? This is the kind of record you put on at midnight, dude. Put this on at midnight, and do whatever people like to do: smoke a joint, drive a car, or have sex with your girlfriend or whatever, and that would be the record for that.’ That’s the way I felt about this one. I write a lot of stuff, and there were some songs where it was like, ‘That’s just never going to go on this record.’
R: After doing your last album, [2010’s] Mastermind, why did you want to do an album like Last Patrol? How did you want the two records to contrast?
DW: Yeah, the method of working I did on Mastermind I really liked, and that was working with strictly Phil Caivano playing bass. He understands the bass parts that I write really, really well, and I really wanted Mastermind to become a little less big rock, and more in the style of old psychedelic stuff that I used to like when I was a kid, and I played that stuff early in Monster Magnet. So I wanted the bass to tell the story; I wanted all kinds of octaves, and all this crazy stuff. Real music shit. But I knew that it would have a bearing on the atmosphere of the way the record sounded. So I started working like that with Phil on Mastermind, and we didn’t get a chance to do the whole record that way, because of time constraints. So I just made a plan in my head, ‘Dude, you and me, for the next record we’re going to do it this way. I’m gonna write the songs and I’m gonna bring it to you and Bob [Pantella], the drummer, first, and work these songs to the tits playing live. All the moods and starts I’m not going to leave it up to just what happens in the studio. I’m gonna write it all.’ So those guys were awesome because they’ll actually put up with my shit. [Laughs] Like, ‘No, let’s try it like this,’ and most of the time I really don’t have to do that much. Here’s four minutes of music, here’s all the parts, and what I think it should do is get crazy here, get squirrelly here, go up and down the neck here, and they just take it from there.
R: Since you’re the only founding member of the band left, I know you write basically all the material and call all the shots as far as the band goes. What does it mean to you to develop those relationships with guys like Phil and Bob, or other Monster Magnet members, past or present, while still being behind everything that is Monster Magnet?
DW: I act as musical director, or like I’m a writer/director of a movie. That’s the way I act in Monster Magnet. It’s my thing, and has been my thing for a long time. I tried to share it with other people, but I was always just obsessed with the whole thing, so I never slept. Like while everybody else slept, going, ‘It’s going to be cool,’ I’m up at three o’clock in the morning going, ‘It’s not gonna be cool! Not unless this happen!’ I just love it. So finally after years and years of working with really talented people, but not all people who were exactly on the same page; finally I’ve gotten myself with a group of people who like it. They take it as a challenge, to listen to this writer/director who has this thing, and what can we add to it. They understand the thing, and that’s what I didn’t get in the past.
R: As a songwriter, how much do you just hole up by yourself, and how much do you jam out with other people to flesh out your song ideas?
DW: Basically I do two to three minutes for each song, and that’ll be like a verse, a chorus, and a midsection. Sometimes that’ll be a completely finished song, and sometimes it’ll just be a verse and a chorus and a midsection to be determined. It’s all sketched out and most of the stuff could’ve been recorded – I probably could’ve been released at one point as the demo. But it just doesn’t sound real. It’s played by me; I’m a terrible player. I don’t play very well. So there’s a lot of mistakes, and all kinds of chuggy shit. And I’ll record it with the effects I want to use. Like the drums have to be played on this part the way they are because later on there’s gonna be a delay on it. So you don’t have to mix it up, you don’t have to be that tight, because later on it’s gonna be like this. Then I bring it those guys, one by one. Drummer first. Everybody listens to it, and then with the drummer, it’s like, ‘OK, let’s work out the drum parts.’ Put a scratch track of drums, and then go and sit with Phil and say, ‘OK, let’s overdub some bass on here. Let’s see how this is going.’ I’ll have a scratch track of my guitar for emphasis and for direction. And if that sounds good, it’s like, ‘All right. We’re almost done. All we have to do is get our sounds together and record it with maximum enthusiasm.’ So those guys will bring to it their own special brand of delivery. It would be different. It would not be the same record if I were to record it with different people.
R: Going into the North American tour, how do you feel about the current live line-up of the band?
DW: Oh it’s awesome. It’s really great. That’s another thing I should have mentioned. Once this thing is all done in the studio – like recorded music is only a simulation of live, you know what I mean? Recorded music is so much different from live music; it’s just a different thing. A lot of the times the songs will just get better, and these guys will make ‘em better. The live situation, we just hired Chris Kosnick on bass who’s replaced Jim Baglino, who’s been with us for a long time, and now he’s gone. Chris Kosnick is an amazing fucking guy. He can handle all these parts. [Lead guitarist] Garret [Sweeney], Bob, and Phil, we’ve been doing Europe now for the last five years, and I’ve never heard them play better. It’s gonna hammer. It’s totally psychedelic where it should be, and totally hammering on as well.
R: You’ll be starting Monster Magnet’s first full-fledged North American tour in ten years here in Grand Rapids [on Nov. 14]. Why did you decide it was finally time to fully tour the U.S. again?
DW: The records that I was hearing coming out were more my style. I felt there were more people into that kind of music. Ten years ago when I got off A&M [Records]… Well, A&M had folded and it turned into Interscope. We were on Interscope, and nu-metal was still the big fucking thing. I was like, ‘People aren’t going to buy this shit here! C’mon, nu-metal has nothing to do with Monster Magnet!’ That, and a lot of DJ stuff was going on; techno was big. And I just couldn’t find a place in the States. The major cities, sure, New York, L.A., I could get gigs there, but just the hole through the heartland it was guys with mullets and shit. And going like, ‘Uhhh!!’ And having the ear piercings and shit and listening to Korn and stuff like that. They didn’t want to have anything to do with Monster Magnet. There was nothing for us. I didn’t see anything for any psychedelic band, to tell you the truth, psychedelic rock or whatever. People tried, and a couple people succeeded. For me it was just too much work. I was like, ‘Man, I can get work all over the world. I’m gonna go there!’ I guess I’m lazy. [Laughs] I just wanted to go where people wanted it, and Europe is fucking awesome. The variety of music over there is insane. It’s a music lover’s dream. I could ride around in a tour bus, drink fancy coffee, get these like hot looking women. In Europe it was like… I mean what would you rather do, go there or go to Cincinnati where there will be a couple farmers, like bald dudes yelling, ‘Hey, why don’t you play ‘Space Lord?’’ [Laughs] No, no. I’ll see you when things get better. And guess what, things did get better. The records that have been coming out the last few years have a whole fucking resurgence in what they call stoner rock. I just call it hard rock, revisionist, psychedelic. Stuff like Graveyard, Cadaver, really cool stuff. The new Clutch record is the most rocking record they’ve done in a long time. There’s something in the air. So I’m like, ‘OK, it’s time to go back!’
R: How do you feel about being credited with pioneering stoner rock as a genre? What do you think of the term and what part do you think Monster Magnet played in that movement?
DW: Well being considered a pioneer of anything is pretty humbling, so I’ll take it. [Laughs] So that’s really cool. But the term stoner rock to me was always kind of a misnomer because, to me, it just sounded like a bunch of guys smoking pot. And I was like, ‘We’re not just smoking pot, man, there’s fucking LSD involved in this shit too! How about trip rock?!’ I always felt a little bit more aggro, and a little bit more song-oriented, than the definition of stoner rock back in the ‘90s, which was basically kind of a Kyuss thing. Long jams, savage riffs, only. But hey, I can’t make these things. Those things are made up by press guys and they take off. People love to label stuff. So whatever they want to label it, that’s fine by me. If somebody were to ask me, ‘What do you think of the label stoner rock?’ I’d say, ‘It’s limiting.’
R: Throughout your career you’ve honored your own influences by doing cover songs – like the cover of Donovan’s “Three King Fishers,” you have on Last Patrol – while always adding your own spirit to the original. What’s the best part about doing a cover song, and what’s the biggest challenge?
DW: Well the best part is that sometimes you just can’t find the song that suits the record that I wrote, and that’s what happened in this case. I had like sixteen or seventeen songs written for this record, and it needed something else. I was like, ‘Well, I could fill out the record; I could get sixteen songs on the record.’ But I didn’t want to put sixteen songs on a record to fill it up with crap. But I was like, ‘It needs something. It needs something else.’ So I assembled the songs that I wanted to put on the record, and the record was light. So I was like, ‘All right, I need to write two songs. What the record needs is one really pristine, old-school psych song, like San Francisco, England, that kind of thing, like 1967. And the other one I need is a really moronical, Godzilla, like just completely over the top, ‘Blah! Blah! Blah!’ Because I felt the record wasn’t heavy enough, like, ‘It needs another heavy song!!!’ I went to sleep and I woke up the next day and I was like, ‘Donovan!’ It just came into my head, and I guess that’s what I wanted to do. So at first I tried to steal it. I was like, ‘I’ll sit down with a sitar and write another song,’ and I was like, ‘Fuck, this Donovan song is great. I’ll just put it as a cover.’ So I started playing Donovan; I put it down on my little tape machine, and I just got heavy with it, because the chords in that song, just the drones, it’s heavy already without being heavy. What’s cool about the early psych stuff is that that stuff is heavy as shit even without being heavy. Turn up the amp on it, play that psych stuff, and then it really felt monstrous. So I was like, ‘OK, I’ll just rewrite the Donovan song, incorporate the heavy thing I needed with the psych thing I needed, and that’ll kill two birds with one stone,’ and that’s what I did. I just reinvented the Donovan song, and it was like, ‘Job done! Next thing!’
R: Lyrically your songs sound like a swirl of personal confessions, science fiction, and of course, sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Why do you always want your songs to have a certain mystery to them?
DW: Yeah, it’s so personal sometimes I’m spooked when I let it out in a normal manner. I may be playing games with myself, but I just don’t think that that stuff is that interesting. It’s just so normal. Like what goes in my head, it’s twisted and fucked up, but everybody’s twisted and fucked up, you know? What I think about is all like country and western style lyrics, and if I would put it normally, it would sound like a country and western song. And then I write this music that I want to hear, and I think of the words that I’m writing, and I’m like, ‘These words aren’t going to fit this kind of music. It’s got to be bigger! More psych! More fucking drugs! More planets exploding! Everything’s got to be at a hundred and fifty. It’s just like a word like I’m sad just doesn’t fucking do it, you know. I’m sad just doesn’t fucking do it. It’s got to say more. How can I say I’m sad, and bump that up to cosmic proportions,’ and that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time, and it’s seems to work. So yeah, they’re ambiguous, and yeah, I’ll get a lot of people going, ‘This fucking asshole! All he writes is a bunch of drivel!’ But it’s like, ‘Good. Go listen to your Blink 182 records and that’s fine. I’ll write my records.’ If you want to listen to just straight lyrics, there’s plenty of bands out there. There’s more bands playing straight lyrics than me. I just do it, and I run into some confusion problems with some fans sometimes, but man, the Monster Magnet fans are really cool about this stuff. I think they get it. They know it’s some weird kind of poetry. It’s a weird thing, but I think the words fit the music, and that’s the most important thing, is that the emotion of the song gets through, and that’s the right word for the right sound. That’s number one. I don’t literally have to be understood every line, as long as the vibe is understood. I think the biggest fear in the world for a songwriter is to have somebody hear their stuff go, ‘Oh I get it, and I don’t want it.’ I’d rather have people be like, ‘I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about!’ That’s more fun to have that, or to have someone go, ‘Man, that song does something to me, and I don’t know what it is.’ But to have people just go, ‘Yeah I know what that is; I don’t want it.’ That’s disturbing. So maybe that’s why I write the way I write.
R: A lot of those people who are resistant to it are just reluctant to take that trip. Since the music itself is so trippy, obviously the lyrics take the listener to a place, whether it’s an emotional place or a conceptual, metaphysical place, that they’re afraid to follow you there.
DW: Yeah, it’s cool, and they just can’t be bothered. This is 2013 and I realize that I’m not exactly the super modern guy here writing that way. There’s not a lot of demand for surreal poetry in music today. I would’ve had a better shot of doing this in 1973 or 1972. But I can’t help myself! I love that stuff! I grew up with that stuff. I grew up listening to T-Rex albums. You ever listen to the lyrics on a T-Rex album? They’re insane! The guy’s talking about kissing a car? And I never went like, ‘What the fuck is this guy saying?’ I was just like, ‘Man that sounds badass!’ And Black Sabbath, those lyrics were pretty psychedelic. So that’s what I grew up on, that, and soon after punk rock, which had its own vibe, which had to be different from that stuff. But it still had an omnipresent vibe and a lot of satire, and they spoke in metaphors too. They were satirical and they were smart. So I got used to listening to a lot of those lyrics, and I like all that stuff. I listen to lyrics from a lot of bands nowadays, just straight middle of the road rock bands, which have always been terrible lyrics. But really they suck! We’re in a terrible spot.
R: Looking back on that much history, and everything that’s going on now, how do you look at the future of Monster Magnet?
DW: You know it’s weird because usually I don’t plan too far ahead with anything in my life because it makes your head hurt. Like making a calendar for more than two months makes my head hurt. So now, no matter how many disappointments I’ll get considering music or acceptance of music, it’s always fun to make it, so I’ll be in the laboratory regardless. Whether it’s a commercial success or whether it allows us to tour for two years or two days, the laboratory is always, and that’s where the shit happens. And that’s where the fun is, in doing it. When you’re in it, and making that stuff, and working with effects like that, it’s really fun! It’s like being twelve years old in your room. Remember when you were like twelve years old and you had all this cool shit in your room? That’s exactly what it’s like making a record for me. And I would never give that up; it’s just too much fun!
Monster Magnet will kick-off their first North American tour in over ten years at The Intersection Nov. 14. Last Patrol is in stores and online now. For more, click over to monstermagnet.com.
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