Well, the Jesus Lizard did it, they broke down and signed to a major fucking label even though they were one of the most popular and successful indie bands around. This is an interview we did with them before they signed. This is an interview we at 10 THINGS did, even though a fair amount of people have stolen it without giving us any credit since it is pretty much the best fucking interview the Jesus Lizard has ever done.

We caught up with David Yow at the Off Ramp before their show there on the day before Halloween. Between belches, Yow provided us with some insight on the best rock band in the world The Jesus Lizard. Interview by David and Charlie. Photos of David Yow by Suze Dodd and photo of band by David.

10: How's the tour going?

D: Well, at the end of this US leg, goddammit, we have to play DC and the next morning fly to London and get on a bus and take a ferry to France where we play the first night of eight nights in a row, then fly back and the next night we play New York and finish the northeast and get home a couple of days before Christmas. That's gonna be a motherfucker. 10: Why is it so intense? D: We didn't have a lot of time. We're recording again in January.

10: With Albini again?

D: Yeah. Although it almost wasn't.

10: Why?

D: 'Cause he's being such a dick.

10: He said some shit about you guys.

D: Some bad shit?

10: Just stuff like, they've lost their edge and they're not as good as they used to be.

D: Where did you see that?

10: I'm not sure, I think it was an interview in a fanzine somewhere; I read it somewhere.

D: He may have said that because I insulted his group. Well, I didn't insult them, I was just as honest with him as he would always be with me.

10: What do you think of Shellac?

D: I told him it sounds like Rapeman with less tricky drumming.

10: He didn't like that.

D: He said. "You don't think the guitar sounds a lot different?" and I said, "No, it sounds exactly the same." I think that he sings a little more on this than he did with Rapeman, which is a good thing, but, he shouldn't sing and play guitar in a band again. He should either sing, or play guitar, or sing and play bass, or sing and play drums, or play drums, or bass, but not the two.

10: Why do you think that?

D: Because his voice is so distinctive and his guitar sound is so distinctive that there's no way he's gonna get away from Big Black. Rapeman had a big enough difference because of the drums. But if Rapeman had a drum machine...

10: I think his guitar sound was kinda different between Rapeman and Big Black.

D: Yeah, but it's just too sort of trademarky, you know, that sounds like Albini's voice and that sounds like Albini's guitar, and that's half the band.

10: And his production style creates a certain sound. In fact, there's been some reviews of the Nirvana album which claim there are Jesus Lizard influences on it. Do you hear them?

D: Somebody yesterday was talking about how he thinks on the new record they pay tribute to a lot of bands they like, but I only heard the record once in the van, so I can't really say.

10: The drum sound is very similar, which is certainly due to Albini.

D: That's probably the biggest reason a lot of bands record with Albini, because they like the drum sound so much.

10: What does he do that's different?

D: I don't know much about technical stuff.

10: Where do you see the sound of The Jesus Lizard going? Are there other directions you'd like to explore? It almost seems like your three albums could have come out in any order, it's a very similar sound.

D: I think Goat and Liar are pretty similar, there's not a shitload of difference. Liar isn't really a big step forward, it's more like a step sideways. I think Head is quite a bit different than those two; it's raunchier. Some of the new stuff....I don't know. I don't really see us progressing a whole lot. I mean, I'm happy with what we're doing, but I don't see it as 'we're leaving that old shit behind.' There are changes that happen all the time, like on the next record there will be a song that's the prettiest, most melodic song we've every done--far more so than Pastoral or Zachariah. But at the same time, there's some extremely noisy shit. One song reminds me of Judas Priest.

10: There almost seems to be two directions in your music--one is the texture type stuff like Pastoral, and the other is more rock oriented like Puss or Glamourous. D: Yeah. Maybe I'm fooling myself, but I like to think that even the quieter stuff, the prettier stuff, still has an air of intensity. Where it might be quiet and pretty, but my mom still isn't going to like it.

10: Have your parents seen you perform?

D: My mom saw Scratch Acid. And they've seen video tapes of The Jesus Lizard, and they've got copies of everything we've put out. But I don't want them to have to put up with the crowds?

10: What do they think?

D: They don't like the music. They have finally, in the last six or seven years, developed a respect for what I do. And when she saw Scatch Acid, she said, "My goodness, you boys have so much energy."

10: Has your live performance evolved, or were you doing the same sort of stuff with Scratch Acid?

D: Sort of. Honestly, I think it's gotten a little wilder as I've gotten older. Which still surprises me.

10: How do you get up for shows: adrenalin or alcohol?

D: A combination of both.

10: I've read reviews of your shows where they talk about you exposing yourself, but I've never seen you do it here.

D: Well, I'm sure on the first couple of tours I did the Tight and Shiny trick, where I used to pull my balls out real tight, and it's an instrumental song and I'd just hold my balls to the microphone. I know I did that. But usually the nakedness is an accident as a result of me being too drunk.

10: Do you still keep up with the Austin scene?

D: Not that much. We haven't played there in quite a while. However I did speak with a friend there yesterday who's in a new band called Pretty Mouth, and it's Buff and Glen from the Dicks, and this guy Mark who was in a band called Trouser Trout, and one of my oldest, best friends named Brian McGee is playing drums. And I'm really eager to hear what it sounds like. They told me it's real good.

10: What's the story behind Mouthbreather.

D: It's about Britt Walford, from Slint. And Albini had gone out of town for a while, and Britt was watching his house, and one night he just got plowed and lost the keys to the house, so he broke down the door--taking part of the doorframe with it. So instead of repairing it, he just nailed it up with a bunch of 2x4s. And he broke a toilet, and it was literally raining piss water in the basement, where there was mucial equipment and drums set up, and just splashing piss water over the drums and shit.

10: Are your lyrics mostly about personal experiences? They're never polictical or anything.

D: Never political. We have a new song called Queen for a Day where I mention politics, but it's out of sort of a comedy aspect of it.

10: Seems like a lot of your lyrics just jump between thoughts ideas rather than sticking to a cohesive whole.

D: Probably more than half the time there's not one particular idea. To me, it ends up sort of vaguely meaning something.

10: Do you just write phrases down as they pop into your head and try to find ones with similar themes?

D: Yeah, and rearrange them, and like say A few of the lines in that suck and take them out , and try to figure out what works and sounds good together. I think the way it sounds is more important than what it's saying. Because most of the time you can't understand it anyways.

10: Do you ever use effects on your voice in the studio?

D: Well, some effects obviously like delay and a little reverb or a slapback. But never anything like distortion, which a lot of people think Man, you've got distortion. It's just cupping the microphone. Although one song on Head, I don't remember which one, we ran the vocals through a guitar amp, and just miked that.

10: It seems like on Liar a lot more attention was paid to the vocal production than on the earlier albums.

D: Steve and I talked about that before we recorded it, that we wanted to, particularly on songs like Zachariah, that we wanted it to sound like I could really sing, and we'd spend as much time as it takes to make it sound good. Oddly enough, Zach was like one take. But we did pay more attention to the vocals than usual. Before it was like, all right, they're done, let's go mix, hurry up.

10: I've read where Steve has said he hates the sound of the human voice.

D: I love Steve, but he says some of the...I met his father and I told his father that his son is the world's dumbest genius. Because he's a fucking genius, but he says some of the stupidest shit sometimes. If you asked him a question on something he doesn't know anything about, he'll tell you about it for ten minutes. And sound very convincing.

10: I'm not sure if you'd know this, but was Rapeman meant to be sort of a one-off, short term project?

D: No. Initially, they planned on being a full-time band that would last as long as it could. And I guess it did last as long as it could.

10: Do you know what happened?

D: Not really. None of the three of them ever told me. Whenever David's asked that question he's really vague about it.

10: Rey Washam seems to go through a lot of bands. Is he tough to work with?

D: He's always been rather difficult to work with because he's a real fucking perfectionist. And if everybody else isn't being the same caliber of perfectionism that he is, he just gets pissed off. That's a large part of why Scratch Acid broke up, because Brett Bradford, who was playing guitar, and Rey, they had some problems that way. Brett was into kinda slop, and Rey was definitely not.

10: What were Scratch Acid's influences?

D: Same as yours. My mom, my dad, the food I ate. The people I hung out with. Led Zepplin. Same as everybody's. Everything that you come in contact with.

10: Are the other members of the band getting recognition for their musicianship? I think I saw somehting about Duane in Guitar Player magazine or something.

D: Guitar World. They did that piece on him and they're doing another one. Flipside did a thing on Duane. Nobody's done anything specifically on David or Mac.

10: In one interview I read, you said that three-fourths of the band has talent.

D: Just about anybody can do what I do vocally. I guess I've honed it somewhat.

10: Do you every listen to bands and hear that you've had an influence on them?

D: There have been a shitload of people who we've done interviews with who tell us about how they talk to so many bands and they ask them what bands they respect and 90% of the time they say The Jesus Lizard and Fugazi. I haven't read it though. But, then again, I don't read that much. There was this guy in L.A. who said, hey, you should check out this band they sound exactly like you guys. I listened to it and I was insulted. It hurt my feelings that he honestly thought that that's what we sounded like. 'Cause I didn't hear any similarity other than the fact that it was electric guitar rock. In San Diego, on this tour, there was a little blurb in this local rag that said "The Jesus Lizard--the Seattle sound cometh." Goddamn. People are so fucking stupid.

10: You drew the cover art for the Seersucker album.

D: Yeah. Although the print came out really shitty; something fucked up in printing.

10: Is art a big hobby?

D: Not until recently. They asked me to do that because I'd done some...I'd laid out everything we've put out, not necessarily done the artwork for everything. I did the drawing for the Wheelchair single, and the Seersucker guys were in Chicago when I was doing it, and at the time they asked if I would do their record cover, and I said sure. And since then I started doing it a lot, just fucking around doing drawings and paintings. That's what I went to school for, but I hadn't done it in 13 years. And I really understand why I did it in the first place, because it's fun as hell. But the Seersucker thing and the Wheelchair thing, I don't think of those as art, it's like cartoons.

10: Have you noticed bigger or different crowds since that split with Nirvana came out? Do you think that exposed you to a new audience?

D: Not that much, because the first tour we did after that came out was the Helmet thing. And the people that were there were going to be there whether we were on the bill or not. So it was hard to tell. Well, actually, on that tour there were a lot of kids. Fucking kids, between 7 and 14 years old, who would come up and talk to us after the show just freaking out and going "Man, where are you guys from? What's the deal with you? Are there other bands like you? How do we find out about them? If you hadn't done that split with Nirvana, we'd never have heard of you." And we're like, well, pick up a copy of Flipside or Your Flesh, and they're going, "What's that?" So I wrote down a list of things for them to get and check out, and I said, do not listen to Soundgarden, do not listen to Pearl Jam, do not listen to Stone Temple Dumb-ass. Don't listen to that, don't buy it, tell your friends, and they're going, OK. I felt like a dad.

10: The David Yow Youth.

D: Yeah.

10: Are you involved at all in the music part of the songwriting? You played bass on some of the Scratch Acid stuff.

D: Not much. I make suggestions. Actually, in the last several months all four of us have gotten a lot better at making suggestions and feeding back between each other, and ideas flying around and stuff. Which I really really like. I like the whole idea of the ensemble, where if you make a suggestion and it doesn't get used, no big deal, but if you've got an idea, fucking spit it out. For a while we weren't like that at all, and I'm really glad it got that way.

10: Is there one driving songwriting force in the band?

D: David and Duane. We keep telling Mac to write, because he's a really good guitar player and piano player. But he never does. He just says "OK," but then he never does.

10: Do you ever have a problem jumping into the audience? Does something bad ever happen?

D: Yeah. I've gone to the hospital before.

10: Do you almost feel like you have to put on a performance every time you play, and that you have to top the last time you came to town, and it's getting harder and sometimes you just don't want to do it?

D: I rarely really want to do it. I feel so fucking redundant sometimes. It's weird, when I look back at the first several tours, I don't think I did that every fucking night, but it seems like I do now. 10: It's expected now. That's one of the reasons why people come to see The Jesus Lizard. D: That's exactly why I shouldn't do it. I like it and I hate it. I don't like the fact that it's expected, but I usually enjoy it.

10: Have you ever done something on stage that you wished you didn't?

D: Yeah. Mostly when I drink too much, and just do a fucking terrible show and can't remember the words and break six microphones and piss the other guys off. I regret that a lot. That's not doing anybody any good.

10: Do you feel that you have to get drunk before the show?

D: I like to be lubricated. There's a fine line.

10: Do you get drunk before you record in the studio?

D: I used to. Goddamn. Liar was the first one where I wasn't plowed the whole time. For instance, when we recorded Head, we were recording one day, and the next day we came in and we're going down the list of things we still have to do, and I said, "Well, I've got to do vocals on Pastoral," and they said, "No, you did that yesterday," and I said, "No I didn't." And they played me a tape of it. and I had no recollection of doing it. At the time it didn't sound like I was drunk to me, but just recently I listened to it, and now I sound blotto to me. I don't get drunk at practice. I don't even drink any more at home, I only drink on tour and when we're recording. I think I'm probably going to cut down on the drinking when we record.

10: Do you think you could get on stage and give a performance if you weren't drunk?

D: No. A couple of years ago I quit drinking, and we started a tour and I played the first three shows sober and I hated every second of it. I was terrified, I had no fun, I was inhibited. And so at that time I made this amendment so where I drank on tour. Maybe it's a crutch, but oh well. It's hard to do that shit sober.

10: Do the other guys get fucked up before they play?

D: Not at all. Mac will usually drink some, but David and Duane...Duane almost not at all. David has his two hour limit; he'll stop drinking two hours before the show.

10: What bands are you listening to these days?

D: I say this an awful lot, but the best band in the world is the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. The Explosion, man, drives me fucking wild. I like Girls Against Boys, although I didn't want to because their name was so dumb.

10: What about side project that you have been involved in?

D: Well, all of us have done at least something with some other assholes. Like David did a thing with Martin Atkins and Chris Connelly called the Love Interest, Mac played high-hat on Jesus Built my Hot Rod. If you ever see that video, he's in there. It's fuckin' hilarious, to see him with a leather motorcycle jacket on because that's like dressing your grandmother up in a football uniform. It's just not right. Duane just finished doing this thing with The Revolting Cocks. I got tape of the mix early on and it's cool as shit; they ripped off some cool jazz drum beat and they ripped off some cool jazz bass line, and Duane was just doing this jazzy noodling, and it was cool as shit. And then they mixed it and took like five seconds of the fucking guitar. It was this long instrumental, guitar, bass, and drums all the way through. They took out almost all the guitar, though in these fucking stupid samples. Bullshit.

10: What was your involvement with Pigface?

D: Before they ever recorded anything, Martin asked me to sing on a record of his. And I was pretty honored, as I think he's a pretty amazing drummer and an awfully nice guy. So I said sure, and we went in the studio and he, "This song's called Bushmaster, go write some words," and two hours later we recorded the song. Since then I haven't wanted to since I really don't like Pigface very much. I think the drums are almost consistently great throughout, but the music just doesn't do much for me.

10: How do you feel about other bands in the Chicago scene that have gotten big, Urge Overkill, Smashing Pumpkins, Al Jorgensen and his camp.

D: I still like Urge's music, but as people I think they're fuck-asses. I used to be close friends with them, they were a lot of fun to be around, but now I don't give a shit about them. Smashing Pupmkins, I can't say. I couldn't name a Smashing Pumpkins song, if you were playing one I wouldn't know who it was. I'm sure they're all swell people.