When he’s not staring at a computer screen, reading comic books or hibernating like a bear in his down time, Dave Wyndorf lives the rock and roll dream as the frontman for Monster Magnet.
Heading to the land Down Under this April, Wyndorf and his bandmates arrive in the country with 25 years’ worth of metal-hewn, space-drenched tunes drawn from nine albums of Monster Magent’s inimitable brand of stoner rock riffage.
Beginning with 1991 debut LP Spine Of God to last year’s Last Partrol album, it’s quite the body of work. And who better to re-evaluate it than Dave Wyndorf himself?
We had a chat with the Monster Magnet vocalist/guitarist/pianist/trombonist (!?) to discuss the group’s entire discography, getting him to rate their records from least favourite to most favourite, providing us an insight into a long-running career where – in his immortal words – “Rock and Roll sorts out the men from the boys.”
4-Way Diablo (SPV, 2007)
“Easy – the one I didn’t like the most was 4-Way Diablo, yeah, because I was out of it. You know I wrote the songs addicted to sleep medication and I was a mess – that’s the real drug album and you know not the good drugs either, it wasn’t like I was doing LSD and fuckin’ like, ‘aaayyy, haha,’ you know? I was a mess; I kinda just put it together to fulfil contractual obligations.
Just when I thought I knew what every drug in the world can do to you I found out like my particular evil drug and it got the better of me but, thank goodness, it’s just another adventure to talk about.”
Monolithic Baby (SPV, 2004)
“I was gonna make a straight rock and roll Monster Magnet record with not a lot of emphasis on the psychedelic stuff and I wrote a bunch of songs that were straight rock and roll but I just ran outta songs and was like… ‘straight rock and roll is kinda boring, all’s I have is like four of ‘em’; so you know, I was like ‘wow, maybe this is not for me’ but it was too late.
I already booked the studio time. It’s the music business, I’m not a fine artist, if you say you’re gonna do a record, you do a record and if it’s good that’s great, if it’s bad well tough shit you gotta put it out anyway, so that one kinda got weird on me.”
God Says No (A&M Records, 2001)
“Weird record. A record, which I wrote really really fast, the music really fast and wrote the lyrics very much separately, very very much separately and in a different town and then, all the lyrics I had written down, and not recorded, were stolen out of a car in Chicago so I had to re-write the lyrics from memory.
It was the first record where I wasn’t a part of the initial layering of the tracks; I was locked in a hotel room across town writing lyrics.
Where it’s supposed to be clean, I wanted it really clean and when it was meant to be dirty I wanted it really dirty which can’t be done with engineers, well not good ones anyway, they just focus in on one thing. There’s a certain sameness to the whole recording that I couldn’t mix out, even with two engineers.”
Mastermind (Napalm Records, 2010)
“Recorded in Jersey; I had a problem with my co-producer who was hellbent on making the fastest record he could through means of digital editing. I’m willing to work with the mistakes you know, the musicians we had were really good and the mixing was just too tight – he wanted it to be so tight, so it was cool, but not as cool as it could have been. I don’t like listening to much of what humans can’t physically play. I looked at it like a training ground for Last Patrol.”
Superjudge (A&M, 1993)
“Superjudge was a mad house of a record, first major label record, my first time in a big studio. You know I’d gone from a 4-track at home to an 8-track in the local 8-track demo studio. Then we went to a place called the Magic Shop in New York, 24-track, you know pretty much state of the art back then – no digital yet, and I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
I kept thinking it sounded too good. I made this record that’s almost impossible to listen to now with all this mid-range fuzz but I’ll tell you one thing, it wasn’t like anything else that fucking came out on major record label that year.”
Spine Of God (Caroline Records, 1991)
“That was great, I had a great time doing that, it was recorded really really fast and the songs had been around for awhile, like two years. When I first did ‘em, it was on a 4-track cassette up in my bedroom with a drum machine and then we moved them to the band, you know when Monster Magnet started and it was a lot of fun.
[It] didn’t take that long to make, a week maybe and it was one of those ones where the way it was mixed I wanted to hide a bunch of drum fuck ups. I wanted to bury them in the mix and put effects over the top and as a result it has this really weird sound to it that’s kinda cool, not the type of sound you want all the time but I was really happy, I was totally psyched that was my first time in the studio, well, other than my house so I was like, ‘look! Look what I can do – cool’.”
Powertrip (A&M, 1998)
“That was crazy, that got started as a direct reaction to my record company at the time, A&M. Someone at A&M told me – the label isn’t supposed to tell the artists anything – but he told me because I was really hands-on managing the band because I’d fired my manager and he said ‘We really hoped it had sold more’. I had a total Jersey guy fit and was like you know what I should do… I should just put tits and money all over the record, ‘cause that’s what people buy that’s what hip-hops guys do, people don’t care what it sounds like.
It’s my job to write Monster Magnet music it’s your job to sell it. I wanted to prove a point that it’s not about the music. So when I came out of the studio I was like, ‘fuck this’! We’re not hiding behind a light show anymore, I’m gonna put on a pair of leather pants and we’re gonna have tits and money on the cover and let’s see what happens– and it worked!
It sold like a million copies, it was great and money started rolling in and I got to do the serious rock and roll trip, you know the serious fucking trip. We opened for Marilyn Manson, Aerosmith, Van Halen it was hysterical, it was like a giant cosmic joke coming true.”
Dopes To Infinity (A&M, 1995)
“Dopes is one of my favourites, it was a lot of fun to make. Headline track ‘Negasonic Teenage Warhead’ was used as a villain character in Marvel Comic, New X-Men, a fond memory… I know! It’s fuckin’ amazing dude, you know I had nothing to do with that, all’s I did was wrote a song, wrote a record and all of a sudden one of the top writers in comic books names a character after me. I mean, I could retire right then – it’s like a teenage dream! Really cool!’’
Last Patrol (Napalm Records, 2013)
“The new record I really like a lot, that’s one of my favourite ones, probably one of the most honest records I ever made and that counts for something ‘cos the more you do it the more you wanna believe, you know. This one was created very much like the old ones were made. There was a lot of dreaming that went into it but not too much over thought when I actually did it, I did it just on instinct so that’s why I like this one the most.
I think it’s better recorded, more melodic than some of the other stuff and I like the early stuff. You can fake stuff these days, you can fake recording on digital and no-one will know it’s not analogue but you can’t fake the source gear. If you get the right source gear it’s gonna give the music a character that you just can’t replicate with modern stuff and if you try and replicate it with plug-ins… well, it’s kinda like using filters on Instagram you know, it kinda looks old but the more you look at it, it really doesn’t.”
Monster Magnet Australian Tour 2014
Thursday 3rd April – Amplifier, Perth
www.oztix.com.au
Friday 4th April – The HiFi, Sydney
www.oztix.com.au
Saturday 5th April – The HiFi, Brisbane
www.oztix.com.au
Sunday 6th April – 170 Russell, Melbourne
www.170russell.com
