PRONG Mainman Talks About Working With AL JOURGENSEN, GLENN DANZIG

Sweden's Metalshrine recently conducted an interview with PRONG mainman Tommy Victor. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Metalshrine: How did you end up working with Al [Jourgensen, MINISTRY]? When did you two meet?

Tommy: We've been crossing paths and had mutual friends for the last twenty years. Some of the same guys that were in and out of MINISTRY, I had been in contact with. We had met personally way, way back. Of course like most relationships that wind up to be long-term, we hated each other first. Usually the people that you like initially wind up being a disaster and there are people that you are uptight about that end up being good friends later in life. I've had that happen several times and not just in Al's case. We played a show, I believe it was in Holland, and reunited there and that was fairly recent and I had a good relationship with Mike Scaccia and when they needed another guitar player... during the time I was playing with DANZIG, I said, "Hell yeah, I'm really up for it!", because apart from playing with Glenn, maybe if Jaz Coleman called me to do KILLING JOKE, I mean, MINISTRY would be the only other thing outside of PRONG that I would've ever been interested in doing. I've gotten calls from some really big artists and I've turned them down. But it was the perfect thing and it's going on three years now, working with Al. During the process of touring with MINISTRY we had discussions of a PRONG record. I had been working on material and PRONG had been continuily doing little tours in America, just crappy ass club shows, and there was sort of a build up of material that was coming about. We were demoing and out looking for labels. We figured of keeping it in the family, sort of, so to speak.

Metalshrine: Have you learned anything from Al when it comes to recording an album or writing songs? Has he influenced you in any way?

Tommy: I don't know about musically as much as attitude-wise. Al has a major disgust of the large music scene and his assertion of rebel music and being outside the lines, has been something I've been fighting against too. I've been pulled in the major label direction and the concentration of being concerned with radio hits. This whole L.A. music scene and him being outside of that and his ability to maintain himself throughout this hell and the constant pitfalls and obstructions that you always are heading on to or come in contact with. Almost an innocence in that was something that inspired me.

Metalshrine: What was it like working with Glenn Danzig? You hear all these stories about him and are you still in touch with him?

Tommy: I'd like to be more, but he's so involved with so many different things himself. He's got an unbelievable amount of energy. He's got his hands in so much stuff, the group DANZIG or anything associated with the music side is just a small part of his life. If anything was disappointing about working with Glenn, it's that. You know, "I've got some comic books to be involved with" or it's "Black Aria" or doing some MISFITS merch or whatever he's got going on. I'm like "Glenn, let's just go out and do shows or make another record!", but nah, he wants to do other things, so I just wished we did more concentration on DANZIG rather than a month tour here or there or even if that much. It's awesome working with Glenn and he's got a whole other way of doing things. He's definitely influential and we had some good times together and it was pretty fun, you know. But again, the only thing that disappointed me was that there wasn't enough work with the group DANZIG.

Metalshrine: Could you see yourself working with him again?

Tommy: Oh, sure, if I had the time or if I was allowed to do it. Both of us have our temperamental moments and sometimes we clash on that. He's gotten to a point in his life where he doesn't like drama and working on people's schedules and all this stuff. But I don't think he's gonna do that much more work with DANZIG music, so I don't foresee that happening so much.

Read the entire interview at this location.