MONSTER MAGNET Frontman Talks About Performing Entire 'Dopes To Infinity' Album

August 29, 2011

Steve Mascord of Australia's Loud magazine recently conducted an interview with MONSTER MAGNET mainman Dave Wyndorf. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On his battle with sleeping-pill addiction:

"Benzodiazepine particular. It's not even a sleeping pill, really, it's more like an anti-anxiety drug. Anything that's like Xanax, Ativan, anything with a pan in it, Diazepam. That's stuff than can really fuck you up, beyond heroin, beyond coke and stuff. It's its own particular brand of devil.

"When you hear the term 'pillhead' 'he's a pillhead' that usually means a person whose eyeballs are, like, up in their socket and they never make sense. And not even the hardcore drug guys hang out with them. You know what I mean? You're better off doing heroin. That stuff is so fucked up, it's like, 'God! How did I get involved in that stuff?'

"Be careful everybody! Don't take it on a regular basis! It puts the hooks into you and it will make you have the brain and the nervous system of a squirrel."

On MONSTER MAGNET's upcoming tour during which the band will perform its 1995 album, "Dopes To Infinity", in its entirety:

"I've been watching people do this album routine where they play an album and I've always been interested because if I was a kid, I'd think that was the coolest fucking thing ever, to see a band do an entire album in sequence. You kinda want to do that. I finally talked to some people that I know who have done that I talked to Mark Arm from MUDHONEY, I talked to Josh [Homme] from QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE and they said how much fun they had doing it. I said, 'Alright, we're going in, we're doing it.'

"I picked 'Dopes' because 'Dopes' is not our biggest-selling record but it's not our smallest-selling record either. It leaves me a chance to do the biggest seller again if it's successful. I could go up to 'Powertrip', which is the biggest-selling record, or I could go down to total undergroundsville, which is 'Spine Of God', 'Superjudge' and stuff like that. So this seemed a good place to start."

"I wrote all the stuff and I recorded it so I've already heard it, like, a thousand times in my head. I don't lose any of that. I'm looking forward to seeing how the stuff mutates live because stuff always does.

"It's very in-tune. The vocals are very in-tune. I remember going crazy because I wanted it be the opposite of 'Superjudge' which was wildly razor sharp. This one, I wanted to be smooth and zoomy and it was. It came out a little bit too smooth at the time.

"Everything has to get roughed up. I think the material's going to be better for it."

On the proposed Dave Wyndorf solo album:

"I would do a solo record except that every time I go out on tour for a month, I end up going on tour for two years. Then it's time to make another MONSTER MAGNET record. I'm strapped for time. I use all the heavy ones for the next MONSTER MAGNET record.

"I want to do this solo thing. I've got a lot of stuff in the can now. So between this ... I'll possibly record the next MONSTER MAGNET record and the solo album in pieces at the same time and then release the solo record later.

"I want to work with a piano player and stuff. I want to be sure I lock myself into a different (way of thinking). It's easy for me to pick up a guitar and make it work. But it's going to sound the same. So I think I'm going to hire a piano player. I'm gonna say, 'We're going to write some songs, I'm gonna tell you to play all these pieces I wrote on guitar which I'm going to translate to piano.' That will force me to work in a different sonic sphere."

On the possibility of releasing a MONSTER MAGNET live album:

"We might do that, yeah. I don't know if we're going to record any in Australia, that's a little bit close. But I think in Europe we're going to record the 'Dopes' thing several times and other stuff as well so hopefully in the next couple of years, we'll have a nice collection of live stuff to release."

Read the entire interview from Loud magazine.

Find more on
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).