Celebrities
The Interview
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 Me with (L - R) Benis & Skinny of Mushroomhead |
As I have said before, I love this band. They are fun to listen to, great to watch and awesome to hang out with. What follows is my interview with Drummer/Founder: Skinny and Bassist: Pig Benis, with a few words from Keyboardist: Schmotz. |
The Mushroomhead Interview
Tom: Thanks for the interview. Let's get right to it. GuitarWorld Magazine just dubbed you guy the new cult kings. How do you feel about that?
Benis: Well y'know we've always written the songs, and written the stage shows, to be underground, part of the underground thing. If you want to consider that a cult, then yeah, we might be like a cult. We have a somewhat of a cult-like following in a lot of cities and we have for some time. Now it's starting to get a little more mainstream with the push from magazines and radios. But uh if some consider us the kings of the new cult than that's great.
Tom: I checked out some of the fan sites you guys are linked to. Those kids are crazy man there total like so into you guys its unbelievable. They're some of the best fan sites I've seen
Skinnny: Yeah, we're looking to take over the Grateful Dead spot but not so much the fucking hippie angle of it. Not sop much the dirty smelly hippie angle of it.
Tom: I got to admit you guys are one of my new favorite bands. I just found about you guys a few months back. A friend turned me onto you guys and I haven't taken the cd out of my disc player since I got it. What I like about you guys is that you take everything I've ever loved about all of my favorite bands, and made into one band that looks and sounds like none of the others. Pretty phat deal. With so many guys in the band and so much going on do you guys find it hard to put shit together, y'know to arrange the songs and make the come out?
Benis: Yeah, you have to sometimes break it down to like 3 or 4 people at a time. Instead of all eight, because there's just too many cooks in the kitchen then, but you do take the ideas from everyone here and there while the song is being written and arranged everyone gets their ideas in. But, usually at a time we work with 3 or 4 just to get it done.
Skinny: Then you just start throwing the kitchen sink at it... if it doesn't work you subtract it. Just build the raw bones with 3 or 4 guys, then you just layering on stuff and immediately you know what you DON'T want. Takes a while before you start to really dig it, but that's kinda the formula we have… no formula.
Tom: All right, so what do you guys listen to when you're not doing your own stuff like what's your influences?
Skinny: Well on this tour I've been listening to Dry Cell everyday… cause they're on right before us and I actually got their disc…
Benis: They're good, too
Skinny: And they're good man, they're great songwriters for their age too… They're just really high energy and it's good stuff… but we listen to a lot of mindless self indulgence. Like the other day, Exodus: Bonded By Blood, Slayer, still with the Slayer, lots of different stuff… Bjork, PJ Harvey but uh… on this trip it's been a lot of Dry Cell! Someone wakes up singing one of their tunes EVERY day…
Tom: Ok, you guys just finished up your first headlining tour of the US, now you're on Locobazooka, and then you're off to the OzzFest… are you getting the same crowd response everywhere you're going?
Benis: It's been really good; I think the thing that's helping us now is that we're able to play for the fans that don't really know us. When we did our own thing, and our own headlining tours, it was great and we had great turnouts, but it was people that already into us and wanted to come and see us. It's a good thing, but we wanted to get out in front of people that have never seen us before. That's what we're doing now.
Tom: Obviously, you're excited about going on tour with Ozzy…
Benis: Sure.
Skinny: Yeah. That's what's cool about Europe, especially for me, I had never been to Europe before, so the first time I went to Europe I got to play OzzFest… Donnington Raceway… 100,000 people… insane…
Tom: Awesome
Skinny: Not to mention Tool, System of A Down, and Slayer
Emo: You can't beat that bill…
Skinny: Shit, just what I wished for as a kid, all my life…
Tom: Ok you knew this was coming… the whole Slipknot thing…
Skinny: Oooh, the S-word… the fucking S-word. Those guys got serious issues. They want to turn this into fucking 2Pac and Biggie. I think ultimately, they don't like another band that's wearing costumes and shit and getting attention or something, cause every time I pick up a magazine, one of them's got something bad to say about us. Don't know 'em. Never met 'em. Can't wait to. I can't wait to.
Benis: Especially a couple of them.
Skinny: Yeah, there's two of them… they got some 'splainin' to do.
Tom: There was an incident where some Slipknot fans threw shit at you on stage…
Benis: No…
Skinny: Well, that happens every day. We got a bottle and a Slipknot shirt thrown at us today. The day they first came through Cleveland, when they first came out, and some kids found it fucking highly offensive that they looked just like us. Cause we didn't always look like this. You look at our old CDs… you know, orange jumpsuits, the pig playing the bass guitar… it was ridiculous…I wore a gas mask.
Benis: Bondage masks… there were just too many similarities…
Skinny: So anyway, we took the high road, and changed our image… if they had come out sounding like us, we'd have been fucked. Know what I mean? But they came out looking like us… so; fine we can change our look, that's cool. Ultimately, they helped in a lot of ways. I don't think we'd have a record deal if they didn't sell a million records. I mean, you gotta look at both sides of the coin. But as far as that fucking Cory kid goes, I'm gonna bust his teeth out!
Tom: I think you guys blow them out of the water. I like the fact that on this album you only swear four times.
Skinny: You don't need to swear man.
Tom: Personally I think it's a show of ignorance when you have to write "fuck" every fourth word…
Skinny: It shows a lack of substance.
Tom: …or like Limp Bizkit when you have to put your band's name in every song, and it becomes kind of asinine after a while…
Skinny: It's a lack of substance to write about, and it shows… I think, ultimately, they're pissed though, because there's another band that's got costumes and masks. It's like "Well? How do you think we felt all these years?"
Emo: Do you think that they think they were the first?
Benis: They've pounded it into their own heads.
Skinny: They feel they're the creators and they're creators of something…
Emo: I mean, GWAR, and Kiss, and Alice Cooper…
Tom: … even Fish from Marillion painted his face…
Skinny: The Residents.
Tom: …Peter Gabriel…
Skinny: The Residents were a big influence on me as far as to wear costumes and masks. I mean that's just fucking creepy… I always wanted to do something like that; everyone wanted to do something different. That's where all the costumes and masks came from. They're just mad cause they can't play like us. Well, the drummer's cool…
Tom: Why the name Mushroomhead? Is it like the same reason as Whitesnake? With a bass player named "Pig Benis", an obvious phallic reference…
Benis: Oh, Really?!? (Laughter)
Tom: …is it the same reason for the name? I mean why the name Mushroomhead?
Benis: I think that the thing we're going with today is that it's an omnipresent word that you can add many different meanings to. What it means to you is what it means to you, and it's all good. What it means to us may be something different.
Skinny: It's not like Deicide, where you know what kind of band you're getting…
All: Right.
Tom: I don't know if it's Deicide or another band, but the guy admitted that there are no lyrics to the songs, he just gets up there and grunts, growls and every once in a while screams "BLOOOOOD!" He just openly admitted there were No lyrics to his songs…
I have to address the Scorpion King soundtrack… Bad movie, awesome soundtrack. How do you feel about the fact that the
soundtrack you're on is better than the damn movie?
Skinny: I still haven't seen it
Tom: It's awful… save your money.
Benis: We heard that our song made the end credits, which is cool. Good to see and hear, to check it out… if you stayed long enough after the end of the movie…
Tom: People are buying up the discs, you know, because it's got…
Benis: …a lot a good bands, sure. It was cool to be part of the lineup; they put it together rather quickly. They asked us to write a song for it, so we did. We took a few weeks, wrote it, recorded it, and put it on there. Got a hold of it, put it in there, yeah, that's good.
Tom: I recently saw you guys play at the Lost Horizon in Syracuse, small club, stark stage, then I checked out the website saw you guys playing with big extravagant sets. How long does it take you guys to get a stage set together before a show, get into costume and all?
Benis: The costumes we can get in and out of pretty quick, with years of experience at it… it really just depends on the size of the venue, and what kind of show we can bring. If it's a small club… the size of the venue y'know it varies quite a bit, so we have different size props and banners that we can put in to wherever we're playing, if we're playing at a big place obviously we can have a lot more to offer as far as the show goes, and in smaller places you've just to do with what you've got. I mean, with 8 guys in a band, it's hard just to get enough room on the stage.
Skinny: Yeah that's a bitch. We got shows A, B, and C, sometimes D. What show's it gonna be tonight?
Benis: A Locobazooka thing like this, you get on in 15 minutes, you play your set, and you get off in 15 minutes. Not a lot of time for a line check, a sound check. A line check, but no sound check. You just got to get on there and perform really quickly in the middle of the day. It's really a test of what the music stands for and where your fans are.
Tom: Many bands have a superstitious side, and got through a pre-show ritual… is there any kind of pre-show ritual that you guys do?
Skinny: Putting the suits on.
Benis: We're not superstitious. We don't got rheumatism, we don't got stigmatisms, and we don't got superstition.
Skinny: We kinda just go out there and fucking hope everything goes right. Something always goes wrong.
Benis: Maybe we should start...
Skinny: Yeah, maybe we should start, 'cause that's just how it is. Most people do whatever they have to do before they go on, and they have the best shows of their lives but… even if you do that every day, someone's monitor is gonna fuck up or someone's string is gonna break. It's just the name of the game, y'know...Shit Happens.
Tom: And what's the future hold for you guys? Any chance of a GWAR-type movie, maybe a comic book, action figures, anything like that.
Schmotz: Probably all of that, eventually.
Skinny: Definitely a home video, although the majority of our stuff is like a Pantera home video. It's all about us being fucked up or smashing something or breaking something…
Benis: But yeah, actually, we were talking about doing these videos, one of the thing that we are really into is making these cool videos with a good storyline, and go to the next level. Eventually, if we could do some sort of modern "Wall" or some shit like that, that would be the ultimate. But you'd need a lot of financing and time to do that.
Tom: I play your video for Solitaire Unraveling all the time at my house, and it scares the shit out of my kid.
Skinny: (Laughs) I got two boys; they wear the masks all the time.
Tom: I've got a five-year-old daughter, she runs in the other room. The masks freak her out. I'm like, "Come on back in here, these guys are cool."
Skinny: (Laughs)
Tom: All right, one last bonus question: The Homeless - Good source of food or fuel?
Skinny: Fuel. We should put 'em to work, right? No excuse for that, I got a drum tech job just waiting for somebody. Lots of people are hiring. If not, I have one word for you: CANADA!
At that point the band had to get ready for the Japanese photo shoot, so we packed up our stuff and tagged along for the make-up and costume preparations. It was very cool to see them getting ready.
When it came time for the shoot we left.
There were lots more bands to see...
