 When
I first saw the film Jaws I was 4 years old. I don’t
know what my dad was thinking, but after that movie I thought
a 20 foot Great White could fit into my ten-gallon aquarium.
After recovering from my first experience of the most visceral
fear a boy should handle, I went on to love that white belly,
eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head style of the man-eater. Fear
had turned to love.
When I first saw the Butthole Surfers I was 15 years old.
I don’t what my mom was thinking, but after that show
I thought that lighting my rubbing alcohol-soaked hand on
fire was a great way to front a band. After recovering from
the bombastic/ecstatic experience, I went on to love the teeth-grinding
quiver of the Surfers in full chaos.
Like an old friend, the Butthole Surfers have been with me
every single step of the way along my musical pursuits. I
finally reached a crossroads where opportunity granted me
the chance to record with and interview King Coffey, the Surfers’
drummer for the past nineteen years.
I asked King about the Surfer’s teeth-grinding, all-I-could-do-was-smile
vibe on stage and he said, “I think it’s always
sort of a terrifying sense when the band is on. It’s
like seeing a horror film, like Evil Dead. It’s terrifying,
yet funny at the same time. Laugh in the face of terror. I
used to scream a lot when I played early on. It was like scream
therapy for me. We had the primalcy of punk, but instead of
being defined with these two-minute songs about Reagan, it
went a whole lot darker and into nightmares—things you
can’t really talk about, deep instincts.”
His words resonated with me immensely. I had always thought
of the band as a musical catharsis blending the most morbid
with the swirling sublime.
King described this range of emotion as “a more instinctual
kind of thing where we knew what kind of films we wanted and
what kind of lights we had, and basically, the whole thing
was just about extreme things. The extremes were also not
even just bloody stuff but extremely beautiful stuff too,
like dolphins into water—extremely visual images whether
they’re incredibly pleasing or incredibly disturbing.
I think we really just wanted a spectacle to a large degree.”
 I
remember the whole crowd seeming dosed, a sub-cultural communion
with each person eating their tabs like the body of the Butthole
Surfers.
“I
always thought the band would be a horrible band to take acid
to, live especially, because it is just so disgusting. We
were a touring band forever. We never had any classic groupie
experiences ever. It was just too ugly of an experience. Both
us physically and also the music and the way it was presented
that nobody ever wanted to come backstage.”
When I met with King, there were many things I wanted to know.
King shared graciously with me, making me feel at ease for
being so quizzical. I asked him to tell me about his drumming
roots, and he said, “When I first got into punk rock—at
first I wanted to be a bass player. It just seemed too hard.
I got some drumsticks and was beating on the wooden floor
of our house to the point where I had these missing chunks
of the floor where basically I was tapping it down. Just playing
along to records. Finally my dad took some pity upon me and
said, ‘Would you want to take a lesson?’ I said,
‘Sure.’
I went to this music store in Fort Worth, and this jazz drummer
said, ‘Do you play drums?’ And in my head, ‘Yeah,
I did.’ I’d been playing the floor for months
now.
He said, ‘Show me what you know.’ So, I went behind
the drum kit and played just the Ramones, a perfect Ramones
beat. And the jazz guy was bummed. He said ‘No, no,
no. You’re holding the sticks wrong .You’re playing
this wrong.’ Then, he took over and did this pointless,
jazzy fills kinda stuff. That’s when I realized I didn’t
want anything to do with taking lessons from this guy or any
other guy.”
When King mentioned the Ramones beat, I had a wonderful picture
of the jazz cat from the music store disapproving what many
people these days would argue to be great drumming; maybe
words got twisted, and history didn’t know what to say?
I had come for names, too. I wondered who had inspired or
provoked King to play the drums. I wanted to put together
this puzzle that had been in pieces on a table in my mind
since I was fifteen years old.
In regards to his favorite drummers, King provided, “For
all time, Mitch Mitchell (Jimi Hendrix Experience), Paul Whaley
(Blue Cheer), Ginger Baker (Cream). I love the psychedelic
school of heavy tom drumming, but then I also like the purity
of the Cramps and the Ramones—but also the post-punk
stuff, like Killing Joke’s first two records, Gang of
Four’s first two records, and the drums on the first
couple of Public Image records. I like real tom heavy stuff.”
King’s drummer list literally sprung a plethora of the
Surfers’ beats into my mind from the “pure”
kick-snare of “Human Cannonball” to the tom-laden
“E.D.G.A.R” on Independent Worm Saloon.
King also very succinctly assessed how we rate drummers, “It
seems like that whenever somebody refers to a good drummer
they’re usually talking about somebody who plays lots
of toms.”
King admits that nowadays he is at the point where he would
take some drum lessons,
“I was watching this documentary on Cream, and Ginger
Baker was running through the three or four drum patterns
that he uses. And they're all just basically variations of
drum patterns that most students learn. I get a sense that
a lot of my favorites—the real busy, heavy tom-rolling
drummers—probably studied a lot and are doing what they
learned in drum school on the drum kit.”
I described to King how as kids we would practice the “King
Coffey beat” in our jam space. I was vying for an affirmation
that he has forged a great style. He referred me to former
member Teresa Nervosa, “A big chunk of that though is
really Teresa. We were never the same once Teresa left the
band, because Teresa was doing all the really cool drum parts.
I had the kick and snare, so I was keeping the skeleton of
the beat, but it was really Teresa who was playing strictly
toms—and nothing but toms—and really filling out
the sound. So when she left the band, it seemed kind of pointless
to replace her.
I would do my best trying to double up some stuff, but really,
a lot of that is just Teresa going to town.”
 King
started playing with the Surfers in 1983 when he was eighteen
years old. Frontman Gibby Haynes and guitarist Paul Leary
had returned to Texas and needed a drummer, and there was
King, who had been playing up to then in the Hugh Beaumont
Experience. He told me about the seeing the band before he
played with them, “I was a fan of the band before I
joined the band. When I first saw the band it was like ‘83,
‘82? They had a rep as being a hardcore band, but when
I saw them they weren’t playing hardcore at all. It
was this guy in his boxer shorts playing a saxophone playing
seventies rock covers, but the whole thing was so ludicrous,
so over the top. It kinda had a real ‘fuck you’
attitude of punks. It was like a punk band that wasn’t
playing punk. Paul kept looking up in the sky. I kept looking
up in the crowd what see he was staring at.”
Back then, I’ll take a stab here, there was simply less
music going around. And how King describes them makes a lot
of sense, “In the ‘80s, you were lucky to have
one club, and they might book maybe one show a week that was
worth going to.”
The genres certainly weren’t divvied up in to the postmodern
fragments they are now. But still, “punk” and
“hardcore” blew wide open the doors to what would
later be considered underground music and from those doors
gushed the creative onslaught which still leaves a trail like
a Hansel who’s been chewing George Lucas’ chocolate
mushrooms in the black forest. The Surfers, at the time, must
have been so out there but welcome. According to King, “Early
Texas punk bands had their own style. They would never be
confused for a West Coast punk band or an East Coast punk
band, because at that time, Texas was so isolated from the
rest of the planet. There weren’t that many touring
bands. The bands that people saw were those who played locally
a lot. You had bands like the Big Boys and the Dicks who were
big influences—say like on the Butthole Surfers.”
One of the neatest aspects of speaking with King was his viewpoint
on the history and state of music. Before speaking with him,
I might have been inclined to try to hyper-explain the impact
of this and that type of music, cross-pollinating with this
region etc. etc.
King,
I think, quite simply describes the state of pop and its growth
since the 1950’s in his description of what influenced
the Surfers, “Punk and hardcore. Those were the two
(styles of music) which most directly affected us, but beyond
electronic and techno, there really hasn’t been anything
(else). When you look at the way pop music has developed,
there was a big explosion in the ‘50s. You have Elvis
in like ‘55. By ’65, you had the Beatles. You
had an incredible explosion of music within ten years. From
‘65 to ‘75 a lot happened: you had Hendrix come
along, and you had the whole psychedelic thing. But really
music and pop culture seems to be slowing down in a way. The
last great movement was really punk rock. If you look at what’s
happened in the last ten years, there’s been no development
between ‘93 and ‘03. Nothing. And really even
between ‘83 and ’93, there wasn’t really
that much, really. You had corporate new wave become a little
bit more established. But that’s it.”
 I
followed up with a question about grunge and its impact on
music. King responded with, “Corporate media, record
labels have completely swallowed up whatever threat and creativity
punk once had. Well, it was weird when the Nirvana hit number
one. It was the first time that a record was number one in
the nation and, also at the same time, my favorite record.
Plus, they were our peer group. We knew Nirvana; they were
friends of ours. So, it was strange to see kids wearing, like
at the mall, Nirvana T-shirts. While in the short term it
might have improved the music, it’s certainly better
to hear Nirvana on the radio as opposed to Bryan Adams or
something. It also gave us Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots,
and completely diminishing returns as twelfth rate and fourteenth
rate Nirvanas were trying to be found and exposed. Even worse,
it took underground rock culture—and that aspect of
underground rock music—and made it a mainstream force.”
So getting back to those empty years between ‘93 and
‘03, I’ll weigh in and say that this was the era
when popular music developed its marketability to an obnoxious
pitch, like a devil in the ear of integrity. Even the Surfers
went around the track more than once. There was getting on
a major label with Capitol Records, a shed tour with the Stone
Pimple Toilets, a spiced, chart-topping Gibby rap, a spot
on Letterman, and a few trips on the movie soundtrack go-round.
I’m making no judgments here, just pointing out the
accoutrements of “succeeding” in this day and
age—devoid of worthy mass content, leaving nothing sacred,
and touching even the most prized of our muses.
To this King mentioned something both hopeful and daunting,
“The only time the Butthole Surfers actually sold records
was when it wasn’t weird, when you had a pretty much
straight ahead pop song like ‘Pepper.’ It’s
time for something new to happen. I don’t know what
it’s going to be. I don’t know what field it’s
gonna come from.”
And if what you or I are doing right at this moment isn’t
new, what does that make us in the eyes of innovation? Hopefully
a bunch of weirdos. It seems to be a place where we can be
ourselves.
 According
to King, “Being weird doesn’t sell. Being weird
is a detriment to moving units. Michael Jackson used to be
a pop star but then he became weird. Occasionally, you’ll
have exceptions like Alice Cooper, maybe even Little Richard,
but by and large, people want music which they understand
and that can be presented in a real concise manner, like ‘macho
rock band’ or ‘sexy teenage starlet.’ Whatever,
it has to be easily presented. Thankfully, weird will never
sell, which is probably just as well, so that way we can sort
of keep our own music to ourselves, maintain our own little
culture.”
Even in the midst of “success” the Surfers’
kept doing it how they chose to do it. Independent Worm Saloon
was their first Capitol Records release. It was the last album
Jeff Pinkus made with them, and their first in a world class
studio with gold records on the wall. IWS was produced by
Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones and took a month to record—a
time frame strange to the Surfers’ and their previous
“record it at home or when you can” ethic.
Of the old recording technique, King says, “It’s
always the band kind of sneaking in to the studio and recording
a song when they could. An album was a collection of songs
recorded over time in a piecemeal kind of basis. The first
EP was done that way, as was the first two LPs. Some of Rembrandt
and Locust, we started investing into recording ourselves.
So instead of sneaking into someone else’s studio, we
were recording at our house basically. Those albums are like
the best of the home tapes.
By Hairway, Paul especially, who always acted as the engineer
for the band, felt like he was limited by the eight-tracks
we could record on at our house. So we went to an all-digital
studio in Dallas to record. Hairway to Steven was the first
time we actually went to a studio and recorded an album within
a couple of days, mixed the next couple of days, and we were
done. That’s how most albums get done. A band has their
set, they record their set over a span of a week or two, and
it gets done.”
And with Capitol Records, King explains that the “newness”
this time around was to make a “rock” album, “After
being in a band for so long, going to a professional studio,
even having a producer, it was all funny—nothing that
none of us were used to, especially the whole surrealism of
having John Paul Jones be the producer.”
Thanks to a lack of trust, the Surfers hooked John Paul Jones:
“Capitol was spending a lot of money on a record by
a band, the Butthole Surfers. They didn’t trust us to
record ourselves. Paul sent him (JPJ) Hairway to Steven, not
even thinking at the time the whole title of the LP was a
parody of Led Zeppelin. Apparently JPJ thought the whole thing
was kinda cheeky on our part, thought it was humorous. I think
he was intrigued by trying to record some Texan punk surrealists.
I blew out my wrist in the process. We were recording all
these fast and furious songs first. A week into it I couldn’t
even hold a cup of water anymore. We never really made a rock
record before, as far as completely up-tempo rocking kind
of tunes. It was just fun to play. All of our songs in the
past have been such a mixed bag of tricks—either slow,
fast, arty. To have a consistently up-tempo rocking feel was
fun to do. We never tried it. I think that‘s always
been one of the things the band’s always done—trying
new stuff. In that case, a rock record was something new.”
When it comes to the mainstream I think polluted is a nice
way to put it. The waters are definitely not to be used for
cooking.
King shared with me an image of his mainstream which speaks
straight from the head waters of Waller Creek, “Then
again, I don’t really care anymore, as far as what the
mainstream does. My mainstream is what’s happening on
Red River, at 710, or Beerland, or Emo’s, or Flamingo.
The clubs on Red River are what’s happening in music
for me. It’s really the bands playing in those clubs
that I care most about. It’s like our own alternate
universe that’s ours. It’s our music. That’s
what I care the most about these days. At one point I might
have cared what major labels were doing, but now, I don’t.
It all sucks. It always has sucked. It probably will suck
forever.
Like, right now is a really great time in Austin. Now, we
have this incredibly rich scene of music with all these clubs
who are presenting all these bands. It’s incredible.
Every night you can pick and chose as to what shows you want
to go to. My hat, if I wore a hat, would be off to all the
clubs on Red River and the bands they book and the people
who go out to shows. It’s where I want to be most nights.
I think it’s probably good for regionalism, as well,
for even a city to develop its own style and sound and ideas
instead of being totally reliant on what’s happening
on the West Coast. When you have a happening local music scene,
I think bands like Tia Carrera are going to wind up inspiring
other future bands, locally.” The Butthole Surfers found
inspiration in the many influences that roiled through the
band’s collective psyche as a group who was confined
to a tour van long enough to name an era after it.
“During
our vans days, I acted as a DJ, I like to think. I was the
one that kind of maintained the big briefcases of cassette
tapes we had. Whenever we had a day off at somebody’s
house, I would totally raid the record collection and record
a ton of stuff. It would be like new fuel for the van. I would
go for anything which I hadn’t heard before—arty
punk stuff, also psychedelic music of the ‘60s. Some
of our favorite tapes were those we found at Thai restaurants
of Thai pop music,” King explains.
As to the band being “art rock,” King responded,
“We were art punks. There’s just no denying it.
The band could talk as much about their favorite turn of the
century artist as they could about 1970s punk rock records.
We were primarily music fans, certainly of this happening
music of our lifetime, the whole punk and hardcore explosion
of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
We also put it in the context of painting and filmmaking and
the bigger arts world in general. Plus, other schools of music
as well. The band has a big blues foundation that was never
really talked about, but we all know the same Howling Wolf
records or Muddy Waters. Paul and Gibby especially are really
into Freddie King. We all listened to Throbbing Gristle and
various industrial bands. More weird theatrical. post-punk
stuff,
Savage Republic from California or Chrome. I think we were
always inspired by punk but looked down upon how confining
it was.
There’s a world of influences and interests from the
band, art being one of them. We were influenced by, or inspired
by at least, the Dada, the surrealists, the conceptual artists
and performance artists as well. I think there’s a big
performance art aspect to the band. So we were inspired by
people doing something different, even Flipper, people making
new sounds that couldn’t immediately be described in
a simple, one-word phrase. That’s what it is.”
At the end of King’s quote he brought me back to the
idea that to be happening music, you must eat happening music.
You must have a relationship to the music that warrants living
it: But, King says, “The van years kinda sucked. We
had a more pure relationship with music in a way. The only
entertainment we had was our collection of cassette tapes.
That was the only thing to listen to and I really got to learn
that music really well.”
I still can’t shake all the records that I have memorized,
all the Surfers’ LPs included, and it’s King’s
last comment that I attribute to what would be considered
my love of this band. Complete digestion. The body of Butthole.
King and I recorded a song for this story. It can be downloaded
at www.butterylicious.com. I approached King and asked to
make a recording with him, which he graciously obliged. We
made “computer” rock in his living room. I was
surprised to find that he was not as into computer music as
I thought. However, his skill at creating it was especially
nice to bask in while we made our song.
 He
later told me his feelings on Drain, his solo project, which
was put out on his Trance record label. It seems that by the
early ‘90s the Surfers had time to branch out.
“I think it really, by that point, was the first time
we actually could do anything outside the band. Up to that
point, we had always been traveling so much. We were either
living in a van, or barely getting by. We actually had a chance
to do things that wasn’t directly tied into the band.
A window of opportunity opened up, we just wound up doing
stuff.”
Paul released his LP A History of Dogs, Gibby and Jeff did
the Jackofficer’s Digital Dump, their “hick house”
album. And King released Pick Up Heaven and Regional Action.
All these albums are uniquely “Butthole,” while
maintaining very individual musical perspectives.
“The
Drain records was basically me and my love of computers and
samplers, but by the time the last two Butthole records, I
got so burnt out on working with computers. I think it sorta
like takes the spontaneity out of music; it takes a lot of
the soul out of music. It’s a useful tool. It’s
real easy when the computer works to be the end all, be all
of the song. When you do that it’s not nearly as fun
as holding a drumstick and laying into a drum kit.
These days I’d rather be doing that. I‘d like
to be in a rock band, a heavy rock band. That’s easier
said than done. So in the meantime, yeah, I’ve been
playing with loops and stuff, even though I can’t stand
computer music anymore. I can still make it, and that’s
better than watching TV.”
King and I actually watched TV while we recording the song.
The Yanks were trying to beat the Sox to the pennant. We spent
about two and a half hours listening and playing to loops
that King had recorded on a trip to India.
He told me about acquiring the loop stock abroad, “Instead
of photographing everything I was recording everything. I
was recording all kind of TV sounds and radio sounds. So,
I was walking around with a microphone in all these busy streets.
I was recording street sounds. Here I was this tall, pale
ghost walking around with a microphone recording the most
banal sounds of street life. I would always get a crowd wherever
I went.
Generally speaking, in India people are respectful. They would
let me record, and as soon as I would put away the microphone
then everybody would begin selling me their beads or postcards.”
We also synched King’s electronic drums to the loops,
and then I tried my damnedest to find a melodic, power chord
accompaniment to the structure. I was satisfied just listening
to the loops. I remarked to King that I could listen to just
the loops for a whole record.
“Loops
are great. They can be really hypnotic. When I’m working
with loops the time flies. I could be in my little bedroom
for five hours listening to loops, and it feels like thirty
minutes. It almost carries you into a drug-like state, especially
when you make loops of the mundane things. Complete nonsense
can take on unintentional spiritual overtones at some point.”
King has a great line about technology being a great democratizer.
If the computer was bringing the music to a more democratic
state with home recording programs, affordable hardware and
a pro-sound at the domestic level, the question that remained
was this, “King, do we want democratic music?”
My answer from King was, “Somebody has a quote about,
you know, ‘punk rock showed that anyone could be in
a band, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should be
in a band.’ It’s true. With tools that people
have these days to be able to record music via computer, it’s
gotten so cheap. In the ‘70s punk rock ideal was that
you don’t have to spend a lot of money to go into a
studio. You do things cheaply and not worry about it. Well,
now you can do things cheaply and make it sound good.
I’m also getting cynical over things like Pro Tools.
Taking a song and making it absolutely perfect. Putting all
the drums parts exactly where things have to go. Copying and
pasting your music parts. I’ve been in this real reactionary
mood the past five years or so by just listening to soul music.
Like ‘60s soul music, where it’s all about passion
and feel, and there’s all these mistakes left and right
but it doesn’t matter.
I’m really sick of computers being used—especially
for rock music. I don’t think there’s really any
place any more for computers and rock music.”
Regarding the “computer” rock we made for you,
I will say this, we did have a song in a matter of hours.
However, I know this can be done in the “live”
format too. I was really impressed with King’s work
and his sense of blending different loops to create a soundscape
that is coherent and accessible, not to mention the stellar
drum work that I witnessed in the privacy of his living room.
Late in the interview King brought up his view on creating
music live versus the studio. I think they’re great
words of experience and great parting words too, considering
the impact and breadth of both the Surfer’s “alive
with pleasure” rock shows and their avant garde LPs.
 “There
are things live that you can’t do on record. You have
to treat each medium—whether you’re making a record
or making a live show—as its own entity. Go about it
that way. Don’t limit yourself to any kind of rules
as to what you can and cannot do.”
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