The pioneering force of The Jesus Lizard returned to our stages and stereos last year with the incredible ‘Rack’ album on Ipecac Records. They performed their first UK performances live in 16 years on our shores to sold-out crowds and huge critical acclaim. Since then, the band have released three extraordinary singles. And today, we’re very honoured to be joined by their frontman, the legendary David Yow.
First, I was lucky to be at your Leeds show at the Brudenell Social Club. How did you feel returning to the stage after so much time away?
“It’s been a lot of fun. You know, I love those other three guys, and they’re really good at what they do. And so it’s been a whole lot of fun to play these shows. I’m pretty happy with the new record, and it’s been a blast to play these new songs live instead of some of the re-enactment stuff in the few years before recording Rack. We were just doing the same shit that we’ve been doing for, I think, 70 years. It’s been nice to incorporate some new stuff in there. The crowds have been great, good audience reactions. The shows in the States have been freaking me out because some of them are really, really big. I mean, in the old days, 1200 people, maybe 1500 people, was about as big as it got for us. We’ve been doing shit for three and a half thousand people and stuff. It’s freaking me out!”
The music industry needs this resurgence in noise rock. Music seems so safe these days. Do you feel that way about music at the moment?
“I don’t really keep up with it, George, but I mean, I’ve felt that for quite some time, and now I feel like there are a lot of bands. I mean, I don’t keep my finger on the pulse, but it seems to me that there are a pretty fair number of bands that are not as safe as it’s always been, you know, like Amyl and the Sniffers or the Viagra Boys or Idles. There’s a bunch of bands that have sort of more balls than it seems like the average has had for a while, so that’s a plus.”
One notable thing about your recent show was the size of your setlist. How do you keep that energy and momentum?
“Well, I don’t know if I do keep it up (laughs). I’m usually pretty exhausted by the end of that. During that UK tour, I think there was one point where we did six nights in a row, and I told our booking agent no more. No, we’re not doing six nights in a row again. Five nights tops. Because everybody’s older than they used to be and still live through it. But I sort of try.
So spending an hour and a half trying to do that is, like I said, a challenge.”
The Jesus Lizard are a really tight unit live. Is that muscle memory from playing together for so long?
“Well, those guys are really, really good musicians, and they’ve only gotten better since 1999, you know, because they’ve been playing continuously. So I don’t think its muscle memory; I think it’s just aptitude and capability.”
In relatively quick succession, you’ve released three singles since ‘Rack’, and there’s the EP, ‘Flux’. Is this productivity a sudden burst of inspiration working together, and many songs have come out, or have you returned to older songs?
“Well, the only song that was from the actual old days is ‘Lord Godiva’, which I think we wrote about 27 years ago. I think we played it a couple of times live, but I’m not sure. I never got a good recording of it, and so all the stuff that’s on ‘Rack’ and ‘Flux’ EP, you said a burst, it wasn’t necessarily a burst because there was so much time. But the other guys had been working on structural ideas for a while before they sort of pitched it to me, and I was impressed with what they had and figured, “Okay, maybe I can write some shit for this stuff.” It wasn’t easy because, at first, I was going, “I don’t know how to write a song.” right? I don’t know that I ever knew how to write a song!”
You released a solo album in 2013. Was that handy to get back in the saddle?
“Well, no, because I started that in 96. Alex Hacke from Einstürzende Neubauten, a beautiful friend of mine, had shown me, back in the mid-90s, the rudiments of Pro Tools. So I got Pro Tools and just started fucking around with some ideas. I had a handful of them when I first met Mike Patton, and he and Greg were working on Ipecac Records, and he told me, he grabbed me by the shoulders and said, “You’re gonna do a solo album, and I’m putting it out whether you like it or not.” And I said, well, that’s great because I’ve already got like five songs for it, and so I continued on, but I think from start to finish that record took like 11 years of not working very hard.”
One of the titles of the singles, which strikes a chord for someone who’s living in the UK, was ‘Cost of Living’. Which is a phrase we’ve used a lot over here.
“It means the same thing on the other side; maybe it just wasn’t as heavy duty.”
It’s a very evocative title. I was thinking, yes, it does cost just to live; you’re born into debt.
“Yeah, it’s got, however many entendres, I’m not sure. That’s one of the things I like about this band, and particularly some of the record titles. The most difficult thing about being in the Jesus Lizard is trying to get the four of us to agree on a four-letter title for an album. And ‘Rack’ was my idea, and I just really rammed it down their throats. I love that there are so many entendres of Rack. I think, you know, probably 12 or more, and I like that!”
You come from a golden era of bands that seemed to care first about catharsis and art and then became reluctantly famous, for want of a better word, or infamous.
“Well, I think a lot of us, you know, were so weaned on punk rock that rock star is a bad word. You’re not interested in that at all. And I know whenever I first started being in bands like Scratch Acid and stuff, fame and fortune never even came into the picture. You sell a thousand cassettes, and you go, “Man, fucking people we don’t even know are buying this,” I think there’s a huge contingent of people who I say are weaned on punk rock. They’re doing it because they enjoy doing it, and it’s fun. That’s it.”
Today’s modern music scene or even today’s culture seems obsessed with the notion of being famous. Is the punk rock mission statement getting lost in translation?
“I think you’re probably right, and this is not exactly in line with what you’re talking about, but my wife and I ate dinner at a ramen place just the other day, and on the TV, there was some Chinese kind of version of The Voice or America’s Got Talent or whatever, that kind of bullshit and man, it made me sick in my stomach to watch these beautiful young boys and girls singing these songs, and they’re just emoting so much. It was just pathetic, and that’s what the average Joe accepts and enjoys.”
You’re also an actor, and you’ve worked with the likes of Peter Dinklage, Elijah Woods and Kevin Spacey. Do you find acting is a valuable tool when it comes to performing on stage? Do the two cross over at all?
“Only slightly. I think that I’ve said this before, with the Jesus Lizard I can do anything I want at any time. I can change the lyrics or not sing or go over there or smack that person or just do whatever the fuck I want. With acting, there are typically some direct, actual parameters where you have to say this, and you have to go pick up that glass, put it down there, and do all this stuff. So, outside of them both being performances, I don’t really see that much connection or overlap. Once I sort of got more and more acting, when we did the 2009 re-enactment, it was the beginning of all these re-enactment shows; it almost like, I would sort of imagine like an acting class and doing songs like ‘Bloody Mary’, which is just a tremendously sad song. I tried to, I would sort of approach it from an acting standpoint. And it was fun. I mean, I don’t think that you could outwardly tell that it would make any difference, but that has happened with a handful of songs, and that’s been fun, but I don’t think that there’s a whole lot of overlapping.”
I read through your IMDB and saw that improv is listed as one of your skills. I thought that might be useful.
“Well, the funny part about that is that that manager and agent said that we should include that in my CV because I’ve taken improvisational classes, I, however, am not good at improv at all; it’s funny because I’m relatively clever, I can be quick-witted, but improv, it’s so difficult, and it’s not for me. Other people can just kick ass at it, but I’m not one of those people!”
It also makes me think that to be a good actor, you have to be quite a good study of human nature and human behaviour. I’ve noticed your lyrics are quite informed by human behaviour, and that takes someone observing.
“Observing is the word I was going to say; it’s got to be a fair amount of observation and imagination.”
Your fans are very fanatical. How does that sit with you? Do you find it strange, or are you comfortable with it?
“I’m not sure how aware I am of it. I mean, I am to a degree, but it’s always just flattering to me. Whenever anybody seems to appreciate something I’ve done or something that we’ve done so fervently, it’s really nice. I take it sincerely, and I’m really grateful that anybody likes the crap that we do. I used to have a really hard time with compliments. I just couldn’t take a compliment. After a while, I realised that was very rude. If somebody says to you, “Hey man, I love this thing that you do.” you don’t say, “No, I suck,” you’re insulting them. So if somebody wants to take the time to thank you or tell you whatever they think you are, the best reaction is to say thank you very much.”
You’ve previously covered a song from ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ with Scratch Acid. Would you ever entertain the idea of covering another song from a musical? And if so, which one?
“Largely because of our drummer Mac. He’s the nicest guy in the world. Have you ever seen Oklahoma? I say that Mac is like, ‘I’m just a girl who can’t say no’. I think that would be a killer song for us to do.”
I always thought that something would be funny if you did it as “I’m just a girl that can’t say nnnn…”
“(Laughs) “I’m just a girl who can’t say…” I really dug the Cows version of ’39 Lashes’. If you think of Tim Wright and Andrew Lloyd Webber, and if you pretend that they were a band and imagine they meet up for practice one day and one guy says, oh man, I’ve written these lyrics; listen to this, it’s like one, two, three, four, five, six, and go all the way up to thirty, lyrically, what an amazing song. It’s going to blow your mind.”
While you’ve been away, the music industry has changed a lot. How have you found it since you’ve come back? Have you felt a change?
“I don’t really know about the change in the music industry. I just know that our band is far more popular now than we were when we broke up in 1999. And I blame the internet. And the blame is a good thing. I appreciate that more people give a fuck about us than they did in the 90s. But as far as the music biz itself, I don’t really know.”
You published a book of drawings of cats and puns on the word cat. Is this correct?
“That is correct, yes, yes it is.”
How did that come about?
“I was an art major in school, in college and stuff, so I used to draw and paint a lot. In the very early 80s, one of my best friends was a guy named Tom. I would draw these stupid little cats. They were always in the same position. They were always standing in the same position. I put on a T-shirt, and it said, Tom. It was Tomcat. Elsewhere, the letters C-A-T are catastrophic, catamaran. So, we had worked for some years on doing The Jesus Lizard book that was published by Akashic and Johnny Temple from Girls Against Boys runs Akashic Publishing, and I asked him, would you be willing to do this cat book? He was sort of reluctant because they had never done anything quite like that, but he liked the idea, and so that’s how that happened. You can get it on Amazon but just go to akashic.org.
If the education committee came to you and said, “We need a song recommendation for a child who is coming up to 18 and needs to hear the track before he goes out into adulthood,” what song would you recommend?
“‘Anywhere On This Road’ by Lhasa. She did a record called ‘The Living Road’, ‘ and I got turned on to it right as we started writing this last record. I honestly believe it might be the best record ever made. So anything by Lassa, particularly off of the album ‘The Living Road'”
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Interview By George Miller
All Band Photos By Joshua Black Wilkins