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in-death-we-fall · 2 years ago

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Parallel Lives

Kerrang 923, September 28 2002

In Slipknot, Joey Jordison gets to rage. In the Murderdolls, he gets to rock. In both bands, he shits in public…

Words: Ian Winwood Photos: Roxy Erickson

Never let it be said that the Murderdolls lack the capacity to surprise. It’s Thursday night, the penultimate date of their sold-out tour of British clubs, and the band were due onstage 10 minutes ago. Getting a band like this to do anything on time is like turning an oil tanker around, so they’re running late. Which means that the 500 people packed inside Bristol’s Fleece club are just going to have to wait.

Joey Jordison, on the other hand, cannot wait. Opting to change from ugly-men-without-make-up to ugly-men-with-make-up not in the venue’s intimate and inaccessible dressing room, but in their tour bus, the Murderdolls have, for the past 45 minutes, been saying “Excuse me” and “Could you pass the hairspray/lipstick” and getting dressed into stage clothes that have seen less washing powder than the Turin Shroud. It’s like playing Twister with Max Factor.

And it could be worse. Joey Jordison – five feet not very many inches tall, even in ridiculous stage boots – needs to ‘go to the toilet’, and he needs to do this in the ‘I’d leave that for 10 minutes if I were you’ sense of the term. Which is unfortunate, considering that ‘No solids shall be deposited in the tour bus toilet’ is appropriately Rule Number Two in the rock ‘n’ roll code of the road, second only to ‘Do not blow the bus driver’s brains out with a .45 Magnum as he’s hurtling down the motorway at 120 miles per hour’. For Jordison, looking quietly concerned, this is a problem. Think, think, think: what to do?

Joey Jordison decides to resolve his predicament by performing a bowel movement on the pavement, in the street.

You did read that correctly.

“Man, I just took a shit in the street,” he says, almost skipping with joy and pride.

Perhaps to celebrate such a commendable achievement, one of the Murderdolls – and, let’s be honest, aside from Joey Jordison, they all look the same – decides to smash a pint glass. The jar arcs through the air, hitting the cobbled floor with a smash that is, strangely, as satisfying as it is entirely redundant. Then another glass takes flight. Then another, then another. There isn’t much whooping and there isn’t much hollering, but there is plenty of debris.

We’re standing outside a pub, next door to the Fleece. The landlady leans out of the doorway.

“Could you stop that please?” she asks.

“Go back inside lady,” says vocalist Wednesday 13, winner of this week’s stupid name competition. “Go back inside and no-one will get hurt.”

Five minutes ago Wednesday was giving serious consideration to urinating on a Puddle Of Mudd fly poster. He decided not to because the band, as people, are “cool”.

The Murderdolls are now walking toward the stage door.

“Hey, you know about American football right?” asks Eric Griffin, the bass player. Eric has missed a part of the tour after his father died, but now he’s back. “Well in American football this is called a drop-kick.”

Eric throws a pint glass from his hand and tries to kick it. The glass spins from his boot and smashes six inches away.

He adds: “Although it’s not a very good drop-kick.”

Inside the venue, the crowd have heard the intro tape and are starting to cheer. Outside, the band are going inside.

Please welcome, from the United States of Stupidity, The Murderdolls.

The Murderdolls have a song called ‘I Like (sic) To Say Fuck’, which is just as well, because they say fuck all the time; they also have a song called ‘Let’s Fuck’ which is not just as well, if you’re the one in line, because they’re all as ugly as fuck.

Onstage at the Fleece, the band say the word so many times that if they were to keep a swearbox they could, at the end of the tour, purchase a country. So it’s, “Here’s a fucking song for you, Bristol,” and “Are you tired of hearing all the fucking shit on the radio, Bristol?”.

In case, heaven forbid, you get bored of the word “fuck”, The Murderdolls do spice it up and throw it around with the odd “motherfucker” as well. They’re inventive like that.

They’re also, on a night like this, at the very core of their element. When the album, ‘Beyond The Valley Of The Murderdolls’, is boiled down and fried up in a hateful hall before 500 loving people, you’re seeing this band as they were intended to be seen. It’s here that you can view the parts of the Murderdolls that are A Good Thing, such as the schlock-punk shtick that recalls bands such as the Misfits and the Necros. This is also the place to see the parts of the Murderdolls that are A Bad Thing, such as them revisiting the era of hairspray and shiny guitars that epitomised the glam-metal years.

The Murderdolls will try to guess a woman’s cup size by feeling her breasts. It’s worth asking: what is the point of the Murderdolls?

“Just to have some fun,” says Joey Jordison. The guitarist – for this group at least – sits in the upstairs lounge of his band’s tour bus. Adjacent to him is Wednesday. Before the tape recorder is switched on, a request is made that the whole band are questioned, but Joey, quietly, won’t allow it. Make of this what you will.

“I get all my angry shit out with Slipknot, so this is something else that I can do. And I have fun doing it. We may not be the most serious band in the world, but that doesn’t really matter. That doesn’t mean that this can’t mean something to me just the same.”

For a band that aren’t serious, by the way, Joey Jordison chose to meet this question in serious tones, and with some immediacy – ready with an answer, almost leaping in with his response.

Would you like your audience to be serious about liking you?

“Yeah, I suppose I would.”

Joey Jordison didn’t actually make an appearance today until 8pm, fearing that he’d contracted a fever after standing in the cole – straight after his band’s set – in Manchester for three hours signing CDs and body parts for his fans. Later in Bristol it would seem that this is no more than a chill, but his earlier absence means that his bandmates have to endure the mind-shrivelling tedium that is the afternoon before a show without him.

Wednesday and guitarist Acey Slade are upstairs in the Fleece’s dressing room, talking small and killing time. Wednesday is attempting to fit brown plastic holsters to his trousers, in which he can hold the blue plastic pistols that will spurt water into the crowd later tonight. Slade – the funniest and most impressive member of the band – is looking through photographs taken in Germany. He says the word “cool” a lot. Wednesday has a bastardised image of Colonel Sanders on the back of his jacket. Kentucky Fried Chicken is his favourite food, he says, with the humorous delivery of a serious sentiment. Although if he lived in England he would open a chain of fast food franchises called Kentucky Fried Fish And Chips.

Wednesday is from Louisiana (sic). Acey is from Pennsylvania.

But you’re based in Los Angeles, right?

“Fuck no,” says Wednesday.

I thought that’s where you all lived.

“We don’t really have a base,” says Slade.

Is that because you’re not a proper band?

“Fuck you,” says Wednesday.

The Murderdolls take this well. The Murderdolls, fittingly, know how to smile.

This is Joey Jordison’s band. He laughs and jokes along throughout the evening – and his humour and tolerance of a piss-taking journalist is more impressive than many – but, in subtle moments, his demeanour betrays a seriousness and focus that is hardly disguised. He is acutely aware of how he wishes to be portrayed although, strangely, he appears more concerned with visuals than words. He applies his make-up on three separate occasions for the photographs that partner this piece. The last time he has to do this, at 1am, he doesn’t appear overly thrilled. He has a quiet word with Roxy Erickson about what she can and can’t shoot (admirably, she opts not to fall in with the conspiracy).

In conversation, conversely, Jordison is almost slanderously unguarded. He wants to make it clear than our own Josh Sindell, in his review of the Murderdolls’ set at the Whisky A Go-Go, was wrong to say that Kerry King left early out of disdain, but rather had to leave for LAX airport. Then he says that while the other eight members of Slipknot were furious with K! Dep Ed Jason Arnopp for the things he wrote in his Slipknot book, this was only because they knew that what he wrote was “true”. He’ll also tell you about how he fucked-up his voice by mixing two different batches of cocaine together earlier in the tour. And how, on the road with Slipknot in America, he walked in to the Clown’s dressing room and emptied his bowels right into the rubbish bin. Right there in the room.

Why on Earth did you do that?

“Because he was fucking with me.”

Is there tension in Slipknot?

“No.”

But then he’ll say this. And he’ll say it with some joy and no disguise.

“We had more people at our gig (in Los Angeles) than Stone Sour did.”

Yeah, but Stone Sour are selling more records in America than you are.

Joey Jordison nods his head and curls his mouth into the thinnest, and cruellest, of smiles. Quietly he says, “At the moment”.

Are you sure there’s no tension in Slipknot?

“Yes.”

In the pub next door to the Fleece, there is something approaching mutiny. It’s 11:50pm, and the Murderdolls left the stage a quarter of an hour ago. Four men in their 40s are arguing about the merits – or otherwise – of the band. They all went to the show, but only half of them enjoyed it. You’ve got to move with the times, say the defenders. They weren’t even playing their instruments, say the detractors.

Listening to this is the landlord. He manages to be friendly despite glowing incandescent with fury. It was his glasses that were smashed by the band, and it was his wife who Wednesday instructed to go back inside so that “nobody would get hurt”.

The landlord also thinks the Murderdolls are the worst band ever to have performed next door. So furious he was with the incident, he confronted the Murderdolls’ tour manager and, threatening to summon the law, elicited an apology and £50 in compensation without hesitation or complaint.

Rock ‘n’ roll.

Just round the corner, the Murderdolls are milling in the street, signing autographs for the 200 people who have braved the chill and missed the last bus to talk to them. They will stay there for two hours. Then they will board the bus and, knowing nothing of the furore left behind them, sleep in their bunks and wake in another town. And there the Murderdolls will emerge to laugh and bullshit their way through another day.

#problems. all of them.#murderdolls #joey jordison #wednesday 13 #eric griffin #acey slade #ben graves #ben is only in a photo #interview #kerrang 923 sep 28 02 #if you want anything else scanned lemme know #the staples in this one were not aligned so just pay the edges of the two page photo no mind please thanks

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