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-First step is make sure the air pressure is out of them,
so they don't blow your face off when you undo the plug.
And then, you add the dye.
It's a hypoallergenic powdered food dye.
They used to get it from France.
I don't know where they get it now.
It's FDA approved.
No more mold, no more maggots in the hoses.
At every venue, you gotta find out where the hose hook-up is.
Sometimes it's behind the bar, under a sink.
We've had to hook them up to toilets before.
It's...
kind of a mess.
We've had a few mishaps.
We've had these connections to blow off mid-show,
and just send a geyser of blood 20 feet in the air.
But man, people love getting spewed on, and I love doing it.
I never really knew that I enjoyed
just spraying people with blood as much as I do.
♪♪
-GWAR was a big body, violent, sexual theatrical rock show.
-Basically, they are barbarian interplanetary warriors
who play heavy metal music, and shoot various bodily fluids
all over the audience.
That's pretty much GWAR.
-They were the scum dogs of the universe,
banished to the shittiest planet they could come to.
Is that -- that's the thing?
That part seems pretty accurate.
-It's performance art, but it's also,
it's this performance art that doesn't take itself seriously.
It's fucking crazy.
-The greatest fucking metal band that ever was --
alien, human, otherwise.
-What you're not seeing is what's going on
behind that stage
that's making this whole show work.
And it's people frantically working their asses off
the whole time.
This bands is not just musicians.
They're artists.
They build and they make everything themselves.
It sounds like a really messy, mindless joke, I suppose,
but in reality,
it's one of the greatest social commentaries ever.
That's sort of the beauty of GWAR is,
as much as they'll say,
"We're here to destroy the human race,"
they're actually here to save it.
-Listen, you're gonna go, you're gonna be absolutely entertained.
Some of the stuff may offend you,
but you gotta go in there with an open mind.
-There's something very punk and raw about GWAR's art.
And it's not supposed to be safe.
It makes you feel uncomfortable. That's part of it.
-It was a really powerful group of awesome artists
converging at the same time.
And it was a joke, and we just kept going with it.
It's like, joke's on everyone else, now, 30 years later.
It's a joke with no punchline
[Laughs]
-The most amazing, cataclysmic rock 'n roll event
of the century, ladies and gentlemen.
This is GWAR.
♪♪
-So, Richmond in the '80's was a conservative city,
capital of the Confederacy.
It was dangerous. It was dirty.
-It was a good place to get your ass kicked,
especially if you were a college student,
especially if you were an art student.
-There was a pretty happening punk scene
that grew around the art school at VCU --
Virginia Commonwealth University.
♪♪
-Here in Richmond, there's a building called "the Dairy."
It's a really bizarre building.
It has milk bottles as corners.
-The dairy was an old milk-bottling plant
from the '20's,
and it had long since fallen into disuse and disrepair.
There was junk everywhere. There was leftover machinery.
-They wanted to gut this building.
And they used to hire a lot of artists to do shit
like tear out the asbestos, and shit like that.
And in order to, like, keep the whole project afloat,
they rented the different chambers
of the crazy maze-like building out to local artists
and musicians, who wanted practice spaces and stuff.
[Music plays]
-Bands started moving in. Weird artists started moving in.
And then, there was this whole scene there.
-And it was illegal to live there,
but everyone did live there.
-And one of those early people was Hunter Jackson.
♪♪
Hunter was building these weird crazy costumes
for a science fiction movie he wanted to do
called "The Scum Dogs of the Universe."
-Yeah, I graduated.
I have a Bachelor's Degree in Commercial Art.
But my teachers hated my art.
I was the exact kind of student that a Commercial Art professor
does notwant in their class, and that is somebody
that's into fucking comic books and animation.
You know, my teachers didn't do anything
but tell me not to do what I do, and so, there you go.
-Hunter got the studio at the Dairy to make props,
and have a set that he could just sort of more control over.
Other people in that scene found out
about the Dairy through him, so the type of thing
he was looking for sort of surrounded him.
-Hunter and I first met at a friend's house.
And we were playing D&D.
We were into things that weren't considered high-brow.
We liked horror movies. We liked science fiction novels.
We liked stuff that is considered schlock.
-So, guys like me, Hunter Jackson, Shaw,
when we got accepted to VCU, we had high-faluting ideas
of being fantasy comic book artists.
And once we got into school,
we realized that that shit just doesn't fly.
If you brought a Frizetto wanna be painting into critique,
you're getting shredded.
-It really broke down their egos,
and said, "The shit that you like is stupid.
"Dungeons & Dragons,
and Japanese live-action pictures,
and Kiss, that stuff is stupid.
It's not art."
-It was natural for us to get together,
and want to do something
that really was kind of a big "fuck you"
to the Art department.
-The movie that they started to make
was "Scum Dogs of the Universe,"
which they wanted to be more punk rock,
and use that sort of energy --
you know, fun, and not elitist and alienating.
-I wanted my science fiction movie
to have a punk rock soundtrack.
And I like Death Piggy's music,
and I thought that it would work.
♪♪
-As soon as you got to Richmond,
if you were at VCU, there was a buzz.
There was Death Piggy.
-You couldn't not know Death Piggy and Brockie.
We loved him because they were the only punk rock band
that had a sense of humor.
-And you would see his graffiti before you met him.
That was just cool.
-Dave Brockie had moved down to Richmond to go to VCU,
and he had formed a band called "Death piggy,"
which was a punk rock band.
And he was known for his theatrics on stage.
Like, he would put mayonnaise down his pants,
and a piñata that he filled with candy,
and quarters, and cat shit.
So, the audience would beat it, and it broke open.
-They all dived to the ground, and were clawing through
this mess, trying to find the quarters,
and they're actually going through cat shit
while they're doing it.
It was just like...
-My biggest influence throughout all high school
was Monty Python.
I thought that was the most brilliant shit I'd ever seen.
And I really wanted to make fucked up, weird music.
As long as it was loud, and fast,
and I could go down and hurt myself,
I was into it.
-What the fuck is going on?
Hi. -Hello.
-Hi.
-Dave Brockie was a funny,
really talented performer who was always on.
I mean, he lived like he was on stage all the time.
And just to know him, he was hilarious.
-Yeah, he was my first big love.
He was so creative, and smart,
and he had such a big fanbase already.
Like, everyone always wanted to be around him
because of his personality.
Every time you were around him, everyone was in a good mood.
[Indistinct talking]
-One thing that Dave had in common with me
is that he was willing to get up there,
and pretend like he's jerking off
in front of an audience, you know, and shit like that.
Not very many lead singers of a band that want to be cool
are gonna want to do things like that.
But Dave was game for whatever, and beyond.
-That's one way that Dave and Hunter really connected
was this sort of eshewing the self-seriousness
that was really worthy only of contempt to them.
I was just like, "Art's great," you know?
And they're like, "No. Art fucking sucks."
People who draw a bunch of squiggly lines,
and then stand next to it, and smoke cigarettes,
and act cool, those people suck,
They hated that.
They wanted to destroy that.
-He shared a lot of the sense of humor
that I had about crazy over-the-top stuff.
And that's why we clung together,
because, in a way, we were driven by the same demons.
-Death Piggy's recording studio
was just on the other side of the wall
from the original slave pit that Hunter and I had.
And it was inevitable that we would meet.
-So, we're over there at the slave pit,
working on Hunter Jackson's movie,
and Dave Brockie comes in over, and he says,
"Hey, I've got a great idea.
What if we borrow these costumes,
and we open for ourselves as this insane barbarian band."
-Hunter's making these props and sets for a movie,
Dave's in this crazy performance punk band.
And Dave says, "Hey, I'll wear that stupid shit on stage,
and see what happens."
"We'll call it...
GWAR."
♪♪
-The first couple times we tried it,
I would just show up with all the stuff in a garbage bag.
Everybody would just put shit on.
Dave would just borrow musicians from here, there, everywhere,
within the Dairy.
They'd get up on stage.
having probably practiced the music once or twice.
They hardly knew the songs at all.
-Those first few shows were very awkward.
We had never done anything like that, so we had --
if you can imagine -- a kind of a stage fright.
-I think we've almost got the problem solved,
ladies and gentlemen.
And we're gonna play that first song again
because it was so bad.
-I kept trying to justify doing this by saying,
"Oh, this is gonna be a scene in my movie."
And I had these characters that I had created.
But then, people would start playing those characters,
and they would take the character
in their own direction.
The idea of "Scum Dogs of the Universe,"
the barbarians from outer space gets stranded on earth.
And then, they're slowly sort of sucked away into adult life.
One of them gets a girlfriend. One of them becomes a stoner.
One of them joins a rock band.
Death Piggy was gonna be the rock band.
But you pitch anything like that to Dave Brockie,
and he's gonna take it over, which is what he did.
♪♪
Without Dave, it's not a band,
and without Hunter, it's not space barbarians.
So, the two of them, and their ideas colliding together,
was this kind of supernatural event.
-Immediately, everybody in Richmond loved it.
-They loved it.
And GWAR blew up after that.
-You really gotta give credit to Hunter,
and his brilliance, and Brockie, and his energy.
Two stars hit, and then, it was like, boom.
They couldn't have done it without each other.
-It was a pretty quick snowball of this movie
starting to roll down a hill,
and then, all these people jumping on it,
getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
-We had a lot of creative people
that were just basically moving in, and setting up shop,
and no one was saying "no" to them.
And if we had said "no,"
maybe GWAR never would've been as cool as it was.
So, I will defend our open-house policy of misfit artists
till the end.
♪♪
-Halloween 1986, GWAR plays their biggest show to date
in a big commons area in the middle of VCU.
It's called "Shafer Court."
Iggy Pop played there.
A lot of big touring bands played there.
-And that place would be packed.
There'd be 500 to 1,000 people there.
So, when they hired GWAR to play Halloween,
that was a really big deal for us.
-All of us worked together really hard
to make this one particular show.
And we were gonna debut a lot of stuff.
A giant dinosaur and a cockroach come out, and fight.
Terrorists take over the stage.
Every GWAR villain comes out.
A giant airplane engine falls out of the sky,
and lands on stage, and kills people.
-Boom!
It was so awesome.
-I think we all came away from that with a feeling that
"This isn't just a joke band anymore.
This thing really has potential."
I remember feeling like "This is what I want to do.
This is gonna be huge."
-So, Dave and I broke up, and anybody who was near us
hated to be around us when we were in the same room.
[ Laughs ]
They had a meeting, and everybody voted me out.
And I was like, "I'm gonna be strong."
And I'm like, "Have a good life."
But I knew GWAR had so much brilliance in it,
and so, I was really disappointed.
But, you know, that's life.
-During the beginning part of GWAR,
a lot of it was financed by my job as a prison guard.
I got an offer to move to Detroit.
And me, a little boy from the sticks
who always wanted to live in the big city,
I couldn't resist.
And I took off for Detroit for a year.
Literally, they said, "Okay, at Shafer Court,
we're gonna get serious."
And then, a month later, everybody quits.
Hunter decided to move to Detroit,
and all the musicians quit.
-We don't even have the costumes anymore,
because Hunter took those, as well.
-That was horrible because we had no idea.
We thought everything was going great,
and we had this great show at Shafer Court,
and, all of a sudden, we were losing, like,
our most talented people.
-Don and Dave basically said, "Well, we're gonna do this.
Don's gonna be in charge of the Art Department now.
We're gonna find a whole new band, and some new artists,
and we're gonna make this work."
-Don was really instrumental
in bringing new technologies to GWAR.
He always wanted the style to be more polished,
and more professional-looking.
-One of the biggest breakthroughs was latex rubber.
Don used it to make the Chernobyl cockroach.
And the next thing you know, we have latex in our blood.
-All the new characters were made
by Don and Chuck right then.
♪♪
-Hunter would take blood balloons.
He'd put carrot syrup and food dye
into these water balloons.
And he would tape them onto one of the spikes of a mace.
♪♪
That was okay.
But we were thinking, "Okay, what else can we add?"
And I took a hot water bottle,
and ran a tube out to the shoulder, here.
-You're my hero, man. I've always wanted to meet you.
If I could just shake your hand, man.
-And I squeezed the water bottle, and spewed blood.
I think I might have reached somebody in the front row.
I don't know.
But from then on, it was just like,
"Where can we do this effect again?"
And "Why sit there and use the water bottle?
Let's do pressurization in a fire extinguisher."
So we started stealing fire extinguishers
from the VCU campus.
And that's the way we've been doing it ever since,
just getting bigger and bigger canisters to pressurize,
and shoot spew.
It was just a cornucopia of body fluids
spraying all over the audience.
And I was like, "What! You can't do tha--
You can do that?"
-It was, like, very cathartic.
-When you go to a GWAR show, in 90 minutes,
you're gonna get to see everyone you hated that year get killed.
You get to see a lot of the evil in the world
get their comeuppance.
-You get blood shot at you,
and you don't know who's getting decapitated next.
And it's just this blur of performance art
rather than a rock show.
And it's low-brow, and it's nasty, and it's fun.
[Chuckles]
-If there was somebody who wanted to go see a GWAR show,
and they didn't know anything about them,
I would just say --
I'd give them a new T-shirt, and I'd say,
"This is just what everyone does."
I'd just watch him as he just gets pelted with cum, and blood,
and various combinations of the two.
-And when they see you up-front,
and they know you're standing there,
they're gonna fuck with you on purpose.
If you're going up-front, you're gonna be covered.
-I don't wanna consider myself some sort of dandy,
but I might be the guy who, like...
when you're like, "Hey, you like GWAR?
I'm like, "Oh yeah, yeah, for sure."
They're like, "Do you wanna go see GWAR,
and stand right up close?"
I don't know.
I don't know if I do.
-One time, we played, I think it was The Tabernacle,
and the club was, like, so apologetic.
They're like "You can't set up for another couple of hours
'cause we're still cleaning up the blood
from the GWAR show last night."
[Laughs]
They make a mess.
You figure, if you're gonna do a show, you put on a show.
♪♪
-Dave decided it was time to get a real band.
And there was this new kid in high school
who was playing in this band called "The Guilty."
And everybody was talking about him.
It was like, "Oh, have you seen Guilty?
It's like, "Beefcake, man, this kid Beefcake,
he's crazy. He's like --
He plays bass like I've never seen, using his fingers,
and he's all over the place."
Everybody respected him.
He was the best bass player in Richmond.
And so, he stole Beefcake out of The Guilty,
and out of high school, and he said,
"You're gonna be in my band."
-Hate me. -There's a lot to hate there.
Hate me. Yeah, really.
There's too much of me to hate.
-Beefcake The Mighty, when I was in the punk scene in Richmond,
I gave myself a punk name, which was Beefcake.
-Just everybody knew him.
He's a kid that would walk in,
and they would all go, "Oh, it's Beefcake."
The local pizza place, he we would walk in.
"It's Beefcake. Slices, slices, Beefcake."
-It's very tacky. -Are you ready?
-I would never wear it.
-So, he was the only one who didn't have to come up
with a stage name, because I just said,
"You can be Beefcake, 'cause that'll work."
-Thank you. I am Beefcake The Mighty.
And the purpose of GWAR is, of course,
as you can tell from our accoutrement, to destroy.
-So, they put together all these musicians,
and actually wrote 15 punk rock songs,
and went up there, and recorded it.
And we're really proud of it.
I remember first hearing it.
I thought it sounded pretty bad.
♪ 'Cause we are GWAR
♪ We've got guitars
♪ We'll eat your cars
-We got it done. We were all excited.
We had a big listening party.
And we just sat there, and dropped the needle on it,
and it finishes, and everybody is like,
"Oh, dude, that just sucks."
-Yeah, it was horrible.
It sounded like it was coming out of
a fucking Japanese transistor radio.
♪♪
-That idea of wanting to demonstrate
that you're a good player
because you're also in this costume,
that kind of shaped the way that the band sounded.
And the result was kind of awful.
♪♪
-The band was just dumb.
And it really wasn't until we started thinking about the band
in a more serious way, the people that are out there
doing really good music right now,
and we got those guys.
♪♪
-My name is Balsac the Jaws of Death.
I didn't think I was a punk rocker at all.
I was just a kid who played guitar and liked weird stuff.
Brockie liked that I made weird faces with my jaw.
'cause, like, when I played, I would do a lot of stuff --
which is funny, because I put on a mask,
and nobody could ever see what I look looked like
when I play guitar.
♪♪
-Mike Bishop calls me up, and we set up an audition,
and there's two other guys
that are gonna audition the same day.
And one guy doesn't have a kit, so he's gonna play my kit.
He played the audition first.
And then, I just went up,
and just whipped his ass on my own set.
It wasn't that hard to do,
'cause he wasn't familiar with my drum set-up, but I was.
And I just listened to what he played,
and then, I just went in, and did it better.
[Laughs]
I was like, "Oh, this is a great opportunity.
I could use GWAR as a stepping stone to a career in music."
And, you know, 30 years later, I'm still in GWAR.
[Laughs]
-I was checking out the GWAR shows, and everything.
And I'd be bouncing off the walls, and stuff.
And that's kind of where they saw, like,
"Oh, wow, Danielle's this crazy dancer."
I think they came over to my house
in the middle of the night, like,
"Danielle, we need you to go to this show."
And I mean, I was in college, and everything,
so I didn't really think it was gonna be, like, a career move.
I just was like, "Okay, I'm going to New York this weekend."
You know? [Laughs]
Before I had joined the band,
the character had been called "GWAR Woman."
And I really wanted to give her a name.
I was always, like, men's fear of menstruation, like,
"Don't have your dad buy tampons."
It's just kind of a stigma in our culture.
And it's just something that happens.
So you're a sex symbol with this bloody crotch.
It's kind of like, "Ew, how sexy."
You know?
So, Slymenstra Hymen.
-When they decided that they we're gonna do
the Techno Destructo song, I wanted to come back.
-One day, Dave saw him coming down the street,
with his giant stilts -- 8 1/2 feet, 9 feet tall --
walking down the street, coming at Dave.
Dave was like, "Oh, my God."
It was terrifying.
I think Dave, right then and there,
knew he wasn't gonna argue.
Hunter wanted to be back in the band, so, "Okay."
-I will always come back,
no matter how many times they cheat, lie,
and use deceitful tactics against me.
-Hunter was totally autobiographical
about anything he conceptually came up with.
Techno Destructo was here to get control of GWAR again.
And if he couldn't get control of them,
he was going to destroy them.
You don't have to be Freud to fucking figure that one out.
-One of these days, GWAR will be destroyed.
-My attitude was like, "You've been gone for a year.
You haven't been working.
You dropped a notch or two on the ladder."
Well, now, like, Don and Chuck can say like, "Oh, we've got..."
what did they say, "...skin in the game now,
because we've created these new characters."
It's like, "This is a real collective going on, here."
-I always wanted to be an artist.
And I thought that art school
was gonna be very different than it was.
I expected it to be a little more weird.
I went to Dave.
I went to his office, and I was like,
"I wanna join the band. I'm quitting art school."
And he was like, "Well, you know, I don't wanna
fuck your life up, or anything."
And I was like, "Dude, I'll go back to art school.
It'll still be there.
But GWAR is doing stuff, and I'm getting paid."
So, he was like, "Alright. Fair enough."
That was it.
-Okay, Matt, hold up your number.
-I met Matt Maguire, and we had a lot in common.
And I was hoping that he and I could collaborate
on some of my crazy wrestling comics, and stuff,
'cause he had some wrestling comics that he had been doing.
But then, he was really hot to get into GWAR.
-The first show I went to, that was it.
I was hooked.
I was just like, "This is freaking amazing."
I was in high school, whatever, just, "Oh, my gosh.
Look at all this cool stuff. There's this chick blowing fire,
and this is happening, and heads are flying off."
-Matt was Hunter's assistant,
and Hunter liked to keep Matt away from us.
But as we realized how good of an artist Matt is,
it was, like, well, we're all hanging out in the back room
having a blast.
So, when he stopped working for Hunter,
he'd come back there, and hang out with us,
and Hunter would get all mad.
But Don was always just like, "Well, fuck that."
-It's hard for me to think how Hunter must have felt
having this vision about a movie --
this was originally what GWAR was,
was his movie -- taken over by the band
where Dave gets to shine, and Hunter doesn't.
-So, what do you really wanna do?
-Well, I don't know. Whatever you guys want me to do.
-I was doing the mail order at that point.
I was in there licking stamps.
You do every single bit of grunt work that nobody wanted to do.
That's how you made yourself useful in the band.
-They got the shittiest jobs, and they had to suffer.
They put up with it for years.
Bob and Matt, they earned their chops.
Gosh, I hope it was worth it.
-Let us toast our glorious destiny.
[Laughter]
-He's ready.
Hey, Dave. Alright.
Hey. You ready to go? -Yeah!
-Ready to rock and roll?
-GWAR, in the early days,
had these International Harvester
school buses that they traveled in.
-We tore all the seats out.
So, you go in, and there's two couches facing each other,
and that's where you hang out.
And then, there was a plywood loft,
and there was upper sleeping and lower sleeping.
-We just all slept in there, like dogs,
you know, like, just animals herded together.
We painted the school bus. It was just covered in graffiti.
The top of it said, "Ed Gein's mom's car."
And so, we would get pulled over a lot.
-The damn thing only went 55 miles an hour,
'cause it had a governor on it, 'cause it was a school bus.
And it was like the Partridge Family on acid,
rolling down the road,
always getting hassled by cops, like,
"What the hell is this?"
At least in the second school bus, you could take a piss.
We built, like, this little cubby hole
in the back, with a door.
I open the door to think
there's gonna be some sort of, like, toilet there -- nothing.
It's just a fucking oil funnel cone
with a hose that goes to a hole in the floor.
And we were just pissing in the cone.
And you can look out the back window
and just see, like all your urine, like, hit whatever car.
I'm just watching, like, a whole family, kids in the car,
windshield wipers come on, and it's just our urine.
Those were the school bus days.
-It is difficult being the only girl, and you're all grungy,
and gross, and dirty, and sweaty.
And you're staying at punk rocker's house on the floor.
-Dave would book these cross-country tours
by just calling numbers out of the back of Maximum Rocknroll.
And we just took off with it,
a Rand McNally Atlas and a bunch of quarters
to use the payphone when we got lost.
♪♪
We made it across the country
probably about six or seven times in these school buses.
Broke several axles on 'em,
and got stranded a couple of times in the Rockies,
but it was fun.
Those were fun days.
-I wouldn't trade those memories for anything,
'cause traveling cross country, and all those windows
and just laying in your bunk,
and going around with the circus...
The thing is, I remember even Dave,
who was was, like, the biggest rock star in the world,
was such a geek and nerd.
-I'm working on D&D, that stupid game that your boyfriend plays.
-We were always into Dungeons & Dragons, and all that stuff.
And Brockie was into it. And he was good at it.
You played it, and you were like,
"Well, this isn't stupid at all. This is really fun."
Because, you know, he was like, any one of the campaigns
that he ran could have been a great fantasy novel.
-I remember one of the first times I went out of town
with GWAR,
him reading a "Conan" book by a flashlight to us
all listening, like we're sitting around
a radio in the 1930s.
It was, like, absurd, but it was so, like, quaint and special.
-Why did you lie to me? Why? Why? why?
Where is he?
-My new shoulder pads are too bouncy, and it's just --
I don't know what to do. I can't fix something like that.
-I'm so sad for You.
-Fuck! God!
♪♪
-It was one of the first school bus tours.
I remember, we were late to a show,
and we pulled up, and there was actually a line
all the way around the building.
And that was an impressive feeling,
to know that we were gonna sell out a club.
-Look at all this beer we get now.
Check this out.
This is all our water and shit to drink on stage.
And then, look at all this stuff.
This is all so sweet, and...
Are we big time, hip, cool, rock stars now, or what?
-As we were growing, so was the stage show.
This shit kept getting bigger and bigger.
Even the monsters were getting huge.
And that's where I came in.
I became the big giant monster maker.
-Some friends of mine said, "Hey, have you heard of
this band GWAR?" I go, "No".
They said, "Oh, my God, you gotta see them.
They're amazing. They run into to the audience.
They throw meat at people, and blood."
They said, "You'd love them." I go, "Oh, okay."
I saw them at CMJ, and was just blown away
by how amazing it was.
I'm sitting there talking to my friends.
I go, "Oh, my God, If these guys are half sane,
I have to work with them."
So, it turns out they were very sane,
and, obviously, we did.
♪♪
-We brought in a real producer into Richmond.
And I thought it was really funny, because he was from LA,
and I didn't really know any California guys back then.
So...
-Can't eat any cheese before you record.
And we have to go eat this Chinese chicken salad.
Every day, we would eat the same salad.
-What're you eating? What are you eating?
-You know, we were drinking cheap beer, and smoking pot,
and he was worried about us eating cheese.
♪♪
That was the best time for us writing,
because we didn't really know what we were doing.
We weren't -- hadn't become the metal band we are now.
We were still these punk rockers
trying to play a heavy metal, and not quite getting it,
but reveling in the fact that we didn't quite get it.
♪♪
You know, we're making fun of it.
We didn't wanna be too good at it.
♪♪
-Huge leap in musicianship from the first album.
It's night and day.
I had the first album, and loved it.
It's kind of schlocky, and it's kind of fun.
But when they put out "Scum Dogs of the Universe,"
I was like, "Whoa.
These dudes had been working on their chops."
-The fact that they were able to play that well
while wearing all that stuff
is something that really doesn't get talked about a lot.
Because those guys could shred.
They were phenomenal musicians.
It takes a lot to be able to play music like that,
not to mention being covered in sticky blood.
-The thing that GWAR, musically, has to fight against,
is how amazing it is aesthetically.
And it...
"Gimmick" is not even close to as strong enough word
to describe what GWAR is.
GWAR is what they are.
It's beyond gimmick.
-I don't know why a lot of people think that
having a sense of humor does not go along with rocking.
I think the two can co-exist peacefully.
But it doesn't work if there's not skill
and talent to back it up.
GWAR's got the talent, and everything else is just icing.
-Everybody in GWAR can fucking shred.
Maybe it's a joke in the packaging,
but the musicianship is very sincere.
♪♪
So, the ultimate joke of GWAR is...
that they're good.
That's the joke.
-"Scum Dogs" is definitely a huge step up.
And when I get the full record, I'm like,
"Oh, my God, this is amazing."
It's an epic piece of work that they did.
-"Hell-o" would get some traction,
but "Scum Dogs" had broke GWAR.
During that tour, of course,
all this stuff happens where life imitates art.
The story is about censorship,
which was a big hot button issue at the time.
-Does the title of "Purple Rain" give you an indication
that the material is about masturbation?
-They mean the album title, "Purple Rain"?
-And on the tour that we're mocking,
and talking about GWAR being censored,
GWAR gets censored, gets arrested.
Dave gets arrested for the Cuttlefish.
We played in Charlotte, and we're doing a regular show,
and we have this priest that comes up on stage,
and gets stuff jammed up his butt.
-Priests were always known for raping young choir boys,
so, in GWAR's show, the priest gets raped.
So, there's this big fake rubber butt,
we're shoving a crucifix up Father Bohab's ass,
dicks in it, swords in it.
It's like a fucking butt bouquet potpourri
of fucking swords hanging out of this thing.
-We didn't know it, but the Charlotte Police were there,
and they didn't think it was very funny.
-They were just like, "You can't do that to a priest."
-And we're like, "It's not. It's a big fake rubber butt."
-These cops come busting into the dressing room.
There's Dave, halfway out of the Oderus costume,
just standing there with a big penis on.
And they're like, "Alright, you're under arrest.
Where's the guy in the priest outfit?"
And Bob was out of costume already, and so he was like,
"Oh, we don't know which one that was."
So they had no choice but just to arrest Dave.
They confiscate the Cuttlefish of Cthulhu, which is the huge...
between Oderus' legs.
It's really a fish.
It's not a dick. It's a fish.
-And they took Dave's dick away in a five-gallon bucket.
That's the only thing they took,
was just the dick in a five-gallon bucket.
-We never got the Cuttlefish back, either.
It's still in evidence room in Charlotte,
North Carolina, somewhere.
-When I heard he got arrested, I was like,
"Oh, what did he do?"
And they told him me what he did.
I said, "He didn't do anything?
He was just wearing his costume? Really?"
-"Oderus Urungus will be in court in Charlotte,
North Carolina, next week, to face obscenity charges
filed after a GWAR concert
in the heart of Jesse Homes country last month."
-When Dave went to trial,
the presiding judge was Dick Boner.
That was the judge's name in real fucking life.
-I was a big fan of Lenny Bruce, and I thought
that was really cool that we're getting charged
with the same stuff that Lenny Bruce did.
That made me pretty proud.
-We're here interviewing people on the street about the GWAR
show that was just shut down by the Athens Police.
How do you feel about this?
-Well, there goes the Constitution,
and everything else it stands for.
-♪ All we are saying is give GWAR a chance ♪
-If you enjoy the music of Barry Manilow,
Liberace, or the Bee Gees, then you're gonna hate GWAR.
-"Their name is GWAR."
-"GWAR, the band from hell."
-That band, GWAR, has gotta be the raunchiest,
most rotten band.
They are the worst.
-Oderus... -Yes?
-...your act has been described as "obscene" and "disgusting."
What'd you say to that? -Very accurate.
-Oh, this is one of the best ones, okay?
I'm gonna read you this.
"To Grawl..." -- G-R-A-W-L --
"...I am a highly concerned Catholic Christian
who watched your video cassette, Tour de Scum.
I've seen many horror shows in my lifetime,
but nothing compared to what I saw on Tour de Scum.
I..." -- all caps -- "...WANTED TO PUKE.
You creatures have the morality of cannibalistic psychotics.
In conclusion, you need to change
your attitudes toward the human race.
Believe it or not, there are some good people
on the planet, too.
God help all of you."
-So, the label gave us $50,000,
which was typical, for a music video.
And we said, "Well, instead of just a music video,
why not just do an entire music movie?"
-That's like more money than we'd ever seen.
Do one song?
No. We're gonna do a whole movie.
-We did months of pre-production -- months.
And we hired a production team from Canada.
-I was like, "Why don't you just let me direct it?"
They're like, "No. We don't want you to direct it.
Even though you have a college degree in film-making,
we have to find a professional director
that knows what they're doing."
-All these dudes came from Canada,
and they had found a director they had worked with before,
and been happy with.
He was in Richmond before we even started filming
for probably two or three weeks.
-He's, like, got these leather pants on, strutting around,
like, "Hey, you've gotta give me a double bed with all the chicks
I'm gonna get while I'm in Richmond."
-And then, the very first night of production,
he has a fucking nervous breakdown.
-Oh, yeah, Ray lost his mind.
He quit. He flew home.
[Chuckles]
You don't wanna tell Dave what to do,
and you don't wanna tell Hunter what to do.
That's, like, the worst situation you could be put in.
-We're just like, "Dude, you gotta get the fuck out here."
Because it was like, "We're doing this."
Then, we're left to pick up the pieces.
It was fucking ridiculous.
So, everybody's, like, directing, and performing,
and then fabricating sets.
And so, you're, like, getting no sleep.
I'm painting a set, then I'm doing a scene,
and then I'm coming back and doing another thing.
-I was playing a role. I was painting the sets.
I was building props.
Even still during the making of that movie
I was waiting tables to pay my rent.
They'd call me up, "We need somebody's mom!
We need a grandma!"
So, I'd be like, "Hey, you wanna be in our movie?"
[Laughs] While I was waiting tables.
it was like that.
-Everybody would pitch in.
It was like how Hunter called the slave pit
the "slave pit" because everybody came in and worked.
You had girlfriends, and wives, and kids,
and everybody just piling in to make the show happen.
-And it was a big chaotic mess, like everything we do.
And it turned out pretty silly and awesome
in its own weird way.
-Do you really know GWAR?
-I'm their fucking manager.
-I'd really like to meet them.
-And you know what?
The thing fucking still got nominated for a Grammy.
♪♪
Yeah, "Phallus in Wonderland" gets nominated for a Grammy,
and we're just all thinking, "Man, somebody really fucked up.
Somebody's losing their job."
-Till this day, we don't understand how the Grammys work,
because it's like Annie Lennox, and MC Hammer, and GWAR?
-I remember, Hunter came in, and was sort of...
He was really matter-of-fact about it.
It wasn't like, "Man, we got nominated for a Grammy!"
It was just like, "We got nominated for a Grammy.
Ehh, just a Grammy."
[Laughs]
-We are gathered here in this great Hall of Justice
to prove that this alleged fish is actually a penis.
♪♪
The president of that organization was not amused.
He did not like us at all.
We had to take the picture, and we were like,
"You know what, man, that's just who we are in character."
And he's like, "Yeah, whatever."
The dude was angry.
♪♪
-We were invited out to LA, to go to the awards ceremony,
but we were specifically told, "Do not bring the costumes."
Like, "Oh yeah, yeah, sure, sure."
-Black was the color of choice for most, but not all.
The loudest fashion statement was from a band called GWAR.
-We're in costume, so, of course,
I immediately go up, and harass Chaka Khan.
I'm just like, "Chaka Khan."
I was like, "You Earth girls are making me hot."
And immediately, her guy there was just like,
"Out of the way, kid."
-So, we lasted about 15 minutes in the lobby of the Grammys,
and we, like, spilled a drink on Leader Ford,
and then we got kicked out.
We went back, and put our tuxes back on,
sat quietly in the audience.
And it was pretty boring the rest of the time,
except for the parties afterwards.
Those were fun.
-We went to a Warner Bros. party after.
I did meet Madonna that night.
I hung out with the Chilli Peppers that night.
And I got to hold a banana up to my crotch,
and George Clinton ate it, at the party.
[Laughs]
That was a crowning moment.
It was nuts.
And GWAR had no business being there.
-♪ Divided by the attention, not to mention the affection ♪
-No matter how you gussied GWAR up,
and no matter what award you give it,
it's always gonna be exactly what it is,
which is this warty little D&D-playing, snort-nosed kid.
that is...
[Chuckles] Like, that's what GWAR is, man.
It's just geeky.
and it's wonderful in that way.
But we didn't fit in at the Grammys.
-♪ Oh, can't you hear me calling? ♪
♪ Just like a sad whale song ♪
♪ I'm on that road behind ♪
♪♪
-I am Flattus Maximus.
I play guitar.
-Dewey was just moving into a different point in his life.
He had his own construction business,
and he was just like,
"I'm not gonna be a rock 'n roll guy anymore."
How I remember it is, Pete just showed up at The Slave Pit,
drove a solid 20 some hours from Texas
with a huge bag of weed, and was just like,
"I'm gonna be you guys' new guitar player."
-Okay, I'll tell you about Flattus.
That's who I was supposed to be when I joined the band.
So, I'm like, "Alright, I'm one of them now, I'm a monster."
So, I'm after a show, and I'm looking in the mirror,
and I go, "You look like a fucking dipshit, man.
I was like, "Wayne, I need a mask, or something,
'cause my face is not intimidating at all."
They made me a new costume with Rydal shoulder pads.
And they fit good, so I can fuckin'...
-Pete is an assassin.
He is such a good guitar player.
[ Guitar solo ]
Fucking amazing.
♪♪
-We seemed to not be able to get on MTV at all.
Where do we put these GWAR videos?
"Headbangers Ball," 120 minutes, I don't know.
This doesn't this make any sense.
It doesn't fit.
-Mike Judge, apparently, really liked us.
And he was like,
"Okay, my characters, they're these people.
What would their favorite band be?"
"Oh, it would be GWAR,"
Of course, Beavis and Butt-Head's
favorite band would be GWAR.
-"Beavis and Butt-Head" was such an important show.
And because of the autonomy that Mike Judge had
in programming that show, he was able to go over the heads
of the people of the Music Programming Department...
...and expose them to places in the country
where there weren't even that many radio stations.
-You have to watch TV for, like, hour and hours and hours
before you see this video, but, like, when you do,
then, it's all worth it. -Yeah.
-We were playing these little punk rock clubs,
now we're playing this ginormous place,
'cause "Beavis and Butt-Head loves GWAR,
so we gotta go check 'em out."
And everybody was like, "What is that shit?"
I gotta go see it."
So, our tours were packed out.
You know, we were on our way.
-There's too much cool stuff to keep track of.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-The "Beavis and Butt-Head" thing turned into
the SAGA Genesis Game, which was a really big deal.
-The point of the whole game was to go to a GWAR concert.
I just thought that was the coolest thing,
when I was a kid.
-I wrote one of them riffs on that song,
and it ended up on the game.
They put it on, it was like...
[Vocalizes]
"Hey, that's badass.
Why did I come here?"
-It seemed like there was another thing every other week.
Now, we're gonna do "Jerry Springer."
-There always is black humor in times of change,
in times of revolution.
It's been all throughout history,
and all throughout literature.
-Okay. Hold on. -Will you welcome...
GWAR!
-We can blow one of our songs, and rose to 300 feet in the air.
-And hang on the Empire State Building.
-You probably have already done that on Sally Jesse, but...
[Laughter]
-We did a skit in our show "The Idiot Box"
where you sacrifice your daughter to GWAR,
and they come to your house, and then take your daughter,
and she ends up in the show,
and gets fed through a giant meat grinder.
The whole thing is super violent.
And there would be people in the audience
who were kind of freaked out.
And even Heather was freaked out.
-Well, she got put into a meat grinder.
-I know, but it wasn't real.
We weren't really gonna grind her.
-You never know. -Yeah.
-Remember the name for your games -- Circuit City.
-We were in a movie called "Mystery Date."
In the script it was written, "there's a bar band playing."
But they say, "Oh, let's get GWAR for that."
And so, it made for a much better scene,
'cause he goes, into this punk rock show,
and there's blood flying everywhere.
And the girl goes, "Oh, I love this."
-"Empire Records," another one.
When we did it, the audience had no idea
what was going on.
I mean, but that's to be expected at a GWAR show.
Weird shit happens.
-I was not the first person that crawled
through that cavity that week,
so it wasn't this sterile environment.
I do remember that.
-Brockie had some lines, He was gonna do them,
but we're at the show.
so, as Oderus, he probably said a few curse words,
so they dubbed some other voice actor's voice onto it.
-"You love GWAR. Why don't you join the band?"
-And they put a big blurry thing,
'cause he had the Cuttlefish on, 'cause it was our live show.
-When they shot it, it was the full dick,
which, I remember, he used, like, masturbate it.
But on the movie, they, like, did this prism digitization.
But it's a cuttlefish, it's not a dick.
Do they really look that much like dicks, cuttlefishes?
-That's how they try to get away with it.
-That's how they get away with it.
-So smart. Because indecency laws.
-To see it turn into such a cult classic, it was awesome.
-The movie is not about GWAR,
but that was a gateway for a ton of people
to find out about, like, us,
and start buying our albums, and coming to see us.
So, all those things sort of add up
to this sort of infamous sort of notoriety we have --
not famous, but infamous.
My dad saw "The Joan Rivers" show.
-What did he say? -"Weird. Weird."
-That was GWAR. That was GWAR.
And...
they were a little too strong for our airways, here.
-We got off the ground being a rock n' roll band,
but we never were a rock n' roll band.
We were an art collective.
-Hunter, Don, a lot of the guys,
a lot of the artists, were like,
"We wanna make movies. Wanna make full-on movies."
Don came -- We were riding bikes through Richmond,
and he's like --
"So, we were talking about this character,
and I think his name is gonna be Skulhedface."
We're riding bikes, and I'm like,
"What the fuck are you talking about?
I don't understand."
It was typical GWAR fashion.
There's the cart, and the horse was somewhere back here.
-We had learned a lot when we worked on
"Phallus in Wonderland."
We took that knowledge into working on "Skulhedface."
and we kind of did it without the Hollywood
people there this time.
-We decided to do something even more ambitious.
We had twice the budget.
And so, "Skulhedface"
was this really huge production, by our standards.
-The production level shot way up.
Every inch of The Slave Pit was a set.
We made a full animatronic Skulhedface.
Everybody's ideas thrown in.
-That's what I love about GWAR.
The most insane idea, "Okay, let's do it."
And then, we do it --
and spend a ton of money and time doing it.
♪♪
Really a lot of people's hearts, and, like, months.
I mean, I lived in my outfit for weeks in that summer.
We wanted to have all our commercials,
so we could have the really fun side projects.
♪♪
-Stuffed dolls, pajamas, video tapes, lunch boxes,
vitamins, towels, bedspreads, and coloring books.
-Blow me, fat boy.
-Yeah, let's do that.
Let's film a 35-millimeter thing
about Alien Butt Head Queens
who produce juice out of their foreheads
that powers the world.
And a corporation wants to buy it,
and suck all the coolness out.
I mean, it's just ridiculous.
It's so insane.
I think it's, like, our high water mark
because it's so weird, and hard to digest.
That's why I like it so much.
-That was fun.
Let's eat.
-Unfortunately, there was that thing.
"Who's the director?
Is it Melanie, or is it Hunter, or is it Dave?"
I'm still proud of it, but if you watch that movie,
and you can explain the plot to me, uh, cool.
[Laughs]
-We filmed "Skulhedface" in 35 millimeter
with the intention of it having a theatrical,
midnight movie cult release.
None of that happened.
After, we were like, "Oh, we're going up."
Grammy nomination for this one that we sort of threw together,
Now, we're putting all this effort into it."
And then, it's just, like, forgotten, cut-out bin.
I know I saw it physically with Chuck and Don.
The sudden disappointment really soured them.
We were like, "Okay, we got a Grammy
for this last movie.
'Skulhedface,' we're gonna start making movies, and comics,
and we're gonna be a punk rock Disney."
But it's also where it...
it all fell apart, to a degree.
-We were mixing...
"Toilet Earth."
♪♪
-We were mixing the album,
and we had to drive back to Richmond for a photo shoot.
-We were in a station wagon,
and Pete was sitting in the back.
We had to take a piss, so we pulled off.
And right as we did, this car next to us turned,
very deliberately, in front of us, right?
So, we clipped, like, just barely hit, his back end.
-Right away, I'm like, "Drive off. Drive off.
They're gonna rob us." It was so obvious.
-Guys in the car that hit us immediately hop out,
and pull out a gun. "Oh shit!"
So, he floors it, and we just take off.
And they start shooting at us.
-It was like an automatic -- semi-automatic handgun.
It was like... [Imitates rapidfire]
-One, two, three, four, five.
And poof, came through, hit me in the chest.
Everything went slow motion.
I'm like, "Wow, I have been shot.
I never thought I'd be shot.
Wow. I've been shot."
-He goes, "I'm shot. I'm shot."
-Straus puts his hand on Pete's chest,
and he pulls it back, and you could see his hand was all red.
And he starts freaking out.
And when he did, he kicked the driver.
So, the driver of the car goes into the median strip,
and flattens two tires.
-Blows out the tire
probably about five blocks away
from where the guy has just shot at us.
-We open the back of the station wagon.
Pete is laying on that, and he's sucking wind,
because his lung is punctured.
So, he's going like... [imitates heavy breathing]
Right?
And we're watching him die. That's what we think.
-I jump into the back with Pete, and, like, the tail gate's open,
and he's just sitting in the back of the station wagon.
And here comes this car, flying around the corner,
hauling ass up to us.
Everyone just bolts into the ghetto.
But Derks stayed there with me.
-All these guys with guns jump out of the car,
fucking pointing them at me and Pete.
-And they put guns in the air and they go, "Freeze."
-"Freeze."
-I immediately soiled my pants, 'cause I had to pee.
Remember, I had to pee.
I was holding it after they shot me.
That's pretty good.
They shoot me, and I'm still holding it.
It seemed like an hour went by, and he finally goes,
"Gang patrol."
I'm like, "Damn. Thank God."
'Cause I thought he was gonna shoot me
right in the fucking face.
-And they were just like these plain clothes gangster cops.
I guess they infiltrated gangs, and stuff.
But they looked like fucking gangsters.
-I didn't experience them as police.
Like, they got out, and I just started running.
And they pull us all back. And Derks is still there.
Derks never ran.
He stayed there with Pete, thinking that he was gonna die.
He just stayed there.
That's the kind of guy he is.
-Yeah, he's not very smart, is he?
[Laughs]
No, I love Derks to death, man.
We have a bond, man.
'cause I would've been running like a motherfucker.
[Laughs] I'm kidding.
I relayed all the information to the cop.
And he's looking at Derks and he's like,
"I'm worried about that guy. He looks like he's in shock."
-Yeah. I kind of...
blanked out after that.
I don't remember getting to the hospital.
-We were on the way to do a photo shoot,
and I didn't make it,
and they still had to do the shoot.
-What I remember about this,
we've already rented the cameras,
we've already got the lights.
It's all set up. We have to film this tomorrow.
We're coming to get you in this van, me and Derks.
And Derks, at this point,
like, I am more worried about him than I am Pete,
because he's rattled, man.
Like, he's not talking at all.
And his eyes don't look right.
And...
they put us in the back of this van.
Like, they come up to get us in a van
that doesn't have seats in it.
it was just a back, right?
And so, every time the van -- it would bounce,
we would scream out, 'cause we were so raw.
And I resented that more than I can describe to you right now.
That slave attitude that I talked about earlier,
the dark side of that is that the individual
didn't matter at all.
Not at all.
That's what it felt like to me.
I felt traumatized by that.
And I didn't understand why or how
they could let it get to that point.
And so, that's really why I left.
-So, Pete had to have a big section of his colon taken out.
Lived with a colostomy bag for years,
and still having health issues related to it.
-Watcha gonna do?
Welcome to America.
But...
don't ride in a hatchback if you're gonna get shot at.
[Laughs]
-But as soon as he could, he was back on stage,
rocking out with a colostomy bag.
♪♪
-Did you have a cesarian?
-Oh, that's where the ringworm went in.
Right there. Big -- Big ringworm.
Texas ringworm.
♪♪
-Yeah, when GWAR was looking for a bass player,
I knew the perfect guy for GWAR, and it was Casey.
-Of course, Casey, coming from Rigor Mortis,
that's, like, legitimate metal player.
-I was 100% on board.
And then, he told me
I'd have to pay for my own flight up to Richmond.
And I was broke as a joke.
So, I said "I can't."
-I was like "Really?"
-Luckily, he called me the next day,
and said he had talked them into it,
and they were gonna pay for my flight up there.
That was it.
I just had to learn some songs, and I had them.
It doesn't take much.
You can put on a hat and feel like a cowboy.
Put on a Beefcake costume,
and I turned into that version of Beefcake.
Man, it was like joining a fraternity, joining a family.
You know, it really was.
Beefcake The Mighty, number 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10.
-We were on "Metal Blade."
And metal blade was getting picked up by Warner Bros.
-Which would be huge for GWAR, right?
Like, the next step.
We would get into more record stores,
we'd have a bigger push, marketing-wise,
behind the record, all of this stuff.
-At that time, Warner had just been bought by Time Inc,
which is this huge multinational corporation.
So, of course, the first record we put out is a GWAR record
with a song called "BDF" -- "Baby Dick Fuck" on it.
-They were like, "Yeah, we're not putting that out."
-It was so filthy that, I mean I thought I'd heard it all.
But Brockie, wordsmith that he is, managed to find a way.
-"If you get rid of that song,
we'll take you to the next level."
So, like, from here to here, I guess.
and it meant more money.
We had a meeting about it.
A bunch of artists and musicians trying to come to one decision.
I was like, "I'm staying out of this shit.
I'm the new guy.
It's like...[Babbles]
-Brockie made a speech
that would have made Mark Anthony blush,
saying that we'll never fall back on our art.
And so, Warner Bros. dropped us.
So, we found out the hard way
that we really cannot get away with everything.
-"Metal Blade" backed us on it, so they kind of missed out
on getting their major Warner Bros. distribution
because of us.
-I'm a stern believer in you sign an artist,
and they have a vision,
and they have what they wanna say and do,
and they should do that.
I'm the last person to censor what they should do or say.
To that fact, I mean, we gave up a record deal
with Warner Bros. records
just because we couldn't put out a GWAR record.
-We shipped 70,000 albums. 70,000 albums.
We charted at 168, and we were so ecstatic.
And then, all of a sudden, 40,000 records get shipped back.
-They had some pretty poppy songs that could have been,
not radio hits, but could have been, you know, something.
But Dave would always put in crazy lyrics in there
that would prohibit them
from getting ever played on the radio.
-♪ Fish fuck, baby
♪ I'm gonna fuck you with a fish ♪
I remember, one day, I was talking to Dave,
and he's like, "Yeah, maybe I shouldn't have messed that up.
Maybe we should have written a pop song.
Maybe I should have not put in five 'fucks,'
and whatever else was in there."
"Well, there you go.
You probably should have done that."
-The thing is, we never really had the chance to sell out.
We never had, "If you just do this,
you'll get this pot of gold."
Because if that happened, you know what, we probably would.
[Laughs]
As long as it's a decent-sized pot of gold.
♪♪
-How many people out there have heard of Slave Pit Incorporated?
Slave Pit is sponsoring a special section
of the T-shirt tonight, featuring --
featuring cool comics
written and drawn by the guys in GWAR.
My goals were very different from Dave Brockie's goals.
I wanted to publish comic books and make movies.
Dave wanted to be a super rock star.
Dave wanted to make movies and comics, as well,
but he just wanted it to be about him.
And that was where our divergence and clashes
all eliminated, basically.
-There was always tension
between all the hierarchy people.
It was a little bit destructive,
because there wasn't cohesion with those people,
because everybody was vying for their own position,
trying to fight to have their spot in the band.
And the gladiatorial competition
to have the stronger idea survive,
I mean, Hunter and Dave having to constantly battle
with each other, and have this tension.
-To me, being in GWAR was like being on
the world's greatest basketball team,
but you never make it to the playoffs
because your own teammates are always stealing the ball
just as you're about to score.
And I felt like I had to dance with the devil
in order to get a lot of things accomplished.
-Me and Hunter had static multiple times from things,
where I thought I'm helping Hunter,
and then he took it as a slight towards him.
You know, instead of it looking like master and apprentice,
he looked at it as competition.
-Hunter is sort of a genius.
Like, I'm a big fan of his art and his concepts.
But he doesn't play well with others, you know?
He thinks that, if anyone takes one of his ideas,
and changes it --
which is the nature of collaboration --
that it's someone doing something to you.
-Listen to the songs that Hunter Jackson sings.
Listen to what he's saying in those songs.
They're all like, "You fucked up.
You ruined everything.
You took this away from me."
It's like, all of that stuff was there on stage.
-♪ How dare you try to make a slave of me ♪
-And everybody knew it. Hunter knew it, you know?
So, it was always like...
real, but also at the distance that art allowed.
-♪ Won't you die
-Me and Bobby, you know, we were slaves.
That's how we were identified for the longest time.
It was like, "Oh, isn't it nice that they let you
come out on tour with them, and blah, blah, blah, blah."
We were the guys that were sort of,
"Look, oh, don't listen to that punk kid.
He doesn't know what he's talking about."
And at a certain point, I didn't.
But you're giving up so much of your life,
and you're struggling so hard
to be part of this thing that's so great,
and you're just slaves.
-Don't get so close to the camera.
Do that over again.
Don't get so close to the camera.
-I was looking at a lot of these older guys for tutelage
in what was happening.
Come to find later on, they didn't know
what the hell they were doing, either.
♪♪
-GWAR was at this stage
where we just did whatever we wanted.
So, if we wanted to play stuff that wasn't thrash or punk,
or stuff that wasn't metal, we did it.
-♪ Now they know that they can't control us ♪
♪ I'm Sleazy, and I think you outta know this ♪
♪ Everybody rip everybody else off ♪
♪ Everybody rip, rip everybody off ♪
-It's not like today, where the fans could tell you
immediately what they think of it.
We were just sort of like, "Well, we're GWAR.
We're gonna write whatever kind of music we want.
And we did it.
- Come on, ladies, sing it with me.
♪ Don't need a lover
♪ Don't need a man
-We thought the band should be much larger than they were.
-Grammy nominations, they're doing huge headline tours,
they're doing all this amazing art,
but we didn't have the sales
that we all felt that the band should have.
-Long-form video had been a big form of income for us,
because we would get, like, $100,000 budgets,
and that would pay people's salaries,
and pay for us to come up with a new plan, and new idea.
And all that money was sort of drying up.
And we were touring a lot, and touring, and touring,
and touring, and touring and it was just relentless.
-[Indistinct]
Mr. Nicholson is suggesting the three of you
could be joined by a friend of yours for an additional $100.
-I fucking did a lot of partying on the road.
I toured a long time with being shot, you know?
I mean, I toured with a colostomy bag.
That's not the healthiest lifestyle
if you're not good friends with will power.
And I wasn't.
-As I remember it, a point came where we just all felt like,
if he doesn't go home, and take care of himself,
he's going to die.
He's going to die.
-He was in a bad place, anyway,
so, I think, when GWAR approached him
to sit out the tour cycle, and get healthy,
and come back, he heard, "Get out, and fuck off."
-I definitely needed a break.
And they gave me one by firing me.
[Laughs]
♪♪
-I called my brother, and he's like,
"Dude, Dave Brockie left a message?"
He was like, "It's Oderus Urungus from GWAR."
He goes, "It sounds like fucking Oderus
is yelling at me on my answering machine."
-I want my fucking cuttlefish back!
-And so, then, I'm getting an audition with GWAR.
Cut to just a few weeks later,
and I'm walking out, in this Flattus Maximus costume,
with shoulder pads and the dumb flipper feet.
Yeah.
And looking in the mirror at myself, like,
"What the fuck am I doing?"
♪♪
And so, it felt like a superhero.
It felt awesome.
♪♪
-Who said that we kill everything?
-Which just happens to be the name of GWAR's new album.
[Indistinct talking]
♪♪
-I was always, as a fan of music,
gotten kind of critical of bands that I like
when they get kind of silly.
And then, I'm the one singing as a giant talking toilet
on that one album.
[Indistinct]
We got to an HR Pufnstuf stage, where our bodyguard
has a big penis with big ball sack, Popeye chin,
And it got really silly,
and not metal, and I understand
why albums weren't selling as well,
and "Metal Blade" wasn't as interested in us.
-The show wasn't working. It was confusing.
People were like, "What in the fuck is happening?"
The thing about it is,
Brockie is also the most gregarious,
hysterical human being I ever met in my life.
I remember, we played Europe, and I walked into the airport,
and Dave has a leather jacket, leather pants, motorcycle boots,
and wraparound, like, Oakley sunglasses,
and he's the Terminator.
And I just go up to him, and I'm like, "Terminator."
And he's just standing in the middle of the airport.
I go, "Dave, what are you doing?"
He goes, "There is no Dave."
And so, he's actually impersonating the Terminator.
Ad I'm like, "Kickass."
'Cause with Dave, you never knew
how long you were in on this ride.
Turns out, a few months.
He didn't break character.
He was the Terminator for the entire tour.
And at one point, we were walking in the streets
in New Orleans, broad daylight, and we could hear him --
somebody running behind us, and it was Brockie,
totally Donald Ducking, but Terminator-style,
so, he had a leather jacket with no pants and combat boots --
or his, like, motorcycle boots.
And he was just jacking off,
running down the street, with sunglasses on.
Yeah.
-[Laughs]
I mean, You don't forget that.
-My vision of him as a friend was this guy
who always had a great story to tell
in the most ridiculous way possible.
He always had a way of making you feel special,
and making you feel involved,
but he was also, like, hard to handle.
Like, you had to be in a wild mood to even keep up with Dave.
-We had this super fan who would send us bottles of liquid acid.
And they'd be in the freezer at the Slave Pit.
I'm up there working on something with Don,
and Dave comes in with a bunch of people he's collected.
They're gonna go on an adventure.
And Dave pulls the bottle of liquid acid out of the freezer,
and he squirts so much into his eyeball.
I couldn't believe it.
Just like...
And then, he was gone for three days.
And I heard stuff like all over town, like, "Oh, we were --
I think we were running up the center of 64 median naked."
And then, like, you know, he comes in to work Monday,
and it's like nothing happened.
And he's just like [hums]
"I was tripping my balls off for three days.
I don't remember, really, what happened."
It's like, all these epic journeys
to the center of the mind.
So, yeah, I mean, that's where he drew his creative well,
but sometimes, it's really rough to work with someone,
or trying to rein that kind of personality in.
-Once he got on one of these binges,
the lack of sleep would make him get a little unhinged,
a little unbalanced,
and he was trying to convince people to join his movement.
-Sometimes, he'd just get pretty divorced from reality,
and it would be a little scary.
Like, the Hale-Bopp thing was happening,
and Heaven's Gate was all happening.
-Your only chance to evacuate is to leave with us.
-The rest of us, we're just making some art.
This is a lot of, like, input to come up with these weird ideas.
Dave sort of started getting into believing it,
and talking about how Slave Pit
was going to become their own renegade compound,
and go up against the government, and stuff.
And it would be like,
"Oh, okay, like, where -- where --
are you in character, now, talking about this?"
-♪ Summoning the master
♪ Call forth his form most vile ♪
-Dave never thought he was taking it far enough,
or being true enough,
so he would, like, really push the boundaries.
And it would be sometimes where he was just out there.
-There were plenty of times when I saw Dave perform,
and I'm like, "Oh, my God, Dave is gone.
Whatever demon or monster drives him
is fully in control now,
and Dave Brockie is only a passenger
watching from the back seat."
-There's not many people that come along in your life
that are as big as Dave Brockie --
this, just, hyper- artistic guy
with a bazillion ideas in his head,
going at all times, very well read, very intelligent,
but at the same time, he had that sense of danger.
Like, you know he's gonna break that thing.
He's not gonna be able to help himself,
By the end of this interview,
he's gonna break that fucking vase.
-When you do an interview, say, with Dave Brockie,
you are getting bowled over.
You could be sitting there in a monster costume,
you're not gonna say a fucking word, because why would you?
Whatever you say is gonna pale in comparison
to the amazing things that are coming out of his mouth,
like dictation from a higher being.
-It worries me that somebody, somewhere,
is gonna watch you guys, and say,
"Okay, that's what we do."
-Well, let them join the army, or something.
There's plenty of outlets for that.
He was one of the all-time greats --
the all-time greats, there's no doubt about it.
There's never gonna be anyone like that guy.
-Dave was really talented, but he was not a generous performer.
It wasn't about making room for other people to do what they do.
Like, they gave us the questions for that show.
So, we get them from Joan's producers.
Before we go, we're sitting there talking about
what we're gonna do,
and thinking of the ways we're gonna answer,
and who's gonna say what, right?
But then, we get there, and Dave starts saying it all --
like, all the stuff we had planned to say.
-I don't watch -- I don't watch much television.
-Of course we do. -Except for your show.
We watch your show 24 hours a day.
-All the time. All the time.
-And Dave, like, it never crossed his mind that
that was something that he wouldn't do.
-Same thing with Sexecutioner.
Chuck would make these cool things
for the Sexecutioner to do,
and then, by the end of the show,
Oderus would be doing them.
There wasn't room enough for the Sexecutioner
and Dave Brockie's ego on the stage at the same time.
-I loved it. [Indistinct] my baby.
It's the one thing that I did that people liked.
But it just wasn't fun anymore.
I think everybody was shocked when I just said,
"No. I've had enough. I'm gonna go."
-I think Dave was at the point where he didn't want
all these extra characters stealing stage time from him,
or up-staging him with their girly butt, or whatever.
In my artistic journey, I had to keep going.
And I was doing the Miss Electra thing.
And it was a little, maybe, too dangerous
or the band was afraid of it.
And then, at that point, I was like,
"If I can't shoot lightning on stage with GWAR,
then, I'm outta here."
[Laughs]
-We had a lot of cool shit planned,
but Dave and I were just working against each other
just too much.
It was fucked up.
-We'd just finished filming "It's Sleazy."
We were gonna do it all ourselves,
and Hunter was the director this time.
-I was finally given the directorship of the project,
but the catch is, Dave is the producer.
What happens is, Dave hires all of his half-ass junkie friends
to be the crew, and half of them don't show up.
And the ones that do show up make outrageous,
crazy mistakes that fucked us.
-We'd just got all the footage filmed,
and next thing I heard is like, "Yeah, Hunter left."
"Wait, he's gonna do the movie, though, right?"
And they're like, "No. He's just gone."
-Here I am, supposedly one of his best friends,
and he gives me a week's notice that he's leaving.
He doesn't tell anybody in the band.
He just says, "Hey, by the way, I'm moving.
I'm taking off."
-I was just like, "You know, Dave is just so out there.
I don't want to be a part of it."
As much as I loved GWAR --
I did GWAR until I was 40 years old,
and I poured everything I had into it --
I just didn't see the story having a happy ending.
-So, it ended up being me and Dave,
sitting there, editing this movie.
And I'd never edited film, or anything like that.
So, I had to learn how to edit film,
and do an entire feature length thing in a couple weeks.
-So, I had this separate bank account
that I was being really super guarded of,
because I knew that, in the future,
I was going to wanna print comic books, which cost, what, $5,000?
what would happen if I went to the musicians, and go,
"Hey, dude, I need $5,000 so I can print this comic book."
What do you think they're gonna do?
They're gonna fucking laugh.
-He had moved away.
You know, he'd moved away to Philly, and had...
There was this discrepancy of,
"What are you doing with that money?
There's that money sitting there.
What do we want to do with this money?"
-I'm on the tour bus, and, all of a sudden,
all this screaming and conflagration breaks out.
And Dave has grabbed Hunter.
He's trying to drag him, pull him out onto the bunk.
I had to get in between the two, and separate them.
Dave was holding a flyer that was advertising,
"Slave Pit merchandise."
And on it, the address was Hunter's Philadelphia address.
Hunter was running his own GWAR merchandise department,
and not informing us, or sharing any of the profits.
Dave basically considered that the ultimate backstab.
-And they go, "Hey, all that money
that you've made selling comic books
in the parking lot while we were partying,
we decided that it all belongs to us."
And that was how I got kicked out of GWAR.
-That's when he thinks that he was kicked out of the band.
And as far as I'm concerned --
and this is how I viewed that meeting --
he was never kicked out of the band, ever.
But I don't think he was interested, at that point.
I think he thought, with Dave around,
there was too much opposition,
and he didn't want to deal with Dave anymore.
I know that was one of the major sticking points.
He didn't wanna deal with Dave.
Years after that, he would just show up at my house.
And I'd let him come, and take whatever he wanted.
He took off with tons of our artwork,
and things that we've never gotten back, you know?
But I was like open-door policy --
"Come on in. Take what you need.
you're one of the main creators of this.
I'm your friend. Take what you need."
But still, to this day, I don't think he sees it that way.
-Toward the end, I was just so tired of fighting everybody
to try to get anything done.
People that I don't even respect
voting on what projects I do and don't get to work on.
And mostly, they're -- a lot of times, they're motivated by
just wanting to thwart my efforts,
and bring Hunter down a peg.
There was just too much of that kind of stupid stuff going on.
It was counterproductive.
And I feel totally free,
and have no desire to go back to struggling with those assholes.
-Yeah, it's a...
it's a tough one, with Hunter.
I mean, for a long time, man, like, when I first got there,
he was my teacher, he was my friend.
And I know that, like, the master and apprentice
kind of relationship goes into this thing
where everybody's cool
because you're learning from the guy,
and then, you go on,
and the idea is to surpass the master.
The apprentice becomes the master.
And I don't think Hunter ever understood that part of it.
He resented it more than...
And he kind of let it destroy our friendship.
And it was unfortunate,
because we had a pretty fucking amazing friendship.
And I miss it. You know, I miss him.
And, you know, it's...
it's an unfortunate mess of this, you know?
♪♪
Yeah. Sorry.
-I don't know, man.
I sort of like being 3,000 miles away from them.
I'm glad to be 3,000 miles away from Richmond,
Virginia, right now.
-He was just gone.
And people just kind of lost faith in it, I think.
And they just needed to live their own lives.
People had to move on.
We'd been doing it for well over a decade,
and people were growing up, and getting older,
and everyone kind of realized,
"Okay, GWAR is never gonna be huge.
And I'm not ever gonna get rich doing this band.
And how much of my life am I gonna dedicate to it?
And am I gonna end up 50 years old..."
[Laughs] "...and this is all I have?"
-Don was pretty much gone.
He was still around, but just coming in when he needed to be,
and then, just doing his own thing.
Danielle had moved to LA.
Chuck was in New York.
-Casey and I went to Dallas.
Bobby and Matt moved to New York.
We were just on a hiatus.
-You know, It was really, like, Dave, Derks, and Brad.
Like, that was it.
-Also, we lost our old Slave Pit on Chamberlain.
This guy had bought the building,
and was gonna turn into a used-car place.
That was kind of the last straw,
whenever we put everything into storage.
-I loved GWAR.
It had been a good part of my life up to that point.
But I figured, you know, like...
it's not really sustainable.
[Indistinct talking]
-When it came time to do the next record,
there was all these just wacky ideas rolling around.
And it was like, "Aren't we metal?
Aren't we supposed to be in that world?
'Cause that's who we're playing with,
and that's who we're touring with."
So, me and Zach were just kind of not really into the idea,
and kind of decided, "Well, man, maybe --
you know, maybe we should step down."
-But I'm this young, idealistic little shit.
And I sold them on the idea.
I was like -- me and Casey did.
It was "Dude, let's just make a metal record
that's about death, and war, and blood, and guts."
-We didn't, like, set out,
"Okay, every song has to be heavy."
The mindset sort of changed.
-I was talking to Dave fairly often.
It wasn't like I was estranged, or mad at him.
I was just like, "I've just gotta do my own thing."
And so, when he played me some of the stuff, I was like --
He's like, "Are you gonna be involved,
if we do a tour, and build stuff?"
And I was just like, "God, man. Yeah. Like, this is awesome.
This is what I want to hear.
Yeah. Play some metal."
♪♪
-♪ Centuries of carnage
♪ Centuries of chaos yet unfolded ♪
-In that timeframe, in that hiatus,
that was the most money I've ever made in my adult life,
because I was doing movies, and I was doing commercials.
I was actually doing production stuff,
and getting paid the right amount to do it.
I got a call from Dave, and he was like,
"Well, we're getting the band back together."
-When you had people like Hunter, and Chuck, and Don
moving on, we were so lucky
that we had Bobby and Matt that had sort of come in
apprenticing, and things like that.
They were so ready and willing to take the baton,
and not miss a beat,
and still put on these dynamic, amazing shows,
which is building Rome in a day, you know, every day.
-And those guys were like, "We got it."
And they fucking did.
-In some other band, they would just be like, roadies.
But these guys, they are GWAR.
They made all this stuff. They make this art.
And, like, what band do you know --
metal band that takes an 18-wheeler
full of shit with 'em.
There's not a ton. And they have to take that.
'Cause what other band has a giant fucking dinosaur?
♪♪
-When we came back to go GWAR again, we were in debt.
We were getting ready to lose our space.
-We had said for years,
"This is too hard for us to do festivals.
Our breakdown and setup time is too long."
But when we sort of realized our mindset is stuck in the way
we have always done stuff,
but it doesn't have to be that way.
Just nuts and bolts.
Like, "That's stupid. Don't do that.
Do this instead."
♪♪
We were just like, "Shit, we're getting a second wind.
Let's fucking grab it.
If we get the offers for shows, let's just keep taking them."
But being older, and spending a lot of time on tour
leads to some bad habits.
And not just the drinking every night
because you're so bored or lonely,
but the physical toll.
Like, Dave classic, like, back, jumping around and singing
with those costumes on your back.
I remember hearing about people just stealing, or getting oxies,
and just being like, "Huh, that's weird."
[Crowd chanting "GWAR!"]
-I loved Dave Brockie. I looked up to him.
I asked him questions about life.
And one thing about Brockie is, no matter how much partying,
how off the rails he was, how crazy he was,
when it came show time, he was fucking...
He loaded that truck in.
He did the show.
He pulled the work of all of us,
and then, loaded that truck out.
And then, all bets are off.
But his work ethic started waning, you know?
He started missing sound checks.
And it just wasn't him.
And I somehow had the wherewithal to go,
"I don't wanna be present for this.
So, please, do something about this.
And if you don't, I'm gonna have to go."
And he's, "Dude, you're right,"
Whatever. And he was supposedly --
and he didn't.
He didn't. And I knew he didn't.
♪♪
-When Zack left, Cory was right there
to jump in, and take the reins,
and write even more contemporary metal.
♪♪
-Cory was such an easy person to get along with.
He was so...
I don't wanna say "simple," but he had this charm to him
that you just could not dislike the guy.
-Now it's cool, 'cause I don't have to get a real job.
I can do this, and pay my bills.
-He had this whole new blood kind of metal thing going on.
And he was younger, and he was hungry.
and they would just make me have to play harder, and play stuff
that I never even thought about playing before.
♪♪
-The thing about Flattus is there's been countless people
in the Flattus costume.
Somebody told me that, for photo shoots,
and press stuff, and all those different things,
there have been upwards of 30 people in the Flattus costume.
Cory was just such a little caveman full of metal,
and I think he made that character become
what it always sort of seemed like it was trying to be.
And that's no slight to anybody else
that ever played the character.
It's just -- It's like the costume fit him better.
The Sounds from the Underground,
it introduced us to sort of a new generation of rock kids
who would not have thought GWAR was cool, starting like this,
and by the end, just being crushed,
'cause we would do a lot in a half-hour.
These kids coming to the shows were kids.
These bands were young kids, and their fans were young kids.
Kids who weren't even born
when some of the first GWAR stuff came out.
So, we weren't sure how they were gonna go over,
but of course, they went down a storm.
Kids loved them, freaked out about it,
and they became a staple of that tour.
♪♪
-We toured three and a half months straight one time.
I mean, it was insane.
And I remember going, like, "Wow, I got through that."
I had money.
But I just remember, like,
the toll that it took on people, personally.
It's rough.
I could see that, even though things were good,
we pushed it too hard.
We toured too much.
We kept saying, like, "Hey, we can get another tour this year,
make a lot more money."
And we were just like, "Fuck it, alright."
♪♪
-I was lying in my bunk, and I heard...
Eddy, our tour manager.
Eddy was banging on everybody's bunks,
to get their passports,
'cause we were going -- crossing into Canada.
And so, I pulled my curtain back,
and Eddy was knocking on Cory's bunk,
and he wouldn't wake up.
And he opened it, and tried to wake him.
-When we sat down after the police took us to the hotel,
we kind of talked about, like, "What should we do?"
As we talked about it, it was like,
"The only way we can help his widow,
the only way we can help ourselves,
is to do what we're doing."
'Cause we go home, we're all gonna go home,
and go to our individual houses,
and probably have, like, a nervous breakdown, you know?
-We continued on with the tour.
We cancelled one show, and played...
the night after he died, we were up on stage again.
Finished out that tour.
-We're a bunch of dudes that don't really
talk to each other in that way.
It's amazing that we've been together for so long,
and we don't really relate
on any sort of deep, emotional level.
We're all such weirdos.
So, like, being together, and grieving together on tour was,
like, the most helpful thing for me, personally.
It helped me process it.
-When Cory died, we kinda realized that
you're more than just putting the suit on.
You become that character.
And if you die as that character, that character dies.
♪♪
-My wife was really good friends with Cory.
So, when we got the news that Cory had passed,
she was -- I had to stop my wife from running out of the door.
She wanted to go see Jamie,
which is Cory's wife at the time.
She was just devastated.
I mean, that was like a member --
That was somebody very close to us.
Eventually, I get a call from Mike Derks,
asking to go try out.
And I didn't know who else tried out,
but I just remember telling myself
that nobody else can have this
because they're not in that circle.
I didn't want a stranger to take this job,
you know, to take this burden.
-Here he is right now, ladies and gentlemen.
-Oh, my God. Look.
-Posthumous, come here. -Victory.
-You bear a striking resemblance to your family member, Flattus.
-Antoinette and Aunt Cindy are doing very well.
Thank you very much. -I told you he was deaf.
-He's just a fucking straight-up rocker, man.
I mean, he's of that old-school rock n' roll heavy metal.
He stepped up a lot, man.
He did all these little promos for the tour.
They're amazing, man.
-Time for you to get a little Christmas spear...it.
-To be a fan, to cross over into a member of the band,
you have these thoughts and these impressions
of these people that you don't know,
that you're looking, reading about.
Meeting them is one thing, and then actually becoming,
like, really close to people is another.
That's kind of where it, I guess,
changes the most, is when you're not --
sometimes, you're not a fan anymore, you're just family.
♪♪
-Please welcome GWAR's delightful singer,
Oderus Urungus.
-Hello. Hello.
-Now, you hate Earth, don't you?
-Oh, I despise it. But I love it at the same time.
-Yeah, you do.
-See, Earth is the only place in the galaxy that has crack.
-Yeah, that's true.
[Laughter]
-"Viva La Bam," basically, I got $300,000 per episode
to do whatever the hell that I wanted.
And it was usually messing with my parents,
turning the house into a skate park,
alligator in the kitchen, things like that.
-[Screams]
What are you doing here?!
-It's scary upstairs.
-Aren't your friends up there with you?
-[Crying] They're not my friends.
-Oderus Urungus.
It was the story of how Oderus couldn't be outrageous anymore,
so he wanted to do children's birthday parties.
So, of course, he steals my face, and uses it as a mask
to play children's birthday parties.
♪♪
[Cheering]
[Applause]
-Let's have a round of applause for all the bands so far.
♪♪
-Yeah, I got a call in the middle of the night.
And he's sobbing.
And he -- And he just says its
He's like, "Dave's dead."
-He had a sheet hanging,
separating his living room from the kitchen,
I could see through the sheet, but I didn't go in.
Yeah, I didn't wanna see him.
-Dave passed, and he's in his chair.
And I didn't go in the other room to look at Dave either,
man, 'cause that's not the way I remember those guys.
I remember those guys as fierce players and great friends.
-We learned this with Cory, like, the thing you got to do
is you've gotta tell the important people
before they find out, before it hits the news.
So, I was like, "I got to call a bunch of my old friends,
and give them bad news.
But I'd rather them hear it from me."
-Brad called me.
And the minute I saw his phone number on my phone,
I knew it was real, and I broke down pretty hard.
I still can't talk about it.
I break down every time I even start thinking about it.
-Derks called me.
and I'm glad it was Derks that called me.
I don't know why.
But it was...
Man, you know, try to wrap your head around that.
Dave fucking Brockie? The guy's a fucking bull.
-I couldn't process it.
I still have his fucking phone number,
and I go back through our texts all the time --
just random shit.
He would text me constantly -- "Love you, buddy. Miss ya."
-I got a call while I was working that day.
And...
It sucked. I mean, I cried out.
I remember that.
And just was crushing me
to think about them losing everything --
like, losing Dave, and, at the same time,
losing their...
everything they'd worked for, you know?
Like, staring that in the face.
-I assumed that it was over, you know?
And I was fine with that,
because losing someone like Dave Brockie
is a lot more important to me than losing a job.
I was like, "I can go get another job.
There's no more Dave Brockie. You can't replace that."
-He was the most energetic, enthusiastic,
prolific frontman any band could ever have asked for.
And we were damn lucky to have him.
-We all freak out on this planet.
We all get confused.
We all do the lower things sometimes.
But when you really lose someone,
all that noise of confusion between you goes away,
and you realize the only thing that really matters is love.
So, that's what I remembered.
Totally.
-And I called Hunter.
And, you know, I had a number that,
I wasn't sure if it was his or not.
And he told me never to call it, you know, but I was like,
"Well, you know, Dave Brockie just died,
so I'm calling this number."
-Bob Gorman called me, and told me that he had died,
and all like that.
But I didn't wanna go to his funeral because...
you know, I hated the guy, and I didn't want to --
who knows what I might say, you know?
I was like, "Man, you know, like...
I know you hate us all, and everything,"
but I was like, "This guy was a big part of your life,
and part of something that you guys gave the world."
-I said everything I wanted say to him.
He knows how I felt about him.
I just feel like his story came to its logical conclusion.
It's too bad, but...yeah.
That's how it is.
-When I was a kid, I used to think
the worst thing that could possibly happen
is if, like, I would be at the end of my life,
and look back,. and I'd go, "You just fucked up.
You didn't do anything. You just...blew it."
And I don't feel that way.
It's like, when I met these guys that we created GWAR together,
it really gave my life meaning,
I mean, if you're an artist or a musician,
it's very fucking difficult...
-Yes, it is. -...to make a living.
So, somehow, we've been able to do it.
And there's not a second that I'm not just absolutely,
count my lucky stars, my blessings,
and all the fans that have supported us for so many years.
That is the greatest thing, as an artist, that you can get.
♪♪
[Bagpipes play]
[Crowd chanting "Oderus!]
-When I get to three,
I just want you to scream at the top of your lungs,
so that Dave can hear you, alright?
And you'll be amazed at how good this feels.
And it's something that he did all the fucking time.
[Laughter]
One...two...three.
[All screaming]
♪♪
-When we lost Dave, we pretty much assumed that
that would be it for GWAR.
But, you know, it's just such a huge thing
that we had all been working on,
and dedicating our lives to.
And...
there's so much more to this band
than any one person could put into it,
even though he did put more in than anyone.
♪♪
-You have so many people that have been
in and out of this band since day one.
I mean, hundreds, at least 100 people
probably, have been, one way or another,
considered to be an active member of GWAR.
And when you lose somebody in a band
that's such a big group of people, you can't just say,
"Well, that's it," and it's over.
-You know, I fell in love with GWAR when I was a fan,
and then, to be part of it, it's just been amazing.
You know, it's hard to let that die on the vine,
because you're just like, "This thing is so cool."
And you want that magic that you saw as a fan to perpetuate.
You want to share that with other people.
-After Dave passed, I'm like,
"What the hell are we gonna do?"
We know that Dave would have wanted us, and GWAR, to go on.
You know, he'd even talked about it in interviews.
And the only person -- the only person that, you know,
most of us thought could even have a chance of doing it,
let alone us was getting excited about, was Mike Bishop.
In the early years, he was part of the spirit.
He was like the heart of the band.
And to bring him back, you know,
was the only thing that made sense.
We thought, "Well, that's gonna be the thing
that could actually work."
Not only that, but I remember him
saying to me that he came back...
He's like -- He's like, "I can help heal you guys
as well as be the singer."
-I mean, they were hurting, without doubt.
And...I tried hard to...
to do what I could to make that pain less for them.
I did.
And singing was part of it.
Like, making it so that they could keep going.
felt like service to them, and to today.
You know, so, I mean, it wasn't hard for me to figure out.
♪♪
-♪ The world has never looked so dark ♪
♪ The pain never felt so bad ♪
♪ Is it wrong to try to go on? ♪
♪ To try to [indistinct]?
♪ Will you let us scream again? ♪
♪ [Indistinct]
♪ I can feel you like a phantom limb ♪
-We still get a lot of, you know,
"without Brockie, there is no GWAR,"
and blah blah blah.
And Derks said it best --
like, "Yeah, ever since your grandma died,
your family sucks."
You know?
It's just such a shitty thing to say to guys
who knew Dave better than anyone,
and loved him more than anybody else.
It's his legacy. He devoted his entire life GWAR.
-It's just the way I knew those guys would want it.
Like, they wouldn't want us to stop
because they weren't here.
GWAR has never stopped.
We've had a million people in the band come and go,
an GWAR always goes on.
We're on the Warped Tour in 2017,
and, like, Derks was resting a lot,
and he was tired.
And one day he was, like, school-bus yellow.
-I kind of collapsed on stage.
And sent me to the emergency room.
And the band had to go on without me.
And it took months.
Finally, I was diagnosed with myelofibrosis.
-I told Mike once, a long time ago,
and especially when he was sick, I was like,
"Look, I don't know what you're gonna do,
if you're gonna stay, or whatever,
but whatever you do, take me with you.
-Having to sit at home in the summer
when they were out on Warped Tour
was probably the hardest thing in my life,
to know that this band that I helped to create,
and bring this far, was out there playing...
...and to not be part of it.
-I've known him for a really long time.
He's not the most outspoken guy.
He's pretty intelligent, really sensitive human being.
And it's -- And I love him.
And I'm so glad that he made it through that shit.
I really am.
And I like playing music with him.
And I'm glad I still get to do it.
It's just the best.
-The transfusion was a total success,
and I'm getting ready to go out again this fall.
The cancer's in 100% remission.
And I'm feeling great.
I know GWAR is kind of stronger for it, in a way.
They -- Like, we just pull it together.
The world needs a GWAR, you know?
It needs GWAR.
It needs it to smack it around,
and tell it what to do and tell it why it looks like shit,
and tell it why it sucks, you know?
And hopefully, there would be some beauty in that.
-♪ Fuck this place
♪ Fuck this place
[ Feedback whines ]
♪♪
♪ Sexecutioner
♪♪
♪ Yeah
♪ One, two, three
♪ Whoo
♪♪
♪ Slymenstra Hymen
♪♪
-Hello, little boys! [ Giggles ]
♪♪
♪ Sleazy P
♪♪
-We're a team.
♪♪
-♪ GWAR Woman
♪♪
-Once you've been in that band,
you're always in that band.
I talk about GWAR, even though my career,
I am in a band called Rise Against.
But I'm forever in GWAR.
That's my family, you know, still.
♪♪
-It's amazing. Like, I've gotten to hang out
with one of my best friends that I haven't been able
to hang out with in a really long time.
It's like we picked right back up where we left off.
And even though we've had our differences
and there's been some static between us,
overall, man, he's my friend, you know?
[ Laughs ] And it's nice to have my friend back.
[ Laughs ] You know?
So...yeah.
♪♪
-Chaos has been what's made this band move forward
for 30-some years.
And it's crazy when you think about it.
There's nothing else like this.
♪♪
-We're doing more things than ever --
the festival, a lot of different endorsements.
Matt's got the comics going on.
I just put together GWAR's first museum show.
The GWAR Bar.
-Yeah, when Dave died, we were months away
from getting the bar open,
and now it's kind of like a little GWAR museum
that you can get drunk in.
-You don't do GWAR because you want to get rich.
You don't do GWAR 'cause you want to get famous.
You do GWAR because you fucking love it.
I didn't get rich off this.
I've put a lot of my life into it,
and I wouldn't trade it for anything at this point.
-I can't believe it's been the defining thing in my life
and I'm still doing it 30 years later,
but it's made meaning out of my life,
and I've enjoyed every bit of it, even the horrible shit.
So, like, I'm proud of everybody I work with
and everything that we've done, even the crappy stuff.
So, like, try and find another GWAR. There's not one.
So that's something to be said for that.
♪♪
-♪ Motherfucker
♪♪
-Yeah, man, I've had just 12 concussions in this band,
and the doctor was like -- The last one,
he was just like, "What line of work are you in again?
[ Laughs ]
He's like, "You should probably find some other line of work."
♪♪
-♪ Your socks they smell, your feet they stink ♪
♪ You never take a bath
♪ Your nose it runs, you bust your buns ♪
♪ You always finish last
♪ Sick of -♪ Sick of
-♪ You
♪ I'm so sick, so sick of you
♪ Sick of -♪ Sick of
-♪ You
♪ I'm so sick, so sick of you
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪
♪♪
♪ Sick of you
♪ I'm so sick, so sick of you
♪ I'm sick of you
♪ I'm so sick, so sick of you
♪ I'm sick of you, I'm sick of you ♪
♪ I'm so sick, so sick of you
♪ I'm sick of you, I'm sick of you ♪
♪ I'm so sick, so sick of you
♪ I'm sick of you
♪ I'm so sick, so sick of you
♪ I'm sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick ♪
♪ I'm so sick
♪ So motherfuckin' titty-suckin' ♪
♪ God damn, don't you know it, I am fuckin' sick of you ♪
♪♪