“It was alive and exciting and subversive.” Why Le…
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If you need reminding how bizarre the post-Nevermind frenzy among major record labels to sign ‘The Next Nirvana‘ was, you could do worse that considering the case of the Butthole Surfers, a band whose records sounded like Hieronymus Bosch paintings look, and whose lives shows featured nudity, suicide footage, LSD, ‘piss wands’ and interpretative dance courtesy of a former Times Square stripper who rejoiced in the name Ta-Da The Shit Lady, being snapped up by Capitol Records, and given the chance to work with Led Zeppelin legend, and former choirmaster, John Paul Jones. The inspiration behind Who Was in My Room Last Night?, the first major label single released by the Texan band to cash in on the the alt. rock boom? “This crack whore I went out with for a month and a half,” said frontman Gibby Haynes.
Lovely stuff.
Full credit though to everyone involved for throwing themselves into the project, 1993’s Independent Worm Saloon album, with such gusto and such open minds, not least John Paul Jones.
“I hadn’t heard them before,” Jones admitted to Musician magazine in March 1993. “People send me an awful lot of tapes, and I’ve heard an awful lot of uninteresting bands. When my manager sent me the Buttholes’ demo tape, I was just immediately interested. It was alive and exciting and subversive.
“Then Paul [Leary, BS guitarist] sent me their album Hairway to Steven,” Jones recalled. “He didn’t quite realize what he’d done when I thanked him for it [bearing in mind the title is a piss-take nod to Led Zeppelin’s most famous song]. He said, ‘I sent what?’ They probably thought I had a more serious or sacred attitude, but Hairway confirmed that I wanted to work with them. I also like their version of Hurdy Gurdy Man, which I arranged with Donovan. I prefer the Butthole version, actually.”
Asked by writer Charles M. Young if he could compare working with Led Zeppelin and the Butthole Surfers, the bassist replied, “They’re similar in their work habits. When it came to recording, both bands got down to it and worked very hard.”
For their part, the Buttholes were rather charmed by the former Zeppelin bassist, with Paul Leary admitting that, at the outset, he’d told himself, “if I pass up a chance to work with John Paul Jones, I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself.”
“When John Paul came to town, I went to pick him up at the airport. I was expecting someone with mutton-chop sideburns and bellbottoms, and I just couldn’t find him anywhere. I had him paged and he was standing next to me. He looked so… normal.”
Bassist Jeff Pinkus added: “When he played bass on The Ballad of Naked Man, I was playing banjo and I kept thinking, Who could have guessed when I was growing up and listening to Led Zeppelin that one day John Paul Jones would be playing bass with me on a song I wrote? It was probably my biggest thrill since joining the band.”
Released on March 23, 1993, the album peaked at number 154 on the Billboard 200, but did not chart in the UK.
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