Formed in Austin, Texas, but of no fixed abode for much of their late-’80s heyday, the Butthole Surfers resembled a cross between Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and the early, no-budget Alice Cooper—a roaming freak show of improvised druggy chaos. Along the way, they left behind a trail of deranged and damaged recordings. Stalwarts of the post-hardcore underground that spawned Big Black, Sonic Youth, and Dinosaur Jr., Butthole Surfers seemed the least likely of the scene ever to go mainstream. Instead, they seemed more likely to grow into a Dadaist Grateful Dead for the 1990s, playing to ever-larger crowds of the turned-on faithful, but way too weird for radio and Walmart. The name alone seemed like an act of commercial suicide. But, surprising everybody, Butthole Surfers signed to a major label, made an album with Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, traveled the United States on the first Lollapalooza tour, and, eventually, cleaned up with the modern rock radio hit “Pepper.”
Speaking from their Austin homes, guitarist Paul Leary and drummer King Coffey discuss their pre-crossover days of insanitary insanity, via the latest batch of Butthole Surfers reissues from Matador Records: Cream Corn From the Socket of Davis, Locust Abortion Technician, and Hairway to Steven.
Pitchfork: Last summer, I was saddened to learn about the death of the band’s onetime drummer Teresa Taylor—or, as she was known back then, Teresa Nervosa. I understand she originally left the Butthole Surfers in 1989 for health reasons?
King Coffey: She had brain problems, supposedly partially attributable to the strobe lights we used onstage. The doctors asked, “Have you ever been exposed to any strobes?” And Teresa laughed, “Oh, you’ll never know how many strobes I’ve witnessed.” She struggled through many problems in her final 10 years. But I’m just so grateful that we had a chance to know her and play with her and be her de facto brothers.
The two of you pounding away at your stand-up drum kits was quite a sight back in the day—Teresa’s flaming red tresses flailing! Sonically impactful, too, the twin drum attack.
Coffey: When I first joined the band, I was doing real basic kick and snare drums, from having been in this hardcore band the Hugh Beaumont Experience. Playing like a wind-up monkey. In the Buttholes, Teresa started playing these really cool tribal beats. I learned how to play just being with her and watching her. We kind of worked with one brain.
The first time I saw a Buttholes show, in 1987, I was totally unprepared for the audio-visual assault. Singer Gibby Haynes squirted flammable liquid on a cymbal, set it ablaze, and kept smashing the cymbal with a drumstick—flames shot up to the ceiling! I’m thinking, Is this whole venue going to go up in smoke?
Paul Leary: We were really lucky, because we set fires every night for a decade, but we never got hurt. One time, Gibby got injured by an exploding coffee pot, but that was when we were staying at a house in Georgia. His skin was falling off his arm for a month. In those days, we couldn’t afford a doctor. But we never got injured on the actual stage. Even with the shotgun.
The shotgun?
Leary: We’re playing the first Lollapalooza tour—second on the bill, in the mid-afternoon. Our light show wouldn’t work in daylight, so Gibby got a 12-gauge pump shotgun and he’d load it up with what’s called popper loads—they don’t shoot bullets, but they’re used to train dogs, by having a louder, more violent explosion than a regular shell. Siouxsie and the Banshees was on that first Lollapalooza bill. At one show, I was playing a solo and I looked down—there’s Gibby and Siouxsie at my feet, wrestling around with a shotgun pointed at my head, trying to grab it from each other. That was like seeing a rattlesnake—I jumped 10 feet in the air.
There’s so much lore around the Buttholes — outrageous exploits and crazy antics. My wife saw your infamous concert at Danceteria, in 1986, the one with live sex acts taking place onstage.
Leary: We’d been in L.A. and got an offer from Danceteria to play two shows, Friday and Saturday. So we drove from L.A. to New York, a pretty hefty drive, but when we showed up on Friday they said, “Oh, you’re only playing tonight.” We were not happy about that at all, and we kind of let them have it. Towards the end of the show, I pulled out a screwdriver and went around destroying every speaker in their PA and their monitors. They paid us, but they were threatening Gibby and telling us we’d never play New York again.
Do you ever feel that the legend and the lore obscures the music? Amid all the chaos and the clowning, there’s some great rock — particularly on Locust Abortion Technician and Hairway to Steven, there’s a sheer majesty to the sound.
Leary: I don’t remember thinking like that. I thought we were pretty pitiful! Starving punk rockers going from town to town, trying to get enough money to buy beer and pot and gas. This was before the internet and cell phones — we had a basket in the van with maps of all the towns in the United States.
Coffey: We had an “us-against-the-world” mentality. We’d all been washing dishes in Austin, Texas, and then we thought, fuck this. Let’s just be a band. Let’s hit the road. People talk about these amazing shows we did — keep in mind that everything was self-contained in a Chevy Nova or a van. We didn’t have this big arsenal of lights, a road crew — it was just the five of us, the dog, and whatever fit in a van. We didn’t have a manager.
Leary: All we had was burnt bridges in our rearview mirror.
Coffey: Even though it was grindingly hard at times, we were also having a blast. None of us had girlfriends, boyfriends, a place to live, but at least we were doing what we set out to do. We’d all crash in the same Motel 6 room or whoever’s house we were staying at.
Leary: Waking up on the floor next to some stranger’s cat box.
Coffey: Later in life, I realized we were run like a commune. We had one communal fund that we’d take money out of to eat, or for gas. We’d get money from a show and put it back into the fund.
Interesting that you mention communes, because the Buttholes always struck me as this bizarre merger of hippie and punk. A compelling collision of mind-expanding music and mind-debasing everything-else. The lyrics and the album artwork reveled in the gross and grotesque. Like those films you used to back-project at shows: penile reconstruction surgery, car crash carnage.
Leary: I think Gibby got a lot of those films from the University of Texas film library. He’d call in and say that he was Dr. Gibby Haynes, and he needed this movie and that movie.
From: https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/butthole-surfers-on-the-deranged-and-damaged-1980s/
