Bonus feature: Mark Deutrom (Part 2)
As promised, here’s Part 2 of an excerpt of a rather lengthy interview with former Melvins bassist — and current Sunn O)) member/ solo artist – Mark Deutrom. Fun fact: Decibel writer Zach Smith transcribed this when he was an intern (the magazine’s first, in fact) way back in ‘04!
The Melvins are famous for pissing audiences off. Do you have any memories to share?
Anybody who has seen the Melvins will tell you there’s a point where they’re going to test your attention span, even to die hard fans. Prick would be a prime example of that — things you can’t really listen to. There’s a certain amount of arrogance and pride in that, and of course I took part happily in that type of attitude when I was in the band. Some of the more notorious examples of that are when we played in Dallas with Nine Inch Nails and we opened the set with a 9+ minute long instrumental. Nine Inch Nails fans don’t want to hear that stuff, so the audience melted down and ripped up the seats in this minor league hockey arena and threw ‘em at us. The old Melvins standby is to just let the feedback rip for 15 minutes. It’s as much of a trademark for the Melvins as Gene Simmons blowing fire is for KISS. It’s just part of the band, and if you love the band, then you kind of look forward to moments like that just to see how people who haven’t been exposed to the band will react.
You joined the band for a bunch of releases that everybody seems to be able to agree upon like Stoner Witch and Stag, as well as all the material that came out on Amphetamine Reptile, which is stuff that no one seems to be able to universally agree on. How were you approached to join the band?
Buzz and Lori both had this situation where they were still involved with each other, they both went into rehab, they came out, and they started getting interest from major labels. I’m not even sure if Lori recorded her parts for Houdini. If she did, it was all wiped. It became evident that Buzz was going to split up with Lori and kick her out of the band, and he was looking for somebody new. They had finished recording Houdini in ‘93, and I wasn’t doing anything, so when they asked me to join the band, I said, “Okay.” It was basically Buzz and Dale on that record, and I think maybe Kurt Cobain played some guitar, I’m not really sure; the whole idea of him producing anything is interesting. He just really didn’t do anything on that record except for kind of show up and pass out, but people…Cobain was addicted to heroin. He couldn’t have produced a crap after a cup of coffee at that point. You know, with all due respect to him, he had no experience producing records. It was kind of one of those sort of mismatches that I think Atlantic came up with or Kurt told the Melvins that he wanted to be there, and all the sudden he’s producing the record.
Can you give me an account of what happened wherein you severed ties with the Melvins?
You mean when they kicked me out of the band?
Yes.
Because make no mistake, they kick people out of their band. Our contract with Atlantic was up, and there were a couple of labels that were interested in us doing demos, but Buzz was like, “I’m not going to do anything for those motherfuckers, there’s no way I’m going to audition for them.” He looked at it purely as an insult, you know, and felt that he would kind of be selling out or being untrue to his own direction. We never sat down and had career move meetings between the three of us. The main thing I felt was “take advantage of everybody as much as you can for as long as you can and then get out.” And that was kind of the attitude we developed, there was certainly a type of mercenary sort of ruthlessness that we had.
My attitude was like, “Sure, we’ll make some demos for you; give us five grand or whatever.” They give you five grand, you go and record an entire record, you give them a couple of songs, and then if they don’t like it, you just put the album out that you’ve recorded on AmRep or Man’s Ruin or whatever, and then basically then you’ve got an album out of the situation for free. So you’re ahead. But I think he interpreted that as me wanting to become some band like Metallica or something, which would be completely ridiculous. Having known the Melvins for like 12 years at that point, I understood exactly what the commercial potential of the band was.
What would bring closure to the situation, what would need to happen for that to happen?
I don’t know, probably apologies or whatever. I’m not sure; I can only speak for myself. For me, it’s just kind of, I’ve been in plenty of towns where they’re playing and I always mull it over: should I go down there and talk to them? I’ll give full credit to Buzz in creating something that’s utterly unique and he created that whole thing by himself. There’s nothing like it and it’s respectable, it’s good, and you know, I was glad to be part of it, seriously. I had my own problems at the time, I had a great deal of depression in my life that started when I was a child, and so they had to put up with that. And I didn’t manage to seriously address it until a few years ago. I’m glad I got a chance to be in the Melvins. That’s it, really.