All language subtitles for [subtitleone.cc] output

[Rob] So Greg...

[Rob] you guys were talking about heroin and stuff?

[Greg] Yeah.

[Rob] What's your take on it right now?

[Greg] Um, I'd like to try it.

Not right now, though.

What would happen is if I don't resolve

all the things that, that bad trip brought up,

and then I do something like heroin,

and I find that it numbs me, and that like,

I can deal with life.

Then I'll become an addict.

[Music]

[Jason] That perfect moment

between the 80s and the aughts,

that perfect moment

that people call the 90s.

[Melissa] You know, what was so beautiful

about that moment in the 90s.

It was a collective unconsciousness,

that we were all like pulling at.

We all felt something

insane was happening.

Jane's Addiction, the Pixies.

It just started like exploding after 91.

[Steve] There was a groundswell of independent labels

and they were selling enough

records to generate real money

and so they were investing more into

bands and their recording budgets.

[Rick] The 90s was really the last time that

it was controlled by

record labels and radio.

Where the program director of the

alternative station could

play whatever she wanted.

[Margaret] It wasn't like anything else.

It's fuzz,

it's crunch and loud but

at the same time quiet.

It's like a dull roar of silence.

It was really weird.

[Justin] There was nothing that sounded or felt like them.

There was a seriousness and an

earnestness to their approach

that felt very refreshing

and very needed at that time.

A lot of guys from my era were

like, "Ah, this is bullshit."

I never saw it like that. I

saw it as, "Fuck, finally,

like some new blood

injected into the sport."

[Maynard] Because most of the stuff around LA at that point

was very kind of formulaic

and a lot of guys were focusing on the

funny hats or the flannels

or whatever was going on at the time.

They were kind of morphing

from one trend to another

and Failure just seemed to cut

right up through the middle.

They were just kind of

their own unique presence.

[Butch] They were tapping into something

that people wanted to hear

they could relate to because they were

embracing that darkness

They were embracing dissonance.

They're like ahead of their time

as far as all that goes.

[Troy] I feel like I owe

a lot of where I'm at today

because of my involvement in the band.

[David] It sounds pretentious but

they're an important band.

There are a number of

bands that are just important

and they're one of them.

I'd never really

heard anything like that.

It changed how I thought about music

and it kind of just made me more than

ever want to be in a band.

[Ken] During my first year of film school at

San Diego State, I was spending most of

my free time playing

guitar and I was kind of getting curious

about playing with other

people. So I started looking

through the musician want ads in San Diego

and I ended up meeting a

group of musicians who had

access to a barn in North County, San Diego.

[Ken] This is where I

met a keyboardist named Carl

and a drummer named Robert.

We eventually tried writing our own songs

but I wasn't super

enthusiastic about them.

[Ken] This coincided with my professor

telling me that if I was serious about working

in the film buisness, I needed to

transfer to Cal State Los Angeles

It was 1986.

I moved to LA, rented a room,

and started the film program at Cal State LA

I think it was about

six months later Robert called

me and said he was going to LA City

College and was starting to

check out the music scene in Hollywood

Rob and I became better

friends. We started hanging

out, going to shows. We got

our own two-bedroom apartment in Hollywood.

and this is where I really started to spend a lot

of time sketching out riffs and songs on

my four-track in my bedroom.

Eventually I had three songs

that I was willing to play for Rob and to

my surprise he really

liked them and said they could

even be a jumping off

point for an original band.

There was what felt like a kind of a

longer period ahead of

Greg coming into the band

where Ken and I were just

writing stuff in the apartment,

me using a drum machine and

him playing guitar and bass.

Ken was starting to listen to Siouxsie & The Banshees

and some stuff like that.

[Music]

[Ken] In terms of what I was into

when I was going to film school,

my favorite painter was Francis Bacon

and my favorite album at that time was

Pornography by The Cure.

[Rob] It's interesting because even as far back

as when we were recording on a little

rack mount Tascam 4 track

Ken was making good sounding recordings.

It just made sense to come up

with a way to play them live

and that was when we

decided to look for a bass player.

[Rob] There were a couple of local

newspapers and music magazines

that you would send in an ad request to

and it would be a print ad.

[Greg] I just knew that I wanted to play music.

I was good at it and I wanted to find

people who were talented

and that I could learn from

And when I graduated,

Disintegration came out that year.

[Greg] The Cure had many

different stylistic changes

from the beginning.

Disintegration somehow fuesed it all

into this perfect mood.

That record was a huge deal for me.

[Greg] When I got out of high school I just

started looking through all these ads.

Felt hopeless. I would

just call so many numbers.

After doing this for a few months there

was this ad that I

come across a few times.

[Music]

[Greg] I called and went over and

met with Ken at his apartment.

He had just gotten out of film school but

he wanted to do music.

He had a little four track.

He was very focused.

He had some demos of

songs like "Procatastrophe"

and I just immediately thought, okay,

this is the kind of

person I want to work with.

There's a real concerted effort to do

something that is kind of unique

and has its own universe.

We set up a rehearsal where

we could all play together

and I got the few

demos that they had done,

learned all the bass parts, went in and

played with the guys.

[Music]

[Rob] My recollection was that he came in and

he had learned the songs.

He had learned them well and he played

well and we just clicked I think

in how we related to each other.

[Ken] Improvising, being creative on the spot

with other people who are also being

creative on the spot,

that was a whole new experience for me

and I really liked it.

[Ken] It was so much more exciting for me than

writing treatments and

directing music videos.

[Music]

[Rob] At that time metal was kind of happening

in the west end of Hollywood

and the non-metal was kind of happening

more sort of on the east side of town.

[Ken] In the early 90s there were these small

clubs on the east end of Hollywood

like Club Lingerie,

Raji's, The Gaslight, Jabberjaw

and they would actually book your band if

they liked your demo tape

as opposed to making you buy a hundred

tickets of your own performance

like the hair bands were

[Ken] doing on the Sunset Strip.

[Rob] Yeah.

[Ken] That's a half-pint.

[Greg] Yeah.

[Rob] Well not the real little ones.

The taller ones.

[Ken] Really?

[Rob] Yeah.

[Greg] The really little blue ones.

[Rob] The pint is the tall one like this.

[Greg] The, non-fat-

[Rob] It's like a mocha mix thing.

[Ken] Oh, okay.

[Rob] Not the real squatty ones.

[laughing]

[Music]

[Ken] How we feeling boys?

Real good.

[Music]

[Maynard] My first memory of seeing them was at the

Club Lingerie, an old club on Sunset.

The thing that was striking to me was

just that three piece

and the amount of sound

and the diversity of

sounds coming off the stage.

It was just really impressive.

The chord structures, the dissonance,

some of the very loose,

but controlled, slow tempos

of some of the songs.

I thought that's not easy to pull off.

That's almost harder than playing fast.

A numb hard shell is how you'll find me

Let me show you my best

I won't be that easy to find

I will fit in

With the rest

[Paul] I was always looking

for cool music, you know,

stumbled on Failure one night

they were playing a club in LA

I was like, "Whoa."

They were just like this wild hybrid of

things that kind of

hit me in my happy place.

[laughing]

[Rick] I think having music that goes to places

that are unexpected, that

has a lot of surprise elements,

are what attracts musicians to it.

If there's too many things, it alienates

the average listener.

What do you want to be as a band?

I always think, do you want to be a band

that's respected by other bands?

Or do you want to be a band that's

commercially accepted?

Well, you want to be both.

[Music]

[Rob] There were local bands that were being

played on the radio.

Sandy Duncan's eye was

playing around at that time.

There was kind of a hot

noise band scene at the time.

[Ken] I thought it was, "This is what you do

when you're in college.

You have a noise band."

Right.

And you get drunk on the weekend.

Correct.

I wanted to be noisy and

I wanted to be abrasive.

[Music]

I believe the first show was at

The Gaslight, if I'm not mistaken.

[Greg] We were getting some self-pressed singles

together that we were releasing.

We were getting some play on the local

college station, KXLU.

[Music]

[Ken] The local college radio station KXLU had

a big impact on our band.

They played us all the time

Sure, the reception was spotty

compared to the big

commercial stations in town,

but we thought it was absolutely amazing

to be driving in

Hollywood at peak drive time

on a Friday afternoon and actually hear

our song on the radio.

And it was often followed by

a plug for our upcoming show.

Sure enough, we started to notice our

audience was growing.

[Greg] It happened quickly. I mean, we only

played maybe 15 or 20 shows

then the record deal happened with Slash.

[Ken] Signing to Slash was kind of like the

first validation that the band had

something going for it.

But Albini agreeing

to do the first album.

It got really real, really fast.

[Steve] I was asked to work on the first album

for Slash called Comfort.

We recorded that at Pachyderm, which was

kind of my go-to studio.

[Steve] They had a really fantastic sounding live

room with a nice high ceiling and big

asymmetrical glass window.

So the reflected sound inside the studio

was very lively and very bright.

The studio had a reasonably good

collection of microphones.

In particular, they had a couple of East

German Neumann tube

microphones called the CMV563.

I was introduced to

them there at that studio.

And when you attach the cable on the end,

the cable is very securely

attached to the microphone.

And immediately that suggested to me that

you should be able to swing the

microphone around by the cable.

And what would be the acoustic effect of

that? Let's find out.

We developed this thing, the danglophone,

which was one of these microphones

dangling from its cable.

And then it would swing in an ellipse

near whatever you were recording.

And as it moved

closer, it would get louder.

And as it moved away, there would be a

Doppler shift and you

would get a phasing effect.

It was a novelty and

I was impressed with

myself that I had thought of it.

So I wanted to try it on everything.

Now this makes me want to

rig up the danglophone.

[Music]

[Steve] There's a song called "Macaque."

We did a version of that song that I

liked and that I thought was a keeper.

But there was some timing irregularity

and the band were not into it.

I seem to remember me sort of being a

dick about it, like

saying, you know, like,

I don't want to waste the time doing this

song again. This is perfectly good

version or whatever.

But in the end, they were right. If you

listen to the song sort of academically,

these timing issues that they were

talking about were absolutely were there.

Eventually, I just realized that I was

being stubborn and I

relented and we redid the song.

And it was fine. And that's the version

that's on the record.

I was younger and more headstrong then. I

didn't know as much.

And when you don't know as much, you tend

to be more certain of your opinions.

Like the dumber you are,

the more certain you are.

And I was sort of medium

dumb at that stage still.

The ideal conditions to record with Steve

was just to be a band that just really

had their shit together

and just go in and he just captures it.

And if you are a great band, you end up

with a great record.

[Music]

[Steve] When the music industry started

extracting from the independent music

scene, from the underground scene,

and bands started to get sucked up into

the cyclone of the corporate music world,

and they started to get destroyed one at

a time, they would get destroyed,

part of me thought, you know, fuck them.

If there's money in fucking a pig and you

go down there and you fuck a pig,

well, whatever, you fucked a pig.

That's your business.

There's all these other people over here,

they're going about

their day not fucking a pig.

I'm perfectly comfortable contending with

those people for the rest of my life.

[Steve] I am in an odd situation occasionally. In

a professional capacity, I'm working for

a band who are within this structure,

this corporate structure

that I'm unsympathetic to.

And I still feel my obligation is to do

the best job possible for that band

because my sympathy is with the band.

I want them to succeed. I want them to

make a great record.

Their life is going to be miserable

dealing with all these fuckers over here.

That's not my department. The record,

working on the record,

that's my department,

and I want to do as good a

job as I can in that department.

[Rob] My problem with my playing on the record

is just time. I just feel

like my timing is not good.

I feel like everyone else played well.

So when I listen to the

recordings, even today,

there almost inevitably is some part in a

song where I'm just like, oh shit, the

drums sucked right there,

dragging or speeding up. And that's part

of the beauty of music at that time,

was not having things quantized and

having it be a little bit of

push and pull in the tempos.

But yeah, it was just too

much for me in many instances.

[Ken] Mind Parasites.

[Greg] Robert was a purist in

certain ways, aesthetically.

And this is where the first tension rose

in the band was not with Ken.

It was really with Robert

because I loved Robert's playing.

It was so interesting. And I loved Robert

as a person, but he needed to adhere to a

sonic aesthetic dogma.

And he would not go outside of that.

I just had no interest in that.

I just wanted to make the music that made

me feel the way I wanted

the music to make me feel.

And whatever it took to

get there was fair game.

[Guitar Feedback]

[Music]

[Rob] When the album came out, I was definitely

I think still full steam ahead as far as

wanting to keep doing music

and keep doing music with Failure. I was

disappointed in my

performances on the album,

but I thought that

you know, the next one could be better.

[Ken] It's pretty damn cold and

we're in the middle of Nebraska.

[Rob] Yep.

[Greg]. Oh, shit.

[Rob] It's all true

We got fucking pulled over because this...

this guy fucking pulls off all the way off the road.

not just off the

road, but off the highway.

So immediately the cops thought that we

So immediately the cops thought that we

were putting away all

the drugs, which I was.

[Ken] You got pulled over too, buddy.

How fast were you going?

Eighty-five.

[Ken] And your ticket was seventy five,

and mine was only fifty.

Mine was seventy-two.

[Ken] Yeah.

Look at the Moon.

[Ken] whoo 000...

[Ken] We're on the 12th floor at the Omni in

Cleveland right now.

We just played the Agora Theater.

Snow's coming early to Cleveland. It's only in

the middle of November.

[Rob] On coming back from tour, the expectation

is, you know, you need to get busy

and start writing

songs for the next album.

Ken had moved out to the valley, out

where Greg was, and they were

sharing an apartment together.

Ken and Greg were writing songs and

putting them on cassette, bringing them

in and saying, you know,

these are the songs we're working on.

[Music]

he crept through the streets

eyes upturned

a small patch of sky

looked down on him

through baskets they weave

s0 thickly

he saw on the sea

a road in the clouds

a rusty old bridge

was yelled in his mind

he thought it was golden

[Ken] This is our home studio.

And this guy up here, he's waiting for us

to do something cool.

Do it, bro.

[playing drum machine]

Yeah.

[playing drum machine]

[Ken] See that cable? That goes in there.

In there is my cabinet.

Mic'd up.

[Music]

[Greg] When we started working on the Magnified demos,

and specifically "Bernie,"

which was such a departure, and we were

really excited about it.

We had sort of moved the basic building

blocks and the language of early Failure.

I would say our version of like a

Beatle-esque infusion

into what we had been doing,

and Robert was just, he was ready to leave

upon hearing it.

Maybe he was moving towards the door

anyway, but for me to be

so excited about something

and then have him reject it and walk out

was, you know, I just felt like, okay.

[Rob] That idea that I was basically going to

be playing other people's

drum tracks was for sure

the number one reason that I was like,

this is not going to be for me anymore.

That was the main reason.

I think a fair amount of it might have

been just personal insecurity.

After Comfort came out and

the way I felt about Comfort,

I imagine that there was a

part of me that was nervous

and maybe not particularly looking

and maybe not particularly looking

forward to recording again

for fear of kind of a repeat of

what happened with Comfort.

[Ken] I mean, he in a way pushed me to even

want to do the band originally.

It was not fun for me.

I had a lot of questions

about him leaving the band.

[Greg] That was the bummer part was to lose him

as a person, as a personality.

He was integral, but the impediment to

the progress that we were making

and were inexorably going to continue to

make, I think, was just

there was no way around it.

[Rob] At some point during my time in L.A_, I

I just got sick of it, you know,

I just got sick of the noise and the smog

and the crowds and the energy.

And I feel like I was

looking forward to my days off work

to just go up into the National Forest

and hike and just hang out in the woods.

Yeah, I just decided, you know, I'm gonna

go live somewhere super beautiful

[Rob] The kind of place where most people, you

know, just think about visiting,

that's where I want to live.

And if I need to go to the city for X, Y, or Z

That's what I'll do.

Working for the National Parks

seemed like the perfect way to accomplish that.

[Music]

[Greg] We're writing now in a room together with

a four-track, with a drum machine,

and for the first time I felt like I was

really writing songs,

collaborating with somebody.

And that's when I think Ken and I really

formed this creative alliance.

There was a musical language that was

developing between Greg and I.

We were learning about our shared

interests in music,

other artists we liked.

[Ken] But the other thing that was happening is

that I was learning more

about Greg's musical abilities

and the fact that he

wasn't just a bass player.

On the first album I was the sole lyricist

but I didn't always relish that

responsibility.

[Ken] Writing for Magnified is when I

discovered that Greg had a

real talent for writing lyrics.

Lyrics became another layer of

collaboration that made our writing

process more unpredictable and exciting.

[Greg] We had done these demos that Bob Biggs,

the head of our record

company Slash, he loved them.

[Ken] So we kept writing, and we didn't say

anything about Robert.

We're sending in the demos, and they're

like, oh my God, wow, you guys opened

the window, what happened?

[Ken] We searched for a drummer for a while, we

found someone, John Dargahi.

He ended up on three songs, maybe four.

But when we got to like three of them, he

came to us and was like, "This is a

little beyond my pay grade.

The pressure is too much for me. I'm not

feeling comfortable.

I think you should get someone else."

So he left.

And now we're like, "Oh,

we're starting to drink a lot now."

[laughing]

[Suzy] I was probably 14, 15. I would always

hang out at this little

coffee shop in Grand Rapids.

We called it Music Depresso.

Coffee, records downstairs.

I remember the record changed, and I

remember being like, "What is this?"

I think it was "Moth." When it hit me, and

I was just like, "What the fuck?"

I went downstairs, asked the guy what it was

and he was like, "It's this."

So, bought it. Been a fan ever since.

Paul Lani, was a metal producer,

and he had produced Megadeth.

It was so far away from what we were

doing stylistically.

He quit in the middle of the record.

OK

[Ken] Howard Willing,

he was the engineer for Magnified.

And so when Paul quit,

Howard just looked over and said, "Wanna keep going?"

I love when engineers do that.

breathe your death down

cause you will not see

let it drip down

let it soak your feet

[Greg] As we lost the drummer, and then I had to

step in and find a way

of recording the drums,

and then we lost our producer, and Ken

kind of had to step up into that role.

If anything, I just remember feeling

like, Okay, there's

more noise out of the way,

and we can just do what we need to do.

[Jordan] You did know what you were doing. You

just didn't know that you

knew what you were doing.

Why is Greg playing drums?

You guys are going on tour in six weeks.

What's going on?

We're gonna find a drummer.

(laughing)

It was so not planned. Everything that

was happening then was just like

reactions, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was fun.

[Kellii] I think I had like two

or three of my own bands.

I was playing with the guys in Wool.

I had just been playing with the guys in

Suicidal and Infectious.

I was just doing all of this stuff.

I had like a million things going on

where I was literally

playing every day of the week.

I got home, and there were a bunch of

messages on my machine.

One was from Tom Morello.

One was from Warren Entner,

the band's manager, referred me to Randy Kaye,

who was the band's

A&R guy at Slash Records.

And he gave me one of those cassettes,

those early demo

cassettes of Magnified.

I picked it up, and I

brought it back to the house.

I didn't listen to it. I put it on the

thing, and I was just like, Yeah, alright,

let's do this.

All these people called me. Like, they

have a manager, and

they have a record label.

Of course I'm gonna do this audition.

And we set up a rehearsal at Mates, and I

just went about my business.

I kept playing in, you know, all these

bands every single day.

You're burning the candle at both ends,

and, you know, that day comes and goes.

I forget all about it. I've never

listened to the tape.

It's still sitting in

the same exact spot.

By the time we were having to audition

drummers to do the

touring on Magnified,

it just so happened that we both had

previous travel plans

so that we couldn't make the audition

happen on the day

that Kellii was available.

Or that he showed up, actually.

(laughing)

[Kelli] "What the fuck, dude? Like, you never

showed up for the audition."

I apologized profusely.

"Well, can we do it again?"

He wasn't available to do it. So I

suggested, "How about me

and the bass player do it?"

"Can you do that?" I remember saying

something like, "Well, yeah, I mean,

if the bass player and drummer can't play

together, then, I

mean, it's a no-go anyway."

So we set up another one.

Then I put on the tape.

What I was listening to sounded like

something I'd never heard.

It just washed over me, and at first I

had this sense of dread.

Yeah, I was gonna get this next audition,

but I had really kind of fucked this up.

But then there was just,

like, I got kind of giddy.

Like, what the fuck is this?

If I can get into this fucking band.

I get there and I meet Greg. I think when

we did the first two songs, he was like,

"Oh, this is cool. Like,

maybe this is gonna work out."

But something noticeably changed in his

demeanor and his face

when we played "Frogs."

You know, his energy was great. He was,

like, very extroverted

and very different to me,

but I immediately connected with him.

And then we went into the office, and he

basically called Ken.

I just asked Greg, like, "Well what do you think?"

"He's the guy."

[Melissa] It was very exciting for Failure to

acquire one of those drummers.

It kind of felt like when Nirvana got

Dave, like, just one

of those epic drummers

that only make the

band the best it can be.

[Melissa] There is nothing more inspiring than

seeing a great drummer

in a great rock band.

There is a physicality to rock music

which will blow people's minds,

that no electronic or pop can ever do.

[Drum Crescendo]

[Applause]

[Ken] There was an overall skill level there

that was very easy to slip into.

We were just so stoked to have someone

who could pull it off.

someone said they'd like to set you up

they're gonna

feed on you

just sleep now

should have known they'd try and

make you cry

they're gonna

have fun now

don't fight it

let me come undone in your house

let me come undone and kill some time

let me come undone in your mouth

let me come undone and feel the same

[David] The first encounter with the band Failure,

I was in high school,

and I was friends with musicians, guys

whose opinions I really looked up to.

They kept talking about

this new band called Failure,

and I hadn't sat down and actually

listened to them yet.

And went to a

[David] Tool concert with two of

my best friends, the musicians.

Failure opened for them as well as

The Flaming Lips, and

my mind was blown.

My life was changed, you know.

[Paul] Tool was just blowing up and, you know,

selling out clubs and

then selling out bigger shows

we went from zero to 100 pretty quickly.

Failure came along for the ride.

[Maynard] There's always a promoter or a local

agent pimping some local band,

and generally speaking

they were pretty dreadful.

So the idea of

being subjected to a group

of people we didn't know,

sounds we weren't familiar with,

[Maynard] and we were kind of precious about what

we were doing as well.

It just made more sense to take out

somebody that we respected.

Failure ended up being one of those few

bands that we just

really, really resonated with.

[Paul] We just started getting bored, and I

would come out and play a song with them.

You know, you become this kind

of musical family on the road.

[Ken] Like the norm is to take

bands out, but for one tour.

Tool took us on five tours.

Tool's one of those bands where when the

band members say they like something, the

fans actually stop and listen.

We finished all the touring with Tool.

We went over to Europe and stuff.

And then we came back,

and it kind of seems like the next day we

were moving into the Lita Ford house

to do Fantastic Planet.

[Musical Sound FX]

[Butch] Fantastic Planet is

in my top 25 albums.

It's a great unsung classic.

I still listen to it.

There's a lot of records from the 90s

I don't really ever

want to listen to again,

but that record I put on all the way

through, and I just love it.

[Dean] I used to eat lunch at this

place. It was a flower shop.

And Troy used to work there.

One day he laid Fantastic Planet on me.

Oh, but when I put that record on, I was

immediately, immediately taken by it.

It banged me right in

the center of my soul.

You know who turned me on to

Failure was Cher's son, Elijah.

I just sat there and I was

like, "Whoa, this is insane."

I was blown away by how fucking clean the

guitars were, but so heavy and detuned.

I don't know. It was a cool sound that I

hadn't heard yet, especially being clean.

Clean guitars that heavy.

I don't know how the fuck he did that.

saturday savior

i can be that

saturday savior

i will be your

This is a period, I guess, in the mid to

late 90s where music started to shift.

We were coming out of grunge and going

into something that was

deeper and more textured sonically,

and they really fit the bill for me.

[Jason] In 1995 or 1996, we were in a rehearsal

studio in North Hollywood.

Halfway through a certain song, I just

remember not being able

to hear our band anymore.

And we stopped playing. The room was

buzzing. It almost felt like a

truck or train was close by.

I just remember touching the

wall and the wall was vibrating.

We were all looking at each other like,

This is crazy. Whatever

band is in there, it's crazy.

[Matt] When Fantastic Planet came out, and I put

the record on, I was still in

the music department at MTV,

but also hosting 120 Minutes,

and I went, "This is amazing."

It felt like they jumped this incredible

level with Fantastic Planet.

[Music]

[Ken] If the four track was where we were

learning about recording and songwriting

for the first two albums,

the third album,

Fantastic Planet, was a huge leap.

Not only did we get the okay from the

label to self-produce this time,

we're going to have our

own multi-track studio.

When I'm just saying multi-track, I don't

mean four tracks, I

don't mean eight tracks,

I don't mean 16 track, 24 tracks. The

same as the big studios had.

[Justin] Failure's sonic presentation and the

methods that they use to

record that sonic presentation

are inextricably bound to the identity of

them as a band,

particularly with Fantastic Planet.

[Kelli] Ken had convinced Slash to give him a

considerable amount of the budget so he

could buy recording gear.

[Ken] We wanted to kind of flip the script and

say, "Well, why can't

we just do it on our own

and have our per day cost be so low that

we can take longer and not have to worry

about being kicked out of the studio,

be more creative in the studio.

we could take chances, we could spend a few days

going down a path

that just went nowhere.

It's pretty hard to do

that in a regular studio.

It gave us

this kind of ultimate luxury

of being able to write in the studio.

the door knob was glowing

all my photographs were rippled and melting

[Billy] The production was so interesting,

especially at that time.

The use of space was different

than a lot of the stuff that I had heard.

It had this modern kind of

Pink Floyd element to it.

There's some anti-anthems on there, in a

way. There's this catchiness to the

songs, but it never quite goes to the

place where you can hate it.

[Kelli] You know, we had all done stuff, but we

had never quite done this, and certainly

not without supervision.

It was kind of fun. It was like camp,

but recording camp.

Everybody was really happy, still, very

optimistic. We thought

we were still going up.

[Hayley] I had just moved from Mississippi

with my family and

I was desperate to make

friends that liked music.

Someone I had met on the way in was like,

"Let me introduce you to Zac." He plays

drums, and he's in a band with his

brother. Zac's like, "Oh,

yeah, I'll make you a mix CD."

So the next Thursday I showed up, and he

sure enough handed me

[Hayley] "Hayley's Mix by Zac"

in the worst best handwriting.

And I put it in so many bands that

changed my life were on that, but the one

that I couldn't believe

was "Pitiful" by Failure.

was "Pitiful" by Failure.

pitiful, laughable, once again silent

you're pitiful, laughable, once again silent

[Kelli] My experience making that record was all

about music, and it was

all about being in a band.

There was nobody around that wasn't

supposed to be there, and

experimentation, and all of the stuff

that you're up until that point told

you're not allowed to do.

Nothing's off the table. But it was also

a lot of really, really hard work.

When everybody was raising their pom-poms

for Seattle Grunge, these guys were

really expanding the notion

of what a rock band could be.

[Ken] It was creatively stressful, because we

had set ourselves up. You're going to

actually let us do all this, and now

we're here, and now we've

gotta make something good.

And then there was the pressure within

the band of, well, what is good?

Is my version of good the same as yours?

I think both Greg and I felt this could

be the last one. There was a feeling of

pressure, and like, I

hope we're getting it.

But there was also this feeling of like,

I think we are getting it.

[Music]

[Greg] There was a big Tower Records down on

Ventura Boulevard. There was this one

section called "Midnight Movies".

There was this one VHS that I kept

looking at. It was called Fantastic Planet.

Blew me away. Everything about it,

the visual style was so distinct.

[Ken] Art film aesthetic was seeping into our

ideas about what the album could be.

Could it be commercial

sounding, but also really artistic?

don't know how many times we watched that.

We had it on all the time.

And then at some point we were talking

about album titles, and Greg pointed at

the poster, and he was like, "That's it."

I think he said

"It can't be anything else."

[Acoustic Guitar]

[Rick] As a listener with a master's degree in

music, when I heard songs like "Blank,"

you just wouldn't hear people come up

with those kind of chord

progressions to write songs over.

The verse melody of that, it's just so,

it's a beautiful melody,

but it's such an odd choice.

Some of it is inside, but then there's

these notes where you think, "Whoa, that

is so cool. Wow, I

didn't expect it to go there."

The surprise elements of that.

There's one dissonance that happens at

the beginning of the progression.

If that was the only one, the song would

have been more of an

inside song, melodic song.

But there's a second dissonance that

happens on the last

phrase of the picking pattern.

That to me makes it incredibly

interesting, but it also starts to limit

the scope of who it might appeal to.

If your music is too interesting, it

makes it difficult to be

successful on a massive scale.

The emperor in Amadeus, too

many notes, take a few out.

[Greg] We were more interested in making

The Wall or Sgt. Pepper's something that

was unlike what was going on,

but that would sort of blow it wide open

in a hundred different directions.

[music]

[Hayley] Fantastic Planet. I listen to it still

all the time, as if it's brand new.

And it kind of like, there's like a

feeling that I felt the first time that I

heard it that I still get.

I can probably count on two or three

fingers, the bands that

make me feel like that,

when I put on that record

from that time in my life.

I played drums and I played piano at that time,

but Failure is like

I learned to play guitar

after I listened to Fantastic Planet.

[music]

It felt like an arrival of a sound, a

self-generated, self-actualized sound.

The richness and the heaviness and the

intensity, it just was a moment.

It's like a confluence of

things that all came together.

It's just one of those

moments that crystallizes.

[Kelli] I remember there was always like a

leather microphone bag

full of pot the whole time.

I could smoke a lot of pot.

I could smoke all the pot.

The longer we go on, the darker the

presence in the house is getting.

Experimenting with drugs with each other

at first, it was part of the lifestyle.

There was definitely a safety net of

having your friends around,

but I think there also was.

The drugs were also part of the point of

reference that all of us had.

[Kelli] Music and ideas, we were all in the same spot

and under the same influences.

Drugs were one of them.

[Ken] That's what was happening then.

What party are we going to

and what drug are we taking?

Those were the main

considerations for the evening.

I was looking for any

kind of new experience.

Friends, girlfriends, drugs, musical

collaboration, I just, bring it all.

[Monica] Some records you hear them and they sound

so of a specific time, it's

almost hard to listen to it.

It's just like fashion, right?

But then there's other records that you

hear and they just have

this timeless quality to them.

I think Fantastic Planet's like that.

Well the thing with Failure is, I mean

they were always so

far ahead of their time.

They didn't sound really

like anything else back then.

That was the thing that

always kind of hit me.

You know, I mean

they sounded like they were

making music in the future.

[music]

[Butch] The riff on "Stuck on you" sounds like it's

an S.0.S. being beamed

in from another galaxy.

It's just this crazy freaky cool sound.

I was obsessed with it.

I mean, I

played it over and over in the studio.

We were working on a Garbage record and I

was like, "we should get a sound like this"

and spent hours with fucking stompbox

pedals and never quite got it.

[Rick] It was both the sonics

and it was the music.

You have this beautiful melodic figure

when the guitars came in,

the power of them,

the chorus when it hits,

it was the most crushing sound.

[music]

I just never heard anything powerful like that,

that just was so right.

Everything about it was wow.

Like soft loud, soft loud thing that

people, especially in the

90s, they talk about a lot.

Guilty as charged, loud soft loud, okay.

Failure's version of it

is it gets so broken down.

It's so quiet and then when it gets loud,

it's like a collision

of these ping pong balls.

And then you can hear scrapes on things.

They're just into sort of sonic

exploration and it didn't

matter where it was coming from.

Yeah, this space rock, psychedelic rock,

Spiritualized, Radiohead, Spaceman 3,

bunch of bands, Spectrum, all

that cover this kind of genre.

And I think that Failure was to me like

the seminal, they were the

band in that like rocket ship.

There are a lot of moments when a chord

comes in that's a chord that

no one else would have gone to.

Just like anybody who has a signature

type thing, they have a

signature way they write music.

Sense of how they hear things and the way

they orchestrate the music, the way they

arrange it and the way they tune.

There's just moments when they're playing

blaahhh...

It's a strange way that they play

together that gives it its kind of like

tempo and its heaviness.

i got high

on scrapings from my nails

now i'm back down

my eyes are growing dark

my burnt spoon

[Justin] I love everything about that album.

It is a straight up masterpiece, but the

lyrics are just this indelible,

beautiful, tragic, psychedelic thing.

I don't know anyone that writes like Greg

and Ken wrote those lyrics.

i've waited so long without you

[Greg] I don't so much tell myself a story about

what happened through that period leading

up to the breakup of the band.

I've let it become a black hole.

Doing this is forcing me to go over that

whole period of my life.

[Priscilla] Do you feel like you can be honest with me?

What are you, my therapist?

[laughing]

[Greg] When I graduated high school, I enrolled

in Cal State Northridge as a psych major.

I took a Buddhism course, and I think

through that I discovered Alan Watts.

I started reading Ulysses on my own and

just became obsessed with James Joyce.

My first literary

love was Virginia Woolf.

I was like really in this kind of

headspace, and I was

experimenting with LSD.

I fell in love with

the psychedelic realm.

It connected so well

with what I was reading.

I felt like I was doing something

important for myself, for my evolution.

And then one day,

finally, I had a bad trip.

[Greg] I was with two of my

best and oldest friends.

We were up on Mulholland at Tree People.

As it was coming on, one of them had some

really powerful pot,

and that combination

is what set this off.

[Greg] There's this amazing thing in

The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley.

He could see how if you started in the

wrong way, every breath you

took, every thought you had,

every movement of everything around you

and outside of you would

be part of the conspiracy

against you.

The paranoid response in a

bad trip gets amplified to 11.

It is basically just fear

itself flooding your body.

Your mind is trying to

catch up with the feeling.

[Greg] Close my eyes and I would just see like

endless hospital beds

across a vast desert.

And I felt like I was losing my mind

and I would never come back.

I was in hell.

That was right before I met Ken.

I started Failure at the very beginning

of processing that experience.

[Rob] So Greg...

you guys were talking about heroin and stuff?

[Greg] Yeah

[Rob] What's your take on it right now?

[Greg] Um, I'd like to try it.

Not right now, though.

What would happen is if I don't resolve

all the things that, that bad trip brought up,

and then I do something like heroin,

and I find that it numbs me, and that like,

I can deal with life.

Then I'll become an addict.

[Greg] You know, Fantastic Planet at that point

I was writing about my decent into drug addiction.

Of course I had the benefit of not having

to sing any of that stuff.

I was free to express it and write it.

Being decoupled from

actually being the mouthpiece.

If I were singing I don't know that I

would have written those

lyrics in that honest way.

The drugs were a way to escape myself, to

get myself out of the way.

It also became a huge crutch, and I came

to have this deep

belief that I needed that,

and I was entitled to that because it

worked so well for me.

[Kelli] I had a friend that lived next door to

one of Greg's friends.

We were doing heroin on the weekends when

we weren't writing and recording.

And nobody was hiding anything yet.

But somewhere in there, oh yeah this is

really amazing that we're doing these

drugs on the weekend.

I want to do more of it.

It'd be cool to do heroin right now.

Not a big deal.

So you go outside of the group use and

you start using on your

own with other people.

Not necessarily a secret as just

something you weren't

telling everyone about.

[Paul] I always felt Greg was like he's the one

who really got caught.

He was so goddamn

smart and just intelligent.

He was this writer, poet.

And then he allowed

that to take him over.

And it was really kind of difficult just

to see that happen to somebody.

I mean he was fucking funny sometimes.

[Paul] I remember recording

at Lita Ford's house.

And she had left all her like personal

items in the house and all her like rock

gear and this and that.

And we're just like all sitting on the

couch all serious watching a movie.

And then Greg comes out and he's just

wearing this full glam chick regalia full

on like spiky leather pants

and this whole red bustier.

And he just sat down

and just started reading.

And we're all just like.

[Music]

[Kelli] Two months before the end of the record,

we got news

[Ken] that Slash, which had financed the album,

was trying to sell itself and had already

were currently in the studio that they

were going to be allowed

to finish their records.

[Ken] There is a chance the

album might never come out.

Sent me into a serious depression.

[Music]

[Julie] There's like so few albums in the world

that exist that achieve the height of

"Heliotropic" through the

end of Fantastic Planet.

It's a complete entity.

It's like a perfect thing.

[Greg] We had done something and I felt like

this is really going to hit right now.

People are going to discover it.

And then the wait came.

[Kelli] This is it.

Like we just made this thing and no one's

ever going to get to hear it.

Fuck.

[Butch] The last song on

Fantastic Planet is "Daylight."

And it starts out with a shimmer of hope.

It's kind of the

prettiest song on the record.

But the lyrics about going into a

catacomb and just shutting

yourself off from the world.

[Ken]: When you get the news that the best thing

you've ever done may never see the light

of day but you're not

done with the album,

what kind of songs are you

going to come up with after that?

The last two songs on the album are

"Heliotropic" and "Daylight."

[Ken] To find out that it might not ever come out

was a lot to process.

And I think the processing of that, you

can hear it on "Heliotropic"

but maybe more so on "Daylight."

When you're in an emotion it's hard to

see that you're in it.

And now when I look back on "Daylight" I

think that song is about this album is

never going to get to see daylight.

[Greg] And then every piece of news we seem to

get was maybe it's going to be shelved.

And at that same time I

was just spiraling down.

My drug use was increasing.

I was not around the kinds of people I

should have been around.

I was in extremely

unhealthy relationships.

[Kelli] When the record was over and I went back

down into Hollywood,

I just went to RCA every single day and

they let me use their duplication room.

I pedaled there like five miles on my

bicycle and I made 12 cassettes a day,

put them in my backpack, rode back home

and did what I've always done.

Went out, partied, told everybody how

amazing I was and passed out cassettes

for this record that no

one was ever going to hear.

[Ken] 18 months after we had

finished Fantastic Planet,

I got a call from Steven Baker

and Geoffrey Weiss,

the president and head of A&R for

Warner Bros. Records in 1996.

"We got a copy of this album called

Fantastic Planet and

we're freaking out on it.

What would the band think about

Warner Bros. Records

releasing the album directly?"

I mean at that point I was grateful that

the album was going

to get released at all.

At the same time Greg's drug use, which I

was pretty sure had actually gotten worse

over the last year and a

half, loomed over the band.

[Troy] I was friends with Kellii Scott.

We had been playing together.

We were all around the same kind of

scene, you know, just

here in LA playing clubs.

The record was finished.

I was fortunate enough to be around, you

know, for some of those listening

sessions while the Fantastic Planet was

being made and I was hooked.

[Troy] And when it came time for them to go on

tour, they needed another

guy to help fill out the sound.

As you know, that record

is pretty deep sonically.

So they asked me and I'll drop whatever

I'm doing and I'll go out on the road with you guys

because I dig it so hard.

pitiful, laughable, once again silent

one hundred stones that

mean nothing to me

sergeant politeness

searching for weak points

caress my ego

trick me so softly

nothing helps

and no one else

can make it feel okay

float me through the day

nothing helps

and no one else

can make it feel alright

float me through the night

i cannot let 'em go

dirty blue balloons

I was very fortunate to see

the Fantastic Planet tour.

Their musicianship blew me away.

I was fascinated by the

swapping of guitars and bass.

The most special thing about that show

was that I brought my

unborn daughter at the time

because I wanted her to have

a Failure experience

from inside the womb.

Never forget it.

[Margaret] I was following Failure a bit on tour,

I remember being with Ken after a show.

It might have been in San Francisco at

the Bottom of the Hill

and I was in their van.

They had a little tour van.

So he was playing me "Enjoy the Silence."

They had just recorded it.

Then he gave me the

cassette after and I still have it.

It's hard to do covers of classic songs

like that, but they managed to take

"Enjoy the Silence"

and make it sound like Failure.

[Kelli] When we were at Mates and we were doing

that Depeche Mode cover.

We had three days to

write, arrange and record it.

It would have been the first

thing that Troy was involved.

Same trial by fire that I went through.

He did the touring cycle and he would

have been part of the band on

whatever the next recording was.

First day,

we set up.

We waited for Greg

and he never showed up

and he wasn't answering his phone.

He'd just disappeared.

He had never done that before.

Well, fuck this. We have to do something.

The three of us

started working on something.

And it was a very similar rendition to

the song because we

were now under the gun.

And Greg finally showed up

and he heard what we were doing.

In pure Greg fashion, he completely tore

it all apart, listed off a thousand ways

that it was total bullshit.

And there was no way we could ever record

or do anything like that.

And they had been in there and they had

been working and I showed up

irresponsibly late and probably

incredibly disheveled.

And immediately had very strong negative

feelings about the direction that they

were taking the cover in.

He showed up with this

horrible fucking attitude.

Didn't walk in the door to answer for

"Where the fuck have you been?"

I just remember being very focused on

what should be changed.

Also in pure Greg fashion, he was just

like, "No, this is how it's going to go."

And through whatever dysfunction or field

trip he had took for

the last day and a half,

he had managed to map out some semblance

he had managed to map out some semblance

of like a really good,

crazy, cool vision for the song.

[Music]

His fucking idea was totally spot on.

And we deconstructed

everything that we had done.

It was a great rendition, despite him

clearly crossing a boundary.

And I think that was the end of it all.

But let's do Lollapalooza.

We have to do Lollapalooza.

[Butch] You know, I saw Failure

play Chicago at Lollapalooza.

All of my musician friends were in the

crowd watching them.

Band's band.

They were a band's band.

Like everybody was watching them play,

listening to the songs,

totally figuring out the sonic,

the sculpture, of what was

coming through the PA, you know.

[Hutch] Failure covers the lows and covers the highs

and everything in between

Yeah even in the early days of the technology

and what was available

they were looking for the new thing

they were pioneering some early technology

they just brought something new

It was a great addition to my own tool kit.

[Hayley] Every musician that I know knows Failure.

It's inspired and influenced most of the

bands that I'm

friends with or that I love.

[Kelli] We do a lot of touring on the record.

I'm still not an everyday user. I'm

drinking and I'm smoking pot.

I'm doing coke if

people show up and have it.

It's different with Greg.

Greg is a junkie.

[Kelli] And it becomes very obvious when we're on

tour, because he's

having drugs sent to him,

[Kelli] and he literally is like nodding out in

front of us all the time.

[Justin] Failure played this show, and

I remember playing our show,

and then walking backstage and seeing

Failure destroying their dressing room.

There was a moment there where I

realized, I don't know what's going to

happen with the band.

Greg didn't look particularly well.

Evan Dando from the Lemonheads came in

the room, and it all

had a dark cast over it.

The whole thing was a bit of a moment.

[Justin] But I remember Ken talking to me, we were

sort of standing aside,

and he was sort of shrugging his

shoulders going like,

"Well, here we are. Got to

do these shows, I guess."

At that point, it felt like

things were clearly unraveling.

[Troy] We had an opportunity to go on the road

with Stone Temple Pilots at that time.

Certain members of their band and certain

members of our band were

doing certain substances.

[Troy] We were on tour, I think it was

Thanksgiving night in New York City,

and of course we had the night off, and

we were having drinks in the bar.

There's this guy who keeps looking at us

with this girl, and

none of us recognize him.

He just keeps looking at us.

Finally, he comes

over, and he says to Greg,

"My wife wants to pay you

to watch me give you a blow job in our hotel room."

That's paraphrasing.

And it was right then when we recognized

that it was Scott Weiland.

[Troy] We were right in the midst of our

management and their

management talking about us,

opening up for this huge

arena tour they were doing.

He disappeared with Greg.

The next day, we lost the tour.

So that's one of those stories that I

always thought was funny in a sick way.

[Julie] I loved the music, but then on a personal

level, it was like a disaster for me.

It's given me a lifelong opinion on

narcotics, like deep-seated.

Like if people are doing certain things,

I can't roll, I can't hang,

and I get very uptight.

You might be in a room having a great

time doing blow with some people,

[Julie] but you never know which of those people

have completely fractured

relationships with their family

and everything else as a result of what

you guys are doing to have fun.

And so that makes me

I don't like the liability there.

[Greg] We actually ended up being on the main

stage at Lollapalooza because

one of the bands dropped out.

Korn had to pull out.

So we got added as the first band there,

and we were doing the second stage.

So it was two shows a day.

I don't remember a lot about that.

I had continued my decline through the

making of the record,

and then we finally were touring on it,

and I was just a shell

of myself at that point.

[Greg] And Ken was singing all these lyrics that

I had written about this narrative arc,

and here I was at the end of this

narrative arc on stage, you know

barely even human.

[Monica] I feel like Failure was really on the

precipice of breaking.

They had just done the

second stage at Lollapalooza.

"Stuck On you" had been released.

The video had gotten a lot of traction.

If they had just gone back into the

studio and done

another record right then,

I really do think they had a shot at

becoming a much bigger band.

[Kelli] Part of all of our dysfunction, we were

shaking our head at,

but there were also moments of it where

we were like, kind of laughing at it.

Like, it was slightly

comical, but it was also the end.

It must have been the green room, because

there seemed to be a

mixture of people there.

[Julie] He was like holding court, sitting at the

back, like a complete space alien.

Not in reality, and not recognizable,

and I don't think I

could even interact with him.

[Ken] The last show of Lollapalooza, one of the

people that showed up after our second

set on the second stage

was Steven Baker, who was, at the time,

the president of Warner Brothers.

[Ken] "We don't really want to spend a ton more

money on this record.

We want you guys to

go back in the studio.

Even though I felt like the band was

basically over at that point,

because the label had

specifically asked for another album,

I felt I at least had to try to start

writing new songs with Greg.

I saw their last show at

Shoreline Amphitheater at Lollapalooza.

At the end of the show, they destroyed a

bunch of their equipment.

I know this because I caught a part of

it, because they

destroyed it, and then threw it,

and I got it. It was the whole front of

the violin bass with no back,

so it's just some wires and stuff.

But I remember every girl that I ever

dated, since that show, was always like,

"What is this? Why do you

have this at your house?"

[Ken] When Lollapalooza

ended and I was back home,

I was having a very hard time figuring

out what to do with the band.

I didn't want Failure to end.

Take a couple weeks off,

[Ken] and then I'm going to see if I can't get

Greg to come over to my apartment

for some writing sessions. We set a date,

and he doesn't show up.

Call him? No answer.

He calls me the next day and says, "Oh,

man. Sorry. I had some things come up."

So we reschedule it

for a couple days later.

But he calls me.

Oh, yeah, man. I'm having some car trouble.

I'm really close to you, though. Could

you come pick me up?

[Ken] I'm at that music

shop in the Cahuenga Pass.

I see Greg playing a synth and kind of

messing with the sound,

so I walk over there. He's got white

powder all over him.

I also noticed he's got some blood on his

face and blood on his nose.

Greg, what's up? Are you

okay? What's the white stuff?

"Oh, yeah, I just had some car problems. I

guess maybe the airbag or something."

"Did you have an accident?"

"Yeah, but-"

"Well where's the car?"

"Oh, they towed it. It's gone."

He was on his way to my house

and he fell asleep,

and he plowed into two

or three parked cars.

[SFX]

[Greg] I'd probably been up for days.

I drove head-on into the Nissan

dealership on Ventura,

and then Ken came and picked me up,

but there was a music store right nearby.

I said, "Meet me at the

music store." My car was totaled.

I started tweaking out

on whatever synthesizer.

I think it might have been a Waldorf.

And what I didn't realize is that there's

all this white powder

that comes from the airbag, and Ken

walked into the music store,

and I was just like a zombie over there,

like with white powder all over my face,

[Deep breath]

Yeah, it's really easy for me to just get

fucking furious with myself, you know?

When I look back on it, I'm just horrified.

I could have killed somebody.

And the worst part about it is that when

you're in the middle of

your addiction like that,

you brush it all off. I mean, you just

like rationalize it all.

You minimize all that kind of stuff.

How, things like that would happen, and I

would just continue on.

And the people who were really worried

about me and cared

about me would show concern.

And now I realize what they'd get back is

just this psycho zombie.

Everything was just about continuing in

this deep rut I was digging for myself

that at the same time seemed like the

greatest path I could ever be on.

[Music]

[Julie] I think I spent years and years and years

of my life thinking that

he was not going to make it.

It was like an ambience of someone is

missing here. Someone's not showing up.

Someone's keeping secrets. Something is unsaid.

Something is misunderstood.

Something is a deep dark mystery that we

can't ever touch or understand,

but makes us all feel a

little bit uncomfortable.

[Paul] I felt like he was going to try and

outsmart it or something.

You know, we would talk

about it a little bit.

I think I remember he had some

psychiatrist or something.

He wasn't on just heroin. He was taking

all kinds of things from this doctor,

and he was mixing and matching, and he

was on a different level with that stuff.

I've seen a lot of people go down that

path, you know, especially heroin.

That's a path you go down that's hard

to get off of once you

do that slippery slide.

Yeah, there's really no good outcome, you know.

Somebody getting strung out.

There's very few options, and none are

very good, you know.

[Ken] People always talk about addicts

needing to hit rock bottom

before they can admit they even have a problem.

Everybody's rock bottom is different but it usually

centers around losing something

you actually care about.

I started to realize that Greg hadn't lost anything

of value to him or faced any real consequences

from his addiction

He still had the same place to live.

He was still in a band that had

just played Lollapalooza.

I just didn't want Greg's first major consequence

to be his last.

That's when I started to get a lot of

clarity about breaking up the band.

I mean the band was done anyway.

Greg was an irreplaceable member

who could no longer participate.

maybe the band ending

could provide some sort of wake up call for him.

[Greg] At some point in that

long fog after Lollapalooza,

Ken called me and he said,

"I don't know if it's

because we didn't have

the right haircuts or what,

but I think it's time to move on."

I agreed with him.

It was a friendly conversation.

Hung up the phone.

He didn't say anything

about it in the phone call,

and it really didn't

occur to me that any of this

had anything to do

with me or my drug use.

That's the level of denial I was in.

At the same time,

leagues and leagues underneath,

my awareness, a bomb went off.

Realizing that I was

untethered from this thing,

from Failure, that

had meant so much to me.

It was destabilizing.

My drug use just spiraled from there.

I mean, I was on a steady

routine of uppers and downers

spinning around this

spine of the heroin addiction.

Soon after he called, I

think my girlfriend found

a dropper bottle of dissolved heroin

in a pocket of my robe.

And I think in the other pocket,

she found an unsent

letter to another woman,

and she left immediately.

So then I was just alone.

I wasn't creating.

I wasn't doing anything.

I was just on my way to the bottom.

[Troy] I got the call from Ken.

"Yeah, I'm disbanding the whole thing." So...

I mean, I think it took a while for that

to sink in for the rest of us.

And you feel like

you're a part of

something that's really incredible,

and you're so lucky to be doing it.

When that ends, it turns out to be more

devastating than you realize.

[Kelli] I wasn't an everyday user for years.

When the band broke up,

like, all bets were off.

There was nothing that was

going to make that feel okay.

[Kelli] I did not have the emotional capability

of, like, just breaking down.

And I carried that with me for years to

come. And that's when I became a

full-time drug user.

After the band broke up, I

mean, there was nothing else.

Like, heroin was the only thing that was

gonna make me, like, feel something

while not feeling anything about all of

this stuff that I had

just buried and gone through.

[Troy] That was, like, one of the first lessons

I kind of got when something's, you know,

beautiful and special.

mean, expecting it to

last forever is kind of folly.

[Butch] You know, Failure had some

self-awareness about drugs.

They wrote one of the most brilliant

songs of the 90s with "Stuck On you."

And while it seemingly feels like a kiss-off

love song, it's

really, at least I think,

a song about acknowledging a slow descent

into darkness from heroin addiction.

And yet, it's a brilliant pop song.

And it's all masked in this glorious

ringing guitar riff and just the heavy

chords and great melody.

But they knew what was happening to them.

[SFX]

[Music]

[Ken] I don't really have any regrets about

breaking up the band at that point

because it needed to be done.

What I do feel a lot of regret about is

not following up with

Greg after the band broke up.

I just put blinders on and went into my

next musical project and just was like,

Well, hey, I'm doing this now.

I could have been there

I could have been at least trying to be

there for him, and I didn't

and I regret that.

Beyond us playing music

together, we were friends.

You know, fuck the musical stuff that can

die and whatever with it.

As a friend, like I never

I never showed up for Greg.

Probably a heavier regret than that,

though, for me, is the fact that I

introduced Greg to opioids.

Maybe he would have

tried it some other way.

But it doesn't really feel good to be the

person who was like,

"Hey man, have you tried this before?

You got to try it."

If there's one thing I wish I could take

back, it would be that moment.

[Greg] I don't think it's

necessary to forgive yourself.

I think forgiveness is overrated.

You can forgive to a certain extent, and

then you can withhold some forgiveness,

and that can be healthy.

To not try to find this place where you

let yourself off the hook completely.

[Greg] You know, people love this whole

"no regrets" idea and "don't look back" and

"don't get caught up in the past,"

but that's not possible.

It's a fantasy.

I'm content to not totally forgive

myself, because I don't want to forget

[Greg] just how dark and isolating

my life was at that point,

because it's easy to forget that.

Your memories were formed in this altered

state, but more so than anything, it's

all the time that I spent in isolation

with just me

and my drugs

[Greg] and my cat.

I will spend my life wrestling with and

trying to understand why addiction is

such an integral part of the journey

for people who are storytellers and

musicians and people that

are artists, if you will.

Artists in general have this furious

drive to attain that perfect, whatever it is

that perfect work

And part of that drive can be diagnosed

as alcoholism or drug addiction.

Drug addicts and alcoholics have this

singularity of focus that is very much in

tune with people who are great artists.

And oftentimes that overlaps. Art and

addiction are interchangeable at times.

Fantastic Planet is an interesting album.

Would that album have

been made without heroin?

That's the problem, I think, is there's

some really great art

that's made by junkies,

and it's hard to know how much the drug

use contributed to that output.

Word of mouth, on the road,

try this, you can't believe this.

That's how it happened.

These bands were touring together.

These bands had access to it.

These bands described this magical dip

into some creamy, I don't

even care how they described it,

because I was so

angry at the whole thing.

The whole thing just was not for me,

because I love life and

I do not want to escape.

I want to be here more.

I want psychedelics.

Give me enhanced

reality, not the opposite.

There's nothing you can do to stop people

from having that drive and having all of

the things that come with it.

I think ultimately it's a gift to be this

way, to be born this way,

and you just have to

direct it in the right way.

That's your sort of lot in life.

[Kelli] Blinker would have been the first band

that I was in and actually committed to

post Failure breakup.

Jordan Zatarazny and me at the time. We

did two records together.

One of which was with Ken, produced and

mixed, called August Everywhere.

I didn't get sober until 2004. I would go

out on tour and kick and

just drink and smoke pot while

I was on tour and then come home and

become a junkie again and flying to

Greece and like kicking

and you know trying to lay down

underneath people's seats and it was

horrible.

[Kelli] I was stealing sunglasses.

There was this little plaza on Sunset and Vine and just

before I put him in my pockets

he drags me to the ground. I go to jail

and when the cops figure out

that I never actually stole

anything, the guy jumped on me too soon.

They have to let me go.

All you have to do is like not use

drugs while we call a rehab

for you to get into.

Cool, it's a deal.

And two days later I was in

rehab out of the valley.

After sobriety,

I didn't play music at all

for probably like three years

[Kelli] and then I wound up running into one of

the members of Veruca Salt.

We did a couple records

and a bunch of tours. After that I fell

into becoming a session

drummer. I got like a really

good gig for about five years.

I really honed in my skill as a

drummer on that gig.

I don't know

how much time passed but at some point

Carla reached out to me.

[Greg] had met Carla on one of the

last Failure tours and we really hit it

off. Expressed interest

in playing together and

starting a band. As soon as she spent

some time around me she saw

the state I was in and I think

she realized that there were a lot of

things that had to happen

before Autolux could start.

[Greg] She along with my parents, guided me gently

over the period of a few

months into agreeing to go to

rehab. I spent a month in rehab and got

completely off all the drugs and threw

myself into Autolux.

[Greg] The great fear I had was that I needed

the drugs to be creative.

That first year or two in Autolux

I found out I did not need to be on drugs

to be creative and do

what I considered some of my best work.

I felt like I was back on my

feet enough. I had a lot

of time since the last time

I had used heroin or any hard drug and I

started drinking.

[Greg] I'd have a few beers before shows and it

led to some regrettable moments and I

flirted with some drugs that I shouldn't

have. I mean I never

did heroin again but I really hadn't

gotten the the message. That slope is

just too slippery for me.

I had not accepted that so I kept going.

[Music]

[Greg] End of 2014, I was

falling in love with Carina,

and she didn't drink.

We went to dinner one night.

I ordered a big glass of red wine.

The watcher in the back of my mind

just tracked me drinking the wine and

completely changing.

I felt so disassociated from that person

that I so quickly became.

That was sort of an epiphany,

and then just occurred to me

that that was the last

drink I'll ever have.

I just needed to find another route.

[Music]

[Greg] If I can run six

to eight miles every day,

I'm sort of in the sweet spot.

I'm so much more resilient with my anxiety and depression.

still gets a hold on me and

still tries to pull me down,

but all I have to do is go out and run.

When I finish like an eight-mile run, I

feel high. I mean, there's no doubt.

It's like a high with zero guilt.

It's like meditation, because you can try

to think about things, but as you're

running and you're

breathing and you're running,

then all of a sudden you realize that

of your thoughts anymore.

Things are just passing through.

Breathing, you're concentrating on your

form, and the thoughts just kind of come

and go, like clouds in the sky.

I can't stop. I can take three or four

days off, but I don't like it.

It's addictive. The addictive part of me

that got me into so many troubles in the

past with drugs, it's

absolutely part of my running thing.

But I'm happy with the exchange.

[Ken] It's a good exchange.

[Greg] Yeah.

[Music]

[Ken] After the breakup, I

couldn't touch guitar for months.

I just couldn't touch it.

The first thing I did was a solo thing.

I started a project known as On,

and it was an electronic-based album

project, essentially.

Epic signed it, did a

little bit of touring on it,

and then all of a sudden there was a

regime change at Sony,

and everything kind of

fell apart on that project.

[Ken] Luckily, I was getting a

lot of offers to produce

and mix for other artists,

and I did that for a few years

when really started to

develop a career path in that vein.

Around 2003, my friend Tim Dow, the

drummer from Shiner,

"Let's do a rock band,

like a two-guitar

bass and drum rock band."

He was very persistent,

and he also had two

other really good guys,

Jeff Garber and Solomon Snyder.

Year of the Rabbit made

one album for Elektra Records,

and then Elektra had a regime change,

and that whole situation also imploded.

[Ken] I found myself back in the studio

producing and mixing for other artists,

but this time I'm determined

to stay out of the limelight.

[Music]

[Ken] When our kids were born within like four

or five months of each other, I think we

both learned there was something between

us that having kids muted.

Maybe our own egos got knocked down

enough to where we were just like,

"Why aren't we at least talking to each other?"

[Greg] Ken and I started hanging out. We both

had children at the same time.

We started having play dates. Slowly over many months

It started to dawn on me that

I could definitely write some more

songs with this guy.

I had a studio in my backyard. It's kind

of inevitable at a certain point.

We went in there and actually picked up instruments

Is it going be

fun to do this again,

or is it going to be creatively

satisfying but emotionally draining?

I'd left the drugs behind.

together, it was a fresh start without

any of that craziness.

[Ken] Everything I remembered about the best

part of our friendship.

I was just having a good time.

I was just with my old friend.

[Music]

[Ken] Sometimes when I got demos like that

I'd be like, what is going on?

What am I going to do with this?

How am I going to tell Greg I don't like this?

You know?

I get to the end of the song or the

middle of the song and

I'm like, wait, wait.

That's a fucking good song

in here isn't there?

I feel really free to just come in and

work and write and try a bunch of stuff.

And then Ken will come in and it's like

in sketch form at that point.

But he knows what my sketches look like

and he knows how to get the full

structure out of that.

[Ken] There are a lot of times in Failure I can

tell Greg is on a roll.

I'm just there to facilitate that roll

and filter it and get it down on tape.

alien air is a similar drink

and we'll carry seasides in our latest mutant

it's always on my mind

like a shadow slipped from your brain

[Greg] We spent so many hours together working

and writing things that

it's just a fluid process.

I mean, you don't even

have to think about it.

It's hard to even

remember who came up with what.

It's just like this organism that's all

intertwined and at the end

of it, you end up with a song.

[Ken] We can kind of finish each

other's musical sentences.

Someone starts a riff,

the other person goes

boom, you know, here's what's next.

Yeah, that's what's next.

[Ken] If you're writing about things that are

from your life and then

someone else is singing them,

putting an emotional framework on it

by how they're performing it,

and he'll notice that I've

changed some of the lyrics.

And that's always an interesting moment.

[laughing]

I don't know what Ken and Greg's working

relationship is like,

but I assume there's some tension between

them and their personalities,

and that comes across in the music, and I

think that's a big part of Failure's sound.

Ken and Greg definitely had their

moments. They would get

into it every once in a while.

I have a distinct memory of after show

Greg just blew his top and

threw a pizza, hot pizza on Ken,

and that turned into a bit of a scuffle.

And I was like, I'm out of here.

You kids figure it out.

Our temperaments and our personalities

are so completely different.

He's methodical and goal-oriented, and

he's a workaholic. He's a finisher.

[Greg] He is really good at submerging his ego

in order to use what

the people around him have

that will make the end product better.

Music technology, camera technology,

producing and directing a video,

he is always able to rise up to

understand it on all the dimensions that

are necessary in order to finish it.

I haven't met many people who can juggle all that.

[Greg] And I'm much more abstract in my thinking

and more ethereal in my descriptions and

my ambitions about what I

want to get out of a song.

I mean, and that's not strictly true, but

I think in general there was this really

healthy, productive tension

between those two sides of us.

It's the combination of maybe what might

be chaotic about Greg and maybe, you

know, technically awesome about Ken.

That juxtaposition to me was always the

thing about Failure

that kept me interested.

[Hayley] Something is so wonderfully pure to me

about listening to Ken talk about sounds

and listening to Ken talk about what he's

not willing to compromise.

[Melissa] You know, it's one thing to be like

futzing around with a

guitar and a bass or drums

and becoming an amazing

musician or songwriter.

It's another thing to also be obsessively

working on the recording elements

and the guitar sounds and

the mics that record the thing.

Just the attention to detail that Ken

displayed on his stuff,

[Steve] like he had a MIDI pedalboard

that was switching the modes of his amp

and switching effects.

Each song had a preset

for that moment of that song even.

You know, that can betray a predilection

or a personality type

or it can just be a matter of this is the one thing in my

life I really want to

execute in a certain way.

[Monica] He's incredibly influential. I think

people want to figure out how to get that

sound, and so

of course they would hire Ken.

[Kelli] When it comes to like outside forces

needing to be pushed back, Greg and I are

not the ones to do that.

Ken is the one who stands up

and tells people to fuck off.

And unfortunately, the person that does

do it almost always gets

a reputation to outsiders

for being like some kind of person that's

difficult to deal with.

And for you people...

[Justin] The other not so secret weapon of Failure is Greg.

The depth of his musicality.

It's always something that

anyone in our generation envied.

How does Greg write those piano parts and

come up with those lyrics?

He had some sort of arcane knowledge

about how to create music

from a place of instinct.

I see Greg socially sometimes, and

there's some sort of part of him that's a

little bit detached from the world.

He's sort of a very

otherworldly kind of figure.

When you're writing as an artist, when

you're doing something, you're making a

film, you always have somebody in mind

that is your mentor or somebody you look

up to or look across to.

[Maynard] What if they see what I'm doing? What if

they hear what I'm doing? What if they

taste whatever I'm doing?

Would they like it or would they spit it

out or would they turn it

off or would they walk away?

Greg is one of those people for me.

Whenever I'm doing something, whether

it's A Perfect Circle, Tool, or Puscifer,

Greg's in mind to be that honest opinion.

And he has a very specific, eloquent

review. Should you choose to accept it.

[Ken] An idea person, almost like an art critic

really can analyze things.

Technically a really accomplished player.

He has this uncanny way of looking at

music problems and coming up with

solutions that are both novel and also

just really arresting.

They grab you. They're like,

Oh, hmm, play that again?

We have a lot of conflicts and we are

very different people

but at the same time

I wonder how many other people

understand me as well as he does.

There's a creative trust there that I

don't have with anyone else.

[Music]

[Kelli] Definitely by that point, okay with the

legacy of Failure. And it was okay that

we were broken up and it was okay we were

never getting back together.

It was a source of joy, again.

It was a source of joy, again.

I was working over at SIR building drum sets.

I saw that my phone had rang and I

listened to the voice

message and it was Ken.

"Well, I don't know if you've heard, but

Greg and I," and as soon as he said Greg's

name, I knew what was coming.

I had so many competing emotions. Do we

want to do this thing? Like, should we?

Like, everything is in such a good spot.

Do I need to open up this can of worms?

Like, everything is finally at a point in

my life where I'm fine.

Ken sent me music shortly after that.

What is this? Is it any good? Like, I

just, I can't hear it.

I had so much more at stake that I

literally could not hear

the music that was playing.

[Kelli] I wanted it to be good, but I also wanted

to know if this is going to be bad. I

should be able to say, no,

I'm not going to do this.

I mean, the more I dove into it and

started to learn the stuff and talk to

Ken and Greg more and then found a studio

and set up that date and like, this is

really going to happen.

I started to chill out and embrace that

this is going to happen.

[Ken] When we first got back in the room

together, somebody would start playing an

older song. My hand would just go there.

I couldn't even control it. My hand went

to the first chord and then it went to

the second chord. And these are weird

chords that you wouldn't remember unless

you played them a few hundred

times, 16 years ago, I guess.

[Kelli] As soon as I played the first note,

something just snapped back. It was

almost like when you're watching a movie,

the person snaps back into their body and

there's that cool effect

that movies do.

The musical language.

Everyone still had it. All of us

collectively had done things since that

were now part of our set of tools.

It wasn't even still got it was like back.

As if like it was the day after.

[Kelli] The one thing we would learn the more time we

spent around each other.

A lot of the things that we had before we

no longer had, which would make our

relationship moving forward way better.

Time heals all wounds is

basically what was happening.

[Ken] Like in the music where we had all this

independent experience being brought in

and informing the musical output of the

new version of the band.

We also had all this other life

experience being brought to bear on our

interpersonal relationships. Our

appreciation for each other

is not just musical anymore.

[Music]

[Justin] From the mid 90s through the 2000s is a

groundswell where you have a younger

generation of bands and fans who are

discovering Failure for the first time.

And ascribing a lot of meaning and

significance to Failure's music, their message,

and their lyrical content and

their whole aesthetic makeup.

[Greg] Well there were always these rumblings

that Failure was continuing to be

[Greg] discovered as kind of a cult

band after we had broken up.

There's a whole new generation of Failure

fans you don't even know about.

How do you even measure that?

Well you can't really.

When they came back they played the El Rey

and it sold out within minutes, which

I think surprised everybody. And they

came out and they played

and it was like mind boggling.

They were such better musicians than

they'd been the first time around that

the show was by far the best Failure show

I had ever seen. And who can say that?

Like I saw a band 20 years ago and I see

them 20 years later and they're even

better. I mean that's rare.

[Justin] To see them at the El Rey theater and be

there with all of our mutual friends was

not only like one of those moments of

pure ecstatic joy as a music fan, but it

was it was a vindication.

It was a cathartic moment. They sounded

and felt better than they

ever did. It was incredible.

[Music]

[Greg] When I watch the footage of it I actually

get chills. But on stage I was just

worried about the curtain dropping at the

right moment and then not fucking up the

guitar part. It was

beyond any expectation I had.

And I never expected people to travel

from all around the world.

It was kind of overwhelming.

I didn't have enough juice and it sold

out immediately so I was

super bummed that I couldn't go.

We have this thing called the internet now.

A lot of things have happened with

Failure's music since you guys have been away.

This is much

bigger than you think it is.

[Music]

[Applause]

[Ken] The show freaked me right out.

Mainly because of

how many young people were there.

That really changed me.

Hearing "Stuck on you." That intro is

amazing. Just the wall of sound.

[Applause, yelling]

That was amazing!

I love the "Heliotropic" song. I listened

to it obsessively over

the last like two years.

I'm 17. This is my favorite band ever.

I've seen them four times now. Yeah.

Yeah. Our fan base is younger and more

female. Because we did so many shows with

Tool back in the day there are a lot of

male fans from that. And now it's nice to

see that it's much more diverse.

I almost cried when they started playing

"The Nurse Who Loved Me."

I was born in 94. I was like two when

some of these came out.

I mean we had fans in the 90s. No doubt

about it. But the true understanding of

the band took a while. And maybe that was

because our sound was a little too

different or a little too dissonant.

A different generation really to kind of

like go, "Wait who is

this? Is this from the 90s?"

And I guess after that show if we weren't

already on the path to really completely

coming back together and making another

record I think that

show sort of sealed it.

[Music]

Butch: The Heart is a Monster sounds like it's a

follow up to Fantastic Planet. It could

have come out three years later.

[Brian] But it's not dripping with its own

reverence. Like it's not "bringing it back."

That's what I almost like about it

more is that it is honestly themselves.

But they have a little more to play with.

[Troy] It's easy to reform and play your old

stuff. Not many bands reform after 20

years and make the record that actually

sounds like it came out right after. To

me that was special.

So to be a part of the next Failure

record after that 20 years

later was kind of like a "Yes!"

[Jason] There's nothing nostalgic about the

latest Failure music. It's still vibrant.

It's still fascinatingly textured. If you

want to go back to Magnified too. Yeah no

Magnified exists. It's been reissued.

and all that stuff. You can go back and

listen to that. This is the

way the trains pointed now.

[Music]

[Butch] When I heard The Heart is a Monster

I saw the Segues on there, I thought that

was really cool because I love the Segues

on the first record.

They are like little noir film moments.

Some of those sounds are pretty en vogue now.

as far as scoring.

The Segues could be an

HBO show or a Netflix show.

Those textures are also the textures they

put into their rock songs.

You know, the main songs they write

'cause there's a lot of ambience and like noise and

little things in the depths of all their songs.

[Music]

[Matt] I didn't want to not love it. You know.

And then I put on,

wow, it really is so good.

Because it doesn't always work that way.

You know how many bands reform later on

and they make a record

and it's just like, you're

like, where did spark go?

Where's the spark? Where's the songs?

I make a playlist of Failure music

and I mix in the last album

with the first three albums.

And it's like, oh, this is seamless.

That's a very rare space.

If you have a 16 year gap

between associations of people

and then somehow you get into a room

and you come up with that.

Well, I find that

fascinating that after going away

for that long, that it

would still sound like Failure.

That's almost impossible.

[Music]

we suffer and dream

and ride on a steel blade

one more exit home

i'm relying on your senses

my equilibrium is failing

[Kat] I think that the music business didn't

know what to do with them.

You've got Ken Andrews voice that's like

very much like the indie rock voice of

the 90s. But the music was way heavier

than say Pavement. You know it was like

that weird thing. And I think the record

industry didn't know

what to do with them.

[Lisa] I was a fan. We support it on the local

show. But you know when it got played in

the meeting and matched up against you

know all the other songs it was

competing against it. It didn't it didn't

really stack very well.

Because also the sound isn't really what

is the most popular sound right now. A

lot of the most popular thing you know

it's Coldplay and it's things that are a

little more pop leaning.

Frankly, I don't think it had a shot in hell of being

played. I mean it's not the

same game as it was in the 90s.

[Music]

[Ken] If you look at all the records,

there's always something going on

with somebody in the band.

I was going through

probably the worst experience of my whole life.

I was going through a divorce.

[Greg] On In the Future there are a number of

songs where I was writing

about what he was going through.

That became a point of inspiration.

[Ken] I leaned on him more than I've leaned on him

ever before during that period.

your sociopath sure won't save you now

your calm collector ain't gonna pull you down

[Greg] Your mental state was just weighing on

you heavily and you were fighting through

that. But I feel like you did some

cathartic stuff too. I mean one of the

first ideas was just like a drum beat and a

bass line that became "Dark Speed."

[Greg] There's a lot in that song that you were

getting off your chest.

but your free now

you don't need this

you won't freak out

you can't feel this

[Marianna] In the Future Your Body Will Be the

Furthest Thing from Your Mind

Which is my favorite album of all time.

My favorite part about it is how it was able to bring

Failure's sound into a new era and yet it

didn't feel too sterile. It didn't feel

too clean. The lyricism I've always liked

from Failure but it's like next level. It

really resonated with me.

The way I'm just able to close my eyes for like

over an hour and listen to it and picture

so many different scenarios in my mind

and then without even listening to the

music just read the lyrics and kind of

like they were a poem. It's

It's something I really really love.

I felt like I said a lot about what I was

feeling about culture and social media.

In a way politics, "The Pineal Electorate"

is a metaphysical catharsis for me about

the crazy moment that we were at then and

that we're still at now.

During my worst stages of depression. It was like one

album I could always go to and be like

yes they understand.

I can't prove it but I

feel like they saved my life.

I remember going in for my yearly

physical and my doctor did not give me

orders for a colonoscopy, which I found

very weird because I was turning 50.

Order me one of those home tests,

screener things. And a couple days later

got a call. "We're looking at your

screener and there's something here."

It was first stage. I think they were optimistic

because I was optimistic. But I could

certainly tell that there was something

in their voice that the three of us don't

get that way with one another often.

Yeah, the day he went in for the surgery,

I was managing anxiety and fear and I

just wanted the best outcome.

It went really well.

Could a sick man do this?

Eh.

Eh.

And he had a really successful surgery

and a successful recovery.

And he wanted to

get started right away.

This would have been the most challenging

record for him because we were just

jamming for hours and hours and hours. It

was easy to forget that he had even gone

through that. There was

nothing to let you know.

I like recorded a song on my solo record.

Comes in with a triplet kind of caveman-y

fill, and I was like, this is just me

biting every bit of Kelli Scott that I

could muster up out of my body.

The jamming that we did for "Wild Type Droid."

Where a lot of people would just

be like figuring out their parts, and then

later they'll really lock it down. You

don't have to worry about that with

Kelli. If you've got the mics there,

he always plays like the red light's on.

[Music]

[Ken] One of us has always been going through

life challenges.

Whether or not you're consciously putting

those problems into the music, it's

happening. There's no way you could go

through brutal life experiences and not

have it affect your creative output.

[Music]

come meet me in the silence

i can tear it off

the best dreams all turn to violence

disconnection is love

is love

is love

is love

[Greg] In terms of financial success, in terms

of how big your fan base is, we were a

band called Failure that failed.

In the world of rock and roll, I wouldn't

be where I am right now if it weren't for

bands like Failure, bands that have

achieved a certain level of success by

mainstream standards, but

that means nothing to me.

I feel no pretentiousness coming from

them in their music or them on stage,

highly relatable to a person like me.

The art that Failure has made

is very authentic to me.

I feel my band, Mastodon, has kind of

followed the footsteps

that they've laid before us.

[Kelli] When we finish a new record, I say, "This

is the greatest thing that we're ever

going to do," like I truly mean it.

And from my perspective, everything that

I've ever done with the band, year after

year after year after year, I've become a

way better version of myself.

When I hear the records and the work, I

experience it as someone who is involved

and as someone who's listening to it for

the first time.

It's just super exciting.

I can't believe that it's me.

[Ken] Having your own unique sound to me was

always the ring that I was grabbing for.

That means more to me than

being on MTV or the radio.

[Kelli] If you asked me when I was 17, success

was rich and famous, lots of girls and

cars and, you know, all the stuff. Do I

love this enough to continue doing it

without all of that stuff?

Can you pay your bills without having to

compromise who you are as a person and a

musician? That's success.

[Monica] To me, the fact that Failure came back

and we have a stack of press, all these

people just heralding their return and

talking about what a great record it is,

I think that's success.

[Greg] Ultimately, success is just the sense

that you have connected with even just

one person. That you've maybe changed

their perspective, served as

a soundtrack to their life.

[Ken] I valued the process of making records

more than the accolades that you could

get from said record.

I still feel that way today.

I do this mostly because I enjoy the

process of making the stuff.

[Ken] The real magic for me happens in the recording

studio with my collaborators. That's my

happy place. The finishing is actually,

that's harder. I don't want to let it go.

I just want to keep

working on it, you know, forever.

[Monica] If success is measured in people caring

about your band, then I think Failure has been successful.

Failure's music inspires my art.

You can just sink into the music,

you can just let the art flow.

[Failure fan] People don't understand this band, they don't

understand. It's just such an incredible feeling

You have no idea what

it means in this moment for me.

You worry that the people that you admire

so much don't get it sometimes. You

wonder, like, do they know how many,

like, thousands of times that this song,

like, pulled me out of something, or that

this song summed up a moment in my life

that was so meaningful? Like, do they

know that really? Do they just nod their

head and say thanks? I hope that they do.

[Greg] I put a lot of my pain and confusion and

fear, you know, I put it right into the

lyrics. To realize now that there are a

group of our fans who really pay

attention to the lyrics, that's a good

feeling. Existentially, I think it's made

me feel less alone.

It's a connection.

[Greg] A lot of our songs are dark and kind of

depressing. I think the ultimate effect

is uplifting.

I guess that success to me

is knowing that all the work we put in

served as that kind of

experience for people.

[Failure Fan] The one thing that I've always felt about this

band is that it was a means of categorizing chaos

and taking dissonance and taking

the pain and the darkening elements

and making them beautiful.

Especially when they came back around

I thought there was a need for that.

Sometimes the best things in lives duck and cover.

They come back just when you need them.

[Greg] Maybe there's somebody watching this

right now who's, like, in the midst, in

that black hole of addiction and

hopelessness, and you just can't imagine

that you'll ever get out of it or that

maybe you'll even see tomorrow.

I've felt that many, many times.

I'm living proof.

There's so much hope

in escaping that state.

[Music]