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♪ "Daddy?" "Yes, son?"

♪ "Wh-wh-wh-wh-what does regret mean?" ♪

♪ "Well, son, a funny thing about regret is ♪

The Butthole Surfers are something that can only happen in one time in space.

Wiener folk.

You know, Gibby just, like,

what the fuck, man?

He was, like, poetic and weird,

and created this vehicle for this thing, and he got so lost in it.

There's so much yearning in it to, like, break through

to something that hasn't been done before.

But it's also dangerous, you know?

Just bringing the fucking chaos.

There is kind of a before and after when you wander into a Butthole Surfer show.

♪ Hey, hey, hey

Like, the laws of the universe change.

♪ Hey-hey, hey

It's psychedelic.

People were scared.

♪ Even if you could

The greatest live band of my lifetime.

♪ Let's go to hell, hey

Butthole Surfers is what happened when Paul Leary

collided with Gibby Haynes.

♪ Now I'm in love

Just blew my mind.

I'm a surfer!

♪ Why don't they see?

♪ Get your hands off me

♪ Hey, hey, hey

♪ Hey-hey, hey-hey, hey-hey

♪ I'm burning out Like a falling dove ♪

♪ 'Cause I'm not fit To fall in love ♪

Butthole Surfers, you know, what mother wants their son

to grow up to be in the Butthole Surfers?

Right now I'm about as close to normal as I've ever been, and it feels pretty good.

I'm an old man that looks like I should be working at the hardware store.

It took you a long time to get normal.

Yeah, a very long time.

I went to Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

My dad was a professor at Trinity University,

so I got a full scholarship just for that.

I don't know if I would've gotten into any other school, really.

I wanted to be a stockbroker or something.

It's such a normal thing.

I've never really quite felt normal, and I always wanted to be normal.

I guess I figured I'd study enough business

to get a good job out of college.

But studying art was the fun part.

I had been drawing since I was old enough to hold a pencil.

My parents were sending me to a psychiatrist.

He wanted to see my drawings, so I was always drawing vomiting suns for him,

you know, in his great psychological wisdom.

You know, he could analyze what that meant.

I felt weird from the get-go.

I struggle to fit in with people, and sometimes

I'm uncomfortable in situations, and...

I wanted to be something that I couldn't be.

So none of it ever made sense, really.

That's when I met Gibby.

Hello. I'm Gibson Haynes.

Everybody knew who Gibby Haynes was.

He was the star basketball player.

I wasn't that good of an athlete, I just worked hard.

He was in a frat,

and he was also a business major.

I obtained my undergraduate degree

in accounting and economics.

By then, he was in the art scene and the music scene too.

Very artistic. I mean, he was putting stuff in the San Antonio Museum.

So he had a lot of different social circles that he was a part of.

He was always the showman, though.

It's because his dad was famous,

and we all grew up watching him on TV.

His dad was Mr. Peppermint.

Welcome to Peppermint Place!

He was Mr. Rogers with a little more flair than a boring sweater.

Help, Mr. Peppermint!

I fell off a cliff, Mr. Peppermint, over here.

Where are you, Muffin?

♪ As he strolled along

♪ He sang a song of The land of milk and honey ♪

Does any of your flair for showmanship

- come from your dad? - Yes. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jerry Haynes. Good guy.

My dad was just the nicest guy in Dallas.

Well, here we go!

Gibby was just that kind of eccentric, wacky person like that,

that you really wanted to be around him more.

He stood out on campus 'cause he was, you know,

6'7" or whatever the hell he is, and...

...punk haircut and a black leather biker jacket.

I was just so fucking cool, man. I was beautiful.

I just remember going to his dorm and he had a really nice Pioneer stereo,

and he had great records.

He helped turn me on to a lot of that cool music back in the day,

everything from the Ramones to Joy Division.

Paul and Gibby, between 'em, saw each other,

and there was an element of recognition, maybe.

They clicked. They had it. It's the chemistry.

You had this brilliant, introverted Paul,

and then you had the outgoing Gibby,

and they just really went together so well.

They were in love.

♪ Love, love Will tear us apart again ♪

That's how love hits. It's a big one.

We kind of got into abstract expressionism.

Dada and all that stuff.

Marcel Duchamp. He's the original punk rocker.

I just liked his attitude.

TheMona Lisa with a mustache and a goatee.

Things that were just stupid being art.

- Sacrilegious. - Sacrilegious, blasphemous, all you want.

I was all about stupid ideas.

So we started doing stuff. Just weird stuff.

Gibby and I were gonna start a t-shirt company.

We were selling Lee Harvey Oswald t-shirts and pillowcases and bed sheets.

And then we did make a sort of a zine, Strange VDmagazine.

We took pictures from a book called

Stitt's Diagnosis and Treatment of Tropical Diseases.

Strange VDis a wonderful book.

You know, you should have it next to your bed table

for those hours of quiet desperation when you can't fall asleep.

It was so much fun, man, those days,

late seventies at Trinity.

And I don't know how the band came together.

It just somehow...

Uh...

You know, Gibby had a guitar, like an old Silvertone guitar.

We would hang out listening to music together and stuff.

He would start playing his song ideas.

He started playing music in Scott Matthews' house with Scott Stevens.

Scott played drums. I played guitar.

We have a lot of people named Scott in the band.

And we played a song--

the first song we ever played--

I was listening to The Ventures.

I really liked The Ventures in Space,

and so when we started making a mess of noise, I had this little thing.

After the noise, there was a period of silence...

...in which I said, "Wow, that sounds like surf music."

And the drummer Scott said, "Yeah, butthole surf music."

That'll perk your ears up, right? - Yeah!

Well, we've got ourselves a song.

♪ Butthole surfers Butthole surfers ♪

♪ Fucking surfers Butthole surfer ♪

"Butthole Surfer." It was two chords. It was real simple.

♪ Butthole surf, wha-oh Butthole surf, wha-oh ♪

That was the first song we had.

But I was playing guitar,

and we realized that a bass would be better.

Paul could play guitar better than me, right?

Oh.

Paul was like a psychedelic master on the fucking guitar.

Immediately recognizable. Awesome guitar player.

I think Paul is one of the greatest guitar players ever.

I started playing guitar at, like, age five.

By age eight, I played in front of the school that I went to.

And then I played in some garage bands.

I learned how to play the Grand Funk Railroad

double Live Album from start to finish.

And, you know, back then, you know, it was, like--

it was fun to listen to music that you knew would irritate your mom.

She was a Black Sabbath fan?

I don't think so.

My mom raised me to be a gentleman.

Man, if I didn't open a door for a woman when I was young growing up,

my mother wouldn't let me have dinner. Seriously.

I had to sit in the car.

So after high school, I kind of stopped playing.

I felt like I wasn't making any contribution to anything.

You know, it was kind of pointless,

and I wasn't gonna be a rock star, so why bother?

So when Gibby invited me to come play with him,

I was reluctant.

You ready?

Oh, man, Paul was so cool.

I could express myself

with a guy that could play the shit out of a guitar.

How the fuck did that happen?

And then after putting it down for four years,

it kind of allowed me to be fresh when I picked it up again.

You know, I wasn't thinking about what I'd been doing

for the previous 12 years or whatever.

And then I got a hold of a single by the Meat Puppets

that had a song called "Out In the Gardener,"

and it just sounded like a train wreck.

I was like, "That's what I wanna do."

That was, like, March, April, May of '81,

and we were playing shows around San Antonio.

It was more of an art performance

than a musical performance.

But then we graduated college, and Gibby got his job.

Are you talking about when I was an accountant?

Gibby graduated Accounting Student of the Year.

Which is how he landed his job at Peat Marwick & Mitchell,

which was at the time the biggest accounting firm in the world.

All I knew was I would get, like, 28 grand out of college.

Bam!

He'd come to rehearsal,

and he'd have this kind of accounting suit on.

And then he would start stripping down to his boxer shorts,

and then, "The real Gibby is here," you know what I mean?

Instead of having to play this role.

♪ Oh, my God

I didn't get hired out of college. I didn't get a job.

So I was in graduate school at the time at Trinity

just to get a student loan to buy band equipment.

I wasn't finding work either,

and I thought if I moved to Dallas, I can get a job.

So I was done.

And then Andrew Mullin came along and started playing with them.

But then he flipped out on a bunch of acid,

took all the band's money.

I, um...

made a lot of, um...

...sort of, uh, difficult choices.

- And just disappeared. - Oh, that's it. Out of here.

So they still had gigs booked, and they're like, "Screw it, we'll do it as a three-piece."

I was living with my brother, and I was standing there watching, and it was like,

"Man, they're horrible as a three-piece. I'm gonna be their next bass player."

So I sat and taught myself how to play bass guitar with a cassette player.

I was like, "I'm your new bass player." Paul and Gibby were like...

- Yeah, yeah, sure. - Sure.

And all of a sudden, I was in the band.

And what were you calling yourself at this point?

Um...

When we first started playing shows,

we changed our name at every show.

Just the stupidest, dumbest names we could come up with.

We became the Ashtray Baby Heads.

9ft Worm Makes Own Food.

- Ed Asner Is Gay. - Abe Lincoln's Bush.

The Right to Eat Fred Astaire's Asshole--

The Inalienable Right to Eat Fred Astaire's Asshole.

My favorite was Playtex Butt Agamemnons.

And then there was The Dick Clark Five.

We had a T-shirt.

We probably had more names

then there were bands in San Antonio.

And then we played a show up in Austin at Duke's,

where we got to open up for The Big Boys,

and Chris Gates introduced us.

You know, and he said, "This is..."

He couldn't remember what our band name was for that night,

but he knew we had a song called "Butthole Surfers,"

so he called us the Butthole Surfers. -

So I'm like, "Man, it's Butthole Surfers."

Ha-ha, that's a funny joke.

We were looking around like, "Who? Oh, us? Okay."

And then we got, like, 50 bucks at the end of the show,

and so it was like, "We got our name."

Sorry, guys.

♪ I'm talking to my mom Now I'm talking to my dad ♪

♪ Now I listen To the stereo ♪

♪ I'm walking down the hall

Butthole showed up. They were that combination that made sense to me.

Creatively, musically, it was very weird and experimental.

♪ At the punk rock show

But they weren't arty people.

They were right down there, dirty, rolling on the floor, whatever.

They were my kind of guys.

And word spread quick.

I was over at a friend's house,

so I'm really excited to see The Dicks and The Big Boys.

And they said, "Well, what about the Butthole Surfers?" And I said, "Who?"

And they smiled and said, "Butthole Surfers. You'll see."

The first thing I really remember is kind of a maelstrom of sound.

Just that chaotic energy.

It wasn't just riff rock, and it wasn't punk rock.

It was freak rock.

I was jaw agape that night, and was an instant fan.

Suck my dick!

The band really started taking off around Austin,

and it was kind of fun watching the momentum build,

but it started to dawn on me that I'm not gonna be a normal person.

♪ Suck my dick, little sir Suck my dick ♪

♪ Fuck you, little sir

So I failed to get through a master's degree,

and I gave up on being a stockbroker.

As for Gibby, his days were numbered.

I quit my job at Peat Marwick & Mitchell

'cause it was miserable being an auditor.

Gibby was gung-ho to go to California and make it as a band,

and so, shoot, I was ready to go there too.

We first went to California in 1982.

We drove out to Los Angeles,

and we had one show opening up with Minutemen.

Before we went out there, I was telling my mom

how the Minutemen wrote 17 songs a day,

and she said, "That's because they can't stand any of 'em."

Good point.

The gig was on Melrose

in a Mexican chop pad called Grandia Room.

♪ I, Calypso

The idea was to blow minds.

And, man, the Buttholes, they fucking brought it.

It was the greatest fuckin' gig.

I was like, "Whoa, kindred spirit.

Wow, kindred soul. Whoa!"

So we played our set to what I thought was very well-received,

but it was LA, and hardcore was just starting to really take off.

♪ Rise above We're gonna rise above ♪

♪ Think they're smart Can't think for themselves ♪

♪ Rise above We're gonna rise above ♪

And we weren't hardcore at all.

I think Texas definitely had an effect on them.

How much does Texas matter to the Butthole Surfers?

Come and get your ice cream.

Man, Texas is everything to our band,

to the attitude, to the history.

It invoked everything you knew about Texas, you know?

That guns were rampant, and it was the state that wanted to secede from the Union,

and Texas Chainsaw.

Anyway, so we decided we'd take our last money

and buy gas to drive up to San Francisco, where there was free food.

They had soup kitchens where you could eat six days a week.

And so we drove up there, and our van starts to break down.

And it just came rolling to a stop in front of this place called Tool and Die.

We look over and we see a bunch of punk rockers loading drum kits and amps

into the Tool and Die, so we're like... - "This is good."

And we started unloading our stuff and going into the Tool and Die,

and this woman comes out and goes, "Who are you guys?"

We're like, "We're the Butthole Surfers,"

and she goes, "You're not playing here."

When I want people to do shit, they do it.

She broke down and let us play three songs.

So here's the Buttholes playing that show.

The place was freaky, it was scary.

By all accounts a death trap, a fire trap.

And everybody was like, "Oh, Dead Kennedys are gonna show up."

They ended up being a surprise act on the bill,

and they saw us play and Jello liked that,

so we ended up hanging out and going over to his house, met his wife.

You guys are really good.

And then Jello said that we should put out

a record on his Alternative Tentacles label.

I'd like to sign you to my record label.

That was it.

Got a record deal out of,

you know, our engine breaking down.

Thanks a lot!

And we were like, "We made it."

All I wanted was to get into the studio and record.

So I was excited to get back to Texas and get started.

But things just started kind of falling apart...

at that point.

I don't think my brother and Paul were getting along very well.

It got to the point where it's like, "All right, that's it, we're breaking up,"

and then Gibby and Paul disappeared with all the money.

And it was kind of like, "Hey, what is this?"

Really? You want 35 bucks?

That's just not part of the deal.

And that's when I went with my brother and his girlfriend

to go confront Gibby and Paul at Mr. Peppermint's house.

Your son ripped us off! Give us the money, asshole!

And then Gibby just came out swinging.

Him and my brother got into it real good.

Well, fuck you, fucker!

Uh-huh.

I think I might've swung and maybe grazed him.

Mr. Peppermint is, "Stop, stop, stop!"

But it-- it was no big deal.

Gibby's mother just gave us a bunch of money and said,

"Here, just go away. Just go away."

So now we didn't have a bass or a drummer, but we had a record deal.

♪ Whoo!

So we booked some time at BOSS Studio in San Antonio,

and we got a guy from Austin, Bill Jolly, on bass.

But we couldn't get a drummer to save our lives.

They had a really fine drummer who would do all kinds of fancy rolls and stuff.

And at one point, somebody took a beer and threw it at Gibby...

- Okay.

...which hit the drummer, and he said,

"I quit. I didn't come here to get bottles thrown at me."

Yeah, they did throw things.

Whereas me, it's like, "Yeah, throw a beer bottle at me.

Sure. Bring it, man."

I was born with two brown front teeth

because the mineral level is so high in West Texas.

It's a matter of pride.

It means that you're from the soil.

I remember King Coffey being quiet, but really personable.

- Just kind. - Torpedo! Yes, good boy.

At the time, he was in a band called The Hugh Beaumont Experience.

I first saw the Butthole Surfers in '83.

♪ Oh, oh, ohh

They became my favorite Texas band right then and there.

It was about music, but it was also just about

letting your freak flag fly.

That was a dream come true.

I graduated from high school early,

because, one, I hated high school.

I couldn't wait to get the F out of there

and go to Austin, where the punk rock scene was.

But part of that is that I didn't wanna deal with the whole pressure of the prom

and finding a girl at the prom.

So I found a way to opt out.

A nightmare.

Most of my friends were

so turned on by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.

I was really turned on by the Dallas Cowboys.

...at both sides, and back tightens up.

For somebody my age in Texas back then,

it was like you had this horrible, horrible dark secret

that you can't tell anyone about,

because fags get their asses kicked,

and your life sucks.

So to be in a punk rock band?

Yes! Hell yes.

We were still in the studio,

and King came along towards the end of the record

and recorded on two or three songs.

But at that time, I only played on two drums.

We could tell we needed a bit more.

We were like, "Let's get two of 'em."

Sure.

So we knew Teresa, and Teresa kicked ass.

How you feeling? You ready?

- No. - All right.

Drink a little coffee.

Take a hit of weed.

She was one of the music scenesters.

I was a punk and I wanted to be in a punk band.

And I think she might have been playing in John Hawkes' band.

- Oh, Meat Joy. - Yeah.

We played a show at the flophouse where I lived,

and I remember Gibby and Paul in the audience.

As the set finished, Paul shouted something like,

"What a fucking great drummer."

I had never thought before that I could ever do anything with the drums,

because girls aren't in rock bands.

And then when I saw Debbie Harry

and I saw pictures of them touring,

going to other countries,

and I was like, "That would be so cool."

So one day, Gibby came to me and he said,

"Do you wanna join the Butthole Surfers

and play drums side-by-side with King?"

And I was like, "Gibby, in my lifetime,

can you get me to Paris?"

And he said, "I think I can."

So I called my mom and I said,

"Mom, my ship's come in."

And she said, "Well, you're on probation for that little bit of pot,

and you still have four months to go."

And I was like, "Fuck that shit."

So I called my probation officer and I said...

Ma'am, I've joined a rock band. I will not be back.

- And she was like... - Oh, hell, I'm so tired of dealing with you,

I'll just close your case out."

I never locked in with another musician

like I did with Teresa.

We just felt a connection,

just a heart and soul between us two.

Like, yeah, okay. This is it.

Two drummers standing up, and the way that they sort of looked alike.

It's like she's my long-lost sister.

All the rhythms that King and Teresa were making together,

they had incredible groove.

Just in rhythm with each other.

Sort of marching band meets tribal.

It's almost always gonna create a flam.

That's two beats that are sort of stuttered closely.

It's gonna go, "boom."

It's never perfect.

I don't know, there's something about it

that makes it sound like

you're smacking the shit out of your drums.

The first time she played with us, after the show,

I can remember giving her a hug

and begging her to stick around.

Paul picked me up, and the crowd was cheering.

Let's give it up for Butthole Surfers!

And I was like, "This is it, man. This is fucking it."

I was playing with the best band in the world,

but not everybody knew it yet.

In '83, we got the first EP.

That is a great fuckin' record.

The first phone call that I had with Kurt,

I was happy to find that the first EP was one of his favorite records.

There's the melodies and the lyrics,

but there's that chaos and dissonance and noise as well.

I mean, it honestly sounds like the weirdest fucking thing of all time.

It was time for us to hit the road,

and we had a record out to justify going on the road.

But it took us a while to find a bass player, because Bill Jolly, well...

Bill had vanished, been abducted by aliens or something.

But I'd known Gibby since the mid-seventies from Trinity,

and they had a bass and a rig and nobody was playing it.

Terrence had a Chevy Nova,

and this guy named Buzz, who had done a stint in prison...

His name was Buzz Saw.

Shit, I'll take that back seat out for you.

He ripped out the back seat...

Beat out the tire wells so that he could put plywood in there.

And then underneath the plywood

is where we'd put luggage.

And we'll pull a little U-Haul of equipment.

It's a bench front seat.

So three people would sit in the front

and two would lay down in back with the dog.

That was a great car, man.

Little did I know it would launch us into stardom.

All of us wanted to be on the road.

It was almost a cult mentality.

I felt like I was on a mission from God.

We're in this together.

It was absolutely where I belonged.

♪ Oh, I don't know, And you can't say ♪

♪ But even if you could

♪ You wouldn't anyway

♪ Let's go to hell

We got to be a better band the more we played, you know.

We finally got into a groove.

We kind of had this cockiness

of like, we could blow away all your motherfuckers on stage.

It was great music, but then it was also

this kind of avant-garde visual art project.

♪ There's a time to fuck And a time to crave ♪

♪ But the Shah sleeps In Lee Harvey's grave ♪

From the beginning, the Buttholes used very

low tech but very effective stagecraft.

Gibby would put clothespins in his hair.

Like strobes and like fake blood and dresses.

Cockroaches.

We had a roach problem at Butthole Manor.

One night, Gibby and I both grabbed

a can of Raid Stream

and we were playing a game of

whoever got to kill the roach first won.

And we probably sat there for two, three hours

because we were tripping on acid.

There's one, there's one, there's one.

The next day they're all dried out.

Gibby took them to work and xeroxed either side of it.

Cut those up and we'd fill up grocery store bags of them.

And they threw them everywhere like confetti.

So when we got on stage, the stage was just

covered with these things and it was just hilarious.

They went and bought these big stuffed animals.

Second-hand stores, they always have stuffed animals.

And we were like, mm, okay,

why would they want these stupid children's toys, right?

Well, later at the show...

They pull this giant ten-foot-tall stuffed bear.

This thing is like Son of Kong.

Whenever we could find one, it was so great.

Gibby, he had to get up on the ladder to pull the head off

and all of the stuffing starts flying out.

And...

The really amazing part was there were a couple

of industrial fans on each side of the stage.

They ripped these animals

and the stuffing came down like surreal snow.

The strobe lights.

There was all of this stuff just floating in the air.

And I looked over and the promoter was on the side of the stage

and he was almost in tears.

We weren't really planning our careers or anything going,

gosh, let's go out and sell a gold record

and have a radio hit and tour the world.

So it was a hard life.

There was no money. If they had lots of money,

they probably would have shared it with us.

We had to sleep on the floors of any stranger's apartment.

It was even below living hand to mouth.

We never had really enough money to--

to eat well or any of that other stuff.

So it really is sheer survival.

And I need to find some Kentucky Fried Chicken,

a Whataburger, a McDonald's. Right now.

We would eat by going into a restaurant

and order a pitcher of beer.

And then when people left their table,

we would grab their plates and eat what they didn't eat.

We would also crash out in the parking lot of a motel.

And when people left in the morning,

we'd run into their deserted room

and take a shower before the maid came.

Nyuck, nyuck.

So that was an adjustment for me,

but we had so much fun playing.

Wasn't sure at the time if Alternative Tentacles was the place for them.

Butthole Surfers make a break for Touch and Go.

It's a Midwest label started by Touch and Gomagazine.

And then Corey Rusk took over the label.

All the money that came in was used to pay off

the recording expenses and then--

and any other expenses associated with the record.

And then any profit was split 50/50.

So being able to move into Touch and Go was a great thing.

And it gave The Butthole Surfers a lot of support.

I think started off a really fruitful relationship.

Gobby wanted to name it Psychic... Powerless...

And I think Paul wanted to name it Another Man's Sack.

And then they had written it down, S-A-C-K.

And I said, oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Another Man's Sacis S-A-C.

I felt like we were referring to another man's testicles,

not to another man's bag of groceries.

And they were like, oh, whatever.

Another Man's Sac was one of the records that I was listening to every day.

♪ I went into the theater, I decide to whirl ♪

♪ I'll take a man, I'll see him again ♪

♪ Never seen-a said, "Buddy boy" ♪

Personally, that's my favorite album because it has the really weird shit on it.

Like the really fucked up shit.

They're just hinting at musical forms.

There's not one song like the other song on that record.

After you listen to something like...

"Lady Sniff," you know, leading off.

"Lady Sniff." Yeah.

"Lady Sniff." I fucking loved that song.

♪ Lady sniff My twisted Lincoln ♪

♪ Lady walk alone

♪ Lately when I see you, baby ♪

♪ Lord I gotta go

That one came from Trinity University.

One day I was driving from my apartment to class and it just hit me.

Lady Sniff. Lady Sniff. Lady Sniff.

So I turned around and went back to my apartment

and got on the phone and called Gibby

and go, Gibby, you gotta remember this. Lady Sniff.

He ended up coming up with lyrics.

Do you remember that? - No.

♪ Lady sniff My broken teabag ♪

♪ Lady walk the road

♪ Lately when I see that teabag I can't take the load ♪

It's like the closest, like, a song can be to being like a cartoon.

I mean, the barfing sound effect they chose is so perfect.

Just the most obnoxious fart.

You know, for people like us who have the shared sensibility

that like that kind of thing, it's just...

resonates in the best way.

The one song that, like, gutted me like a fish was "Cherub."

There was something so dark and devious about that song.

♪ Cherub

♪ Cherub the angel

♪ Roll back The hands of time ♪

Besides the fact that it was an obvious dance hit.

45 shows in six months, something like that.

I think I was just burned out. I was definitely sick.

I mean, like diarrhea and just worn out.

Well, we woke up in the morning and Terence woke up

and he was upset 'cause he didn't have any milk,

but we couldn't afford milk.

You know, we could afford beer, but not milk.

And then started saying he just couldn't understand

why we would do what we were doing.

And he gathered his guitar and got in a cab and left.

And then I went back to San Antonio, moved to Japan. The rest is history.

And Corey from Touch and Go knew this kid from Canada...

Trevor?

Will he play bass for us? Yes.

But he also brought a tuba with him.

Actually, he didn't play a tuba.

He played a sousaphone.

And then we get to Canada and we're at soundcheck and all of a sudden his old

high school band teacher shows up.

He's like, I want my sousaphone back.

I think it was kind of downhill for Trevor after that.

Anywho. So we... So we were desperately looking

for a bass player again.

And we knew that Kramer played bass.

Just for the record, everybody calls me Kramer.

We'd gotten to know Kramer through his playing for Shockabilly.

When Shockabilly would come to Austin, you know, we became friends.

And they decided to go to Athens and move in with R.E.M. or do something like that.

We were in Seattle. We'd all been drinking, acid was floating around,

and I don't know whose idea it was.

Like, let's go to Athens, Georgia.

Let's meet R.E.M.

So we went there to intentionally stalk R.E.M.

We had an unhealthy obsession.

Who doesn't like R.E.M.?

Michael Stipe showed up

at some kind of festival the band was doing in Athens.

And he invited a bunch of the bands after the show

back to his estate for a party.

But he conspicuously did not invite the Butthole Surfers.

Gibby took an exception to this.

So they followed some of the bands back to the estate.

And as I recall, Gibby took a can of spray paint.

And on the side of our van, he spray painted,

Michael Stipe, despite the hype,

we still want to suck your big, long pipe.

No, we never wrote that anywhere.

Maybe we talked about doing that.

Oh, God. I don't know, man.

We never obsessed over Michael Stipe's...

penis at all, ever.

It's one of those things, if you remember,

you weren't there, you know, so I'm not sure.

Paul would know. Paul would remember.

I don't remember.

After I joined the band, I convinced Paul

that if people saw the band in Europe,

this would be explosive.

So I got a couple of promoters in Europe interested.

And the promoter in the Netherlands

got us booked into this massive festival.

It was an incredible lineup,

- including Alex Chilton... - Nick Cave...

- Sonic Youth... - And the Butthole Surfers.

And I was excited to be playing

with all those bands. And, uh...

Before the show, Gibby had a big bottle of whiskey...

A couple tabs of acid, and he said...

Showtime.

It reminded me of that old Bugs Bunny thing

where Daffy Duck is trying to do the thing.

And he drinks all nitroglycerin, blows himself up.

He just goes, it's a great show, but I can only do it once.

But the Buttholes kept doing it and doing it and doing it.

After we got off stage, Gibby was covered in a fake blood,

as he usually was after those performances.

And we lost track of him.

About a half hour later, a security guy came right up to me and said,

"We have a member of your band.

He is running around and breaking glass bottles."

He was picking fights with the big, giant bouncers.

And there was a scuffle and he almost went over this rail.

And I looked over the rail and it was 50 feet down.

You know, it would have been bad.

Did I say he was stark naked? He was also stark naked.

I was so irresponsibly naked.

You Dutch, with your angles

and your doors and your ovens.

Yeah.

Then I rushed a Nick Cave show.

Gibby jumps up on stage.

Then a security man tackles him to the ground.

Whoa!

Blixa Bargeld from the Bad Seeds

with these pointy metal-tipped boots

is kicking the shit out of Gibby.

And they quickly...

scooted me away.

I run back to the dressing room.

Paul at this point has had it.

Grabs a beer bottle, takes it out

and smashes it on his Telecaster guitar.

"I hate this fucking band."

They were screaming at each other backstage...

And he'd take another bottle and each time, "I quit."

Fuck you. No, fuck you.

I fucking quit this fucking band.

And Gibby, maybe three feet away with the glass

shattering all over him, stark naked from head to toe,

dripping in fake blood, smile on his face,

very calmly, as though this was the point

of his behavior for the evening,

to see Paul smashing the shit out of his guitars and quitting the band.

Yeah, uh...

I don't know how we survived that night.

Paul was very, very interested in seeing the band do really well,

and Gibby was really committed

to avoiding sobriety at all costs.

I love you.

The next morning I picked up the paper and was like, open it up.

And there's a big full page picture of Gibby wearing a dress

with the whiskey bottle hoisted up.

And although it left Paul on the verge of quitting the band,

Gibby's behavior is why we were offered

the opportunity to come back to Europe as soon as possible.

So it was a huge hit.

- Hey, Trevor. - Yes?

So can you just talk about your time?

What you remember with the Butthole Surfers?

You know, it was the best of times,

it was the worst of times.

You know, be careful what you wish for, I guess.

I ran away and joined the circus.

Turns out the circus had a couple of jerks in it, you know.

The Butthole Surfers are sort of the Manson of punk rock.

You're in this weird club now. These are the rules.

There's this morphogenic field of, like,

Gibby's the leader or some shit.

I have no idea why everybody put up with it.

And he was, like, purposefully intimidating.

And I realized that these people were not sympathetic people.

So I just got the fuck out. I was like, this is stupid.

I-- I didn't talk for a long time after I was with the Buttholes.

I was so traumatized, I actually didn't talk.

Yeah, it was weird.

After that European tour, I couldn't justify in my head

23 hours a day of sheer hell and near-death experiences

in exchange for one hour on stage

that was like dying and going to heaven.

I thought they were the best band in the world,

and I thought I was playing bass

in the best band in the world.

But when it came time to leave,

there just didn't seem to be any choice to me.

But one of my greatest pieces of pride

as a Butthole Surfer was that had I not left the band,

the world might not know JD Pinkus.

When I joined, they informed me

that we sleep on a lot of floors.

I was like, like every night? They're like, pretty much.

I was like, you're gonna guarantee me a floor every night?

I was down.

I was a little runt kid running around Atlanta.

I was 17 years old, and they needed somebody

probably that didn't need money, could sleep on floors,

didn't mind saying goodbye to his girlfriend.

So I kind of fit the bill on that. I was pretty perfect.

I got a phone call from Gibby at a payphone.

- Hello? - Hey, is this Pinkus?

- Yeah. - Why don't you come down tomorrow?

We set up a time, and then my two ex-girlfriends took me down there.

I've literally never been more excited.

And I played Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath songs with King and Paul.

And then afterwards they said,

you can stay in the band as long as you want.

And I said, cool.

And so that's kind of how it happened.

Jeff was such a good bass player,

and the way he locked up with King and Teresa

in this real rubbery, deep, kind of bottomless pit of groove,

they were very fucking good musicians.

So in '80s Atlanta,

the punk and drag subcultures really collided.

Can you talk about that?

There were lots of drag clubs around town that you could go see shows.

The Celebrity Club, that was opened and Larry Tee

and Tom Zarrilli were managing that.

We were a drag bar.

We had drag queens on the bar.

Celebrity Club was the shit.

It was where freaks of Atlanta would do their thing.

You know, it was where RuPaul got his start.

RuPaul did go-go dance for the Buttholes one night.

The best shows there ever, by far the most memorable were the Butthole Surfers,

which leads me to my favorite story.

Lisette.

She was probably our sluttiest, most provocative drag.

And she was hired to go-go dance for the Butthole Surfers.

And she started fag baiting

some of the punks at the end of the bar, like, you know,

like saying, you want this, you know, kind of thing.

And they really got upset and it was clear

they were going to drag her off that bar

and kill her right there on the spot.

So she leapt off the bar and into the back to hide.

And so they come bursting through the door

and there's Gibby in nothing but clothespins

and sort of a see-through black veil

with full-frontal nudity.

And he was like...

And they were all like, oh, Gibby, sir.

And he said, "This is my friend."

And they was like, Gibby, sir, I won't--

And they kind of all backed away and Lisette lived.

So that was the end of that.

It's hard to forget a moment like that.

Didn't you pick up Kathleen there?

Wasn't she added to the band...

She was part of that scene, yeah. Celebrity Club scene. Yeah.

Is there any good story there about,

you know, how she came into the band on tour?

- Kathleen... - Hello.

...had a weird nickname that I don't know if--

The shitting dyke.

I did engage in some things that, uh...

Okay, so anyway--

And she was absolutely brilliant.

Kathleen is the most amazing person I've ever met.

She's a... really amazing and talented artist.

I loved making it ugly.

I would wear a goatee a lot.

Like, I had extensions for here,

which is probably a lot grosser for people.

And pubic extensions.

You'd do something to make yourself more ugly

and it would evolve into something more beautiful.

♪ American woman, Listen what I say, hey ♪

Kathleen would hide behind this little riser and pop up.

And you'd see the kids in the front row going,

"Wow, boobs," and then all of a sudden their faces would go,

"Why does she have a beard? Wait a minute,

is she wearing a bratwurst between her legs?"

And you think punk rock is hectic. This is way more hectic.

Like, this is upsetting.

It's something that you can't design to do.

It's something that becomes

and it's this energy and this effusion.

- Performance art. - Performance art--

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

A true artist...

And we loved her dearly

because she was just up for anything.

But I ended up falling in love with a woman who--

she and her boyfriend encouraged me to move

to New York with them, and that's what I did.

♪ American woman, American woman ♪

And so Kathleen got this job at the Show Palace in Times Square...

Some peep show sex place.

And they put the quarter in

and, you know, the curtain comes up.

And this guy was, like, repeatedly putting the coins in or whatever.

And I guess I had... I had to go.

She was obsessed with enemas. - Shit art.

And so I guess she wasn't keeping track of what was what.

And she thought she had to fart.

Curtains opens up, and she bends over and just sprays diarrhea.

And she looked at the guy and said...

Ta-dah!

- Ta-dah! - Ta-dah!

Ta-dah! And ran offstage.

And so the Butthole Surfers were going to tour,

and they said, oh, yeah, when you come to New York,

come up and play with us or something.

- Which venue? - This was the Danceteria show.

That was the beginning of us going from tiny little hole-in-the-wall clubs

to playing a club with a sound system

with a big floor

in New York City.

You were playing late at night.

You were probably drunk.

We were just going to go for it.

There might have been some psychedelics involved.

So the details kind of get scatter-shot.

When they would come to town, everybody would go

because they knew it was going to be something.

You just didn't know, like, what state of consciousness

this man was going to be in.

So I got there, and I remember Paul saying, just, you know,

go or something just positive, like, do you.

And it just gave a lot of freedom.

They came out in a complete and utter fury.

They just had every single light flashing on the stage.

Everything was happening. Kathleen dancing naked.

Paul was just, like, out of his mind.

Gibby was pretty much completely nude by,

like, 20 minutes into it.

I tore my dresses off and I forgot I didn't have any underwear on.

Taking King's cymbal stands and just pouring

lighter fluid over it and constantly torching it.

And so there's fire. There is everything, smoke...

I had friends who were there.

That one friend said...

She thought it was the end of Western civilization.

I think Gibby had sex with Kathleen on stage.

And that was very intriguing.

Oh, yeah. Well...

We were recreating the bacchanal

in its most basic form.

Because bacchanalia was about being a caveman dude

and going out in the woods

and eating fucking rabbits and fucking other people.

People coming up to me is like, can you believe this is happening?

Yelling in my ear like, this is insane.

This is nuts.

No, no, it was not. It was not.

There was no sex at all.

It was close.

Oh...

Who knows?

To me, it was all performance art.

It was very, like, theatrical.

You know, it looked real, but I don't know if it was--

it was probably simulated.

Gibby had his thumb in her ass.

Oh, well, Kramer-- Kramer would say that, wouldn't he?

It was very much like this incredibly playful energy.

That was like gentle, quiet energy amidst this cacophony.

And it was really sort of healing.

It really was.

Because I had always been afraid of men.

And the culture had always taught me to be afraid of men.

But it was just so innocent.

Although it was just kind of crazy.

Rembrandt Pussyhorse.

I really love that record.

"Creep in the Cellar."

♪ Well, there's a creep In the cellar ♪

♪ That I'm gonna let in

♪ And he eats in the alley

♪ And keeps track Of my sins ♪

And I remember the album, when you open it up,

it's like a close-up of, like,

a female bodybuilder's pussy.

♪ Yeah

The touring never ended.

And we started playing shows where people

would come see us, and then we could actually drive

from town to town, and there would be a crowd

waiting for us everywhere.

To see it gradually pick up some steam,

people began to respond to it.

We realized that you're not just totally shouting into the wind.

That was cool.

There was definitely people that traveled around

to go see them, similar to The Grateful Dead,

and you'd see the same person, like, all up the West Coast,

or all up the East Coast.

I would see the Butthole Surfers from D.C.,

to, like, New England.

And I would catch all the shows.

And I'm pretty sure there were a lot of the same party favors

that were being used as Grateful Dead crowds,

but obviously, a slightly different show.

We would drive around, and get high,

or do mushrooms or acid,

and listen to the Butthole Surfers.

They were the most psychedelic band ever.

But it's not peace, and love, and like,

rainbows, and kaleidoscopes, and shit.

It's a motherfucker! It's a motherfucker!

There's a dark, evil side of acid.

Somehow, when I thought I'd seen it all,

it would be more over the top,

and more of a bad trip every time.

They were notorious for dosing themselves before going on stage.

So you just didn't know.

But you did know that it was gonna be spectacular.

Like, the thousands of the people that came before me

that are descendants of me,

would show war movies out of their penises.

And they just, like, kept adding to their production.

The first films they started showing

were old science education-type films.

And you were their first projectionist, you've mentioned.

Well, if no one else remembers that,

um, it's no big deal.

I got to know Teresa first.

It's a Madonna pap smear.

It's got Ciccone on the top.

That's like, you know, like, a medical label, Ciccone.

She was in a friend of mine's film class

at Austin Community College.

I'd taken a couple film classes there.

I'd already started the Austin Film Society.

And we would have screenings.

Teresa would come by, and then I remember

getting to know Gibby a little bit.

And he was like, hmm, how am I gonna--

I want to incorporate movies into my shows.

And I remember saying, "Gibby, I've got a perfect film for you guys."

This is an experimental film called,

Epileptic Seizure Comparison.

I thought, oh, that works perfect with your aesthetics.

That was an early film they started showing.

And I did project for them early on, a little bit.

I remember going to Houston with them, Bill Daniel, and I.

And Bill ended up going on tour with them.

The band, more than any-- any other band in the history of bands,

challenged their audience.

It's Mechanized Death.

I didn't appreciate seeing car crash films, you know.

I just remember it being really colorful.

There were, like, maybe fish going through,

like, a coral reef.

We were so high on acid.

Acid.

And it's amazing.

Just, like, these beautiful fish.

Beautiful fish. Fish.

And then it immediately went to some sort of, like...

genital surgery.

It's actually a penis rebuilding surgery

of a farmer's totally mangled penis.

I'm on two fucking hits of acid!

I was just like, "Oh my God, I can't be in here!"

It's really fuckin' gruesome.

There were people that would faint.

Every dude goes, "Ooh!"

And the combination of that, and the strobe lights,

made me feel very nauseous.

I think it was the booze you were drinking.

It might've been that, too.

It was actually a really-- a happy ending film.

I mean, the guy got injured, and he got his dick

put back together.

What--what we loved was just watching them

do the most insane shit,

so freaky and so ahead of the curve and so original.

The innovation, the voice manipulation, you know, all that was what we wanted to do.

♪ Oh, John E. Smoke

♪ John Smoke, Smoke, Smoke

They were frightening. They were...

unpredictable.

They were pioneers of a new way of expression.

And they seemed to be interested in puncturing the bubble of reality

that made you not understand where you were anymore.

You were touching the existential cloth.

Woo-hoo! Whee! Whoa!

We'd been on the road for years.

I thought, you know, guys, can we just go back to Austin?

And Gibby and Paul and Jeff,

- to their great credit, said... - "Oh, okay."

So we moved back to Austin and we set up shop,

recording what would become Locust Abortion Technician.

Locust Abortion Technician?

The Locust,uh... the Locustrecord.

♪ Pardon me, I'm only bleeding ♪

♪ But you cut me To the bone ♪

"Graveyard" is one of my favorites.

The foulest, most psychedelic riff.

♪ You lie in the graveyard

♪ Well, you're rotting away

It is as fucked-up a guitar part

as was ever recorded, I think.

And Gibby wrote it.

I can write the shit out of a song,

but I'm not a great, uh, player.

I wanted to get Gibby playing the guitar,

but I didn't want him to, like, think about it

or come up with something or anything like that,

so I plugged a microphone in,

leaned up the guitar against the amp,

and then just left the room, and waited.

Eventually Gibby walked by and saw it, and...

...picked it up and just started playing.

When I hit the record button,

and that beautiful sound came out...

It was just like, ah!

That's what I've been waiting for.

And then we-- we made a song around that.

But there was a really great track on Locust Abortion.

Sort of a fake Black Sabbath cover.

"Sweat Loaf."

Daddy?

Yes, son?

What-- What-- What-- What does "regret" mean?

Well, son, a funny thing about regret

is that it's better to regret something you have done

than to regret something you haven't done.

And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend,

would you be sure and tell her...

Satan, Satan, Satan!

Satan, Satan, Satan!

♪ Oh

It's a nod to "Sweet Leaf."

A classique.

"Sweat Loaf" was always great live.

It was just that riff,

and with them just, like, putting it through

the Butthole's prism.

It was fantastic, always.

♪ Rape of desire

♪ Of desire, of desire, of desire ♪

♪ Rape of desire

♪ Of desire, of desire, of desire ♪

♪ Rape of desire

♪ Of desire, of desire, of desire, rape ♪

In those golden days, we were sort of, like,

on a magic carpet ride, or something.

♪ You don't know What we can find ♪

We traveled the U.K., Europe,

the world, my dream come true.

But, yeah, there were some--

some times where it was more negative.

♪ Like a sea horse Like a graveyard ♪

♪ Like a moron Like a girlfriend ♪

Those guys spent so much time around each other.

It was just everybody piling in a van,

and everybody's breathing on each other.

Everybody's on top of each other.

♪ Like a brain stroke Like a long drip ♪

All the band was cranky.

But Paul definitely felt the pressure.

Paul definitely qualifies as someone that can flip a switch.

You don't want to see that on the other side of you.

What, you want some shit?

- No, sit down. - Well, fuckin' get the fuck away from me, then!

There's other things to performing besides being on stage.

Booking shows, and keeping track of things,

and showing up places on time,

and that all gets to be very stressful.

But Gibby...

Gibby is a pretty friendly person.

He can lure you right in, you know,

but so can mass murderers.

Gibby was a total agent of chaos.

Crazy, but very warm and loving,

and you just never know what you're gonna get.

He could be bipolar.

Something clicks inside him,

and he'll just go clobber the--

you know, "Come on, we're gonna kill him."

Like I could kill anybody, dude.

Flames were going up, and you could see

that the insulation was catching.

Then the security was trying to put it out,

with, like, fire extinguishers.

I guess Gibby threw lighter fluid on one of 'em,

and then just started walking towards him

with his little trusty Bic.

Can you be moody, Gibby?

Might as well have asked, can you be not perfect?

And then just go with, oh, in what manner am I not perfect?

I think he truly is suffering from trauma.

It's only 3.5...

Maybe some bad things happened.

♪ Don't try And fuckin' follow ♪

♪ I'm too busy When they're falling ♪

But I've never heard him talk about it.

♪ We'll be living

Have you?

I'll handle this.

Hello, there. I'm Jerry Finster.

This is my wife, Mary Ellen, and my son, Jerry Jr.

Y'all bye!

Hairway to Stevenwas a different kind of album.

♪ It's probably me now

♪ I'm burning up With desire oh ♪

It would also end up being our last album

on Touch and Go.

That was not a pretty ending to that.

And the Buttholes sold a lot of records,

and they had a really deep

and important relationship with Touch and Go.

Corey Rusk is an honest person who pays his bands.

No contracts needed, because he was just an honest guy.

However, the Buttholes had gotten a manager.

You're talking about-- -

I'm not mentioning any names.

They got a manager, and he went to Corey,

and he says, "Hey, the band wants more money."

We made more money for that label

than any of their other bands,

and then we found out they were giving another band

that was friends of ours a better deal than us,

and we wanted that same deal.

They wanted to renegotiate their deal with Touch and Go.

The label refused.

So we terminated the deal.

Turned into him claiming he owned our music for life.

The label refused to recognize the termination,

and kept selling records.

So we decided to sue them for copyright infringement.

I don't know, as the judge put it...

"One would ordinarily think that an agreement of the type

we just described would be in writing.

For, as Yogi Berra observed,

'An oral contract isn't worth the paper it's written on.'"

That pretty much summed up what the judge thought about the whole thing.

♪ Oh my God

A lot of people took Touch and Go's side on that,

which was disappointing.

The Butthole Surfers were suing the one guy in music

who had ever been decent to them.

The way that they just went from being personal friends

to being litigants in this really cold-hearted way,

really turned me off of them.

Screwing people over is just not ever cool, period.

Touch and Go had plenty of money.

They were living nice.

And we were, you know, living in a van.

The Butthole Surfers did something to support artists' rights.

The right to control your masters.

The right to control your destiny, essentially,

and they deserve credit for it.

Oh, bully for them, then.

Great work.

Congratulations.

David Yow asked me one time, he goes,

uh, he goes, "What would happen if you walked into a restaurant,

and there was Corey Rusk?"

And I was like, dude, I'd go up and hug him.

And he was like, "I don't think Corey would."

He won't talk to us. I've asked him five times.

The guy who put out the records won't talk to you?

♪ Their heads went Different directions ♪

♪ And their friendship Ceased to be ♪

It ended in tears, but so it goes.

What I know of them as people makes me think

that they are among the worst people I've ever known.

♪ Different directions

♪ And their friendship Ceased to be ♪

Nobody wants to see people that have been doing it

for years and years make a living.

They just want you to suffer, like me now.

Are y'all happy?

♪ Some day we'll look back And laugh ♪

Hairwaywasn't just our last album with Touch and Go,

but also our last with Teresa.

I had a brain aneurysm,

and I was in full-blown psychosis.

Ooh, that was horrible.

Certainly when she left, um...

you know, it was kind of like less fun for me,

because it's fun, like, having like,

a gay/lesbian co-member in the band,

but Teresa was everybody's best friend.

She was always, always fun.

Just, you know, so much bubbling.

And when she started giggling, you know,

it was-- everybody would be smiling in the room.

Things were just better if Teresa was there.

And then a lot of other things were changing too,

pretty quickly.

One of the most unexpected things to happen

at the end of the '80s, and the start of the '90s,

was the ascent of the underground music scene.

College rock was changing into what was called the alternative nation.

It was a sea change in the culture and the music.

Do you remember when Nirvana opened up for you guys in Seattle?

Yeah, that was awesome.

That poster, it's a killer poster,

because it's Butthole Surfers, Nirvana.

And then, like, a few years later,

it just would've been-- woo!

The order of the bands flipped.

All of this was sort of building,

and people were becoming a little bit more interested

in this sort of crazy guitar music.

And then that was starting to move into mainstream,

and the Buttholes were on that crest of that.

We were the top-grossing independent band in the country,

and we were really starting to build momentum.

Are you finding yourself getting more of a feedback

being out on the road or is it just a downer

that you haven't managed to get yourself a Top 30 hit?

We just needed that one thing to push us to the next level.

And that's part of why they ended up on Lollapalooza.

They had my crew's attention.

He just fucking owned it.

Like, he-- he just took over.

Motherfucker came out with a shotgun.

Jesus, fuck it, like, they are from Texas.

That's punk as fuck.

It was a real shotgun, but he was shooting blanks,

I-- I think.

I've seen a lot of shows in my life,

and that was the most intense-- Aah--

thing I have ever seen done by a band to an audience.

I was like, white boys with shotguns?

Like, what the fuck?

They just outdid us.

You watch and you go, these guys are frickin' scary,

and they're the real deal, and it's awesome.

Lollapalooza certainly wasn't the epitome

of Butthole Surfer shows.

A lot of that twisted darkness,

and a lot of the visual elements were not able to be there.

And yet that show still communicated to that sort of more general audience.

In case there's any chance of, like, next year's Lollapalooza and stuff,

you know, the t-shirt sales were great.

Record labels were clamoring to-- to have us,

especially after Nirvana had their success.

Everybody was looking for the next Nirvana.

I was in line in L.A., uh...

at a Starbucks, and a guy behind me taps me on the shoulder.

He was like, "Gibby." And I was like, "Yeah, man."

President of Capitol Records.

What I saw was so mind boggling,

whether it was rock 'n roll or psychedelic or... punk,

they did it all and they did it pretty damn well.

I was sold. I wanted that band on our label.

And suddenly, the Butthole Surfers are a major label band.

I love the Beatles, I love Dean Martin,

and the Beach Boys, and just on and on, that were on Capitol Records.

And the thought of the Butthole Surfers being on Capitol Records...

...that was just too much to pass up.

Capitol gave us the money.

So the pressure was on.

Let's try to give them their money's worth.

Let's make a rock record.

And we had a lot of A-list producers

that were interested in the job.

The name John Paul Jones came up.

At that point, you know, it's like,

"Do we want to go to our graves saying we could have worked

with John Paul Jones, but didn't?"

I had to work with John Paul Jones.

He was great in the studio.

He taught me a lot about producing.

He came to the practice space, and listened to us

playing, and jamming, and made suggestions.

I was playing banjo in the studio,

with John Paul Jones playing bass.

It was on my bass that he broke his very first bass string, ever.

I've got the string, and it's framed in there.

And then, he was fun to hang out with.

Because, fuck, he's John Paul Jones.

We went $5,000 over budget on alcohol.

Uh, mainly scotch.

By the time that album was finished,

he quit drinking entirely after that.

We drove him to quit drinking.

The whiskey thing, that was the last time you drank, am I right?

- No. - No?

- That's a myth. - Yeah.

I mean, I don't drink, but that was years later.

- Years later. - Yeah.

Okay. Well, they claimed credit.

Oh, well...

Paul Leary is one of my all-time favorite guitarists.

He was worried that

maybe he pissed you off

because backstage in Austin one time

he said he gave you a Texas titty twister.

He did.

What possessed him?

I don't know what possessed him,

but I got him back immediately.

I just went, whup, so that we were even.

Was it a friendly titty twister?

Yeah. No, it was friendly.

Texas titty twister, you know, one of those.

I pinched his titty.

In New York, we call it a purple nurple.

I don't know if there's an English term for it.

We--we don't really do that here.

It was an amazingly creative and inspiring environment,

and it yielded the Independent Worm Saloonrecord,

which up and to that point,

became the biggest record of their career.

We had a minor radio hit with "Who Was in My Room?"

♪ All night long My body burned ♪

♪ The sheets were Wet and cold ♪

♪ The lights were on My eyes were gone ♪

♪ And at any second I'd lose control ♪

That was our big debut, in a way.

After all these years of no-budget records,

it was fun to make a big, dumb rock record.

♪ Who the hell Was in my bed ♪

But joining Capitol added a different dynamic to the band.

We ended up not being in control anymore.

Before, Gibby was very much in control of the business for us.

And when the decision-making was no longer really in his control,

I think that helps you to get a little bit more out of control,

to where he was like, "Well, fuck it.

If y'all don't need me, I'm gone."

I felt him starting to go, you know, a bit distant from us.

♪ Take me, break me

♪ Tell me a good one And maybe I'll cry ♪

I think it was a South by Southwest event,

and there was a party.

I looked across the room and I see Gibby,

so I start wandering over there.

And I see him see me out of the corner of his eye,

and he starts walking away.

At the time, it wasn't making sense to me.

My feelings were a little bit hurt.

Yeah. Thank you.

The Butthole Surfers were playing in Virginia,

down in Norfolk, at a place called The Boathouse.

And we finally get into their dressing room.

And there's all of the guys in the band.

They're all just hanging out.

And we're looking around like, where's Gibby?

And the door opens.

Just enough for Gibby to poke his head in.

I look up and I say, "Gibby, what's happening?"

And he looks green.

He's a little bit shrunken.

I've seen Gibby fucked up, and fucked up out of his mind,

but not like that.

He looked like he was ready to die.

And then they perform, and the performance is amazing.

Gibby that you would expect from him.

It was hard, to say the least, when Gibby started using heroin.

He had an addictive personality, I guess.

That wasn't really clear to me.

And maybe it wasn't clear to him.

Next thing you know, you know, he's living at Johnny Depp's house,

and we're somewhere else without Gibby.

Johnny Depp had done a movie in Texas,

and befriended Gibby,

because he loved Buttholes just like everybody else, right?

And then I was friends with Johnny,

and then somehow Gibby just moved into Johnny's house,

and then we were all living there.

Let's call it the Hollywood years.

He must have been on drugs, because

I don't know how else you could stomach that.

That's just, that's horrendous.

"The Hollywood Hillbillies" or whatever they were called,

you know, Johnny Depp, Evan Dando, Leonardo DiCaprio,

Gibby is the ringleader.

That was in the same time that

Johnny was opening up The Viper Room.

I think the whole idea of Viper Room

was to get everybody out of his house.

He had some really rapscallions living around that house.

♪ Give me one, two, three, Four, five, six, seven, Eight, nine, ten ♪

♪ Bottles of gin

So the drug problem just escalates around that Viper Room era.

And I remember one of the strange people

that was in that circle was Timothy Leary.

Here, in 1993,

we are creating a new language,

beamed around the world at the speed of light.

Not the greatest drug counselor in the world.

Look within. Know thyself.

We would go to Timothy's house sometimes after the Viper Room.

I remember Al Jourgensen was in town making a record,

and Gibby and Timothy Leary got, like,

this brain trust of acid.

Basically, Tim would test out whatever the new psychotropic drug

was being sent by either University of Berkeley,

or Sandoz Corporation from Switzerland,

and we would inject it.

And-- aah!

And Tim would just take notes, literally, like, in a lab coat.

Stick out your tongue.

And then, after about week two,

Gibby lost it on one trip,

and went into Tim's office, and peed all over his desk.

And so, he got thrown out of, like, the Tim Leary experiment.

There's something weird that goes on with people,

especially when you hang out with enablers.

Al's quite an enabler.

We smoked so much crack, Gibby was convinced he was covered in spiders.

So he went to my room to take a shower, and get rid of the spiders.

And then I started hearing gunshots.

So I came running downstairs, and there's Gibby naked,

with a fuckin' smoking gun, and half my tiles blown out

in the shower, because he was seeing spiders,

and he was shooting 'em.

And I had to replace the whole fuckin' bathroom.

The whole Ministry scene was awful for him.

We would practice, and when Gibby would show up,

he would be passed out in the door jamb

in between our studio and out in the hallway.

So it felt like we were spinning our wheels a lot.

Can you hold this for a second.

I would say it was probably more mutual than I quit.

I think those guys were getting sick of me

not liking what we were doing.

Gibby asked me, he goes, "What would you like to see happen?"

And I said, "Let's get back into a room

and write songs together."

Because at that time we were all passing

floppy disks around or whatever.

And I didn't like the touring options that we had.

I didn't like us playing the big places.

Does that show where indie rock is today?

Guys carrying around $100 bills?

This isn't indie rock.

What makes you think this is indie rock?

- Well, independent worm... - Corporate rock.

We're booked by William Morris.

We're on a major label.

We're as independent as Frank Sinatra.

Bands should evolve.

But I felt we were devolving into something

that was not as effective

as when people were right in front of us.

That kind of closeness.

They don't know if they're gonna get hurt.

They don't know if they're gonna catch on fire.

And it was really a pleasure talking

to you here, Mr. Ski Cap.

Doo doo-doo-loo-doo.

Doo-doo.

Paul was right to have been worried about Gibby.

I'd already felt that bite of heroin.

So yeah, Gibby was-- Gibby was using.

I equate it always with that Dr. Johnson quote.

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

John Frusciante, Bob Forrest, River Phoenix...

It's not like none of us didn't understand what we were getting into

in terms of certain drugs and such.

It was a bit of a question mark as to...

the future of the Butthole Surfers and...

Gibby and I ended up doing a record together.

And the band was called P.

♪ I finally talked to Michael Stipe ♪

♪ He touched me on my arm

Johnny played guitar.

Gibby obviously did his thing.

And they were playing a secret gig at the Viper Room.

River was hanging out with us and everybody

was doing hard drugs.

And then we went on stage and the song

that we were playing had his name in it.

♪ Him and River Phoenix

♪ Were leaving on the road tomorrow ♪

And when we looked down, he wasn't there. And then...

23-year-old Phoenix collapsed early

this morning and died a short time later.

It happened outside a West Hollywood nightclub.

Phoenix's friends say he had been acting strangely

shortly before he collapsed.

I don't know.

♪ I finally met old Michael Stipe ♪

♪ I met the girl in his video too ♪

So many people looked up to Gibby.

He could have influence that other people

couldn't have with these people.

And sometimes that influence could be good,

but sometimes it could be bad.

Gibby had an influence on Kurt Cobain too.

He could talk to Kurt in certain ways.

And Kurt was in rehab with Gibby.

Four days before he died.

There was an outdoor area with a seven-foot-tall

cinder block wall around the whole thing.

And I was alone out there with Kurt.

I started telling him about how

Anthony had been to the rehab

and he escaped by jumping over the wall.

Which was really ridiculous because you could just

go to the front door and go, "See you later."

And then Kurt left the rehab by jumping over the wall.

He felt like he failed Kurt, right?

That he couldn't convince him to stay

or to just hold on or just not listen to all the chatter.

And this gets really tragic,

these two deaths, River and Kurt.

I think Gibby carries a lot of that sadness, that tragedy,

because he did have a lot of influence on people.

That's probably his lowest point, that kind of era.

And ironically, it's when he has the hit song too.

Hi, I'm Kurt Loder with MTV News.

After 15 years of semi-underground renown,

Austin's Butthole Surfers have scored a commercial hit

with their single "Pepper" off the group's new album

Electriclarryland.

Really catapulted them in the mainstream.

Like I don't think anybody would have

ever imagined could happen.

Please welcome Butthole Surfers, kids.

♪ I don't mind the sun sometimes ♪

♪ The images it shows

♪ I can taste you on my lips

♪ And smell you in my clothes

We were in this studio

and Gibby came up with all those lyrics.

I remember him sitting in the other room

coming up with lyrics.

The lyrics were about my friends from high school

who died or were, you know, injured horribly.

♪ Tommy played piano like a kid out in the rain ♪

♪ And then he lost his leg in Dallas ♪

♪ He was dancing with a train ♪

This is the trestle

right next to Lake Highlands High School.

"Tommy played piano like a kid out in the rain,

"he lost his leg in Dallas, he was dancing with a train,"

well, he was a friend of Gibby's

and he was in a blackout one night.

Wandering around the trestle here and was hit by a train.

They called me in to do a solo,

guitar solo on that record.

And so I went in there and Gibby was still

singing lyrics, so I waited and waited,

and I think I waited like six freaking hours.

And finally it's done. It's like, okay, it's time.

And we're out of time, you get one take.

And then Gibby comes in after it's all done.

And he hated it.

And I can remember, it was like,

okay, Gibby, it's cracked the top ten.

Do you like the song now? And he goes, "No."

Okay, Gibby, it's number one. Now are you happy?

He's like, "No, it should have been number one-half."

You all right? Thank you very much.

Butthole Surfers, kids.

I kind of feel bad about that.

Yeah, that he thinks I didn't like that song.

That's-- I don't know how to respond to that.

It's like a marriage.

It takes a lot to keep a marriage going.

You know, we weren't cut out

for major label, I don't think.

We were signed by Hale Milgram,

who was a real music guy and a swell guy.

And then shortly after he signed, he's gone.

And in comes Gary Gersh.

And Gary Gersh didn't know what to do with us.

So they kind of left us alone to our own thing.

And then we came out with "Pepper"

and had a number one hit.

Gary Gersh calls us up to his office

to celebrate the gold record.

And he goes, "Hi, I'm Gary Gersh.

I just want to let you know

I really appreciate what you do."

I was like, wow.

This guy's all right after all, you know,

that's pretty cool.

You know, I was feeling all good about myself.

And then about five minutes later,

he comes over to me again and goes, "Hi, I'm Gary Gersh.

I just want you to know

I really appreciate what you do."

Oh, okay.

Next thing I know, you know, they're done with us.

Capitol Records held us hostage, saying,

"We're not going to release your next record,"

nor would they release us.

So we were trapped.

Then they, like, sat on us and smothered us for years.

Those were the worst days of our lives.

Thankfully, Hollywood came to the rescue

and, like, bought our contract off Capitol

and released the record we were working on,

what would become the Weird Revolution.

♪ I love the girls and the money ♪

♪ And the shame of life

"Shame Of Life," I didn't have anything to do

with the writing of that song.

That was Gibby.

- Have a terrific day. - And Kid Rock.

♪ Kid Rock's my motherfucking name, bitch ♪

♪ You know me, so pass the OE ♪

I've never worked with Kid.

Didn't he do that song with you?

Nope. I never worked with Kid Rock.

Why am I thinking that?

I don't know.

I think Gibby wants to write

the Kid Rock thing out of history.

I can get behind that.

Gibby just was in no state of mind

to make a record, I don't think.

I gotta ask some questions

about unpleasant shit.

Which would be what?

Well, you know, drug problems.

Yeah, yeah.

Like, how do you look back

on all that stuff now?

Saying that his drug problem destroyed the band

is probably a bit much. To be honest,

at that point, the band had been going on for a long time.

The ship might have not had anywhere to really go.

You know, maybe drugs were a product

of things being expired.

I saw the writing on the wall early,

and that's why I started producing.

Like, you know, I need an escape hatch.

Then Paul gets to, like, go on to produce.

Like, he did that, like, the Sublime record.

♪ Early in the morning

♪ Rising to the street

♪ Light me up that cigarette ♪

♪ And I strap shoes on my feet ♪

♪ Got to find a reason

♪ Reason things went wrong

♪ Got to find a reason why

♪ My money's all gone

That was a big thing in your life?

Yeah, that was my lottery.

I love the studio.

That's the one place where I can control

what's going on and once I step out the door.

During the making of our last album,

we were trying to make it work,

and we were in pretty good spirits.

He came into the control room and just started

chewing me out in front of everybody.

Our manager was there at the time,

and he was like, "Don't you leave on me!"

I thought he was going to beat me up,

and I had no earthly idea what I had done.

But what if he said, you know,

"I'm sorry about last time,

but can you give me another chance?"

That's hard to imagine.

He's not an apologizer.

Has he never apologized?

I can't remember a time.

I never thought about what regret means very much,

other than I've sure had plenty of them.

I was definitely not the son my mother wanted.

And I still feel bad about that.

She took down the pictures of me around the house,

you know, to where there was no more pictures

of her son anywhere.

And if her friends asked how I was doing,

she just wouldn't say anything.

That's got to hurt.

It did a little bit, but I deserved it, you know.

I was a disappointment to myself, too.

And she died before we had a number one hit song.

- Well, right-- - Right as it was breaking.

But by then she was in the hospital.

And she couldn't really--

No, she had other things on her mind at that point.

We probably should have walked away for a while.

We should have let Gibby get some help.

We should have let Paul process,

you know, his mom dying.

You know, there's a lot.

I can remember, you know, not seeing Gibby for a while.

Suddenly there's a knock on my front door,

and it was Gibby.

And I was just shocked as hell to see him, you know?

And he walks in and he looked like a skeleton.

I could see his pants and his shirt,

but I couldn't see anything underneath it, you know,

it was just like a skeleton.

And he was hungry, and he asked if I had any food.

And I said, well, you're welcome to whatever I've got.

And he went over the refrigerator and he was

literally eating ketchup out of the bottle.

And I just thought at that point, I was like,

man, this guy's not going to last much longer.

Can you name artists that were influences on you?

Got to go with Neil Young.

Neil Young. So what about Neil Young?

What spoke to you about him?

A record, Tonight's the Night.

Friend of mine who knows him really well,

I was talking to him today, and he goes,

he said, Neil's kind of scary.

♪ Well, he shot four men in a cocaine deal ♪

♪ And he left 'em lying in an open field ♪

Why did he love that record so much?

Oh, he used to, like, sing and quote

the: "Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.

Was he a heavy doper or was he just a loser?

He was a friend of yours." He used to quote that.

♪ Well, tell me more, tell me more, tell me more ♪

♪ I mean, was he a heavy doper or ♪

♪ Was he just a loser?

He tried to do his best but-- That's another one

he used to say, "He tried to do his best but he could not."

♪ Tried to do his best

♪ But he could not

What's your earliest memory?

Uh...

My earliest memory,

at least one of them, is...

on Modlin Street.

Imagine that, Modlin Street in Dallas, Texas.

And I was probably...

...four. I was in between our houses.

And our next-door neighbor

made me pull down my pants and he tried

to stick a Barbie doll up my ass.

He was stronger than me.

I didn't know what to do.

There was neighborhood awareness of this creep.

- There was? - Yeah.

Wait, you didn't tell your parents?

- I was four years old. - Right.

I didn't know what happened to me.

Dude next door,

he came and fucking stuck a Barbie doll up my ass

and then fucked me with his cock.

You can't help yourself.

Like, we only started talking

about real life once we got sober

and you joke about it a lot with the Barbie doll thing.

You know, you make light of it.

- You make light of it. - It's kind of funny.

We use humor to deflect, Bob.

But what does humor and shocking people do?

It gets you attention.

Gets you attention and keeps people away.

We found the place.

Yeah. In between the two houses.

And this is going on.

You're not making a sound?

You're not making any sound.

I was the dumb-- I was silent.

Uh...

- Like out of body. - For sure.

I could see my face.

And that Wire song.

Screaming rape really loud for some reason resonated with me.

And like, sometimes I'll just cling to a lyric, like a line,

I just isolate.

And I think that maybe my parents saw a profound change in me

and thought that maybe something might have happened

because when I was a child, I would scream out for my father

to, like, bring me a glass of water.

I did that, like, serially.

"Daddy, I want a glass of water."

And what would he do? He'd come in and be gentle and kind and...

Yeah, yeah.

I'm sorry what happened.

It's awful.

The relationship between you and Paul changed

because you went to L.A.

Is that fair to say?

Well...

It sounds like this is the first time

you're hearing that Paul felt abandoned.

David Morgan, he's...

Tom, here's the thing.

I don't think he's talked about this stuff.

You're probably going to need to get other people to talk

about the kind side of him.

He doesn't understand it.

Anyway.

I feel close, close to you.

So does John, so does Paul.

A lot of people feel close to you.

Do you feel close to them?

- Yeah. - Okay.

Yeah.

- No, I love my peoples. - Maybe you need to call Paul

and tell him you love him.

- Aw! - You do. You do.

I feel like I'm a survivor in that...

I became a father.

- Hey, buddy. - Hey.

It's my buddy. It's my buddy, Satchel.

Gibby really should be a dead man,

but because he met Missy,

because he had a son, it gave him a reason to want to live.

Otherwise he'd be another rock star

who partied too hard and died.

What do you know about my career as a rock star?

Not much.

I never thought that I'd be capable

of being a good parent.

But I'm a good daddy.

♪ God shed his grace on thee ♪

There's a lot to be said for maturing.

Gibby was really volatile

and really angry as a younger man.

♪ From sea to shining sea

Dad, you're a horrible singer.

That's the point.

I think as an older man and with a family,

I think he's found some peace.

Ah, Jesus!

That's my hope at least.

But Gibby isn't the only one who's found happiness.

I became happy when I met my wife, Susan.

I just never thought I could be a happy person.

I didn't even know what it really was.

I've always wanted to be normal, and I've always been

looking for normalcy until I met her.

And she's kind of normal.

This is my puzzle.

I've spent two months trying to accomplish this.

She's able to put up with me and keep me

straight and not too goofy.

Paul's a born dog lover, but I was a cat owner.

So now Paul realizes how wonderful a cat can be.

We are very happy together.

I met Craig in 1991.

He and I had talked about marriage

and I'm just kind of taking a punk rock approach,

saying we didn't need a document.

We considered ourselves married.

That was enough.

It wasn't till Craig became diagnosed

with a ultimately fatal brain disease

and that I realized legally I am--

That I'm...

just his roommate, just a friend.

Unless we get married.

At that particular window,

one could not get gay married in Texas.

It was a hassle, it really was.

But we found a way to get married.

By the time we got back to Texas,

we were kind of married under federal law,

but under Texas law, we weren't.

I love Texas. I'm Texan. I love being here.

But it hurts.

I know Craig would be here for me and I'm here for him,

but it's been incredibly hard to watch somewhat decay.

I guess I should take this opportunity

to say that I've recently been diagnosed

with end-stage lung disease.

I loved smoking cigarettes and every pack

says that it'll kill you.

I'm not stupid.

I knew what I was doing and I'm fine with it.

And I'm so blessed to have so many good friends

and to have been able to live such a cool life

and all the people I got to meet

and the shows we got to play, it was all worth it.

King is the most Zen Buddhist guy I ever met in my life.

I did come to believe that he was my brother

and he was my leader.

Paul is like a solid guy.

I can't believe I got to play drums in a band

with a guy that can play guitar like that.

That's fucking outrageous.

♪ Sittin' in a disco

Pinkus is funny.

I think of him as like,

the only bass player we ever found

that would put up with us.

I love Gibby Haynes.

He's the funniest

person I ever met.

I love him with all my heart.

I always have and I always will.

You look great, dude!

- Hug this out. - All right.

You brought the-- You brought the--

Yeah, the thing-ulele.

Yeah. Might as well. It's a recording studio.

The last person to play those drums

was Teresa on that tour we did.

It's a 125 and he whittled out the nut and set it up.

♪ The continent of Atlantis was an island ♪

♪ So great an area of land

♪ That from her western shores ♪

♪ Those beautiful sailors journeyed ♪

♪ To all corners of the earth ♪

♪ Let us rejoice, let us sing and dance ♪

♪ Ringing anew Hail Atlantis ♪

♪ Way down

♪ Below the ocean

♪ Where I wanna be she may be ♪

Nyuck, nyuck.

♪ Hello, Perry

♪ You think you're so fucking scary ♪

It's about coming of age.

It's about learning how to do it.

It's about learning how to experience things the way

they ought to be experienced.

It's about growing up.

It's about digging the shit off the floors.

It's about doing the things that you ought to do.

It's about being a butthole surfer.

It's about doing promotional work.

It's about-- It's about PR.

It's about all these things.

It's about loving yourself.

It's about loving your mum.

It's about loving your dad.

It's about doing the things.

It's about going to the go kart track.

It's about loving everything.

Your pop, your kitty, all the things.

The cat food, the little bits of crayons,

the melted pieces, the loving friends,

all the things you wish you had.

You're gonna make either a right

or a left or you're gonna go straight.

Yeah.