GWAR Frontman Talks About Return Of SLEAZY P. MARTINI

Smartass Radio recently conducted an interview with GWAR frontman Dave Brockie (a.k.a. Oderus Urungus). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Smartass Radio: So Sleazy P. Martini [GWAR's manager] is back. How did that happen?

Brockie: Well, um, I guess it was about 8 years ago. I guess it was after the "We Kill Everything" record. We realized that we were basically never going to get anywhere except the same old treadmill were always on, if we had every time we went on tour and every time we wrote an album we had 18 extra characters in addition to the main GWAR ones. So basically you know, and all the people, like Chuck, who played the Sexocutioner, and Don, who played Sleazy P. Martini, and Danielle, who played GWARwoman, they were kind of ready, they sensed this, and they were ready to do other things. So at that point we moved back to more of, just a kind of more focusing on the band and the characters directly involved in being the members in GWAR, and it was kind of a rebirth for us, it really gave us a lot of momentum, and we found that when we did that we were able to focus more our music a lot more, and that kind of lead to a real rebirth for GWAR. But we still like to bring the old characters back, you know, we just don't want em all at once. And Don has always stayed close to the Slave Pit, even after he wasn't touring with us anymore, he was always in here helping us with construction projects cos he's a fucking amazing sculptor, and it was just a matter of time until we got around to saying, "Hey, come on, Don." Everybody loves fucking Sleazy P. Martini, he's arguably the most popular character, even though he hasn't been on tour in 10 years, still, really he's definitely one of the most popular characters GWAR ever created. And like all the characters, Sleazy is a reflection of the person who plays the character, and Sleazy is really a good reflection of Don's extremely strange, fucked up personality. We decided this was the year, well, we badgered him for years about it, but this year he finally decided, "What the hell, I'm gonna go out there," and I think it actually had a lot to do with the fact that he just needed the money.

Smartass Radio: Whatever works. Sleazy is just hosting the show? I've never even seen Sleazy with you guys.

Brockie: Yeah. It's amazing. GWAR's been around for so long now, and it's become such a fixture in our culture. That we have a lot of fans now, who really don't even know much about GWAR before "Violence Has Arrived". We play songs off "Scumdogs" and "America Must Be Destroyed" and they don't recognize them. But if we play "War Party" or "Beyond Hell", they're like singing every word. So yeah, there's a lot of guys out there — guys and gals — and grandmothers, and babies, who have never beheld the majesty of Sleazy P. Martini singing "Slaughterama", and that's just a moment that I am really looking forward to, when Sleazy retakes the stage and reclaims his glory, people are going to go fucking apeshit. It's more than just throwing Sleazy in there, Sleazy is in many ways the focal point of the entire show, the show that we're doing on the Electile Dysfunction tour, is an attack on the electoral process and politics in general, it's a familiar target for GWAR, and it's one that people can't seem to get enough of, because you know I think people hate politicians more than they hate lawyers, and especially — most politicians are lawyers, so they're doubly hated. Sleazy basically, as he goes on this tour, he declares the election completely invalid, and he's gonna make the people vying for the presidency fight to the death in some type of gladiatorial combat arena, which we will be providing every night on stage, and then no matter who wins he's going to have them killed, and then just claim all the power for himself anyway.

Read the entire interview from Smartass Radio.