MINISTRY's JOURGENSEN Discusses Upcoming Solo Album, Other Projects; Audio Available

Brett Milano of RockBand.com recently conducted an interview with Al Jourgensen, the "musical terrorist " behind MINISTRY, REVOLTING COCKS, and many edgy solo projects. The entire 16-minute chat can be streamed using the audio player below. It is also available in text format at this location. A couple of excerpts from the interview follow.

RockBand.com: What sort of indoctrination do you give when musicians come into one of your bands?

Jourgensen: Basically, when we do rehearsals, it's boot camp, man. You eat, sleep, and s**t MINISTRY. Okay? You rehearse sixteen hours a day, and then you drink the other eight. [laughs] It's pretty much like literally going to boot camp, only with alcohol. So if you can imagine that. We hole ourselves up. We usually rehearse in this place where we go out in the middle of the desert out here in El Paso, Texas and you just eat, drink, and sleep it for a month. It's a four-week training program and you gotta be pretty good to get through that. I'm pretty much a drill sergeant when it comes to that stuff. Like when Joey Jordison from SLIPKNOT toured with us, uh [he was] literally crying after two days. Just like, "Oh, this sucks." But afterwards he was like, "Man, that was awesome." Because then, when you get it so ingrained into your head, a month of sixteen hour rehearsals, you go on stage and there's nothing that could happen that would be a shock. There's nothing that you can't play through or work through. We used to even have f**kup practices. We'd spend one day a week just having roadies go on and purposely unplug stuff. [laughs] And make sure that we could pretty much handle any situation. It just makes it a lot easier when you actually tour that it's really second nature by then, you know?

RockBand.com: That's great. So, from the sound of things, not having MINISTRY anymore hasn't had any effect on how busy you are.

Jourgensen: No, it's actually worse now. So, so much for retirement. [laughs] I shouldn't say worse. It's better. I've just got so many projects going on. Between the all the 13th Planet stuff and I'm doing a solo record completely different from MINISTRY.

RockBand.com: Really?

Jourgensen: It's really almost kind of pop-y, acoustics and synths and orchestras. More like the old THE THE songs, or Nick Cave kind of stuff. There's absolutely no metal on there at all. And I'm working with Mark Thwaite who's playing guitar for Peter Murphy right now, but he's also been with MISSION UK and also was Tricky's guitar player. And the two of us are doing this solo album for me. Plus I've got REVCO [REVOLTING COCKS] on tour right now that I've gotta do three shows — L.A., Chicago, New York. I'm also getting this entire MINISTRY back catalogue together for future release dates. I'm updating them and doing remixes and stuff like that. And we've got other people that book my recording studio as well. We just had a project, uh, Sara Green, this girl out of Boston that sounds very PORTISHEAD-like. It's really cool. So there's always something going on here at the compound.

RockBand.com: When MINISTRY did the "Cover Up" album, it's coincidentally, I'm sure, but three of those songs are also in "Rock Band". So it was kind of nice to see there was a linkup there. Are you the kind of guy that will blast those classic rock songs when nobody's looking?

Jourgensen: Not even when nobody's looking. When everybody's looking. [laughs] I love that stuff. I grew up on that stuff. Our individual, our take on it from MINISTRY is it's fun to do. We have a gas with it. Everyone's like, "Well how did you pick the songs?" I'm like, "Well, we drank a lot of wine and beer and liquor and sat around and reminisced about songs that you knew when you grew up." It wasn't anything like we sat there and really scoured this list or anything. It was like whatever we were jammin' on while we were drunk. [laughs] It was pretty cool. And a couple of 'em happened by accident. Like "What A Wonderful World" was literally an accident that happened at a party that was over at the guest house where we're at. There was a party there. And there's an out of tune upright piano there. And we had a little limited PA system. And we kept the original piano and the original vocal, both one take with a party going on behind us in the middle of the whole thing. A lot of that stuff was just circumstance. My whole point of that record was just to remember that MINISTRY also rocked. We weren't all just politics and shaking our fist in the air against Republicans and conservatives and all that. It's like, you know what? We're also a rock band. And we have fun too. I know REVCO picks up a lot of that where people know we have a sense of humor and all that and we're a fun band. But people started getting with MINISTRY like, "Okay, enough already, okay?" So it was nice to go out on that note of just a party record.

RockBand.com: I wanted to ask, when you started doing industrial-type stuff, it was the '80s and a lot of the tools people have now didn't even exist then. So how much of a nightmare was it to get the sounds in your head and get them to exist in real life?

Jourgensen: To me it wasn't a nightmare at all. It was exciting. It was cool. It was like, nobody was doing this stuff. We'd go out with a little portable Sony Nagra and go to factories and stuff and take noises. And sit outside a train tracks and wait for a train to go by and get the wheels going and all that. We did a lot of on-site recording and stuff like that. Which now is just, you hit a button and you come up with a sample. You just tell the computer what you want and it's there. But back then it was kind of fun. It was kind of like half being an archeologist and half being a musician. [laughs] To me that was a gas. It wasn't a nightmare at all. And all the editing stuff that you can do on Pro Tools or so much different software right now. What used to take me two or three weeks, now you can do in about two or three hours. But back then it was fun. We didn't know any better. Hell, we were just hillbillies with samplers.

RockBand.com: So it was kind of more fun when it wasn't as easy to do, when you had to do all that kind of legwork?

Jourgensen: Exactly. Another thing, if you listen to music today, this is the interesting paradox that goes on here is that, back then there was very little equipment and yet every band sounded different. Nowadays every band sounds the same even though there's a ton of equipment. It doesn't really make sense to me, but whatever. That's what I'm seeing anyways.

Read the entire interview from RockBand.com.

Al Jourgensen interviewed by RockBand.com (click on player below to launch audio):