MONSTER MAGNET Mainman Contemplating Writing Autobiography

Sweden's Metalshrine last week conducted an interview with MONSTER MAGNET mainman Dave Wyndorf. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metalshrine: How much stuff was recorded [for the new CD]? Was it just the songs on the album or did you have like a ton of stuff and you picked from that?

Dave Wyndorf: I wrote like fifteen songs when I got back from England last year. We were under a deadline, of course, the mystery deadline that I didn't know. "Yeah, you can make the record whenever you want!" And I was like, "Sure, OK." "Well, if you want to have it out in 2010, you have to have it done immediately!" I was like, "What are you talking about?" "Yeah, you can make it whenever you want, but if you don't mind it coming out in late 2011." And I was like, "Fuck that shit! We're gonna have a record out in 2010!" I went in and wrote as fast as I could and it took about a week. Between Christmas and New Year's. It was quick! I kind of knew what I wanted to do, so that made it easy. I was like, "I'm gonna take very cool riff that I've ever learned and just turn it backwards!" What I wanted to do was make a record that we could play live real easily. You look around you and go, "What do I have to use here?" I'm really enthusiastic about making a record and trying to make it sound the best ever and come up with hairy bass lines and I want fuzz bass and I want old-school MAGNET shit but I'm gonna put a Strat band on the record, it's all gonna be Gibsons. All kinds of weird ideas like that! It's like from the mind of a teenager. "It's gonna really sound cool!" (laughs). That's what I was saying and it was almost like the material was second. That was the last thing I had to worry about. When we got in there, we did it really fast and we met the deadline and wrote the songs really fast and made demos of them. Two-minute demos. Intro, verse, chorus and maybe a midsection. Melody lines, no words. Brought it to the band and just sat there, "Try this three times, try this four times!" and everybody was just great. There are no dummies there and we got it together and those guys learned all the parts in six days and I was freaking out, so we moved to it right into the studio, recorded it, made some minor changes inside the studio, but really most of the time was just about getting sounds. It took about a month, but for all the time we were in there it was more nailing down specific guitar sounds. When you try to make a record and try to make a hard rock record that has so many different kinds of fuzz on it and you try to make that audible, it's one thing to make a cool rock record with all different fuzz, but I wanted people to be able to hear, "Look, there is a YARDBIRDS fuzz! There's a SABBATH fuzz!" Yeah, I want people to hear it. It's harder than it actually seems. But those guys played their ass off and it turned out pretty cool.

Metalshrine: I was reading an interview with Vince Neil and he was talking about his new book and he said that the reason for getting into music is "getting laid and drinking free beer." When you got into music, did you have those thoughts or was it just trying to be creative? When you're young, is that the main reason?

Dave Wyndorf: Yeah! What he's really saying is acceptance, you know. He's trying to be funny with the girls and the free beer, but yeah, totally! As a teenager you want girls to like you and you need an angle. I was a nerd, so I didn't have an angle. I basically think you want people to like you on your own terms and if you can't fit in traditionally with the terms that the school offers or society offers and you kind of have to go the rock and roll route where you can kind of make your own rules as you go along to find yourself. You redefine yourself, it's always been the biggest power in rock and roll, is that people can redefine themselves after the time that most people would give up on you. "This is who you are!" and it's like, "I'll show you! I'll go in like a mad scientist to reinvent myself!" The whole thing with girls and stuff was huge and has been huge my whole life with rock and roll. I always remember not being able to talk to anybody. I was completely shy and a complete nerd, but the rock and roll thing was like, "Ah, I'm meeting women! It's the best!"

Metalshrine: These days it seems like every rock and roller is writing their autobiography and all kinds of guys are coming out with their own stories. Have you ever thought of doing that? I mean, you must have led an interesting life so far?

Dave Wyndorf: Well, there's a couple of things that have kept me from doing that. One, a lot of people would come and kill me if I did it. If I'm really gonna tell the truth, it's gonna be some bad stuff. And two, I didn't want to embarrass my family and my daughter was really young. But now my daughter is 19, so I don't think I'm gonna surprise her, so I'm getting closer to actually writing the book. The other thing is that I want to do it well. I wanna learn how to write, so the past couple of years I've actually been learning how to write. Practicing myself and I don't think anybody's good at anything unless they do it for at least five years or ten years. So the last five I've been practicing and at one point I will do it.

Read the entire interview from Metalshrine.