MONSTER MAGNET Mainman Talks About Being Addicted To Prescription Drugs; Songwriting Process

I Heart Guitar recently conducted an interview with MONSTER MAGNET mainman Dave Wyndorf. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

I Heart Guitar: It's been a long time since you've toured Australia, and a while since you've put out an album. What prompted the forthcoming Oz tour?

Wyndorf: It's been 10 years. What prompted it was me trying to make up for lost time. I lost us some time in the last 10 years. We usually tour for two years off a record, but for "Monolithic Baby" we only did one, so we didn't make it down to Australia again, for reasons that were totally my fault. I got horribly addicted to this terrible drug called Benzodiazepine, which I took for sleep. It's pretty embarrassing that after years of being very good with drugs and stuff, I get addicted to a prescription drug. Unbelievable. But long story short, it put me down. Like, really put me down — life-threatening and the whole bit.

I Heart Guitar: So was it the pressure of touring and the lack of sleep?

Wyndorf: Sleep. Totally. I mean, there's nothing pressured about touring, except for the fact that you never get enough sleep. At least, I didn't. And I never realised just how wacky you go when you don't get sleep. You really go crazy. It wasn't as easy as 'I need to sleep so let me lay down.' I would lay down and not go to sleep. So as a result I would just get up and continue on with my life. And it drove me nuts. So then I got the pills and everything was cool until it wasn't cool any more. There are certain things in life, natural functions, that if you rely upon an artificial remedy, you're gonna pay for it. And I did. And now that that's under control I'm like, "Let's go!" I had to be careful about what I promised I was going to do until I got my feet wet again, so that's what I did.

I Heart Guitar: Talk us through your songwriting process. I worry about asking this question because it can seem so generic but everyone has a different answer.

Wyndorf: No, man. I love listening to answers and I love to hear how people write songs. I write 'em with a drum machine or some sort of drum pattern. If it's a really hard rock song with a '70s feel, a hard rock combo feel, I won't go crazy on the drum machine, I'll just use the thing for a tempo. Then the ideas I have about drums are all in my head anyway, so I don't need to program the drum machine that hard. What I'll use it for is sometimes accents and tempo, and that's mainly so I can play it for the band so they'll get an idea of where I'm coming from, rather than have me start totally from scratch and explain it. They enjoy it that way. Now, if it's something more poppy or like a standard rock and roll song, then I'll program the drums because there's not a lot of fills in the songs and I can actually program the drums to nail exactly what I wanted. So depending on what type of song it is, more or less of the drum machine, and always something to keep tempo. For recording I have one of those real amateur-hour things, a little Korg D 1600 MK2, and it's good enough. It's great. You can put 16 tracks down but on my demos, I don't usually go over 8 or 9 tracks, and it's fine.

Read the entire interview from I Heart Guitar.