Show & Tell - Ministry, a chat with Al Jourgensen

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION
AL JOURGENSEN, 11.28.04

There really is no short or simple way to introduce Al Jourgensen.

He's legitimized a genre of music, sold millions of albums, been nominated for a Grammy, tripped with Timothy Leary and shot up with William Burroughs, holds a Master's degree in History, expects to become a professor at the University level when he leaves the industry, kicked a multi-decade heroin addiction, produced Gwar's "The Horror of Yig" for "a large pepperoni pizza, a case of imported beer and a gram of bad coke," is an outspoken political activist and the inspiration for thousands of musicians and fans alike.

I could go on and on, but you're not here to listen to me.

Here's Al.

Show & Tell: Hey Al, its Scott Sisti from Show and Tell. How are you?

Al Jourgensen: What's up, man?

S&T: Not too much, you got some time for me?

Al: Yeah, a little bit.

S&T: You have an off day today?

Al: Yep, thank God.

S&T: There was supposed to be a show though, right? It got canceled or something?

Al: I'm not really sure. All I know is they told me I've got a day off so I'm enjoying it.

S&T: What you are doing on your day off?

Al: Sleeping.

S&T: (laughs) And press!

Al: Yeah, thanks a lot, guy (laughs).

S&T: Sorry, bro.

Al: (laughing) S'alright.

S&T: I've been a big fan for a long time, so it's a pleasure to get to talk to you.

Al: Well fire away.

S&T: Okay. You start this tour–and we all know you hate Bush–and you have a very specific agenda about trying to get people out there registered, trying to get people to vote, get (Bush) out (of office). Now the elections are over and he's back in. What happens now, what's your agenda now?

Al: It's the same agenda; educate people, make them aware, make them part of the process, and keep digging for inconsistencies in Republican policy, and hopefully they'll screw up enough that they'll impeach themselves in a couple of years. There's certainly been a precedent set before. Nixon won a second term, with a "mandate," as they say and he was impeached within a year. So, one can only hope.

S&T: Yeah, (they've been throwing that) word "mandate" around pretty loosely.

Al: Yeah, how 'bout it, y'know? 51 percent's a mandate now? Please. A pretty suspicious 51 percent at that. So, I'll leave it at that.

S&T: What happened? Has it occurred to you that (no matter what happens, Bush) is almost bullet proof?

Al: Yeah, that's all Karl Rove. Karl Rove is a Machiavellian genius. I mean, I almost have to tip my hat to him in his evilness. I find it pretty coincidental and amusing that all Bush talked about for the last week was how important it was to get over 50% when all the polls showed them neck-and-neck. Furthermore, all exit polling showed Kerry in the lead, all day long. If you went on Internet blogs, they interviewed people, they posted it all up on there, why would somebody come out of a voting booth and lie about who they voted for? And yet, all of a sudden the electronic returns come back in, and Bush is at his exact 51% percent? I mean, gimme a break. There's Stark County, Ohio, for instance, where they found a precinct that only had 600 people, yet Bush was accredited over 2000 votes.

S&T: I saw that.

Al: Yeah, so come on. We just need to dig a little deeper and we need to keep our eye on these bastards. My first thought was, "That's it Angie, we're moving to Canada." But somebody's got to stay here and mind the shop.

S&T: I had read a couple of different stories from Ohio, pretty much similar to the one that you just talked about. There's a movement now to do a recount in Ohio, obviously, not that anything is going to change.

Al: You never know.

S&T: I could stay optimistic, I suppose.

Al: The Republican Party has got themselves into so many scandals right now. Karl Rove is like the proverbial Dutch boy, with his finger in all the dikes, all the cracks in the dike. Eventually, the water is going to overrun him. Between Halliburton, or the Tom DeLay mess, with a Republican redistricting in Texas, you can just go on and on and on, let alone voting discrepancies. So, you never know what might spring. Somebody's just got to dig a little deeper.

S&T: And yet, here we are in part two—well, part three, actually. We put him right back in.

Al: Well, good for my career, bad for the country.

S&T: (Laughs) What is the connection with you and the Bushes? What's going on with that?

Al: I don't know, they just seem to really get my dander up, man, just their arrogance, their greed, the corruption. And now, we're losing lives, for a few extra billion dollars for Halliburton. And we're putting people in harm's way. We're pissing off the entire rest of the world. We're making things less secure. We're even more dependent on fossil fuels than ever right now. The education system's in shambles. The ecology is completely in shambles. I mean, what's to like about this guy?

S&T: I don't know. You'd have to ask people who voted for him. What did we underestimate the most, the Christian right? The values of American people? How much gay marriage scares the middle of the country?

Al: I think what we underestimated, in my opinion, is Republican hackers into the main frame (laughing). That's about the only thing I can see.

S&T: For me the scary part was the people who were like, "This is it for me for me, in order. I'm worried about the economy, terrorism and moral values." Moral values? You mean gay marriage? That's number 3? That's the third most important thing to you? That's more important to our discussions than education or the environment. Okay.

Al: We live in a very polarized country right now, with a lot of misinformation. Basically, newscasts are now just a matter of three minutes of spin to the left, three minutes of spin to the right, and the only thing that suffers is the truth. It's just a bunch of sound bytes, and cause de jour.

S&T: Are you optimistic? Do you think we can change the dissemination of information?

Al: No, I absolutely do think we could change. Otherwise I really would be moving out to some remote post in the Yukon with my wife or something then (laughs). No, I really do think—you have to remember that more people voted this election than ever before. And so, Kerry really had the second highest vote total of all time. There's a lot of pissed off people.

S&T: Do you think (Kerry conceded the election) too early? You think he should have stuck it out?

Al: I think the Democrats need somebody, like a Karl Rove, to fight fire with fire, as unfortunate as that may be. In an ideal world, I'd love to see Ralph Nader as our president. Or Vaclav Havel from Czechoslovakia, or a poet laureate or somebody with intelligence and compassion. But it's not an ideal world and all I know is that we gotta get these greedy oil bastards out of the White House. I mean, that's what they're funded by. And the whole world economy is based on fossil fuels and these are the few people that make the money on it, that are running America and it's turning this country, you know, the rich get richer, poor get poorer. They're completely committing genocide on the middle class, and people don't even realize this yet, while making us less secure because we have to deal with the Saudis and kiss their ass and do whatever the hell they want. It all starts with oil and these are the people that run this administration so that's why we got to get rid of them. And if it means hiring a Karl Rove type evil genius to get the Democrats back in power, not that they don't have their own baggage, but at least its different baggage. We really need to get out of this fossil fuel business, fast.

S&T: Do you think (the Democrats) have that in them? They always seem to strike back too late or too soft or too wishy-washy or something. They're always, "We're the intellectuals–we're going to take the high road," and it never works.

Al: I tell you what, if it's any consolation, we're not going to back down over the next four years. So, hopefully other people will be like-minded, hopefully people within the political framework itself will be like-minded and keep the anger that I have right now. I mean I went through a day of shock, a day of denial, a day of depression and then the anger was back tenfold.

S&T: Like cancer.

Al: Yep.

S&T: I know this isn't really about music but you've always been so honest and forthright about this. I feel like this needs to be a topic of conversation now that I've gotten the chance to talk to you.

Al Jourgense: Of course, cool, yeh.

S&T: I had read an interview that you'd done and in the (feedback section for the piece, some of the comments from kids were), "Well, I don't know about all that political stuff. I don't really pay attention," and I wanted to track them down and shake them. What do you mean you pay no attention? You're 22 years old, this affects you.

Al: Exactly. It affects somebody like that a lot more than us old fucks who just don't have a real long time to live (laughs).

S&T: I understand. It's a frustrating situation. Though it encourages me that so many kids turned out to vote this time around. I think that's a positive thing.

Al: Y'know, beyond that even, its just to get them accustomed to being part of a civic process, of a political process, to be educated on what that process is. Whether the vote didn't come out the way that we wanted it to this time, a lot more kids are educated and will vote again next time, I hope. That's what I am going to be working for the next four years.

S&T: Now will you try to crank out as many albums during (Bush's second) administration as you can or what?

Al: Oh, absolutely. These guys piss me off to the point of being a workaholic, man.

S&T: Tell me about making this album. Obviously Paul Barker wasn't with you and I'd read some comments that people were worried the album might be missing something but this album, to me, is definitive Ministry. Do you have any comments for the naysayers or people that thought maybe…

Al: Well, you know, the loss of Paul Barker was neither here nor there for me. What was the real key was the loss of my heroin addiction and I was able… Y'know, you gotta remember I hired Paul into the band. I'd already done records before him and will continue to do records after him. So that didn't really slow me down. I respect his reasons for leaving and that's fine and good luck. But all this worry and furrowed brows by the kids about what was gonna happen certainly didn't affect me. What I was really happy about was that, I no longer had the five hundred pound gorilla on my back and was able to actually get stuff down again and being reenergized and healthy.

S&T: How is recovery, how's that going?

Al: It's awesome; It's going on 3 years now.

S&T: Congratulations.

Al: Thanks.

S&T: That's spectacular. Can you do a comparison of what was it like before to what it's like now?

Al: Sure, it's very simple. It's like this record was the first record we did like jamming in a room as a band as opposed to just getting a bunch of sound bytes, typing it all into the computer, which was Paul's job, and pacing back and forth waiting for the computer to crash. This was a lot more immediate and a lot more organic and a lot more fun and energizing.

S&T: Moving forward, you'd follow suit with the same process?

Al: This was my strength in the band, was to like write the songs on a guitar and to turn the amps up to 11 and to plough forward. Paul's strength was the meticulous like kind of computer programming stuff and all that. So yeah, I am going to play towards my strength, of course.

S&T: How about writing? Lyrically do you have any process that you go through? Is it the same process? Does it just kinda fall into place?

Al: The only sure fire process that I have is that I absolutely have no process. Each song is a different journey. I mean some songs I write on drums, others I write the lyrics for first, others you come up with a riff in your head. There is no process. Sometimes you might hear a sample that elicits some lyrics. I mean every song is a different journey.

S&T: Do you have anything outside of the music that inspires you lyrically? The example that comes to mind is Warp City.Was that, did you see a news story that kind of influenced that?

Al: Exactly. That was a 1950s Border Radio tape on a reel to reel that somebody's grandfather had in the attic and I heard that and just went, you know what, it ain't much different today. It's a song about misogyny obviously and about, uh, pretty much, y'know, southern culture if you will.

S&T: Right, (a culture) you moved into.

Al: Of course, well somebody's got to sleep behind enemy lines.

S&T: (laughs) What's the climate like where you are, politically? I don't want to jump back to politics but…

Al: Actually El Paso, where I live, any true Texan will probably tell you that we don't want them stinking fucking hippies as part of our state (laughs). Because I'm right on the border of Mexico and New Mexico and Texas, all three of them I can see from my backyard. So, it's actually a pretty liberal community. El Paso certainly is Bush country; I mean Kerry country, not Bush country.

S&T: Interesting, I always thought that they were all hardliners down there.

Al: Well, you get around towards the center of the state and it is, yeah.

S&T: Right. Somebody had played a copy of the album for me, this is months ago, that started with a snippet of (the Carl Orff orchestral composition) "Carmina Burana" and then moved to the national anthem and then there were sound bytes of Bush. My copy doesn't actually have that same opening.

Al: Yeah, "Carmina Burana" people got upset and threatened to sue us if we didn't take that off because it was being used for political purposes. I mean they'll use it on horror movies or use it for whatever but "not for political purposes." So whatever. Yeah, some legal thing that had to be worked out that, y'know, I really paid no attention to. We just, y'know, tried to stay out of court and keep the record out there.

S&T: Right. So they pulled that prior to the release date?

Al: Well no, the first batch actually has the "Carmina Burana" on it and then after that it's the Star-Spangled Banner instead, that version.

S&T: And then there's the Bush samples. Lemme ask you this, was it hard to not shower this thing with sound bytes. I mean (Bush has) so many great sound bytes…

Al: I could have done a lot more than I actually did. I sat through about a hundred hours of that idiot's speeches. That was the least exciting aspect of making this record (laughing) was to sit there in front of a computer screen downloading his stupid ass speeches from whitehouse.gov. Yeah, (laughing) that was pretty gross.

S&T: So you've been doing this for, what, you've got about 20 years in?

Al: 23.

S&T: That's amazing.

Al: Yep.

S&T: That's an incredibly long time. It's hard to imagine current or new bands sticking around for another 23 years. How do you see the state of music and maybe why like longevity just doesn't even exist anymore. These bands just fizzle out, there is just no…

Al: Well, first of all, there's no artist development anymore. I mean they sign you for an immediate hit and if you don't have an immediate hit, you are immediately shuffled around to another label and this and that or dropped. I mean they just want bottom line results because it's all owned by major corporations and bean counters. There is no artist development anymore. We've circumvented that a lot of the times by starting our own labels or doing other projects and this and that so I think there's ways around it. But to be honest with you, I really don't know the state of music today in a sense other than its financial bombing right now. I think a big part, they are talking about downloading is the big evil. Well you know what? Back when FM radio came on, that's how far back I go, and they were playing rock blocks, I couldn't afford LPs back then so I would tape the whole record off of a station. That's basically downloading. The reason that the record business is in such financial straits is because they sign shitty acts and make everything mediocre and obvious. That's my take on the whole thing.

S&T: When I was growing up we used to just trade cassette tapes.

Al: Exactly. Well, that's downloading, I hate to tell you. And that was great because I couldn't wait to get the money to buy the real album, as opposed to just having a tape with some Sharpie on it saying what was on it, I wanted to get all of the information and that made me more of a fan.

S&T: The story that's always interesting to me is how Metallica probably gets signed and makes it in the first place because their bootlegged tapes made it out to the east coast. And I don't know, maybe sometimes you just forget where it came from.

Al: Yeah, I'm a big proponent of that. To me it just builds more interest in the band. I'm certainly not one who is gonna hold the press conference about royalty rates and suing people for bootlegs and all this other shit. It's just like, look, the point is they're talking about you and they enjoy your music. That can only be a good thing.

S&T: And like you said, that's under the assumption that what you put out there is an actual quality product because what you get a lot of now is an album that maybe has one song, two songs on it that are good and then everything else is filler, all crap.

Al: Yep.

S&T: And the labels become ticked, because kids don't want to buy 12 tracks of shit? They just want, it's, "Give me 2 bucks, I'll buy the two songs that I like and leave me alone."

Al: Yep.

S&T: And if (the record industry doesn't) change the model, it's just gonna get worse.

Al: That's right, that's right. But I still look at it from a very old school perspective that it's a snap shot in your life, that's what a CD or an album is. It encapsules the time and your surroundings at that particular time of what you were into. And I like to make an entire album like a photo album of that time instead of just one Polaroid (laughs); you know what I'm saying?

S&T: Yeah, that's excellent. Actually, I told a good friend of mine that I was going to be talking to you today and he's like, "Ministry! That brings back memories. I remember exactly where I was the first time I heard Stigmata."

Al: Cool.

S&T: He was like, "I remember exactly where I was." To him it was like the Kennedy assassination. (Laughter)

Al: (laughs) Awesome.

S&T: Well, I don't want to take up too much of your day off. Thanks for taking the time out to talk to me. Just an absolute pleasure and the new album really is just fuckin' amazing.

Al: Well, thanks a lot. I think you're going to like the show too. The band is tight as hell and just kick ass. Everyone that has seen this tour has told me that it's the best Ministry sound in like ten, twelve years.

S&T: Well that's about how long it's been since I saw you live so I'm looking forward to it.

Al: Awesome.

S&T: Alright. Thank you very much, Al.

Al: Bye.

interview by scott sisti