Publication: Rolling Stone
Date: May 2, 1996
Author: Jancee
Dunn
Gibby Haynes, the hedonistic Texan and ranting frontman for the noisy and cheerfully perverse Butthole Surfers, has made an art of being a drunken and disorderly redneck prone to onstage antics such as breaking bottles on his head and firing a shotgun above his audience. The Buttholes, pioneers of the indie-rock underground who have been pushing the boundries of good taste since 1981, bring us an album, the right tasty Electriclarryland.
JD: What's the best rumor
about yourself that you've ever heard?
Gibby: Shit. Mm...that I was a bad
fuck! [Roars with laughter] Of course, only a rumor
[laughs].
JD: What albums do you
thing everyone should own?
Gibby: Let's see. Probably Fleetwood
Mac's Rumors and Surgical Penis Clinic's first record.
JD: That runs the whole
spectrum of music. What is something you would never do?
Gibby: Oh, man. I've
done so much weird shit that the mind just goes! [Laughs] I'd never eat an
entire scab. Although it's OK to eat half a scab.
JD: Why did you have to
change the new album's name from Oklahoma! to
Electriclarryland?
Gibby: I think Rodgers and Hammerstein were really on our shit
about it. I don't know what the deal was; they were just thinking there was some
kind of conflict. I think Kenny G could have called his record Oklahoma! but not
the Butthole Surfers.
JD: Tell me how you first
met Johnny Depp, who is a member of your side project P.
Gibby: I met him at a
Halloween party in Austin [Texas].
JD: What were you dressed
as?
Gibby:
Gibby Haynes. I had puffy cheeks and a piglike nose, and I was drunk! So
this guy comes up to me and goes, "Hey, man, you're Gibby, right? Man, 'Jesus
Built My Hotrod' is one of my favorite songs." I was like, "Oh." I was doing
that I'm-really-cool kind of thing. I glance over, and I go, "Hey, aren't
you...?" And he says, "Yeah."
JD: Give me an NC-17
rated story about Ministry's Al Jourgensen.
Gibby: One time we spent a good eight
hours doing nothing but making up fake headlines concerning the whereabouts, the
existence, the origins, the history, the future of clear spiders-CLEAR SPIDERS
FOUND IN THE SCALP OF AN OLD LADY!-- for eight hours. When we finally came out
of it, we were just dying laughing. I've had some good times with that
guy.
JD: True or False: You
were a business major in college.
Gibby: Yeah. Accounting and
economics.
JD: You were a basketball
player, too, right?
Gibby: Yes, I was captain of the basketball team. And I was
president of a fraternity. It was kind of done as a joke, but it was a beautiful
thing. I probably make the power move to be president because the presidency
came with a cannon operated by real shotgun shells, and I was into this
exploding thing, I'd fire it off at, like 4 in the morning and wake up the
entire campus.
JD: When was the last
time you shot some hoops?
Gibby: I was always a real good shot.
I may still have records in high school, but I made, like, 80 percent free
throws and 50,60 percent field goals and...what was the question? I was
bragging. Oh, when was the last time I shot hoops. Oh! Lollapalooza II, the one
Ministry played on. And Pearl Jam. Those guys in Pearl Jam were playing
basketball at the gym near the dressing room, and I was like [slurs], "Hey!
Gimme the balll!" And I remember I just totally fell flat on the face, and these
guys were looking at me, going, "Oh, God." I was just so
pitiful.
JD: Give me a weird fan
encounter.
Gibby: Oh. Oh. Oh. Besides the obvious? There have been some real
tragedies. Um. Oh! I know a good one. I met Ellen Barkin after the Academy
Awards a couple of years ago. She found out I was in the Butthole Surfers, and
she said that when people asked her 3-year-old son what his favorite group was,
he's say it was the Butthole Surfers, imitating his mother. It was really funny
because she had on kind of a metal chain-mail gold dress. I was like, "Helen" -
I was calling her Helen - I said, "Helen, that is such a beautiful dress. My mom
used to have a purse like that." So I'm facing her, and she's sitting down, and
she lifts up the front of her dress and goes, "Yeah, it's neat material." So
there's this light that came from over my shoulder and went right smack dab onto
her bare crotch. I go, "Helen, man, I fully saw your vagina." [Barkin's
publicist counters that Barkin was, in fact, wearing
underpants.]
JD: And how did she
react?
Gibby: Oh, she laughed. She said, "I hate that
word."
JD: What the first rock
show you ever saw? Do you remember?
Gibby: Shit, yeah. It was John
McLaughlin and Mahavishnu Orchestra, then Dr.John, then the Allman Brothers,
just after Eat a Peach came out. I saw a bunch of cool shit, man. I saw Elton
John when he just rocked butt, when it was really street, hip people going to
see Elton John. But the McLaughlin show was pretty amazing because it got out at
3:30 in the morning. You know how they don't let 'em go past 11 nowadays? I just
came out of that place, and there my father was, waiting to drive me home. My
dad waited out there for three and a half hours.
JD: Was he really
mad?
Gibby: No. No! He's, like, the nicest guy in the
world.
JD: What's the best
advice you dad ever gave you?
Gibby: Oh, boy. [Chuckles] He
stressed a lot over the years to just be yourself. That actually had a lot of
effect on me.