July 23rd, 2009
Interview: The Jesus Lizard’s David Yow
As we told you about, quite excitedly, the other day, legendary ’90s noise-rock quartet the Jesus Lizard is bringing its reunion tour to Philly, playing the Starlight Ballroom on November 18th. I’ve spoken to frontman David Yow a few times over the years — including for a 2007 PW piece I wrote about Qui, one of his post-Lizard music projects — and I caught up with him again over the phone the other day from his home in Los Angeles to talk about the Jesus Lizard’s re-formation:
When we’ve talked in the past, I remember you saying that there was no way the Jesus Lizard would ever reunite — mostly because you didn’t think [drummer] Mac [McNeilly] would do it. And you said the same thing about Scratch Acid, and then Scratch Acid did that little reunion in ‘06…
Well, I think that doing the Scratch Acid thing helped me learn to quit saying never, because I used to say never all the time and I think that it’s bitten me in the ass a few times and made me look kinda foolish. I’m not even certain how this came about. I guess [guitarist] Duane [Denison] had played with Mike Patton, and Mike was curating All Tomorrow’s Parties in England and he asked Duane if we could get our shit together to play ATP. So there was e-mail going around and stuff…and Mac said he was into it, but there wasn’t time from the point that Mac said okay until the ATP thing, so we just kinda blew it off. And then Touch & Go started talking about wanting to do these reissues [of the first four Jesus Lizard albums] with all this extra stuff and we thought, “Well, what the fuck? Okay, let’s do some shows.” And originally it was just gonna be like three or four shows and it’s built up into a total of 35 or 40.
So far you’ve been mostly doing these festival shows and the dates have been spread out. Are you looking forward to the fall when you’ll be playing more regularly, more night-in-and-night-out, and touring in a van or a bus or whatever with those other guys after all this time?
Umm…[laughs]. I am. I don’t know. Even when it really hits, like in October and November, when we’ll be doing several club dates in a row in the U.S., I still don’t think it will be like the old days because I don’t think we’re gonna be spending as much time in a van with really long drives. I think there’s a better possibility of the occasional rental equipment and airports, that sort of thing. And also, Mac doesn’t drink or smoke anymore, so we won’t be getting drunk in the van all day long like we used to do [laughs].
How is the relationship now between the four of you?
Umm…I don’t think either fraternally or with the band, I don’t think anything has really changed. I hadn’t seen Mac in 12 years and hadn’t talked to him in about 10 years, but once we saw each other, it was like nothing had happened. He’s just as wacky, just as nice, just as care-free, just as kick-ass on drums as he ever was.
When did you first get together again to play?
We went and practiced for the first time in January in Nashville, and we e-mailed back and forth and made a list of 29 songs that we were thinking we would do, and I went back and listened to those songs.
What struck you the most, listening back to the old songs?
The thing that struck me most was…I hadn’t listened to any of that stuff in a really, really long time, and although not all of it is recorded necessarily in a way I would consider perfect, I was kinda struck how good some of the shit is, and I never thought that way before.
Really? Did you feel like it had been so long since they were written and recorded that in a way it didn’t seem like it was you, since you’ve changed as a person since then?
As far as me feeling like that’s me, I dunno, it’s a little disembodying to…I guess there was some weird separation. It’s been so long, but I felt much more objective than usual. When I was initially listening to it, it was more like…yeah, objective is the word. I really sort of stepped back from it and listened to it impartially.
Do you think that the Scratch Acid reunion in any way planted the seeds for the Jesus Lizard reunion?
There could have been a little bit of seed-planting. I can’t speak for [Scratch Acid and Jesus Lizard bassist] David [Wm. Sims], but I think he’d concur that both of us had a lot more fun doing the Scratch Acid stuff than we’d anticipated.
Really?
Yeah. I mean, I’m not sure how much I was looking forward to that or not, but I think with Scratch Acid, all four of us are better than when we were doing it the first time. Even with the Jesus Lizard, we’ve made more steps and gotten better at what we do than we used to be.
After the Jesus Lizard broke up, it seems like you made a point of not starting up another band — you just did some part-time music projects…
Well, after the Jesus Lizard broke up I really didn’t wanna be in a band again. I got a job as a freelance photo retoucher. I was making up to $200 an hour and I was goin’, “This is pretty nice, this is a lot of fun and I work from home.” I figured I would just do that. And then the Qui thing came about. I think we covered all of that the last time we talked. With Qui it was just so much fun hanging out with those guys and we kinda clicked and I didn’t feel like it…obviously it was in a similar vein to the crap I’d done in the past, but I felt like it was enough of a departure that it was fair game.
I guess the conventional wisdom is that the Jesus Lizard broke up for a few reasons: After Mac left in ‘97 it wasn’t the same, and you had kind of a crappy experience with Capitol Records. Would you also say it had kind of run its course creatively by the end?
Well, that’s true, sure. It’s funny, you know, sometimes it’s a little bit of a situation where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Like with any band, if you kind of don’t evolve then people rag on you, and if you do, then they rag on you. The thing was, we contractually had an obligation with Capitol to do two more records. When we signed to Capitol, I even told the president of the company, “We’re not gonna sell any records.” And he said, “Ohhhhh I don’t agree David, I think it’s going to go really well!” And then after the second record came out and it didn’t sell, they said, “Okay, you can go.” I called our booking agent/manager and said, “I quit.” After Mac left, it was just a job. It was still fun writing songs. Sort of. Without Mac it was missing too much.
There’s been so many reunions the past several years — did you worry about being “just another band that’s reuniting”?
Yeah, that’s actually the way I felt way before we started doing this. It’s become such a trend, having old guys do music they wrote when they were young guys. But at the same time, I felt like the other three guys certainly wanted to do it and I’m not in a position to veto it. If 75 percent of them wanna do it and it’s the real, original band, then what the hell? And I gotta admit, once we started talking about it and I started finding out some of the guarantees we were getting, I was going “Woooow!” The last year-and-a-half has been a real financial bummer, so this one’s gonna be okay.
Some bands that reunite want to have new material to play because they’re tired of some of the old stuff or whatever — are you cool with just playing the old songs?
Yeah, I kinda like that. There’s been talk of maybe trying to write new stuff. I don’t know how likely that is. I think it’s pretty difficult considering David’s in Brooklyn, I’m in Los Angeles, Mac’s in Evanston, and Duane’s in Nashville. I don’t think that’s very conducive to collaborative stuff.
Yeah, you’d really have to want to do it to make it happen.
Yeah. I don’t [laughs].
Did you miss performing those old songs in the years after the Jesus Lizard broke up?
Umm, no, not really. It is funny — when I think of songs like “Bloody Mary” and “Blockbuster” that are on the first record, we played just about 1,000 shows, and then with recording and practicing, we probably played those songs 10,000 times. There are definitely particular songs…I got pretty choked up a couple times when we’d do “Nub” or “Seasick” or “Monkey Trick.” I don’t know if I missed playing them, but being back together with the guys in a room and doing them for the first time with Mac since 1997, it was kind of emotional. And the shows have been pretty emotional — old friends who were at the shows. I cried for the first 10 minutes.
It must be weird to look out into the crowd and see some people who used to come to all the shows back in the day, who you haven’t seen in more than a decade.
It is kinda surreal. And it’s cool also that folks who never got to see us are there. And it’s also strange to me that I think we’re bigger now than we ever were, and I don’t really know what to attribute that to. I dunno if it’s the Internet and YouTube or word of mouth or time passing, or what.
What are your plans after this reunion tour comes to an end in November?
I’ll probably continue the photo retouching, probably continue on with Qui. Part of the reason I moved to L.A. is that I had done a little bit of acting in Chicago, and I’d like to do more. This year already I’ve done three little tiny movies and I’d like to continue doing that. I’m getting my reel together right now and that’s a lot of fun. I’d really like it if I could make a living at that.
Next week: An interview with Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison!
[David Yow photo by Michael Alan Goldberg.]
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