Do me a favor, Sting, knock that off. Songs
about coal miners in Russia? I don't really
want to hear about that sort of thing. I also
really despise the managerial types-the
corporate bosses and record companies
who are content to provide musical
wallpaper and make things tougher for
people like myself. Well, whatever doesn't.
kill you only serves to make
you stronger. That's a
Nietzsche quote, just to give
old Friedrich his due.
Tell me about your in-
volvement with the music
press before you started
the band.
I was working as a graphic
designer and doing some
other stuff at Flexi-Pop and
a magazine called Metal
Fury, picking up on the suc
cess of Kerrang!. The
people who were doing it
sniffed money, so they came
out with this poster maga-
zine, a heinous crime in
which I was involved.
What was your schooling
previous to all that?
Four years of art school,
learning how to avoid work
and drinking very heavily.
My decision to form a group was influenced
by massive doses of hallucinogenic drugs,
which took me to the brink of insanity. I was
out on the edge for a while, and that gave
me a sense of enormous self-confidence, the
confidence of the insane. I thought that I was
onto something and that I knew something
that the rest of the world didn't-paranoid
delusion is the clinical term. I thought that I
understood the secret of the universe, which
is something no one else understood. Please
don't ask what the secret was, since that all
happened a long time ago and a lot of water
has gone between my ears since then. I
thought I was the chosen one here to lead.
I was Julius Caesar all wrapped up with
Caligula and Hitler.
And of course you chose the name
Zodiac Mindwarp?
I thought that was rather appropriate. I took
Zodiac Mindwarp from a San Francisco
underground comic book from the late six-
ties by a man named Spain Rodriguez. It
came out in 1967, and it's now worth about
six hundred dollars. There were only about
a thousand printed.
And the Love Reaction?
°
"Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springs-
teen. It was one of those moments where a
name just jumps out at you and then all of
a sudden "I need a love reaction." Well,
thank you, Bruce. You can steal one of my
lines sometime. I can't wait to see Bruce
Springsteen and the Sex Fuhrers.
You mentioned Nietzsche earlier. What
other philosophical influences guide
Zodiac Mindwarp?
Daredevil comes out with some important
and relevant things to say from time to time.
So does Batman. Seriously, I beg and bor.
row from everything. I'm not aligned with
any one particular train of thought, so I read
everything and look for the parallels. For ex-
ample, the different philosophies about
religion are all saying virtually the same
thing and I just enjoy reading different ex-
amples of the same, central idea. I go from
Jesus Christ to Buddha to Socrates. I also:
Guitarist Cobalt Stargazer pulls out a menacing chord.
read a lot of art history, especially the pre-
Raphaelites. A lot of people ask me what my
influences are, and I can't really sit down and
say Motorhead. I derive inspiration from
paintings in the National Gallery in much the
same way that painters used to derive
influence from poetry and literature. Gawd,
what a brainbox!
Do you think that your heavy emphasis
on image ever overshadows the music?
I think it makes us stand out and adds to the
music. I'm not going to be boring. The music
and image are hand in hand items I apply
to my canvas.
One thing outstanding about you as a
British band is the tremendous sense of
Americana in your music, image, et al.
That's been one of my main cultural influ-
ences from day one. I think Batman was the
first thing I ever read. Before I went to school,
I was a precocious child who could say
electricity at the age of two. I learned about
America thorugh comics. I was staring at pic-
tures of sea monkeys at the age of two. I
wanted zip guns, Hershey bars and x-ray
specs. America seemed like one big
Disneyland to me, almost my spiritual
homeland. Of course, when I got there.....
What did you think?
Well, I might be presumptuous since I've only
seen America for a few weeks and all I've
seen is hotels and streets-not the heartlands
or anything like that-but I dig it! You can
go to Wendy's, and for three bucks you can
stuff your face! All I have are first impres
sions, so maybe I should keep quiet, but I
know over here you can leave if you don't
like it, something you can't do in Russia.
You also have an American accent.
Yep, you wanna make something of it!? It fits
because a lot of things I sing about are
obsessively American. I guess deep down
I really want to be American. Wish I was
born in the U.S.A. That way, maybe I could
really sing along with Bruce. I guess I was
always fascinated with Wolfman Jack, free
association, Allen Ginsberg, Robin Williams,
Mork and Mindy and all that sort of linguistic
stuff. To be able to free.
associate like that is the sign
of a good soul, because no
shit comes out.
You sport somewhat of a
biker image. Do you ride?
Of course not, I'm a total
fraud. The original idea was
space pirates, but I guess
that image-wise I am
involved with the whole rock
'n' roll mythology of bikes,
girls in leather and bad at-
titudes. I've never seen a
biker that wears tights,
though. The space pirate
image comes from a lot of
underground comics-the
weird, warped stuff that
Greg Irons or R. Crumb did
in the 60s because you have
to dig like a rat through
comic shops to find it.
You're a comics fan.
What are your favorites?
At the moment my reading list includes
Daredevil, Swamp Thing, anything by Frank
Miller and Alan Moore and weird Ninja stuff
like Ninja Mutant Turtles. Also, anything by
Robert Crumb that I can get my hands on.
What attracts you to comics?
It's a twentieth century mythology. As Stan
Lee from Marvel Comics has said, future
generations will see comic heroes as this
generation's Dionysius or Hermes, but will
call them Superman or the Flash. They're
tales of good and evil, right and wrong and
other paradoxes of life. You derive from com-
ics aspects of yourself and they really reflect
on what you are. If you simply write them
off as trash, maybe you aren't looking deep
enough. Once you forget that comics are
ridiculous, just like you forget that rock 'n'
roll is ridiculous, you can start enjoying them.
I'm constantly amazed by stuff like the
metaphysics involved in Swamp Thing, or the
social commentary in Dark Knight.
Who are some of your favorite comic
artists?
I would say that Bill Sienkewicz is almost ex-
pressionistic in his work. I like Alan Moore's
writing, though I don't know if he's found the
right artist yet. People like Frank Miller and
Bill Sienkowicz have an almost poetic nature.
to their work which possess this dark expres-
sionism that sets them apart from most artists.
I think it's kind of a waste that Miller is almost
exclusively writing now because his real
strength is in his artwork, and no one cant
illustrate his stories like he can.
If you were to be a comic book character,
who would it be?
Superman, because he's got the coolest
powers and he can do anything he wants. ►
He never seems to want to go to
the bathroom, which is some-
thing I always have to do. I'm
grooving on the Punisher right
now because he's so bad. He
really blurs the boundaries of
good and evil with his stance as
the self-righteous vigilante. The
Punisher is a very 80s superhero.
He just shoots and doesn't ask
questions.
That's interesting since you,
yourself, have a very am-
biguous stance on morality.
How do you define morality?
I'm in a bit of a moral crisis at
the moment. I've been engross
ed in a lot of Nietzsche, who
denies morality. I agree with
Nietzsche that you invent your
own morality. You have to decide
for yourself what's good and
evil. There's no defined, church-
approved morality. Is an earth-
quake good or evil? Who
knows? Is a volcano good or
evil? It takes books to decide
matters like that, not a flippant
comment from a rocker back-
stage in Boston. It puzzles me
what is good and what is evil
and who decides. Was Hitler
good or evil? He thought he was
good, but history has judged him
evil. Each civilization arbits their
own morality. The great moralist
Plato lived in a time when there
were slaves and it didn't seem to
bother him too greatly.
Lyrically speaking, what is
the focus or desired effect of
your work?
I like my songs to possess a
dream logic. T.S. Eliot describ-
ed a thing called an objective
charameter, which is a collection
of words that only have mean-
ing in a particularly lateral way.
You throw images and concepts
like sex fuhrer together and
achieve a host of paradoxes.
Abstract collections of words that
confuse, stimulate and make
sense to people in different ways.
My use of double entendre is
almost mocking morality in a
way. It's nasty, cheeky, naughty
and puts a little light between.
now and the apocalypse. Most
folks will think that I'm just sing-
ing about my dick, but if they
look a little harder, I think that
they'll find something more.
spooky.
What are your deepest fears?
I find TV evangelism really
spooky. This creeping insanity
that seems to be making head-
way into American politics is
particularly frightening. This is
the league of the insane, the
totally mad. All these socially
conscious individuals coming
down and staring at all of us like
those two people in the famous
painting with the pitchfork and
the grim faces. The Puritans. I
find it even scarier when I hear
Reagan patronizing them. There
are all these people in America
who can best be described as
being spiritually desolate and
they find their spirituality via
television. "Send us half your
wages and we'll give you faith."
It's amazing to see these freaks
on TV crying for a man that died
two thousand years ago and
demanding money in his honor.
That is the most cynical
manipulation of the most tender
expression of the human soul
and I find it horrific and sick. I
think that the majority of rock 'n'
roll is standing up against this
sort of thing and creating
subliminal images for kids.
They're saying not to buy into
this moral majority crap. In
Poltergeist II, the bad guy is this
creepy vicar drawing children
into the ground, and that's an
example of how artists are
fighting back against the people
who's heads we're blowing off in
"Prime Mover."
What are your favorite films?
My favorite film ever is Apoca-
lypse Now because I can never
get bored with it. It's the Homeric
Odyssey. In case you haven't
noticed, I'm somewhat of a
populist, which is the reason I
hate art films. Apocalypse Now
has so many layers of meaning,
referring to the Kingfisher, Eliot,
"The Wasteland," The Golden
Bough, which is the symbolism of
Kurtz being the old king to be
slain. It's a great film and,
strange to say, I find it very
similar to The Wizard of Oz,
which is another story of different
individuals looking for some-
thing and finding it. Taxi Driver
is another film about a journey.
Those are my three favorites.
Is there something you're
looking for in yourself?
No, my boy, I found it! You can
find yourself if you can learn to
turn your barking dogs in the
cellar into graceful swans. If
there's something you don't like
about yourself, by a process of
thought and reading you can
turn those ugly things into
beautiful things, transforming
them into something to be proud
of. Your dark side is nothing to
be ashamed of; it will help to
keep you from being walked all
over. It's your own personal
firepower.
Skate guru Ray Flores of THEE Fourgiven
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