THIS FRIDAY ANYON
FIST BAR
AMERICAN TR
HAD
Story by Mike Gitter
Photos by Kristin Callahan
Meet Tad Doyle. He's a big man with a big sound.
"I wanted to play tuba when I was in the fifth or sixth
grade. I can remember carrying the damn thing back and
forth to school every day. That's where it all started."
Big. Sweaty. Mean. Tad charges around the stage like.
an angry bull, Angus Young on steroids with an axei
murderer's gaze, an imposing character bent on destroy-
ing everything in sight. He attacks his guitar with chain-
saw frenzy, bearing down and spewing up gallons upon
gallons of sonic sludge straight from the bowels of hell
"I want to see people shit in their pants, run scared out
of their minds," he confides. "And it's happened a couple
times. At the frequency we play, which can go as low as
60 hertz, you can lose control of your muscles, your bowels.
It's something they actually discovered. af Dolby
Laboratories. First you start to feel really irritable and sick.
then you totally lose control."
Tad has never exactly been one for subtlety. Currently,
touring the U.S. to support an Lp unsanctimoniously tag-
ged God's Balls, Tad the man and Tad the band (which in-
cludes Kurt Danielson on bass; Steve Wied on drums and
Gary Thorstensen on guitar) have already gained a huge
(mind you, when we're talking Tad, everything's huge)
legion of fans worthy of the sheer immensity of the 6' tail,
250 pound man. There are Tad worshippers. Tad devotees
and, yes, Tad groupies.
Though on stage he's an imposing, oftentimes volatile
presence, our dinnertime chat over a generous helping of
Thai food revealed Tad to be a soft-spoken, gentle soul.
Right: Tad, the band, from left to right: Ted Doyle,
Kurt Danielson, Steve Wied and Gary Thorstensen.
"After my tuba career came to a
screeching halt," he chuckles, "I picked up
the drum sticks because I liked hitting things.
Drums helped me get over a lot of the frust-
ration of being a fat kid. I've since gotten over
it, but when you're young, other kids tend
to make fun of fat people. It's not supposed
to be natural to be as big as I am, but it seems
natural as hell to me."
"Besides," says Danielson, "I wouldn't call
Tad fat; I'd call him big boned."
Historians trace the Seattle man-moun-
tain's roots back to the wilds of Boise, Idaho,
where rumor has it he hobnobbed with fran-
tic scratcher/screamer, Pushead. "It was a
tightly knit little scene," recalls Tad, "real sup-
portive, actually. I remember seeing Septic
Death in a pizza parlor. They were hilarious.
Total fast, thrashy punk rock."
A youthful career drumming in a number
of Led Zeppelin and Kiss cover bands, plus
a healthy musical diet-uhh, make that a deli
platter-stocked with generous servings of
Killing Joke, Gang of Four and Joy Division,
transformed Tad into a sonic serial killer and
led to the formation of H-Hour
"H-Hour was a band that existed over a
period of six years from 1980 to 1986," says
Tad, their one-time skinsman. "It started off
as a real clanky, oil-drum, trash can, in-
dustrial sound that over the years turned into
a wimpy, almost AM radio art fag sound. That
had to do with most of the original members
leaving the band over the years. Plus, by the
end we really wanted to get signed to a ma-
jor label"
Tad moved to Seattle in 1986 for two
reasons: "I hate sunshine and love rain, so
the climate was right, and the last band to
get signed from Idaho was Paul Revere and
the Raiders." With the move came Tad's
entry into the short-lived Bundle of Hiss, an
outfit in which he flexed his brutal, cholestoric
acid-bath axemanship for one gig before the
band broke up.
Thus Tad launched his solo career. His first
single, one of the first releases on the Sub-
Pop label, featured Tad barking and playing
every instrument. With bassist Kurt, a hold-
over from Bundle of Hiss, the Tad band was
formed in 1988, and work began on the
brilliant grind-fest God's Balls. It's a primal
scream session described by the man
himself as, "A great big unoiled machine
ready to blow itself up at any moment." A
follow-up Ep, Salt Lick, is due by year's end.
"We emulate a heavy soul feel you might
have heard James Brown play in the sixties,
but we transfer it through guitars," says Kurt.
"It's on the edge, bloody and raw...
"With a real sexy beat," finishes Tad.
T
TAD STE
So Tad, God's Balls?
TO
GAL
CAN TOUR 18
"Kurt and I were at a bachelor party for
a friend of ours, and we were watching this
porno movie where a priest is getting head
from a prostitute. As she's slurping, he ex-
claims, 'God's balls! God's balls!' Kurt and
I looked at each other and figured, that's it."
Just as disturbing as Tad's aural flesh feast
are the violent images the man so eloquently
barks up, as in "Behemoth," "Cyanide Bath"
and "Sex God Missy" Disturbing. Depraved.
Misanthropic. Would it surprise you to learn
that Tad has earned his living at different
times as a lumberjack and a journeyman
butcher?
"Take it with a grain of salt. We're nice
people having fun with whatever situations
we can imagine. Look at it this way: basical-
ly, our society is divided into two different
sorts of people-people who get screwed
and people who do the screwing. There will
always be somebody making money off
somebody else's misfortune, that's the way
this capitalistic world works. We plan on
doing more of the screwing."
"The idea with us is to have fun," says Kurt.
"Remember, the whole thing is a big joke to
us. Rock and roll is a celebration of things
that are eccentric; over the edge. It's a
twisted fiction. Even back in the heyday of
Rome, freak shows were prevalent; people
loved them. They're basic to human nature
and part of our culture today on TV, in the
movies and such. We try to provide a rawer,
more fun-loving spectacle and we try to make
fun of anything else that happens to exist in
the world in the most exciting, bloodthirsty
manner possible. We'll all butchers."
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