"I
F KURT COBAIN was buried in a casket, that guy Gavin Rossdale of Bush would
have a straw in there sucking the flesh off his bones." singer Page Hamilton of
Helmet says as he just short of gyrates out of his chair, nearly spilling his favorite
potato soup. "He is the most blatant rip-off of one of the most important music figures
I've seen in our lifetime."
When Page Hamilton was 16 years old, he loved the Bee Gees, parted his feathered
hair down the middle, and wore a "Disco Sucks" T-shirt. A year later, he would have grad
uated to the "I'm With Stupid" shirt (with the pointing finger), but fashion wasn't exact
ly on his mind at the time, nor is it now. At 17 he ditched a sweet old man who was teach
ing him to play the guitar because it wasn't going as fast as Hamilton was. Instead, he
conned his way into a jazz guitar lesson by claiming to be a George Benson buff-a record
he had never even listened to, but saw laying around his mother's house. With jazz in
his blood and bell-bottoms ringing around his past, the balls behind the Helmet loco-
motive has geared up to take on the world-or at least the things that matter in the
world of heavy music
"I've done my homework, and I just don't want to listen to that shit," he says. That
"shit" would be bands that have, well, as much talent as Bush and have shot to the top
because of commercialism. "MTV doesn't set my standards." he says. Hamilton has
based the hard-hitting blow-by-blow Helmet on devouring more than the vegetarian feast
that sits in front of him. It's about devouring the music and movies your parents grew up
on and the music your little sister will lose her virginity to
"I don't think about what we are or what people call us," he says.
"We are Helmet, and it doesn't matter if people refer to us as heavy
metal, alternative metal, or industrial metal" Regardless of what they
are categorized as. Hamilton is much more conscious of who they're
associated with these days than he was fashion conscious as a teen.
Helmet shot down a plan to tour with Megadeath about five years ago,
and they wouldn't tour with Live today if they made enough money to
buy all of China. They have, however corporate it may seem at first,
shared the stage with L7. the Beastie Boys, their "musical brothers" the
Rollins Band, Nirvana, and there are even talks of touring with Prodigy
later this year. That's right, Prodigy
Hamilton converted to a vegetarian about seven years ago when
he met his wife, who hustled tables in the very same natural foods
restaurant he sits in today. These days, he's not so concerned with fill-
ing up the toilet with beer piss as he is the music. "We opened up so
many pores in ourselves to put this album out." Hamilton says. It's
hard to imagine that such jackhammer guitar chords and throaty lyrics
come from a guy who eats portobello mushrooms and looks slim
enough to easily be swept from his seat like a feather every time the
restaurant door opens. But on Helmer's fourth album. Aftertaste, there's
no question of who is standing behind the mic and drilling the guitars
into the deepest crevices of your brain. Aftertaste is a return to the
same Helmet thunder that gave birth to Meantime in 1992 and Strap
On in 1990. Their third record Berty, however, received a lot of atten-
tion, but was labeled as an "experimental" album that dealt with
Hamilton's guilty jazz conscience, which stems from a BA from the
GET LUCKY
90 THRE
HOMET
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Manhattan School of Music and his need to "push the envelope."
Helmet is no doubt the tightest "heavy" band in rock today, but
their sound didn't come without some stiff days and nights. After sev-
eral personnel changes over the past eight years, Helmet have final-
ly found a foursome that they can work with. Drummer Henry
Bogdan and bassist John Stainer, who's probably still hung over today
from a five-hour afternoon drinking excursion in January, have been
with Helmet from the beginning. But there's been new life found in
their new guitarist Chris Traynor, formerly of Orange 9mm. When
Hamilton, who is simply the knot at the end of the fabric who keeps it
from unraveling, was learning the craft, time and time again he was
told he "sucked and knew it." "I was a drug-addled alcoholic with a
1.8 GPA and an urge to beat up on myself," he admits. But he never
had a perm and never learned to breakdance.
"With Helmet there are strings." Hamilton says. "Somebody has
to pull the bull by the horns and that's my job." He is, by everyone's
standard in Helmet, the boss. "I don't tell them to play with their right
elbow higher than their left, but I write an arrangement of songs.
and it's up to them to spice it up." Even if that means dabbling with
Helmet's 8-year-old distinctive sound or deciding whether or not to
tour with Marilyn Manson.
Four years ago in Chicago the Rollins Band opened up for
Helmet, and Les Claypool's Sausage opened up for them. It was a
regular three-ring circus at which a kid next to me said, "These
guys are the skinniest bunch of nerds you've ever seen, but man,
you gotta dig their music."
In 1997 it's not going to matter what Helmet look like. They have
an agenda that's going to be met whether Helmet or the world like it
or not. "I'm no leader of mankind," Page Hamilton says after polish-
ing off a cake like desert, "but the American rock music scene is eat-
ing itself from the inside out, and it's caving in on itself. I want people
to listen to this album for breakfast and for dinner."-Tony Romando
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