Talking with Stoner-Rock God Matt "Lemmy" Pike
Interview by Lisa LeeKing & Tanya Richardson
High on Fire
High on Fire returns to New York next week. Last week we interviewed Matt via phone, while he ate a pepperoni pizza.
Lisa LeeKing: Sorry about missing you yesterday. We were supposed to interview Ted Nugent and he rejected all of our questions, and then Tanya had a pill stuck in her throat all day.
Oh wow! A peel?
LL: A pill. We thought you might have a few suggestions on solving those kinds of problems.
Don't get me started on something like that.
Tanya Richardson: Speaking of bad nights, have you seen the new Spin?
No.
TR: Go check it out. They list the 100 "sleaziest moments of rock," proving once and for all Keith Richards definitely got his blood changed. I thought everyone knew that, although this asshole friend of mine has been fighting me on it for weeks.
With Keith, I could believe anything.
TR: Keith is my favorite Stone, because if you look at any picture he's in over the years, Keith is always having the best time in the room.
I just like his guitar playing.
TR: [laughs] Ah...I just took about five Midol, so I'm not really sure where I was going with that.
Oh that's okay.
LL: So why don't you tell us about the Bay Area music scene.
There are a lot of bands, but San Francisco is starting to suck. See, there's these real estate dot-com yuppie fuckers who come in and buy up all the buildings that the labels and the club owners have, so the rents double. And to top it off there's a sound curfew now.
TR: The same thing is happening in New York.
Oh, the same thing is happening everywhere. They want you to stay in your house and sit in front of your computer screen all day.
TR: Do you think people, and especially artists, are going to start moving to the middle of the country?
I'm considering it, actually. Dude, I'm so sick of the Bay Area. It's like fuck, I could work 80 hours a week, and unless I'm making $200,000 a year I'll get fucking nowhere. I could be in a huge band and make a lot of money, which I'm not, and I will just pay rent for the rest of my life. Fuck that, dude.
TR: Where would you go?
Northern California is pretty cool.
TR: I heard Northern California is where stoners go to die. Speaking of pot, where did you come up with the name High on Fire?
George [bass] had said something about this ELO song called "Fire on High," and I just flipped the name around. I started thinking of all the things it could mean, and it was like fuck! High on Fire!
LL: I've heard you have some pretty strict religious beliefs.
I wouldn't say strict. I'm an unorthodox Christian pot-smoker drinker. I'm not no saint or nothin'. I study theology, and a lot of that rubs off on what I write.
TR: Have you ever gone into a trance onstage? Spoken in tongues?
I haven't spoken in tongues, but I tend to space out onstage and go into trances.
LL: When I saw you play I was one of like three females there.
Did it turn you on?
LL: Anyway, you and the bassist took your shirts off before the show even started, and I think that's the epitome of what rock is today, or at least what it should be.
Oh yeah. Well dude...fuck!
TR: Recently I was talking with a guy in another band who's signed to Sub Pop, which is by far the hottest rock label right now, and we were speculating as to why bands like Creed are on the cover of Spin.
Because they've got the money backing. They have a larger, younger crowd, which I'd like to appeal to as well. But I don't have the means necessary to reach those people, like the bands who get signed to a major label. I've been on a major label before, and they want to hear what they want to hear, sell what they want to sell. They chew you up. And the kids don't get any options. They only know what they hear on the radio. So it's like, what are they gonna go buy?
TR: The guy I was talking to said it's because bands like Creed appeal to a mass market, and to appeal to a mass market you have to be mediocre. But what about the Rolling Stones or the Who in the 60s? They appealed to a mass market.
But that was a different time. It was a good time to play music because we didn't have things like MP3s. The labels weren't Nazis. People were just breaking out of their shells. Now that people have been out of their shells for 30 years...
LL: So basically you're saying that if something is on the radio and on MTV and forced down your throat, people will buy it.
Yeah.
TR: But that was true in the 50s and 60s. People had manufactured bubblegum bands who couldn't play an instrument, or even write music, crammed down their throats, and then in the mid-late 60s things started to change. Why did it change? How can we make that happen again?
It changed because people came along with extreme music that hadn't been heard before. There's not a whole lot of bands doing anything new right now. I think that's why so many people are listening to techno and hiphop, because it's not as fucking old as, say, what I play, heavy metal. But I'm trying to put out metal that's new. Metal you haven't heard before.
LL: What do you think about Nebula and Fu Manchu, or other bands categorized as stoner rock?
I played with Nebula the other night and they're pretty rad. I can't say they're some leader as far as where they're taking music, but they definitely put on a cool show.
LL: They have a gong.
And they set it on fire.
TR: It seems you're saying the next thing musically will have to be very different.
Or with a new twist. People are going for theatrics now. Like the Insane Clown Posse. Or things like raves, where people trip on ecstasy or acid and it's a huge event. That to them is what metal was to us. It's a new generation you have to get through to.
LL: Tanya and I are just regressing into classic rock and metal. We have all-metal Fridays in the office.
TR: But bands I used to think were really shitty, like Loverboy, are starting to sound great to me now. And that's a scary thing.
Yeah, it is a scary thing when you start liking Loverboy.
TR: Lenny Kravitz's old stuff used to suck, but his new stuff sucks so bad, like the way he absolutely slaughtered "American Woman," that I find myself wanting to hear the old stuff, and thinking, "Hey, you know 'Always on the Run' wasn't that bad."
How old are you?
LL: We're both 26. How old are you?
Twenty-eight. See, our generation is out of it. Seventy-five percent of record sales are to kids 17 and under. And that's where we're getting the delusion that metal is coming back. But it's just a matter of us and the bands we're touring with getting to the crowds.
TR: What we need is some kind of musical Jesus to bring us out of these dark ages we're in.
Well, I'll do my best.
LL: How about you? What are you listening to these days?
There's tons of shit. Sabbath, AC/DC and then I'll listen to like Beethoven's Ninth.
High on Fire plays CBGB Fri., Sept. 29, with labelmates Acid King, 315 Bowery (Bleecker St.), 982-4052. They return to the Continental for a Man's Ruin CMJ showcase Friday, Oct. 20.