Butthole Surfers Lyrics & My Own Psyche, Semi-Deciphered 

How I Write the Way I Write

Of late, I’ve been doing less of it for your edification and more of it for my own mercenary purposes but, still, writing has served as my full-time occupation now for nearly 20 years.

This inevitable trajectory initially arose in 1988 when the sensible decision makers at SUNY Purchase informed me that I would no longer be a full-time student.

Several years followed, then, wherein I apprenticed as a public school janitor, a Special Ed teacher’s aide, and Wall Street library flunky.

That stretch of relentless glamor culminated (via the library’s printers and copy machines) in the publication of HAPPYLAND #1 on September 13, 1991, the same Friday that Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare in 3-D opened at the Lyric Theater (and one night before I saw Mudhoney play some defunct joint in NYC’s meatpacking district where, the following weekend, I caught Nirvana. Grunge enough for ya?).

Enthused HAPPYLAND write-ups from Rick Sullivan’s Gore Gazette and Peter Bagge’s HATE (to which I would later contribute a column on my obsession with hippie songstress Natalie Merchant), along with on-air praise from Gerard Cosloy via WFMU, garnered the ’zine nifty intention just in time for the second issue, which showcases “They Call Him Flipper,” an account of Malt-Liquor-powered interracial 42nd Street misadventure that remains my personal literary “Stairway to Heaven.”

From there, The New York Press allowed me to pollute its newsprint on occasion, and I kicked off a long and fruitful (in every sense) personal and professional association with Allan MacDonell of Hustler magazine.

And then I wrote lots of other stuff—including the ongoing Mr. Skin bliss that’s highlighted in the present issue of Time Out Chicago—all the way up until what you see now.

Hi.

Every so often people ask who my favorite writers are, along with which scribes have most influenced my style and what authors I best enjoy and/or with whom I most closely identify.

The answers to such questions have little to do with my own approach to a blank page.

I read very little fiction, although I feel eternal affection for Mark Twain, James Thurber, and the first ten years or so of Martin Amis.

The writers who truly inspired me to start cranking out words (initially in the form of epic letters to recipients I am now quite sure did not even want them) were critics and essayists—chiefly: Cult Movies author Danny Peary, the Medved Brothers and their various Golden Turkey variations, and rock writer Chuck Eddy whose eruptive prose, when he first hit the Village Voice in the ’80s (gallantly praising Rush), exhilarated me the way I was William S. Burroughs would, but didn’t (and doesn’t).

Tales of Times Square by Josh Alan Friedman clearly made an apocalyptic impact, as did the aforementioned Gore Gazette and, to a less direct degree, Joe Bob Briggs.

Plus Celebrity Sleuth.

And although (despite my physique for most of my adult life) I’m no comic book guy, I did cop quite a bit from Frank Miller’s 1986 Dark Knight Returns series.

Right now, the writer (of books) whose work I most look forward to is Jimmy McDonough.

More than anything in print, though, when I write what I try to imitate and even produce is sound.

Howard Stern, therefore, is my most direct influence, from his topics to his tone to his New York Jew comedic roots to his actual machine-gun cadence of language.

Sam Kinison’s Louder Than Hell album (and absolutely nothing he did after that) would be another.

Most profoundly, though, what I try to invoke when I write is music, and it’s even some very specific musicians and songs (and even song parts) at that.

As I whack at the keys, I primarily hear Alice Cooper, KISS (including the ‘78 Ace Frehley solo record), Black Sabbath, The Melvins, “Linda Blair” by Redd Kross and, at upbeat intervals, The Monkees and Sweet (the Sex Pistols fall somewhere in the middle, especially in the form of Johnny Rotten’s vocalizing and most especially in the form of “Bodies”).

Singularly, the moments I most often try to replicate is the opening percussiveness Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out of Hell”, along with the of pregnant blast of silence that occurs at the song’s three-minute, 34-second mark, right before the big man explodes into:

I’m gonna hit the highway like a battering ram
On a silver black phantom bike
When the metal is hot and the engine is hungry
And we’re all about to see the light
Nothing ever grows in this rotten old hole
Everything is stunted and lost
And nothing really rocks
And nothing really rolls
And nothing’s ever worth the cost

You said it, Jim Steinam via Marvin Lee Aday.

But(t) the band whose sound, look, feel, performance strategy and overall aesthetic has always exerted the deepest influence upon me is the Butthole Surfers.

And they have done this most specifically in the form of “Jimi”, the lead track from their 1988 opus (and final hour of flawlessness), Hairway to Steven.

Of course, the 7-minute, 41-second epic didn’t even have a proper name upon first release (the LP’s track listing consisted cartoons instead of words) and I’ve never seen a transcription of its baffling lyrics anywhere.

So, really, when I tell you that I attempt to channel “Jimi” when I write, I mean I do so in purely sonic terms, although the piece’s thundering, plodding, bowel-rupturing, heavily metallic sounds have always conjured palpably iconic images in my head.

What I picture, as the music rumbles, is this behemoth Viking space marauder who carries a mighty hammer reigning down his cosmic wrath on some deserving weakling(s).

And I am now confessing that that is also how I have always seen myself as I write: typing determinedly and carrying a big cosmic hammer.

It’s a ruse. But it’s mine. So that’s me.

Today, 22 years later, I made a sincere effort to copy down the actual words to “Jimi”.

However sloppily inaccurate the results are to whatever the Gibbytronix device is, in fact, pumping out, they really do fit my own delusions, both creative and … otherwise.

JIMI

[Gutteral, growling voice]

I’m soiled
Soil me
Soil everyone

Oh my
Oh
My
GOD!

I have come 10 million miles
And traveled all your earth
And with his hands
The fiery beast may consummate my birth

Locust, flies and disgusting beasts
Shall crack the ocean floor
And have given life to fiery hands
That open up the door

[Growl]
[Growl]
[Growl]
Fire away!

[High-pitched squealing helium voice]
Oh daddy, daddy!
We need help!
My mind is at an end!

[Back to Growling voice]

All hope is lost!
You’re bleeding now!
Your dreams forever flagged!

[Growl] [Growl] [Growl]

What do you know about reality?
I AM REALITY!

What do you know about death?
I AM DEATH!

I don’t know what you can see
[Unintelligible rants, evil laughter]

Who knows the things I’ve seen
The faces I know, the places I’ve been
I’m running now with my [unintelligible-- sort of sounds like "lava lamp"]

[Growl] [Growl] [Growl]

[Back to squealing helium voice]

Oh, daddy! Please!
Don’t touch me on my penis and vagina!
Oh, daddy! Don’t touch me in my bottom!
Please daddy!
[Wailing, followed by laughter]
Crazy, crazy fucking world!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Crazy goddamned world!
[Laughter]
Shit
Hey!

[Growling voice]
What is so funny?
Me or my [unintelligible]?
[Gurgle] slap in the face!

[Helium voice]
Oh nooooo! Oh no!

[Growl voice]
You RANG?

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Comments ( 2 )

Mike, I give you endless kudos for just attempting to transcribe that beast of a song. Thanks!

Also, you vaguely imply that the Ace Frehley effort is the only one of those Kiss “solo” albums worth listening to (which, by the way, I completely agree with)… Is that true or am I reading incorrectly between the lines?