- The Edge - Palo Alto, CA - 1999
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- This interview was conducted during the final days of The Edge, at which time the legendary shock/schlock-rockers GWAR performed. This was around 1999, but had never been published before [this being 2006]. GWAR had played their usual entertaining mock-shock brand of blistering heavy metal before a club full of horror and music crazed fans. After the audience, fake-blood-soaked as they were, left for parts unknown (most likely home and to a hot shower, and a laundromat), myself and writer/photographer Tara headed backstage for a little chat with the band. We were greeted first to the gutteral utterings of lead-screamer Oderus Urungus - also known as eclectically mild-mannered Dave Brockie, the genius behind the theatrical onslaught. Following our chat, we moved on to talk with Slymenstra Hymen, she of the crimson-spewing crotch as part of her stage show. So to begin with, the man and myth takes over the interview. As we soon found out, Oderus/Dave has an apparent personality switching disorder and couldn’t quite keep straight which character was going to answer which question. Confusing as it may have seemed, it did lead to a clever chat.
 K2K: So, you’re the infamous Oderus Urungus.
- OU: Yeah. That’s me. Oderus Urungus. Uh huh. Yeah. Uh huh.
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- K2K: So what does the name or acronym GWAR stand for?
- OU: Well, there have been many rumors and many legends, all of which are untrue. Some say Gay Women Against Rape. Some say God What A Racket. Some say Gay Weird Anal Rebrobates. Some say Great White Aryan Race. I like to think of GWAR as meaning [enunciates the following as a grunting sound] “Gwaaar!”, which is kind of a cosmic powered laxative word. Something to aid in evacuating your bowels when you’re all bunged up. Sit down there and “GWAAAARRR!”. (laughs) Music to make you shit.
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- K2K: When your band was on [Jerry] Springer, everyone was giving you grief. Your band was the only one that had anything intelligent to say, that it was a perfect joke and to relax. With El Duce [late of The Mentors]. Do you remember that show?
- OU: Oh yeah.
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- K2K: How real was everyone else compared to you guys?
- OU: Well, the fact that we were the most intelligent people on Jerry Springer wasn’t a big surprise to me. It was ironic that the entire show after that point... Up to that point, the Jerry Springer show had been fairly “real.” The had real people on there, and they did their best to humiliate them. After they had GWAR on there, and some unreal people, and done their best to humiliate them - and failed miserably - then after that, they just started having totally fake shows where people beat the shit out of each other. I don’t know where the irony is in that, but I think it was pretty weird. So I think that we destroyed that whole... I don’t know if we helped, or hurt, or what we did, but it was pretty bizarre that it turned out the way it did.
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- K2K: In mentioning El Duce, The Mentors had often been called “rape rock.” How close would you say that name fit the band or their music?
- OU: I don’t think El Duce was a rapist, and he was very lucky to ever get laid at all. Any idiot who listened to El Duce get up on the Jerry Springer show and say, “The girls line up at the door to get fucked by the king.”, and they would say, (in mock horror) “Oh my God! I can’t believe that.” You wouldn’t have to believe that because you would have had to be a pretty desperate bitch to want to get fucked by El Duce.
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- K2K: Who else was on that Springer show with you guys?
- OU: Oh I don’t know. Some other dumbass people. Even the kid who was a GWAR fan was a total moron.
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- K2K: They had his parents.
- OU: “Parents Confront Shock Rockers About Why Their Kids Are Wearing Eye Make-up,” or something equally absurd.
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- K2K: How long has GWAR been together?
- OU: A billion years, or fourteen years. I don’t know. It seems to just keep going on and on and on.
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- K2K: Where is the band from, on the earthly state?
- OU: We have the slave pit in Virginia, where the slaves toil ceaselessly on our hulking war machines, serving their shit-encrusted masters. We’ve been working out of there about fourteen years. Dynasty!
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- K2K: How did you come up with the concept?
- OU: Oh, I don’t know. Sitting around banging iron pots on each other’s heads. We were getting out of art school, and we were faced with the unfortunate choice of either come up with something to save our lives, or get real jobs. Luckily we were creative enough to come up with this.
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- K2K: Is this making enough money?
- OU: I haven’t had a real job in fourteen years. Actually, this is a real job. It’s a hell of a job. K2K: There is a lot more to this than most people realize. OU: Oh yeah. There’s coming up with costumes, writing the songs, producing records and videos. There’s the whole business aspect to this as well, which we also do ourselves.
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- K2K: Your earlier costumes were much heavier, right?
- OU: Yeah, in the beginning we weren’t quite as good at making them. They tended to last not as long, be heavier, a lot more fiberglass. Things have lightend up, but they’re still heavy as shit.
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- K2K: Do you guys self-censor yourselves? You don’t seem to get nearly as much crap as Marilyn Manson or someone like that.
- OU: No. He’s sold millions more records, and he’s on CNN and MTV every five seconds. Even though what he does is considerably tamer than GWAR, since he gets way more publicity, he becomes the lightning rod for controversy. What people don’t realize is that the more people complain about Marilyn Manson, the more free publicity they’re giving him.
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- K2K: I was wondering why you weren’t over the top like that.
- OU: Well, because we don’t have a major label backing us up. We’re not a PG-17 act, or even an R-rated act. We’re an X-rated act. The very nature of GWAR kind of precludes it from being anything other than an underground sensation, which is perfectly fine for us. We’re the gods of the underground.
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- K2K: What’s the biggest show you’ve done?
- OU: A huge festival in Holland with about 6,000 people. They have these gigantic music festivals over there with about 8,000 bands playing. It was really, for us, so much as every band you’ve ever heard of was playing. They just let us play last because they knew it was going to be disgusting.
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- K2K: Do you remember playing the Cactus Club?
- OU: In San Jose, CA? Where the guy fell through the roof and broke his neck? Yeah. He tried to sneak in through a hole in the roof and fell to his death. Well, he didn’t die, but he fucked himself up pretty bad.
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- K2K: No, but he should have. He should have died. Stupid. [He hit the floor right in front of the stage and the audience thought it was a prop, as some skinheads began kicking him in the ribs. He had in fact broken his neck amongst other things. - Ed.] They brought him outside and the paramedics had to kick his jaw back into place. It was detached from his head.
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- (At this point, someone backstage who had been at the show interjects with some more information about that infamous Cactus Club show.)
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- What’s funny is that the paramedics were angry at the club because the guy was cut and bleeding. The paramedics couldn’t tell the real blood from the fake.
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- K2K: So the city or someone sued the club for basically having a place for smoke to go out - we call it a window. Oh, so there have been rumors that the members of GWAR are all lawyers, or at least some of you are.
- OU: We have a lawyer, but I’ve never heard that rumor before.
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- K2K: The popular rumor of that time was that you guys were all skinheads, but really smart skinheads who had lawyer degrees.
- OU: Laywer skinheads? Let them believe whatever they want. We may be lawyers, but we’re not skinheads. No, no one has ever been a lawyer. A lot of us are art school graduates, but no one in the band has studied law. No. We’re punk rock art school students. A bunch of weird crazy artists who began playing in a band.
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- K2K: What do you guys do outside of the band?
- OU: One of the guys works at an artificial limb manufacturing plant. This pretty much keeps us busy all the time.
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- K2K: Would you say that you’re making a decent living at this?
- OU: Adequate living. We’re certainly not getting rich off of this, but we’re paying the bills.
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- K2K: How expensive is it to do a show like this [tonight]?
- OU: Thousands. Definitely.
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- K2K: How many people do you have in your entourage?
- OU: I think there’s like seventeen all together.
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- K2K: How often do you change the show around?
- OU: Once per year. With every new album we have a new show and then we tour around the world with it. Each year is a chapeter in GWAR’s continuing development.
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- K2K: Do your videos have a constant storyline?
- OU: Yeah, pretty much. The continuing GWAR epic of our adventures on Earth.
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- K2K: How are the comic books doing?
- OU: Very well. We’re on number seven now and we all contribute to it. We’re distributed by Diamond, and we publish them ourselves at the Slave Pit.
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- K2K: Do you think that you’ll ever appear at the San Diego Comic Con?
- OU: We’ve tried several times, but they’re not interested in us. We do Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, and all the other big cons, but San Diego, not interested.
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- K2K: Last year, the Con people were called Nazis because they were enforcing new rules to have all the bands and booths turn down their tunes.
- OU: Yeah, they’re not friendly to the music thing there. I heard they had Danny Elfman there one year, and they gave him a whole bunch of shit. We’d like to be there.
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- And with that, Dave the human had to go and change his outfit and meet other fans, as he ran off into the distance.
- For more information about GWAR - http://www.gwar.net
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- Written by Philip Anderson
- Philip Anderson is a musician, in addition to being a writer/photographer. He has performed as a guitarist/vocalist, as well as songwriter, in several bands over the past 20 years. As a writer and photographer, he has been published by several magazines and in several books, and had his works appear on television.
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