- 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. 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, Danyelle Stampe being her human-born name, she of the crimson-spewing crotch as part of her stage show. In following Oderus, we met a more demure Slymenstra who chatted with us about life with the band and outside.
 K2K: So what does Slymenstra do in her real life?
- SH: I live in L.A., basically for the last two years. For the first year, when I was just getting there, you just have to survive. I was doing art departments, carpentry, art direction, assistant directing, and then I got a production design gigs on different things like commercials, rock videos, and I worked on a few low-budget movies and stuff. I also have an interior decorating business in Virginia and in Los Angeles. I prep people’s houses. One of my really good clients last year was Bill Siddons, the old manager for Jim Morrison and The Doors. He does people like Neil Young and such. He’s awesome. I also did my manager’s house. I do a bunch of other people like recording studios. I decorate recording studios.
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- K2K: What kind of stuff do you do?
- SH: I do really fancy painting, like diamond wall finishes, and anything like that. One of the most interesting places that I’ve done was in Virginia. It was Jefferson, the President. He designed like twelve to fifteen buildings or so that are still standing in Virginia. I helped restore the painting. I did the Jefferson Sheraton Hotel. We did 24 karat gold-leaf hand-painted wallpaper and stuff. It was wild.
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- K2K: Wow! The stuff you don’t expect to hear from this band. So you don’t just lay around and shoot heroin all day?
- SH: (laughs) No. I don’t have any money. Basically, in L.A. I pursued acting and figuring out how that city works.
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- K2K: L.A. doesn’t really “work”, it just lays around, and some people have jobs.
- SH: A lot of people get paid for nothing. (laughs)
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- K2K: We were just talking about the San Diego Comic Con a few minutes ago...
- SH: I was there last year. I was at Danzig’s booth. I was in costume two different days. I went to a couple of parties. I wanted to go to Danzig’s party, but I couldn’t find it. He gave me really crappy directions, like he didn’t really want me there or something. (laughs) I was at the Verotik booth. They asked me if I wanted to do a comic book. I started working on it, but nothing ever happened. So it was OK.
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- K2K: Did you happen to attend the Show Biz Expo in L.A.?
- SH: No. I’ve been gone because of GWAR since March. I went back to L.A. for two weeks. I might be working with Cirque Du Soleil next year, in Las Vegas. I’ll be there for one year.
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- K2K: I thought you have to be French, or speak it.
- SH: No, you don’t have to be. Most of them are. I might have to take French lessons. I do this new stunt that no other woman has done before. I run 2,000,000 volts of electricity through my body and shoot lightning out of my fingers. I’m working on building a suit with which I’ll be able to walk around onstage. Right now I have to sit on a table with a metal plate sitting in water. So this new way, I’ll be able to have a chain mail suit over my entire body, and hopefully have - in theory, as it hasn’t been tried yet - an aura of lightning bolts coming out of me. Any of these stunts could kill me, if not done properly.
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- K2K: Do you have to be grounded?
- SH: Yes. Basically I become the ground. When I have a chain mail glove on, I have the contact, and then it comes out. They’re 15 foot and about this big around. (makes hand gestures of a few inches) And it’s a bolt out of each finger. If you put your hands together, you get a really big bolt.
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- K2K: That’s almost like superpowers in real life.
- SH: Yeah, it is. There have only been two men who could do it before me.
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- K2K: Could the bolts be of danger to anyone else in front of you?
- SH: If they’re within a certain distance. Yes. I could kill them.
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- K2K: Would you yourself be injured
- SH: If it went wrong, yes I could be injured. Let’s say I had metal on my outfit or something. That would become the ground and it would start coming out of the wrong place. If it comes out below your head, or below your heart, you could have a heart attack, or it could throw you off the table and you could electrocute yourself. Right now I have to sit on the table, with a metal plate in water, sitting in it with my ass right on the metal plate, with the water around it. I have to keep my hands above my head. I can move one hand around down here. (shows upper mid-section) One hand has to stay above my head at all times. One of the mistakes I made during the first time I did it, I was dancing around and I guess my hand was almost at the same level as my head. It all started to come out of my head. My wig caught on fire and I was thrown off of the table. And it hurt like fuck! (laughs) Like a good fuck. It hurt like a good fuck! (laughs heartily)
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- Speaking of which... when am I going to get some? Where are all the male groupies, dammit! I’m getting pretty fucking blinked out here on the road. Geez! So many people are in love with me. Yeah, right. Well get up the nerve to come up and talk to me, you fucking losers. (laughs) I know, I know, my beauty and intelligence will scare you off in the first fifteen seconds. (laughs) Get yourself another useless dumb bimbo stripper with no brain. (laughs heartily) I’m going to just entirely give up on meeting someone in the rock ‘n’ roll arena.
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- K2K: You have to ask yourself a question though. Judging by the type of crowd that GWAR attracts, is that the type of guys that you would want to bring back to your hotel?
- SH: No. Absolutely not. What can I say. I’m a moron magnet. I’m the Queen of the Geeks.
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- K2K: I have to know more about your new trick. If you were having sex while wearing your electricity thing...
- SH: Hey baby, every time I have sex, it’s the “electricity thing.” Well we did try to wire up a bra and have that shoot. A metal rod installed in the bra and...
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- K2K: An electric nipple? That’s great.
- SH: And the thing is relatively safe when they first strap me into it. They turn the electricity on a certain amount. If you feel that “hmmmm” feeling like when you stick your finger in a light socket and scream, “Stop, stop!”... and if everything’s going right and you don’t feel that, then they keep giving you juice and giving you juice, and they keep looking at you. And then it starts. It’s like (makes a loud roaring sound). It’s really loud. One time, an effect company I work with had this Halloween exhibit. It’s a haunted house with all the other stuff. Everyone gets cattled into this one room. It’s dark and they can’t see anything. It’s a big metal cage, built in the ground, like the Thunderdome. Outside of that is the world’s largest Tesla coil ever built. It goes off and shoots this huge bolt of lightning towards the people. It hits the metal and that becomes the ground. If you touch the metal, you won’t get electrocuted. That becomes already grounded and sparks fly all over everybody, with this huge noise. People were pissing in their pants.
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- K2K: And suddenly it wasn’t grounded anymore as people stood in their puddles.
- SH: (laughs)
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- K2K: When are you going to be doing this?
- SH: In February. We’re going to do some experiments in October. So we have to wait.
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- K2K: Would you use this trick for GWAR?
- SH: I want to use it for GWAR, but the stage is too small. (sarcastically) Until GWAR gets into the arena stage. I want to use it for my Girly Freak Show. I have this circus show with some friends of mine. We have different girls join us depending where we are.
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- K2K: It sounds like you want to be with the Jim Rose Circus.
- SH: It is a lot like that. But it’s all girls, so it’s better. It’s sexier. As Slymenstra, I do fire, and I want to do the electricity thing in there. I do a snake goddess thing. The girls do trapeze, bed of nails, torture... They are really good at it. We were at Lollapalooza the year that Soundgarden and Metallica were on it. We had our own little tent. We’ve done a lot of shows in New York, in Philly, and in L.A. You know the Billy Ray Cyrus video that had the circus in it? I played a couple of roles in that. I did a lot of things in there. It was fun. I did a bunch of other little things. I did a Del Taco voice-over. Thirty-nine cent tacos. When you’re hungry, you’re hungry. I’ve also done Brut Fabrege. You know that stinky cologne at K-Mart or someplace. They did a spoof of “1 Million Years B.C.”, in which I did a cave woman. That was my first stunt job in L.A.
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 K2K: What is the average age of everyone in GWAR?
- SH: Thirty-something.
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- K2K: Do you create all your own characters?
- SH: Yes. It’s not all original. Me, Brockie (Oderus), Hunter (Techno-Destructo)... There are a lot of original members. We’ve all been here practically from the start. Our guitar player Zack who we just added... our guitar player Pete was shot years ago was having some problems. He was shot during a attempted car-jacking while coming home from our studio. It was a long time ago. It was horrible. He’s been having surgeries. He’s been having complications, so he’s not around anymore.
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- K2K: What role did he play?
- SH: Flattus Maximus.
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- K2K: Oh you have different people fill in the same roles as you change members?
- SH: Yes.
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- K2K: I thought you had new characters with new members.
- SH: Not always. With certain people. If I were to leave there would be no way anyone else could play Slymenstra, not while I was alive. Some of the characters that were around, people just played them. My character was created by me. I feel that if I left the band, they would need to create a new GWAR slut.
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- And with that, we went off on different tangents that had nothing to do with the interview, before we all got booted from the club. Apparently people working there wanted to go home after 3 am. Go figure. So off we ambled.
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- 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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