The Butthole Surfers started out as a drug-fueled post-punk band from Texas. Their live shows were an assault on the senses. Rumoured on-stage sexual antics and disturbing images projecting above the stage were all pretty standard. There was also an instance when full-frontal nudity happened at an all-ages show.
In an interview with Kerrang online, guitarist Paul Leary talked about how frontman Gibby Hanes went on a bender onstage in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He ended up in a dress and threw chairs at the audience.
At a February 1986 show in New York, the band used “piss wands” which were – plastic baseball bats filled with, well you know, that were waved around the crowd. From the get-go, the band was single minded in their mission. They wanted to do something that other bands hadn’t.
“We’d asked ourselves what we wanted to see from a rock band, something that nobody else was doing.” – Paul Leary
Guitarist Paul Leary explained to Classic Rock, “We’d asked ourselves what we wanted to see from a rock band, something that nobody else was doing. We were influenced by psychedelic bands so we wanted strobes. Soon we had shotguns, walls of strobe lights and movies showing penis reconstruction… It helped that there was no message in what we were trying to convey. It was all kinda nihilistic.”
Their onstage behavior soon crossed over to offstage antics. “It was just a party every night. Gibby was definitely our ringleader. We would go into a new town every day, raise as much hell as we wanted, get to drink beer for free, act like lunatics, and make a big mess and then move on to the next town,” Leary remembered.
One of the most ridiculous offstage antics was touching their manhood to a briefcase used by President Jimmy Carter.
For a band that could be so visceral, they were actually inspired by some pretty intellectual philosophies. Dadaism, also known as the art of the absurd and Fredrick Nietzche’s Nihilism, both influenced the group.
Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary Form The Butthole Surfers
Frontmen Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary formed The Butthole Surfers in 1981 in San Antonio, Texas. Ironically, the band members had pretty wholesome backgrounds. Hayne’s father hosted a children’s program in Dallas called Mr. Peppermint and Leary’s father was the business school Dean at Trinity College in Dallas.
They were influenced by punk rock bands like Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys. In what should have been a clue for what lay ahead, the pair created a humorous magazine called Strange V.D., which looked at bizarre medical problems.
Haynes was working at an accounting firm at the time when he was fired by his superiors after they found pages from the magazine in the company printer. It didn’t really matter since the Butthole Surfers had already formed.
“We’d play until the police came and turned the power off.” – Paul Leary
Leary would paint a funny picture of what the band’s early rehearsals looked like, “We’d go over to our drummer’s house in the evening and start rehearsing. Gibby would usually get off work late at the accountancy firm, stumble into practice in his suit and tie, and immediately start stripping down to his boxer shorts while we were playing. That’s how it got incorporated into our live show. We’d play until the police came and turned the power off.”
The early to mid eighties were formative years for the band. In San Francisco in 1981, the Surfers met the Dead Kennedys’ Jello Biafra, who signed the band to his Alternative Tentacles label.
King Coffey and Teresa Nervosa joined the band as percussionists in 1983 while Jeff Pinkus joined in 1986 as bassist.
The Butthole Surfers’ Weirdest Album is Released
Shortly before Jeff Pinkus joined the band, they released what many call their weirdest album, and that’s saying a lot when you’re talking about the Butthole Surfers. 1985’s Rembrandt Pussyhorse was a bizarre soundscape featuring drones, middle eastern instrumentation and farts. There were satanic undertones and freaky lyrics throughout the album. The band’s label at the time refused to publish the record.
Considered one of the band’s finer moments, Locust Abortion Technician was released in 1987 and recorded just outside Athens, Georgia. The album featured the spoken word Black Sabbath cover called “Sweat Loaf”.
“We were depraved people, always scrounging for our next meal and our next six-pack, that kind of thing.” – Paul Leary
Before the album came out, the band spent 6 years living out of a van with a pitbull, surviving on beer, LSD and small change from bottle refunds. Leary remembered in a 2017 interview with The Quietus online, “We were depraved people, always scrounging for our next meal and our next six-pack, that kind of thing.”
Locus Abortion Technician explored some pretty bizarre corners of pop culture. The last track on the album, “22 going on 23” might be the most unsettling of them all. It features a voice clip of a young woman calling into a talk radio show talking about how she’s been assaulted. Another woman calls in to complain about a loveless marriage. Then it fades out to the sound of cows mooing.
The Butthole Surfers Sign with Capitol Records
By the early 90’s, the band signed with Capitol Records. Capitol Records was insistent that the group’s first major label debut 1993’s Independent Worm Saloon be produced by Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones to improve the chances that a mainstream audience would take a liking to the band.
The album proved to be more straightforward for the band and it produced a modest radio hit with the song, “Who Was in My Room Last Night?”.
The Butthole surfers were a big influence for Kurt Cobain and it’s rumoured that he met Courtney Love at one of their shows.
“…Having a hit single was not a whole lot of fun.” – Paul Leary
In 1996, the band released their biggest commercial record with 1996’s ElectricLarryland. The single, “Pepper” topped the modern rock charts and was the band’s biggest hit to date. The success was almost a curse as Leary revealed, “When we signed to Capitol, they didn’t have a clue what to suggest or demand, that was until we had a gold record and a hit. All of a sudden people were lining up around the block, telling us what to do. Having a hit single was not a whole lot of fun.”
With all the success came further troubles as their planned album in 1998, After the Astronaut was shelved temporarily. During the same time the band split with their manager and 5 years after Electriclarryland came out, the band finally released their follow-up record, 2001’s Weird Revolution.
It was a difficult time in the early 2000’s for the band. They split up with the members pursuing other musical projects until they had sporadic reunions in the years that followed.
“We’ve got a couple of interested labels, and the goal is to record a new album…” – Paul Leary
While it seemed like the band was done putting out new music, fans were happy to hear Leary admit it, “We’ve got a couple of interested labels, and the goal is to record a new album. I realize that we’re middle-aged men now, but we’re gonna do it, because that’s what we gotta do. Making Weird Revolution was a gut-wrenching process, and it put us out of commission for a long time. It was such a painful thing to go through that it’s taken years to get over it. Now I figure we have a shot at going back and doing things the way we want. It’s time to try it again.”
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