Sleep Vs Eyehategod
Δηλαδή η αλήθεια για τον μύθο πίσω από την ηχογράφηση του Dopesmoker aka Jerusalem Vs η περιπέτεια του Mike Williams όπως την περιγράφει ο ίδιος.
SLEEP
PART I: SOME GRASS
What's your most vivid memory of the Jerusalem recording session?
PIKE: Well, none of it's vivid. I was smoking so much weed that everything was kinda surreal at the time. [Laughs] But I remember a lot of loud amps and trying to memorize all these crazy combination of parts. There was so much to memorize for that album, and we had to do it in like three different sections, because a reel-to-reel only holds something like 22 minutes. It was really cool, but it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. I was also trying to make my bass player and my drummer get along, because they were having a hard time with each other in the studio. And at the same time my mom was dying from cancer. It was tough.
HAKIUS: I remember a lot of hard work and a lot of stress. We put in a lot of hours to create that album. We had just got onto London Records and we were all really broke, which made things difficult.
CISNEROS: When we finished the tracking and all sat down together in the studio to finally here the song straight through, it was pretty special. It's weird when your entire life is coming back through the speakers in the control room, and all three of you kind of mutually acknowledge that internally. But at the same time, it was like somebody hoisting a flag on a sinking ship.
The popular legend is that Sleep got a big advance for Jerusalem from London Records, smoked it all, and ended up having to rush through the recording sessions. Did that actually happen?
HAKIUS: I've heard that before, and it's certainly not true, but you can't argue with a piece of paper when you read it, you know? Al was always kind of the band leader, so I think an A&R guy contacted him first. At the time, London said they'd give us full artistic freedom, so that's what we did. But when it got down to the final stages of things, we were all really stressed out---and broke---because the money we got from them initially pretty much covered how badly we were in debt at the time we signed. It wasn't because of drugs or anything like that either---it was because we were trying to do this for a living, and we had bills piled up from the time between Holy Mountain and Jerusalem. We never really had real jobs either. Matt and I worked on a plastering crew for a while; Al worked in a bookstore---we all just did odd jobs so we could stay loose and go on tour tour whenever we wanted. But the story that we smoked out budget [laughs] is not true, I can't say we didn't spend a few dollars on it, but I mean, it would have been literally impossible to spend it all on that.
Was London aware, before you signed, that your plan was to record a one-song album?
CISNEROS: Absolutely. We were actually talking to Elecktra at the same time as London, and one of the reasons we decided to go with London is because there were okay with that idea. But within two weeks of signing with London, the A&R guy who had been coming out to California to negotiate with us got transferred and replaced. There was a new head of the A&R department, and new representative for our band, both of whom didn't have any connection with the template that was laid down. So immediately---even before we began tracking---we were nervous and uncomfortable about what they could end up doing to the album, what they might demand in terms of a video, radio edits, and all the rest of it. The conditions of the entire deal changed right underneath us. In a certain sense, all the horror stories we had heard from the bands that had gotten onto a major label came true. They told us, "Don't do it; don't do it." And it was too good to be true. When reality set in, it was like, "We heard this sotry. We shouldn't have done this."
PIKE: Yeah, that was weird because we let them know what we wanted to do before we even signed with them. Both London and Elecktra were biting at us, and we went with London because they offered us more money for the recording. Plus they didn't have as many metal bands, so we thought they're give us special attention.
You'd been working on the song itself for quite some time before the London offer came along.
PIKE: Oh, fuck, we'd been working on it for like four years. We also had two other songs that we were working on that were really long, too---like 15 and 20 minutes. But we never recorded them.
CISNEROS: We toured Europe and the United States on Holy Mountain, and we were really reaching the point where we had to have some new stuff. So the song formulated at soundchecks and then we'd work on it some more in motel rooms or at friends' houses. We's just keep coming up with ideas, and the song just started to assemble itself. At our last show before we decided to settle down and make the record---it was here at Slim's in San Francisco sometime in early or mid '94, and I think we played with the Melvins---we played a shorter, much more up-tempo version of the song. But it was pretty much the same song that you hear on the record. And it was long---the intention was to just keep cycling. We had lots of riffs that kept answering each other in a series, so we said, "Shit, if it's a long song, it's a long song."
How crucial was your collective weed intake to the creative process?
PIKE: We were smoking a lot. Between us all, we were probably smoking two ounces a day or more.
CISNEROS: Back then---from the time of Holy Mountain through Jerusalem---it was definately a ritual that got more and more frequent. Personally speaking, I was really dependent on the space I got into whe I was using it, and some of the lyrics are about that. It was pretty integral to the scope of my life at the tme. The line, "Drop out of life [with bong in hand]," was kind of creed at that point.
HAKIUS: I'd say it was crucial. It helped a lot, but at the same time, everyone was having a rough time personally during and prior to the recording. There was a lot of growing up and learning. We were all in our early 20s, and after the Hawkwind tour we went on, everyone was pretty tore up. That's when we were really working on that song, and I can honestly say everyone wasn't really taking care of themselves that well---and that snowballed into the recording process.
EYEHATEGOD
After facing down the hurricane, heroin and three months in jail, Eyehategod frontman Mike Williams lives to tell the tale.
Five days after Hurricane Katrina demolished New Orleans, Eyehategod frontman Mike Williams and his girlfriend Alicia Morgan barely escaped the city alive. Within hours of arriving in a Morgan City, Louisiana, hotel room, the pair were locked up on drug charges. A few days later, their apartment in the Lower Garden District burned to the ground. While Morgan was transferred into a New York rehab facility, Williams spent 91 days in the Morgan City Jail, forced to kick his legendary heroin habit behind bars. Just a few days after Williams made bail in early December, Decibel called the vocalist at Eyehategod/Superjoint Ritual guitarist Jimmy Bower’s house (where Williams is currently staying) to get the full story.4
Congratulations on getting out, man. Did they treat you okay in there?
Williams: Yeah, it was a city jail, so it wasn’t that bad, but I mean, it’s jail, you know? It’s not comfortable, but it’s not as crowded as the parish jail, and there aren’t so many fights and things. In other ways, it sucks worse than the parish jail, because we had no television, no radio … So I was just reading anything I could get.
It sounds pretty miserable.
The thing is, if you know you’re gonna be there for three months, that’s half the battle right there. What was giving me anxiety was the fact that I didn’t know what was going on. I was there a month before I even got in touch with Jimmy or anybody. He was out in Lake Charles with his mom; [EHG bassist] Gary [Mader] was at another house in Lafayette; [EHG drummer] Joey [LaCaze] was up in Detroit; [EHG guitarist] Brian [Patton] was on tour with Soilent Green, so I was there a month before anybody really knew what was going on.
How did you end up in jail to begin with?
Well, I can’t really talk about what exactly happened, ’cause I haven’t been to court yet, but me and Alicia stayed through the hurricane. I think it was August 29th that the storm hit, and you know, every time there’s a hurricane in New Orleans, no one thinks it’s gonna be the big one. This one was a lot different, obviously—but we stuck it out, as usual. About eight hours in, the power went out, but we had a little battery-powered radio we were listening to and we could tell things were getting bad. People from the Ninth Ward, where the levee broke, were calling into the radio station saying they were trapped on their roofs. I lived in the Lower Garden District, and [after the hurricane passed] the water in my neighborhood went down, but that was probably the worst thing about it, because that’s when people got really violent. If you called 911, you got a busy signal. And that gave everybody ideas right there. My neighborhood was on higher ground, so it became a focal point for people from other neighborhoods to come to. I live in a flophouse-type of place—a bunch of apartments in this one old, old, building—and we had people sleeping in the hallways that we didn’t even know. The first thing we noticed that morning was a body on the corner about three blocks from my house, It was this homeless lady from the neighborhood who I guess got hit by a car the night of the hurricane. You’d see cop cars ride by with the lights on—no sirens or anything—and they’d just pass by her. A couple of us got a blanket and covered her up, but she stayed there for days.
When did you finally decide to leave?
I was on the methadone program, and they gave us a couple bottles to take home, but not enough, so we kinda started panicking about that. When we were walking around, people were telling us there was free water at the grocery store down the street. So, to make up for my prescribed government medicine, we happened to acquire a few pharmaceutical amenities. A lot of my neighbors are on some of the same stuff, like heroin or whatever, and I knew that eventually they were gonna realize we had something in our apartment. People were desperate and I’m sure they could take a hint if we weren’t getting sick, you know? So that was another thing that frightened me—I figured eventually someone would kick in our door. I had a friend that said they’d let me borrow their car, so I was kind of planning on that. The night before we left, Alicia went outside to smoke a cigarette. Now, I used to hear gunshots in my neighborhood often, but you’d hear a lot more after the hurricane. Anyway, she came back in and put a chair under the doorknob. I guess some guy had pulled a gun and told her to come with him. But she totally bullshitted the guy and said, “Hold on—let me go get my shoes.” I heard him coming down the hall, so I threatened to blow his head off, and he left. We slept at my neighbor’s apartment, and as soon as the sun came up, we borrowed my friend’s car and took off. We took our cat with us. Someone adopted her, but at least we saved her. Then we ended up in Morgan City, and I heard my house burned down.
How did that happen?
I don’t know. People are trying to say it was a transformer, but the fact that people were looting all these stores … People were taking like huge bottles of vodka and getting wasted in my building. The superintendent there lost control, and, if you ask me, I’m guessing my landlady called and told him to burn it down. Years and years ago, she had a house on Esplanade Ave. that she rented out—the same type of place—and that mysteriously burned down, too. I think she did it for insurance money. She’d rent out to people on disability, veterans—people who got monthly checks. She’d just take the checks and give them a little bit of money to live on. People like us, who didn’t really have enough money, either—she could say she was running a halfway house.
What happened when you got to Morgan City?
We got a hotel room, but Morgan City is so small that I think if they see anyone with long hair and tattoos, they think [you’re] suspicious. Plus we were from New Orleans, which they knew because we had to show ID to rent the hotel room. So the cops totally came into the hotel room, and that was that.
Can you say what the charges are?
Not exactly, but they’re trying to get me for intent to distribute. I can’t really say how much, but I’m sure they’re gonna drop it down to possession.
Your bail was $150,000. How did you get out?
Well, I have to say Phil Anselmo helped me get out. I haven’t asked him if he wants me to say that in interviews, but, I mean, I’m overwhelmed. He had mentioned something about it, and I thought, well, if I get my bond reduced it won’t be that much. So we had a lawyer, and we filed for a bond reduction, but the judge turned me down. This judge actually said I was a threat to society. They read all my previous charges over the years—I have a lot, you know, but I only have one violent charge and it got dropped. But I did have a previous drug charge. I found out later that the judge—this is my luck—his wife was killed by somebody crazed on drugs. My court date is in March, so I would’ve had to stay in jail the whole time. Phil was like, “Fuck it, man—I’m gonna do it.” He said it was stressing him out too, so he did it.
Were they giving you methadone in jail?
Fuck no. I didn’t sleep for about seven days. I couldn’t eat for probably about six days. I was soaking the bread from lunch in water and just trying to swallow it because I knew I needed to keep something down. In one way, it’s good to kick in jail, because it’s really hard to do outside of that situation because you know you can always make a call. It sounds crazy, but this was a good experience for me in the long run. Being in there while I was kicking was totally miserable, but at least I knew I’d be over the sickness in a week, and that was the worst part. But that’s all in my past now, and I’m not fucking with nothing no more.
You don’t wanna get high anymore?
Oh, of course. [Laughs] I’m not gonna lie. But you just gotta be strong. There’s just certain people and places and situations that you gotta stay away from. The cool thing is that Phil’s not doing anything; Jimmy’s not doing anything—everybody’s clean. …Honestly, I’ve been drinking like mad since I got out. My case isn’t over—I’m just out on bail. I might have to go back. At least then, I’ll know how long I’ll be in for, and I’ll take my lick.
Originally Posted by house_of_low_culture
