The bridge that united the punk world to the jamband scene was built in the 1990s. As Nirvana broke down the commercial barrier held up by a stream of ‘80s hair metal acts followed by Green Day setting it aflame, bands like Phish, Widespread Panic, Blues Traveler and others were crisscrossing North America building a fanbase, one-by-one.
That do-it-yourself ethic is something extremely familiar to Mike Watt. As bassist and founding member of the Minutemen, he not only helped to establish a modern touring circuit where none had existed but, along with childhood friend d. boon on guitar and drummer George Hurley, expanded the dimension of the hardcore punk scene with music that incorporated free jazz, funk and folk. Besides racking up thousands of miles on the road, the trio released six albums and countless singles and EPs over the span of five years. It came to an abrupt end when d. boon died in a car accident in 1985. (For a fantastic read on the minutemen and other artists from the early days of the independent music scene, check out Michael Azerrad’s “Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground, 1981-1991 )
The significance of this history lesson is that the events of the past live in the present for Watt, who remains affected by his friend’s sudden passing even as we discuss his latest solo release, hyphenated-man. (Watt prefers lower case spelling.)
At that time, Watt and Hurley called it a day. But a devoted minutemen follower (Ed “from Ohio” Crawford) convinced them to continue. The three formed fIREHOSE, which recorded and toured for seven years.
As a solo artist and as an interview subject, Watt balances a blue collar mindset and work ethic with an intellectual hunger. That combination peppers the storylines of his three punk operas including hyphenated-man. The first one dealt with the Minutemen as well as his father, who was in the Navy while the second chronicled Watt’s near-death experience due to infection of his perineum.
This time around he muses about middle age with a lyrical influence derived from the surreal paintings of Hieronymus Bosch , while nodding to his past via music that was not only written on d. boon’s guitar but reflects the immediacy of the minutemen’s style. The new album features 30 songs with only two barely breaking the two minute mark.
For more on the 15th century artist Bosch and his imagery, which was used to illustrate moral and religious concepts and narratives, visit this page.
Conversing with Watt spans the verbiage of jazz-man, counseling-man and working-man. I catch him in mid-pain – an injured knee that cropped up during his bass playing activities as a member of the Stooges led to a fall and a newly-injured arm. Despite the physical ailments, Watt remains in good spirits and whipsmart talkative.
JPG: One of the first things I wanted to bring up is terminology. Why use the word ‘opera’ rather than ‘rock opera’ or ‘concept album’?
MW: I have a couple concept albums in the pipeline, one about autumn and one about work. But a concept, I see more like a bunch of songs revolving around an idea where an opera is like one song with different parts. We got the idea from [The Who’s] A Quick One (Happy Jack). There’s a song on that called “A Quick One [While He’s Away].” That’s when we first heard this kind of concept where you’ve got a bunch of parts that make up this one song. And then they did it bigger with Tommy and they called that ‘rock opera’. But that’s kind of grandiose a little bit, so I called mine…you know I’ve done two others. I call them ‘punk operas’. (laughs)
It’s something I never really thought I’d do. We liked that “Quick One” a lot, me and d. boon, and it just seemed like I didn’t have the talent to say what I wanted to say in one tune. So, I had to make this big elongated form. The first time was Contemplating the Engine Room, the title track talked about the Minutemen. The second one ( The Secondman’s Middle Stand ), oh man, that was about the sickness that almost killed me. Those were kinda like telling about stuff that had happened. So, they had a beginning, middle and end, more or less narrative for the libretto. (slight laugh) These are parallel terms in a way, obviously. But the first one was kind of to the tradition. It ended sad. The second one ended happy. I guess you would call that a comedy. Not really, it could be sad too but I don’t think…
The third one, I just thought it was a trippy place where I’m at in my life and I wanted to write about it, and not really recount something from the back, from the past. It doesn’t have the kind of form as those other two, in a way. I mean, I couldn’t play all 30 parts at once, so one comes after the other but they’re supposed to be almost happening at the same time. I kind of came up with the sequence, how I wrote ‘em. That was the flow — thinking about this led to thinking about this led to thinking about this.
At the very end I did make two changes because actually ended it with “Man-Shitting Man.” I used Mr. [Hieronymus] Bosch a little bit, allegorical help, but I think I got too carried away in this big vision, which was the Last Judgment and all that. I was in the studio with Tony Maimone and we’re finishing it and I’m like, ‘Man, I can’t have this be the last song.’ A lot of the piece is about me reconciling things, middle-age mind but there’s some things you can’t reconcile like the way some people are… humans treating each other sometimes. I can’t figure it out. But I had to acknowledge it. That’s part of being where I’m at now. But I couldn’t end it with that! At the last minute I decided. So I said, ‘I’ll take this one out of the middle, “Wheel-Bound Man” and I’ll put this one at the end.’ It’s one of my bass solos anyway.
JPG: I’m glad you did because I highlighted that last line. I was going to mention that — “I think I’ve learned that life’s for learnin’ as I’m goin’ through my trips – me on the wheel as it’s turnin’.”
MW: That’s interesting you say that because that, you know for all of them, whatever it is, that’s the one message I want to get through with the pieces — I’ve learned that life’s for learnin’. In the 20s you know everything. (laughs)
JPG: I’m in my 40s and I know too much unfortunately, you know what I mean?
MW: (laughs) Yeah, you start figuring out you know hardly anything, but it’s okay because it’s a learning process. In fact, playing this thing for people, I didn’t count on this, I didn’t foresee this but it totally manifests this idea because it’s a hard motherfucker to play. There’s a lot of shit to remember.
JPG: Even though they’re short, there are 30 songs on this new one.
MW: The other two were more, very emotional for me. That made them hard to do. I’ve never even done ‘em again. Even though the second one had a happy ending, I had to go through all that sick shit at the beginning, it was too hard. This one’s not too hard emotionally. I’m a lot more content with these ideas.
JPG: Was it emotional at all as far as the writing because you were writing more in a Minuteman style and doing it on d. boon’s guitar?
MW: Yeah, it was very emotional that way, but it was an emotion that doesn’t break me up as bad. Some, I still, when it goes from the “Hell-Building Man” to “Man-Shitting-Man,” that gets very heavy for me because, like I said, I can’t reconcile that shit. But these things, it’s things that you can’t fix that really can bother me. I couldn’t bring d. boon back with the first one. Then, the sickness. What’s it called? ‘Empathy,’ you know, to deal with myself. You actually feel the shit. It’s why I can’t watch a knee surgery film because I feel the knife.
Yeah, I was scared. It took me some courage to get this fucker out. d. boon helped me. I wrote the thing on one of his Telecasters. I ain’t much of a guitar player, only the shit he showed me. The guy lived in his car even though he’d only admit it a little bit when we were boys. Part of it is because I kind of took some Minutemen form. There was certain devices that I tried to use to give respect to George and d. boon. One of them was…I did this sometimes with fIREHOSE even and Minutemen. I would write on guitar first ‘cause I wanted to write on the bass second. I usually write on the bass 95% of the time. One of the reasons is because it gives the other guys a lot of room to do their own thing. I wanted to write the bass second on this.
Also, another reason I did that, I didn’t want Tom, Raul, my missingmen — Tom Watson and Raul Morales – I didn’t want them to hear the bass, the spiel. I didn’t want them to be influenced by the only Minuteman, really, in the band. Even though I wrote it and stuff I still thought this was a kind of a way that wouldn’t be pushed by the bass. I even had ‘em record it without them.
JPG: Yeah, I read that. That’s crazy.
MW: (laughs) You can’t really do that at a gig.
JPG: I was going to say that the songs sound much more cohesive than one would think they should.
MW: Well, I wanted them to have a really strong rapport. I put the band together three years ago, just for this project but I wanted to wait until they played a long time together because I wanted something organic between them two before I foisted this whole other trip. It came to me…you know about this documentary, We Jam Econo?
JPG: Yeah.
MW: Keith [Schieron] and Tim [Irwin], these young men, they were too young to see [the Minutemen], so the documentary is, basically, them finding out about us. They wanted me to talk to them about it, so I had to listen to Minutemen again. I didn’t really do that a lot after d. boon was killed because it was heavy. But then hearing it, I was like, ‘Wow! I kind of like this idea of no filler.’ We got the idea from this England band called Wire. Their Pink Flag album had these little songs. But there’s still something about hearing that stuff was like, ‘I want to do this again.’
Around the same time, I was on tour with the Stooges in Spain. Madrid has this museum called the Prado. They got seven or eight [paintings of Hieronymus Bosch], they call them El Bosco, I couldn’t find them at first. And I found ‘em and I saw ‘em in person. It was much different. As a boy I was kind of tripping onto him. He was, God I couldn’t figure him…I, saw him in the encyclopedia. My ma got me the World Book thing. I was into dinosaurs and astronauts, too. They just seemed so far out, you know? Seeing ‘em in person though was nothing like a picture in the book. They’re on wood and there’s no glass. You can go right up to these things. 500 years old. But what tripped me out was he had all these little designs to make one big thing. And this reminded me kind of Minutemen like “Double Nickels [on the Dime],” you have all these little tunes to make one thing or our gigs. So, that’s where I saw the parallel. And so, that was the device I was going to use to write about this time, this middle-aged punk time for me.
But I brought in another thing. You can’t blame the artist like Mr. Bosch or Mr. L. Frank Baum, [author of] The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I brought this in. My take on Dorothy. If you notice the Lion and Scarecrow and the Tin Man? They’re kind of like Bosch things. They’re combinations of weird things. But they’re also the farmhands, right? ‘You were there and you were there,’ at the end she says. Seems like Dorothy, well, she doesn’t really have a love interest. I think it’s a coming-of-age story, well, maybe the dog. But coming-of-age, I see her as tripping on what men do to be men. Yeah, and that’s kind of what I was trying to do right about this period of life I’m in. So in a way, I’m a weird version of Dorothy. When those cats go to the man behind the curtain he says, ‘Where I come from, if you’re smart you get a diploma. If you’re brave, you get a medal. If you got a heart, you get a clock.’ The Tin Man got a pretty lame one. My sense is he’s saying you’re always asking society to validate you and there comes a point in your life where you just say, ‘Fuck it. I’ve got to make up my own mind about some of these issues myself.’ I fit that in with the Bosch and the Minutemen. (laughs) This is where the third opera comes from. In a way it’s much different than the other two. In a way it’s kind of the same because I didn’t try to make one big song.
JPG: As far as linkage, I don’t know if it’s just me coming up with it or it’s there but some of the titles from “the secondman’s middle stand” album, there’s “Beltsandedman,” Burstedman,” “Pelicanman”...
MW: I was starting to come into this period. I was 45 when I wrote that thing. I felt the middle thing coming on. They’re kind of connected a little bit but the main crux of that thing was that sickness. And I used “The Divine Comedy” as the parallel there, like hell was the sickness, purgatory was the healing and then getting to my play bass and do the kayak and bicycle was heaven (laughs). So, I turn into a pelican. Pelicans have no song. In fact that was the other change I made at the last minute. There was going to be one instrumental, “Pinnedagainsttabelman,” and I was with the Stooges – these moments come to me on tour with the Stooges – but I was in St. Petersberg and said, ‘You know what? All these are going to have words.’ So, I came up with this poem and I just hooked it on to it. (laughs) So, they all ended up with spiel. Pelicans don’t have a song. There’s not many birds that are quiet.
JPG: You mentioned the Stooges. When you’re out on tour with them are you relaxed in a way because it’s not your band and you can be in the background and concentrate on other things?
MW: Not at all, man, because they have a very strong legacy. Sometimes I have this nightmare and there’s this gravestone – I want to be buried at sea but this is a nightmare – and all it says, ‘Fucked up a Stooges gig.’ (laughs) That would be my claim to fame. At the last gig – I just came back from Australia/New Zealand with them – and there were like three or four songs, but the sun shone on the tuner bad and one of the strings was a step up. And Ig [Iggy pop], of course, Ig hears everything. He got it straightened out. (laughs) I couldn’t believe it! That I was playing like that. I was wringing my hands the whole flight, whatever, 23-hour flight. I feel big pressure. I don’t even think we’d have a punk scene without that band.
And Ig, he’s helped me a lot be a better bass player. He don’t work a machine. He’s got kind of this conductor perspective being a go-off, banzai-charged guy. He’s a big duality because at the same time he’s really aware. Big picture! It’s up close, just operatin’ your machine. He gets the big thing. So, this helps me a lot, especially with bass because low end frequencies kind of develop away from the amplifier. You know, April’s going to be eight years [with the Stooges]. Longer than I was with Minutemen. Longer than I was with fIREHOSE. Very interesting classroom.
JPG: Now during down time, during flights or bus rides, is that the time for you to work on…?
MW: I keep a diary. I write up diaries, man. On the hoot page you can see my Stooges diary. That is kind of nerving a little bit because it’s not my tradition. I come from the when you ain’t playin’ you’re payin’ vaudeville thing. Black Flag, that’s where we learned. Those guys did four month tours. (laughs) So, it’s a different thing. They’re older gentlemen and he goes so far out it would destroy him. Every gig he really goes all the way, all the way to the nines. That guy never goes halfway, never connecting dots and sleepwalking. He turns 64 in April. So, I can understand not playing every day. It’s a little different for me but a lot of it’s not in the country so it’s overseas and I can explore things.
JPG: Hit more museums.
MW: Yeah, like the Prado. I’ve been there three times. Van Gogh and Goya, they got all kinds of guys.
JPG: Now for the touring supporting “hyphentated-man,” you’re really hauling ass.
MW: 51 gigs. 52 days. [It sounds over the phone as if he’s beaming]
JPG: I know! Why such a torrid pace?
MW: You can say a lot about the U.S. and Canada but, for sure, they’re big. I’m still gonna miss towns! I’m not gonna get Memphis. I’m not gonna get Cincinnati. I’m not gonna get Bozeman (slight laugh). There’s a lot of towns I’m gonna miss, but the country’s just so big. And if I’m going to go out, I gotta start touring again with the Stooges at the end of May so the window is only so big. So, why not pack it in? I got good men with me. They help me big time. Tom and Raul, they’re beautiful. It’ll be my 65th tour. I’ve done it a little while. So, I think I can make it.
But the number one thing I say to myself is I want to get my guys home safe. Number two, I wanna work this thing for the people the best I can. It’s a little hard but what about five starving kids and working in a salt mine? You’ve got some perspective. There are a lot harder jobs — sponge fisherman with hard hat on and lead shoes… Just think of all the shifts you can pull. Maybe riding in the boat. Actually. it’s an hour, right? It’s all about getting there. Getting from the last one.
JPG: That’s the tough part.
MW: ‘Cause the country’s big, but it’s an interesting place. When you play it for people, I owe it to the Movement. I got involved with the punk movement because of the gigs. Yeah, ‘cause we came from arena rock. It was a lot different than seeing a band in a club. up close. Wow man! I’m into doing that as much as I can, as long as I’ve got a shot.
JPG: The tour with the Stooges, is it all summer or just May and…?
MW: That goes from May to maybe a little bit to the beginning of September, they told me. There might be some U.S., maybe, I don’t know. But all the stuff overseas right now. I know that. There’s one for Ronnie [Ashton] in April. (Original guitarist Ron Ashton died, and the Stooges are playing April 19 in Ann Arbor). I have to leave my guys for one day to play this salute to Ronnie. He’s the reason I was in the band. He’s the guy who got me. When Ig called me up, I was on tour in Tallahassee with my Secondmen [backing band]. I get this call and it’s Ig! He says, ‘Hey, Ronnie says, “You’re the man!’” Most fuckin’ wild call I’d ever gotten in my life!
So, I’m gonna go do that but then the rest are all overseas. Some of the dates are already on my hoot page (www.mikewatt.com). They’re in England and Italy and Belgium, stuff like that. But the way they tour is maybe three or four days at the most a week. They’re spread out and then we come home for a week or week-and-a-half and then go back out. It’s a different kind of touring. A lot of it’s flying.
JPG: Which is way different than your van travelling.
MW: It’s not as happening. It’s a metal tube breathing farts for many hours. (laughs)
JPG: Yeah, that’ll be wonderful for your knees.
MW: But it’s worth it because I love Stooges music. I love playing with them guys.
JPG: And I see the Raw Power live album is coming out.
MW: That’s right. It’s from a gig we did back in September in upstate New York.
JPG: Were you happy with yourself that night?
MW: Ig called me up and he said, ‘Yeah, there was some good bass playing there, Mike.’ Man, I get a call like that. I love it. I love it. ‘Cause I’m even scared to hear sometimes, you know. Actually, it’s almost a new band even though most of us are all the same guys with Ronnie. It’s still a new band — James Williamson and just the new songs. Maybe we’re a year-and-a-half old now. Yeah, I was very glad he was happy but I was also when hearing it not that many clams. (laughs) I just want to give them the best I can do. I just wanna, I feel I owe it to them big time.
JPG: Back to Bosch for a second. I was trying to get a quick primer on him before talking to you. I was studying “The Garden of Earthly Delight”...
MW: Three of ‘em I took — “Earthly Delight,” “Last Judgment” and “Temptation of St. Anthony.” There were three others where I took one each. The one weird one is “Cherry-Head-Lover-Man” because no one’s looking at this lady. So, it’s kind of negative space. There is no actual cherry-headed loverman. You see the cherry-headed lady, but like, nobody’s looking at her. That’s why I took it. It was kind of ironic. Nobody’s looking at her. She’s all proud and shit in the middle of the thing. But she’s got the two cherries on her head. You can tell who she is. So she’s not really the loverman. She’s the object, but then you can’t see the lover. There is no lover. I had to have some fun with this, too. (slight laugh)
The guy didn’t write one diary page or one letter. We don’t know shit about him. Didn’t even sign most of his paintings — the 25 we get attribute to him — but I think some kind of irony in his stuff. Yeah. I just do, man. I just do in some strange way, you know? Hhe’d paint pigs with nun habits on and a mouse with a pope hat on. These things are hanging in churches.
It’s bizarre. This is during the Middle Ages when they’re all heavy on that stuff. And there’s the plague and people are dying all the time. It was fucked up times. This is the thing about art, it transcends… And one reason I’m on a tear now and I’m recording. I had to start my own label; I’ve got so much shit in the pipeline.
JPG: For your clenchedwrench label do you have any idea of a schedule for all these releases?
MW: I don’t want to put ‘em all out at once, so they all have their own lives ‘cause, believe it or not, even though I’m playing the bass, sometimes, I write all the songs. They’re much different because I really give in to my collaborators. Different than this opera where I ask Tom and Raul to take direction. The next thing out is a Dos album. It’s just two basses. That’ll come in a few months. A few months after that I’ve got an album I did with two Italian musicians I did in Italy called Il Sono del Marinaio. Couple months after that some stuff I did in Tokyo with two musicians there to back up Richard Meltzer’s spoken word. He gave me 48 little poems that he recorded. That’s a trip. That’s called “spielgusher.” Then, I got three albums with Nels Cline. They’ll be coming out following that. They’re all varied kind of things, even though only two, three people. Kind of my typical kind of set up.
The politics of bass are trippy, man. You look good making the other guys look good. (laughs) So, it’s not me just doing the same old same old with this little sound behind me. I’m actually the backup guy. I’m the grout of the tiles.
JPG: Is that something you realized in the very beginning or is it something that came to understand after playing awhile?
MW: No. I didn’t know what the fuck it was. Arena rock it was hard to know what the bass was. Then, I found out, ‘Oh man, this is kind of like right field in little league where you put the retarded friend ‘cause of the hierarchy.’ And then d. boon with Minuteman said, ‘No, no. No more hierarchy. Everything equal.’ Also, there were great bass players like James Jamerson and John Entwistle and Jack Bruce. I could actually hear those guys. But there wasn’t a lot of that going on. But they’re big influences.
The bass is still mysterious. I think it’s still finding out what it is. The “Bass Player” magazine people asked me about the future, and I think more composing. Like I told you at the beginning of this talk, I think you leave a lot of room for your other guys because of our narrow physics. Our frequency is so small, but it’s kind of crucial. We’re kind of a kick drum. We’re kind of a little bit guitar-y. We’re a trippy thing. We’re glue!
JPG: Have you ever played the patented bluesy bassline?
MW: Listen to “Jug-Footed-Man.” I used some Willie Dixon there. The only song I did. I think the Jug and the Bosch thing is allegory for alcoholic. So, I drank a bunch of Jim Beam to do that one to find the vocal. I’ve never done that one before, but I did it for this one. I wanted to be in character. But I used a very, very traditional blues line but I put some weird things on it.
JPG: By the way, working in Tony Maimone’s studio…
MW: Tony’s a big hero to me. That was a dream come true. Pere Ubu, they came and played “The Modern Dance” at the Whiskey. Me and d. boon saw that. Blew our minds in the ‘70s; that first album they did. Fuck…and to get to make an album with that guy, I kind of indulged myself a little bit. Well, a lot of this is.
The punk scene was so, everybody hated you so you just get into some of this shit because you wanted. (laughs) You don’t think of a target audience or anything. But to get to record sitting next to Tony, playing Tony’s bass, his ‘66 Fender Jazz, with my hero right there in his studio. That was a dream come true. That’s like the d. boon Telecaster. It was to give me confidence. I was a little scared to talk about some of this shit. Now that it’s out, I don’t care. But it was hard to pry it out of me a little bit in respect to Tony. It was good. You ask me things that people don’t usually ask me, which is very bitchin’.
