Haynes then took the opportunity to touch his penis to the suitcase.
At 3:45 the house was quickly surrounded by Secret Service cars, almost as if a raid were about to occur. Naturally, the Buttholes, high as kites, got a bit nervous. But then at 4 A.M. sharp, a black limousine pulled up, and Amy emerged from the bedroom and went out the door carrying her desecrated suitcase. Her parents lingered in the carport area as some excited and very stoned Butthole Surfers peeked out from the curtains, trying not to scream in disbelief.
And then it happened: former United States president James Earl Carter picked up the suitcase to which Butthole Surfers singer Gibson Jerome Haynes had applied his genitals. The president then put the suitcase in the trunk, got in the car, and they sped off into the humid Georgia night.
It was time to hit the road again, and by the time the tour reached New Orleans, Terence Smart had fallen in love with the Buttholes’ old friend Michiko Sakai and wanted to leave the band and be with her instead. “Poor Terence,” says Leary. “One night we were sleeping on some wretched floor of a punk rock dive in Atlanta, Georgia, and he woke up and he just couldn’t take it anymore. He was screaming, ‘WHY? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?’ We were like, ‘Well, it’s fun [laughs].’ He was out of there within five minutes. We never saw him for a long time.” (Smart and Sakai eventually married and had a son named Maxwell.)
Touch & Go recommended a nineteen-year-old Canadian named Trevor Malcolm to replace Smart. Malcolm came down to Winterville to join the band, sight unseen, carrying a tuba stolen from his former high school. The instrument took up a lot of space in the van, but Malcolm insisted on carrying it everywhere; but, while the Buttholes were on a Canadian tour, a local paper ran a picture of him playing the tuba. No one was happier than Leary when Malcolm’s old school waited for the band to get to Windsor and confiscated the instrument.
The band was beginning to see the results of all the touring. Word was spreading through fanzines and word of mouth that the Butthole Surfers were a great live band. And although the band’s original following consisted of punks and freaks, a more chin-stroking, collegiate crowd began to filter in. “While our records might have been weak,” says Coffey, “we had a reputation of being a good freak show to check out.”
By now the Buttholes’ show featured a grotesque assortment of films projected on a backdrop behind the band. Among the filmic arsenal: autopsies, atomic explosions, accident scenes, facial plastic surgery, meat-processing procedures, people having epileptic seizures, scare-tactic driver’s education films, etc. “We tried to get Operation Dry Pants,” says Leary, still ruing the missed opportunity, “which is about toilet training of Down’s syndrome [kids].”
At first Taylor, a media major at the University of Texas, borrowed films from the school’s vast visual library; later, as their cinematic appetites grew more specialized, a certain “Dr. Haynes from the University of Texas” would order films from medical catalogs. And very soon, just as people would offer drugs to the famously pixilated band, others would offer films. The most infamous depicted a man undergoing penile reconstruction after a farm accident. “I recall the day that arrived in the mail,” says Coffey. “We screened it for the first time and we were just screaming in complete horror.” Sometimes they ran it backwards.
“It just seemed funny,” Leary says of the more ghastly aspects of the band’s stage show. “And fun. I mean, rock music’s got to be something that your mom would hate—if you want it to be really satisfying. We made music that moms would really hate, shows included—like nudity and violence and belching flames and smoke and hideous, loud, damaging music.”
The Butthole Surfers’ shows seemed almost intentionally designed to freak out not just moms but the many audience members who were tripping. The music was nightmarish and violent; the films were horrific. “I always thought we’d be a terrible band to take acid to,” says Coffey, “just a really bad, bad idea.” If the projectionist was really on top of it, he or she could focus the heinous imagery on the periodic walls of smoke that would come spilling off the stage. “And it makes this cool effect,” says Leary, “where you can see this image come blasting out at you—in focus.”
“The full-on shows would make people puke and scream and run out, that kind of thing,” Taylor said. “It was what we’d always wanted.”
Actually, not all the films were so shocking—they’d often do a split screen with undersea footage, nature scenes, or even a treasured color negative of a Charlie’s Angels episode. The contrast was Haynes’s idea. “It was a total mixture of good and bad images coming at you, so it was more of an assault that way, your mind can’t quite digest it,” says Coffey. “It’s not completely good or bad—it’s both.”
Still, the gross-out footage is what really embodied the band’s aesthetic. “Listen, man, one has no choice but to laugh in the face of terror,” Haynes explained. “I think probably most airline pilots, when they see the ground coming at them, just before they hit, go, ‘Oh my god, we’re in trouble! Ha-ha-ha!’ ”
The hardworking Leary taught himself how to use an old vacuum-tube eight-track recorder and started in on their next album. “They were kitchen recordings,” Coffey said, “done right next to the fryer and the bacon grease.” Leary acted as his own apprentice, learning from his mistakes, although the beauty of Butthole Surfers records was that the mistakes often became the keepers.
They recorded half of the four-song Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis EP in Winterville. “Comb” opens with some all too realistic vomiting sounds, followed by Haynes’s heavily distorted voice, like a short-circuiting fifty-foot robot, splattering a sonic wasteland of nuclear guitar noise and Godzilla-stomp drums. The EP also features “Moving to Florida,” in which Haynes plays a crazy old coot intent on nuking the Sunshine State. “I’m going to hold time hostage down in Florida, child,” Haynes drawls in an extended monologue. “I’m going to explode the whole town of Tampa Bay.”
Leary explains the EP’s enigmatic title by revealing that originally the cover art was to feature a depiction of Sammy Davis Jr., who had a glass eye, with creamed corn spilling out of his eyeball socket. “But it was just too brutal,” Leary says.
With Cream Corn and beyond, the Butthole Surfers were kicking over a rock and were looking at all the stuff that squirmed around underneath: incest and bad trips and corrupt businessmen and schizo rednecks and Bible thumpers and all kinds of bad American craziness. It was on very much the same wavelength as David Lynch’s masterpiece Blue Velvet, which came out the following year. But in exploring that dark, forbidden territory, they were also welcoming it and even partaking in it. And the pressure was always on to up the ante, to bring something even more unpleasant into the circus, if only to keep things interesting.
Malcolm quit the band in Winterville. He was miserable, partly since when the band drew lots for which room they’d get, he drew the worst lot and wound up in the basement with the washing machine. At night he would watch in horror as blue bolts of electricity shot across the room. “It was stressful—he didn’t know anybody there and he was in this tiny, tiny room that’s emitting sparks and playing with the Butthole Surfers,” says Coffey. “You know, I’d split, too.”
A temporary bassist played a Midwest tour, but he didn’t want to go on the upcoming European tour, so the band had to think fast. They called Kramer, their New York friend. “Kramer, you better not have been lying when you said you wanted to play with us worse than you wanted to fuck your little sister,” Leary said on the phone, “ ’Cause we need you bad.”
Kramer was on his way.
Once, they had pulled up to the City Gardens club in Trenton, New Jersey, and were told their show had been canceled in favor of the Replacements. (“We were replaced by the Replacements!” Coffey notes.) But the Buttholes pleaded poverty and successfully lobbied to open the show as Playtex Butt Agamemnons. The Buttholes’ chemical excesses unnerved even the bibulous Replacements. “I remember them showing up and asking
me if I knew where they could find some acid,” recalls Replacements roadie Bill Sullivan. “They were really insane then. They actually scared us. They scared the hell out of us.”
Most people were sure the band tripped for every show. “Not every show,” Coffey clarifies. “Personally, I can’t play drums on acid. The one time I did, I got a little too lost in the ride cymbal.”
But pot was a necessity for most of the band. And when they couldn’t get it, which often happened in Europe, there was hell to pay. “We would just drink more to compensate and [the band] would get pissed off because there was no pot around and we would have literally violent shows where people would get punched out,” Coffey says. “We would piss on and punch out anybody else in our path.”
For a bunch of Texans who had never been out of the country, Europe was “like going to the moon,” Leary says. “Those people are different over there. It really inspires you to kick it up extra hard. It’s an alien environment and they start to piss you off after a while.” It’s an unusual comment considering that Europe is renowned for paying bands better, putting them up in hotels, and even feeding them. “They feed you a load of crap is what they do,” Leary scoffs. “They get you a cake and they smile and they’re sticking something else up your ass at the same time. I’m telling you, you don’t want to get involved with those Germans over there. They’ll take you to town.”
The night of their appearance at the huge Pandora’s Box festival in the Netherlands, Kramer went to fetch Haynes for sound check. “It is firstly most important to state that, on this night, Gibby had eaten an entire handful of four-way acid tabs and drank an entire bottle of Jim Beam before the sound check had even begun,” Kramer notes.
Leary was furious at Haynes for getting wasted for such an important show. “Fuck that stupid-ass motherfucker,” he snarled to Kramer. “I hate this fucking band. I swear to fucking Christ on a stick, I hate this fucking band more than I hate myself. And that’s a lot. I don’t even care if we ever play again. If you can’t find him, fuck it. FUCK IT!!!!” With that, he began smashing a couple of guitars with his bare fists.
The festival featured several stages, and Kramer eventually found Haynes at a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show. As Kramer tells it, Haynes was completely naked, repeatedly fighting his way onto the stage and charging at Cave as hulking security guards punched and kicked him off the ten-foot-high stage and back into the audience, where he would remain for a few seconds before trying to claw his way back onstage again. Finally, guitarist Blixa Bargeld came forward and kicked Haynes in the groin with a pointed German boot. This time Haynes did not get up.
Kramer pushed his way through the crowd to come to the aid of his bandmate, only to find him lying unconscious. “I bend over to see if he is still alive, but he seems not to be breathing,” Kramer says. “I poke him in the shoulder. Suddenly, like a volcano, he bursts to life and swirls his fists in every direction, clipping me but good, along with a few innocent girls, and drawing the ire of their boyfriends and the enraged security guards, who are now motivated to leave Mr. Cave to his own devices, descend the stage, and join the boyfriends in administering a thorough and none-too-subtle beating upon Gibby’s face, head, and shoulders, until he is once again unconscious on the floor.”
Or so it seemed. Actually, Haynes was only pretending he’d been knocked out, and as the hired thugs walked away, he rose to his feet and began screaming at them, “DUTCH FAGGOTS!!! GODDAMN FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!! A WHOLE FUCKING COUNTRY FILLED WITH NOTHING BUT FUCKING TURD BURGLING FAGGOTS!!!! I FUCK YOUR ASS IN HEAVEN AND HELL!!!!! FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOU!!”
“The ensuing chase and capture was the stuff dreams are made of,” Kramer says. “Stark naked like the day he was born, beaten, bruised, bloody, and tripping, this icon of modern music ran like Jesse Owens through the entire complex, down the halls, up the stairs, grabbing beer bottles from people’s hands as he went and throwing them down on the concertgoers below. A hail of beer cans, bottles, and miscellaneous garbage rained down upon the Dutch persons as I finally caught up with Gibby just as a throng of the biggest security guards I had ever seen caught up with him, too.
“At this time there were perhaps twenty hands upon him, holding him down, and although Gibby is completely crazy, he is not stupid. ‘I’M SORRY!!!! I’M FUCKING SORRY!!!! PLEASE DON’T BEAT ME ANYMORE! I HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR!!! I CAN’T HELP THE WAY I AM!!!! PLEASE DON’T HIT ME AGAIN!!! IT’S AGAINST MY RELIGION!!!!’ ”
Haynes then made a successful run for the dressing room and slammed the door behind him. Kramer could hear Leary and Haynes screaming at each other inside, and when he finally worked up the courage to open the door, he found the two of them smashing guitars, bottles, and chairs in what Kramer calls “the most potent example of bad behavior I have ever seen. To this day, more than fifteen years later, I have no more vivid memory of the effect a life in music can have on a human being.”
Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. “BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU???!!!” Haynes screamed, eyes flashing in delirious anticipation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.
“I’m Alex Chilton,” the man answered calmly.
Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and gestured at them as if to say, “Take anything you want.”
Just before they went onstage, Haynes chugged an entire bottle of red wine; moments into the set he dived straight into the horrified crowd, which parted like the Red Sea. Haynes knocked himself unconscious on the floor, to warm applause from the theater’s security team. “I look down at Gibby,” recalls Kramer. “He tries to move, but then collapses as vomit begins pouring from his mouth.”
After the gig Haynes was irate about having been unconscious for most of the show and insisted on getting paid within five minutes or he’d be “taking it out on your Dutch testicles!” Haynes snatched up the fistfuls of guilders and stuffed them in a pair of pants in his guitar case, but almost immediately forgot that he had been paid and went on yet another rampage, streaking naked through the festival complex and screaming that he had been ripped off.
“FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!! A WHOLE FUCKING COUNTRY OF COCK-SUCKING QUEENS!!!! YOU FUCKING BEAT ME UP AND THEN YOU RIP US OFF!!!! WHICH ONE OF YOU FAGGOTS STOLE OUR MONEY??!!!! FUCKING DUTCH FAGGOTS!!!!”
Yet another chase scene ensued, and yet another pack of Dutch goons wrestled Haynes to the ground, and yet again he profusely apologized. “After which he is released once again,” Kramer says, “and once again dashes through the halls screaming obscenities while grabbing beer bottles from people’s hands as he runs and hurling them against the brick wall.”
“Those fuckin’ Dutch,” Leary explains, “they kind of get you pissed off after a while, man.”
“We thought we had just ruined our careers by botching this show,” Coffey says. “Of course, the Dutch loved it—‘The mayhem it is beautiful, it is wonderful, every song erupted into chaos!’ ” The next day the local paper ran an article about how the Butthole Surfers were the sensation of the festival. “So of course, every time when we came back after that and just played music, people would be horribly disappointed,” says Coffey. “ ‘[In Dutch accent] How come you do not beat up people?’ ”
Kramer’s now defunct band Shockabilly was far more popular in Europe than the Butthole Surfers, and several unscrupulous promoters simply billed the band as Shockabilly, angering audiences who had paid their money to see another band. One such show was a graduation party for engineering students in Stavanger, Norway. In protest, Leary walked onstage with his pants around his ankles. The promoter nervously asked Kramer if he would mind asking Leary to pull up his pants, but Kramer pretended to misunderstand. “Get up and dance now?” he hollered back. “Of course you can get up and dance! Come on up!”
This little game went on until the police showed up, at which time Leary gingerly pulled up his pants a
nd ran into the dressing room, locking the door behind him. “As I tried to jimmy the door open, I could hear Paul on the other side piling what sounded like guitar cases against the door,” says Kramer. Haynes managed to talk the police into leaving the scene, and after much coaxing, Leary emerged.
Meanwhile, “the crowd of all these Aha-looking types were staring at us with crossed arms,” says Coffey. “When it became obvious that the crowd were just assholes, Gibby rightfully snapped, ‘Fuck you, guys,’ and insisted that everybody leave the room.”
Haynes proceeded to verbally and physically abuse the audience, heaving beer bottles at the walls until he forced literally everybody but the band out of the club. The band resumed playing to the now empty house. People started to creep back into the room, but Haynes bullied them right back out again. And then the band played some more. “That was pretty fun,” Coffey says, smiling at the fond memory, “literally forcing people out of the room during a show.”
They then began a U.S. tour in November, but Kramer quickly fell very ill from food poisoning, perhaps exacerbated by the stress of knowing that the driver of the van they all crammed into on those late night after-show drives was invariably tripping his brains out. Jeff Pinkus replaced him in early ’86.
Finally bored with the claustrophobic Athens scene, they left Winterville and resumed their peripatetic existence.
Taylor quit in December, done in by the stresses of being in the band, and they drafted a new drummer, a woman named Cabbage, “who really couldn’t play the drums at all,” says Leary. “She had a place to practice, though.” They rehearsed in Cabbage’s warehouse space in a section of downtown Atlanta that resembled a war zone; the band stayed at her house, too.
Cabbage introduced the band to her friend Kathleen Lynch, who made her debut at one of the Butthole Surfers’ most infamous shows.
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