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Tom: I understand that the song "Screamer" will be featured in the upcoming motion picture "Lightning Bug". What is the film about and how did your song get chosen for it?
Jerry: Well, basically, the guy that does all the effects for Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and some other things…I'm not sure what else…He made a movie, from what I understand, basically about his life.
Doug: He was into horror.
Jerry: …and he grew up in a Christian town…a small Christian town and they thought that he was a Satan worshipper, and some girl in the town died because of it…It's a real tragic story. But it's about his life. It's a really cool movie. It played at the Sundance Festival and I guess he's trying to get it picked up by a major movie company. So "Screamer" and …uh …"Bad Luck." …"Bad Luck" is on it too. They are both on the soundtrack.
Tom: Have you ever been on a soundtrack before, and do you think that by being on one that you will reach a larger market of people that might not otherwise hear your music?
Jerry: We had a song on Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey: "Junior's Gone Wild" and nothing happened.
Doug: It all depends on the movie. If it's a big movie, and the record sells well, we'll have a hit, and if not, well then people will say, "who's that?"
Jerry: (Laughs) But, you know, we hope it turns into a #1 soundtrack… a #1 movie. Why not?
Tom: You guys started out years ago on the Atlantic/Megaforce label, which at the time was directed at a young crowd and now Metal Blade, which again, has a younger audience that is seeing a newer side of the band, what kind of response are you getting from new fans and older fans about the new material?
Doug: Actually we've got our own label now; it's distributed by Metal Blade. A lot of the young kids have been coming to see us more and more. I don't know if they just turned 18 and have been listening to us since they were ten years old, or if a lot of parents have played King's X for their kids and the parents are gone and the kids are coming now. But I think there is a resurgence of young kids wanting to hear music that's not mainstream. They want something that they can sink their teeth into and we notice that there are a lot of young kids coming. The older folks stand in the back and the young kids come down front. It's pretty cool.
Tom: What's life like on the road with King's X these days?
Jerry: It's wonderfully, terribly, beautifully exciting. It is the life we would all choose to live. We're just the fortunate ones that get to…(laughter)
Doug: (laughter) That's beautiful Jerry…(laughter)
Jerry: (laughter)
Doug: …it's a struggle. You work. You've got to do your thing, but like Jerry said, we get to do what we love to do. So I guess we can't really complain at all. I complain when we're going to Europe or something and I'll be all like, "I'm going to Europe next week and I don't feel like it" and my roommates or my friends say, "Doug, I'm sorry I can't feel sorry for you." And then you get to go to Europe and play for thousands of people. At least we don't sit at home and go to a "nine-to-five."
Jerry: I don't complain about anything anymore. Well, actually I do, but not in front of you…(laughs)
Tom: Speaking of Europe, you guys recently toured Europe. How did that go? Is there a noticeable difference between shows in Europe as opposed to the shows in the United States?
Doug: What do you think Jerry?
Jerry: Here's what I find: No matter where we go in the world, there is always at least a handful of King's X people and it's always that King's X type vibe.
Doug: Yeah, they know all the music and all the words… It's just amazing. They are like Grateful Dead fans.
Jerry: From Romania, Slovenia, to Austria and New Zealand…they're everywhere. It really surprises me. There's that core vibe.
Doug: And with the Internet, they all know each other now. (Laughs)
Jerry: (Laughter)
Tom: Yeah, I get the Metal Blade newsletters and updates and they are listing all the bands like Cattle Decapitation, Vader, Six Feet Under and the like and then there is King's X, and I'm like, one of these things is not the same…
Doug: (laughter) Yeah we don't fit. We never did. We never will. Not on Metal Blade, not on Megaforce, not on Atlantic. All the labels say we don't fit and it's true. So we just go with whoever wants to put the record out. Whoever will put it out to the world, that's who we'll go with. At the end of the day, no one's looking at if it's Metal or not; they're listening to it as music, you know? Even though it might have come from the metal corner, at the end of the day, like I said: People are going to like you for your music.
Tom: King's X is Co-headlining this tour with Fishbone. How did this tour come about?
Doug: We toured with them a year ago right, Jerry?
Jerry: Yeah…
Doug: And Spacey T is a good friend of mine and we'd been talking about touring together for a long time. We all just kept talking about it until it happened one day. And here we are: on Tour with Fishbone.
Tom: Ok, cool. As true pioneers of Progressive Metal, King's X has inspired many players, yet you guys are (for the most part) often overlooked by the media. But in 2000, the band was selected by their peers as one of the "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock" in a VH-1 special. What was the feeling in the King's X camp after that?
Doug: It was finally validation for all this hard work we've been doing and feeling like nobody cared. You know, it was great…It just changed everything for me. It helped me to hold my head up and go out and do what I do, regardless of what anyone thinks or how many records are being sold. It was like being given permission…like being told you were ok, because we've always felt like we don't fit in. We've always been the underdogs and we've always been overlooked. But just to hear somebody give you credit for that on a major TV show and the whole way they did it…it was just beautiful. For me it was a big thing. I recorded it five times. (Laughs)
Tom: Jerry, your thoughts... ?
Jerry: I totally agree with that. It was a tremendous honor and I felt like, "Wow! We are a part of this thing called the music world. It was amazing and it helped me just like he said. It gave the life back to us.
Tom: Yeah, that's a nice little shot in the arm.
Tom: Who are some of the bands that you consider to be your influences?
Jerry: As a matter of fact, last night we were watching that new Led Zepplin DVD and I realized that is where my drumming influence comes from, if nothing else. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life…and Buddy Rich.
Doug: For me the list is probably…from anybody you name, I've probably stolen something from, because I am a music-aholic. Sly and The Family Stone has always been my favorite band, but I can't even begin to tell you …most of my favorite bands…bands that influenced me are bands nobody's heard of like: Cactus and Captain Beyond…and you know, bands that nobody bought that I thought were genius. I grew up listening to show music and show tunes, and Broadway plays, Johnny Mathis, little Richard, all the stuff in the fifties when I grew up. Uh, Do-Wop music, Blues, anything from Lightnin' Hopkins to B.B. King, and every era was a whole new thing. Because you know, I was born in 1950, and the 50's with Elvis and all of that, and the 60's with the Beatles, Motown, James Brown, …then we went through desegregation, and all the music that happened: Curtis Mayfield, and then Rock, like, Led Zepplin popped. In the 70's somebody brought me Led Zepplin II and that changed everything for me. It reminded me of Booker T & The MG's in the 60's without a keyboard player. I remember thinking, "This is Great!" That's how I got really heavily into rock. Then there's the McGuire Sisters who had the cluster chords and lots of harmonies…they were just great, you know with "Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy from Company B" It was amazing how they set those harmonies up and how fast they sang the words and everything. So, I mean it was just everything. In the 80's it was U2 and The Cure, and Metallica gave me permission to be heavy again. U2 put sort of a conscience in what I did, you know, …listening to Bono sing so honestly about what he felt and who he was, he just changed my lyrics, you know… and AC/DC was like one biggest things when it came to groove. AC/DC just had that groove. That's all they were. Jimi Hendrix, Heart…Oh my God! I could just go on and on. The 80's & 90's…Grunge. I feel that we were a big part of Grunge. All those band…it felt like we were part of the 70's. Everyone just took off the garbage, walked out with their hair straight and some shorts and just played again, you know? It went around in a circle for me…Punk Rock…The Sex Pistols, The Ramones…
Tom: I just got to shake hands with Johnny Rotten about two months ago.
Doug: Really?
Tom: Yeah! I punked him into it. (Editor's note: read about that here.)
Jerry & Doug: Yeah!
Tom: You want to talk about validation… It was great.
Doug: That is so cool!
Tom: What are some of the bands that you are listening to lately?
Doug: Deftones... Silverchair is amazing.
Jerry: I like the new limpbizkit...
Doug: I do too. Mars Volta, I think that is going to kick the kids into a whole new generation of music.
Jerry: I've been listening to The Darkness a lot.
Doug: They are great.
Jerry: They make me laugh.
Doug: They're like AC/DC with an opera singer. It's fucked up man.
Tom: Back in 1988, you guys toured with the band Masters of Reality, a band that was from Syracuse, NY. They are good friends of ours. Tim Harrington produced our band Born Again Savages for our first three releases and will be on board again to produce our fourth. What are your thoughts on the Masters?
Doug: I loved those guys. They were a great band.
Jerry: I almost forgot about them…
Doug: I remember the first time I heard them. We got the CD, and Rick Ruben, it was the first time I had heard him produce anything, but that record was sonically, just the most amazing sounding record I had ever heard in my life. It changed everything for me. I think that is why we got them to tour with us. We just loved that record and had the opportunity to tour with them and we said let's do it.
Jerry: I think they broke up on tour with us.
Tom: Yeah they did.
Tour Manager: We were playing in Chicago. We got to the gig and Tim (Harrington) and Vinny (Ludivico) were there, and Googe and Chris Goss had flown home and didn't tell anybody.
Doug: We don't know why they split up, we never saw them fighting or anything. They seemed to get along.
Tom: Well, Chris Goss has gone on to be quite successful, working with Kyuss, and Queens of the Stone Age, and Tim Harrington has new band called Creepjoint as well as producing our CD.
Tom: I know you guys need to get ready to go on stage, so I have one last question. What does the future hold for King's X?
Doug: More records, more touring, play, play, and play until we die. Pay the bills, do what we do …side projects…keep on going.
Jerry: Keep making music. We don't even think about not playing, this is what we do.
Doug: It's what we do. We always have and we always will. We didn't wake up one day and decide to start doing this; we've been doing this all our lives. Why stop now?
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