5. Butthole SurfersHairway To Steven
I think it’s something not a lot of people know about me that I’m a pretty big fan of their music. I heard them first, probably like a lot of other people, on the song ‘Pepper’ [from Electriclarryland. I was a teenager and that was first got me interested in them. I remember listening to the first self-titled record from ’83 and I was really taken by that, and even the later stuff like Independent Worm Saloon from the ’90s, which was weirdly produced by John Paul Jones. This record is from the late ’80s though and it’s my favourite of theirs from both a songwriting and production perspective. There’s a lot of acoustic guitar on it, which I’ve always thought was kind of weird for this kind of music, but I love the way that it sounds. It makes a lot of sense to me. So I got into them the same way that everybody else as a teenager did in the ’90s, but then found more of interest to me in the earlier stuff. It’s a different kind of album from their others. I think even in the songwriting as well as the use of acoustic guitar, it’s quite different. There’s something more sincere as opposed to sardonic in the songs.
Are there other somewhat similar bands from this era that you remember being into at that time?
Sure, it’s a little embarrassing to talk about, I guess, but when I was a teenager, I was a big fan of that late ’80s LA scene. I was a big fan of River Phoenix, early Red Hot Chili Peppers, early REM, all those bands that were kind of connected to each other. For whatever reason, that is a very indicative sound and feeling of my teenage years. There’s a bit of sentiment that means something to me. I think also with Butthole Surfers, the interesting thing for me was that they’re from Texas and I grew up in a part of Canada that is very much like Texas. I think finding what I thought was a cool band from somewhere like Texas just gave me like a little bit of hope. They’re both very conservative area, very centred on, you know, cowboy culture.
