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Eden’s on guitar, Kenny Toy on drums of course, and this guy called Johnny who also plays in a band called The Stitches. He’s on the other guitar. Johnny is the only new one. Kenny and Eden have been in the band for quite some time now.
HIP: A lot of people would consider you a part of Hollywood, a permanent persona. Do you think of yourself that way?Well I do sometimes feel like a dinosaur. Yeah, I’ve been here a long time. I’ve been thrown out of all the best clubs, and they always let me back in.
HIP: I read in an interview that you were on TV as a child in Mexico but you didn't go into it. Do you want to go into it now just to make this a bit more interesting?
Um, when I was younger my mother used to dress my brothers and I all the same. There were four of us, so wherever we went we kind of like got attention. My mother made us all take piano lessons, we played the violin, the trumpet, all kinds of instruments, she was kind of a stage mother. We would go to Mexico every summer because my mother’s Mexican and my father was a schoolteacher so he had summers off and we would spend our time in Mexico, ever since I can remember. Every summer’s been in Mexico, that’s how I learned to speak Spanish at the same time as English. We were there all the time. My mother being the stage mother that she is, would make phone calls and she got us on television. Every summer we’d go back and we’d be on this clown variety show. Too bad it was before the time of the VCR because I don’t even have any tapes of it, all I have is photographs of when I was on TV. It was kind of cool getting attention, the only problem with it was after you get attention like that you just keep wanting more and more attention and then you end up seeking out that same attention, and then you end up like me.
HIP: Was she in the entertainment business?
She wasn’t really in the entertainment business, but she was in the show-off business. She liked to show off her sons and made us go on television. It was cool. People used to stop me on the street when I was a little kid and say “Hey, I saw you on TV!”
HIP: You guys are known for having a big female following, got any good groupie stories?
Well, the girls are very good to us. They take care of you, they buy you things when you need them. I’ve had girls buy me amplifiers, guitars, shoes. Shoes are the most important things, I always ask them to buy me shoes.
HIP: For the female readers, do you think you’ll ever settle down and tie the knot?
Yeah, absolutely. I’m looking for that special girl so I can get married. That’s my goal. Do you?
HIP: Shit, I have no idea. Next question, are you still a man of leisure?Well I do find these points in life when I don’t have to work, that I really enjoy. One time I went five years without a job and it was pretty cool. All I did was watch TV. I’d call my friends and I’d go “What’s up?” and they’d go “Oh, I just got fired” and I’d go “Oh, man of leisure. I like that!” I try to be a man of leisure as often as possible but unfortunately I still have to go to work every now and again because I need money for my beer.
HIP: Got any current bands you like right now?
Yeah, I saw this one Japanese band that I really like. They’re called Orange Candy. Amazing band. Sometimes you see a band and it just makes you feel just like not writing any more songs, it’s like “Okay, I’ll stop now. They got it.” Another band I saw, they were from Alabama, they were called Fr**-A-Go-Go. They were amazing, man. This guitar player, he’s playing a song right? He’s playing a solo then he takes his guitar off, shoves the headstock into the crotch of his pants, grinds against the headstock, pulls the headstock out of his pants and continues playing the solo. Amazing, man, It was still in tune! I mean it was a little out of tune but it didn’t matter at that point. I saw that band and I was like “You know what? I’m going to go home. I need to rethink things here, this is too good.” They were amazing.
HIP: I don't know if you want to talk about drugs but you're known for your various states of intoxication. How do you feel about that reputation of yours?
I don’t really mind it all actually. I went 75 days without a beer. It was pretty weird, it was almost like a drug in itself. Very strange. Very strange, the sober world. I’ve been trying not to drink too much lately. I don’t do drugs any more. I gave that up about four years ago. That’s a pretty tough life.
HIP: How do you feel now looking back on songs like Supersonic?
You know, it’s strange, I wrote Supersonic before I even did drugs and it’s almost like a subconscious level, something warning myself. I don’t know man, that was a trip. Drugs knocked me out. It was weird, I OD’d like over ten times, I stopped counting after ten, and I’m not just talking about like the OD where you friends bring you back to life. I woke up in ambulances, over ten times. I would wake up and I’d be like, “Oh, not again. Damn!” and you still don’t care. You’re thinking “Oh shit, I gotta get my next fix” You don’t think about the fact that you almost died, that doesn’t scare you. Death would be just a great really good night’s sleep. Strangely enough I’ve never had to go to jail. I’m very surprised by that. I’ve avoided the man. I’m afraid that maybe in the future, all those hospital bills may come back to haunt me. I don’t know who takes care of them, I know I certainly didn’t.
HIP: Why do you think so many creative artists do heroin?If you’re like me, you feel very empty all the time...
HIP: Sure...
....and you’re just looking for something to make you feel good. Alcohol makes you feel good, and heroin makes you feel even better. It’s only natural, you know, if it’s cold outside you want a blanket. So if you don’t feel all that good and something makes you feel better, it’s like, "Well, yeah". I guess it’s an artist’s nature to explore and experiment and search other levels to see what’s out there. That’s basically what I did, I was experimenting. It’s only natural that eventually you’re going to come to heroin. First, I discovered Exstacy. I didn’t do drugs until I was like 29 years old. Someone gave me a hit of Exstacy in New York and it was like so brilliant, I was like “Wow! Maybe there is something to this drug culture”. So then I took a hit of Acid and I loved it. It was a natural progression after that. It was pretty cool for a while but then it kind of started hurting, so I had to stop. It hurt, man.