He’s got a faceful of piercings and has stared down death, but can MINISTRY’S Al Jourgensen handle your questions?
Al Jourgensen has manned industrial legends Ministry for four decades, surviving near-death experiences, wild tours and industry bullshit – but can he survive your questions?
MINISTRY MASTERMIND AL JOURGENSEN has seen it all in his 40-year musical career, from epic line-ups and legendary tour antics to losing bandmates and friends around him. With Uncle Al’s industrial brainchild unleashing their lockdownfuelled album Moral Hygiene in
October, we turned to the Metal Hammer readers to pit the craziest questions to the man himself, from his memories of touring with the late Joey Jordison to how it really felt getting a face full of piercings in one sitting.
Ministry had Joey Jordison drum with them in ’06 – what are your memories of that tour, and at that point had you already resolved to retire Ministry after the ‘C U Latour’?
Rich Hobson (Facebook)
“I felt like retiring Ministry on the Rio Grande Blood tour every other show because it was the craziest line-up ever: Tommy Victor on guitar, Mike Scaccia on guitar, myself, John Bechdel and Paul Raven. The antics on that tour are definitely worthy of a book or a TV miniseries with that amount of egos, intelligence, really sarcastic humour and not really giving a fuck. Every other day, somebody would be too fucked-up to play and our shows would suck, then the next night it would be absolutely magical. It pretty much started with Joey, depending on how fucked-up he was that night – if he turned up with a couple of hookers and a bag of cocaine, we knew we were in for a bad show.”
Do you listen to classical music? If so, who’s your fave composer?
@Darkgullrecords (Twitter)
“Yes, but my classical music training, observance and listening habits are off the map. I really like Russian composers because of their darkness and understanding the times that they were living in when they wrote it. I tend to shy away from the popular stuff like Liszt and Mozart, I think they’re the Flock Of Seagulls of their time. I also find some of the contemporary stuff that mixes in jazz time signatures fascinating. It’s like math rock or Rush, you’re just showing off at that point.”
What made you change from synth to rock?
@simonparrock (Twitter)
“We basically never changed, that was a record label decision. For our first record, they signed me on the stuff
I’d written that eventually ended up on Twitch and The Land Of Rape And Honey, but they didn’t want any part of that and they just assigned us producers and back-up musicians – they even wrote lyrics for me. The producers were hellbent on making it an early 80s synth-pop record. They had me cut my hair, bought me a whole new wardrobe of sharkskin suits because they wanted me to be Wham! or whatever was selling that day. I didn’t sign up for this shit!
“I don’t even count that as a Ministry record. It’s good for what it is, but it’s not like we changed from synth to rock – that’s the contract we were under and as soon as we were out of it, we became Ministry. That was a rude awakening to the perils of the music industry. It was like getting in an Uber and the driver gets lost, so I’ve gotta pull out the GPS and find out where we’re going.”
“EVERY OTHER DAY, SOMEBODY WOULD BE TOO FUCKED-UP TO PLAY”
Forty years is a long time for a band. Did you ever imagine keeping it going for this long when you first started?
@CAJ_310 (Twitter)
“I never imagined being alive this long, let alone keeping a band! I seriously thought, before it was hip to be in the 27 Club, that I would be in it – but somehow at 62, I’m still here and actually quite happy. Life has kinda grown on me. I was hesitant to keep trying this experiment called ‘life on Planet Earth’ but as I’ve got older and everyone else is dying around me – also recently losing two friends of mine in Joey Jordison and Dusty Hill – you start thinking, ‘I guess I’m staying here, so I might as well make the best of it.’”
Poppadoms or bread?
@tim_bolitho (Twitter)
“For me, it’d be the poppadom, or what we call English muffins here. I put all my burgers and breakfast on English muffins, but when I eat any type of curry, I go with the poppadom.”
When you got all your facial piercings to prove you’re not a pussy to your daughter, was the pain worth it?
Ruby Lloyd (Email)
“There was no pain, it’s literally just like slapping your wrist real quick. I’m sure there’s sensitive areas that are a lot more acute to pain than where I got them around my eyebrows and nose, but it wasn’t that bad at all. In fact, that same day I made my daughter get a full sleeve and I got all my piercings to have a tattoo-off, she was the one crying. I was like, ‘Whatever, man, give me more! Wanna give me a Prince Albert? I’m ready, give it to me!’ The best part is she’ll regret her tattoos for the rest of her life but I can take my piercings out – revenge was sweet and it was served cold as I only got a few puncture holes in my face.”
At a show a few years back, I asked you what your favourite Hank Williams Sr song was. You asked me to come backstage after the show to answer, but I never made it back because I got too hammered from the kick-ass concert!
@elvisthomas8 (Twitter)
“It’s gotta be Your Cheatin’ Heart: those opening guitar chords transcend eras and take you someplace else. I know he has 144 published songs and of course I chose the most obvious one, and not all of his stuff is good, but those opening chords transport you to the 1940s and 50s, and that’s powerful in music – if you can do that in any song in any genre, you’re doing a good job.”
Which one of your tattoos would you say is your favourite?
Mark Vella (Email)
“I gotta go with my neck, which is Chicago, LA and El Paso, which are the three most influential cities that I’ve lived in; they shaped my course in life and kept me alive.”
Are we waiting for a new musical project by Ministry?
@Cuervot1lla (Twitter)
“Yeah! Moral Hygiene comes out on October 1 and it’s a pretty damn good record. I’m really proud of it and happy with it. There’s also going to be some new Lard material coming out since I have a studio in my house, and that’s all I did during quarantine. We also have 10 songs for a new Ministry record as soon as I get around to putting vocals on it, but I get very pernickety about vocals – I wanna see what’s going on around me before I start yapping. I’m just glad that we got the thumbs-up from Iggy Pop; he’s the first person I sent our cover of Search And Destroy and I said, ‘What do you think, Iggy? Should we put it on the record?’ He was like, ‘Hell yeah, man! I’ve heard 100 covers of that but this one is pretty strange!’ If he’s happy with it, I’m happy with it.”
If you could go back and relive any era from Ministry, Revolting Cocks or Lard, which would you revisit?
Debbie Long (Email)
“Definitely the Rio Grande Blood tour – we’ve lost three of the six mates that were there. I just sent Tommy Victor a photo of Joey, Paul and Mikey with the caption, ‘Who’s next, man? Any volunteers?’ That tour was not only infuriating, but also the most gratifying of any tour I’ve ever done in my life. It was incredible how it somehow worked out, it’s such a great feeling and I hope that’s the feeling on my deathbed: that somehow all this crazy shit worked out.”
MINISTRY’S NEW ALBUM, MORAL HYGIENE, WILL BE RELEASED ON OCTOBER 1 VIA NUCLEAR BLAST
“I’M GLAD WE GOT THE THUMBS-UP FROM IGGY POP”