Murderdolls : Wednesday 13
Your people will wear cardigans, and drink highballs . . .

cc: Any Tuff CDs in there? You were a member of the Tuff fanclub weren't you?

W13: Yeah, that's correct.

cc: There's not many people brave enough to admit that.

W13: Y'know what man, there's a lot of people in this business that try to deny where they came from, and the thing about Murderdolls is that I try to be completely honest about it. Because if you're honest you've got nothing to hide, so when the dirt gets dug up you don't look like a fuckin' asshole. And for me it's like, y'know I'm not admitting it cause I'm afraid I'd get busted - I'm not ashamed of it man.
    With that band Tuff, y'know I saw 'em in a magazine, I wrote 'em, they autographed me an 8x10 back. I was like, 'Wow! - a rock band signed an 8x10 to me!' So I ordered their demo and joined their fanclub. I thought it was my own personal little band, because the world hadn't even heard of them, they had just got signed.

cc: And their first CD was really good [1991's What Comes Around Goes Around], but it didn't really go anywhere.

W13: That time was when the big grunge movement came in and just fuckin' washed all those bands away. It's pretty funny now cause I'm good friends with Stevie [Rachelle], the singer from Tuff. Everytime I go to LA we always go to dinner and hang out, and he's a really cool guy. So it's pretty funny!

cc: Tuff have done a version of [Kid Rock's] American Badass haven't they - American Hair Band?

W13: Yeah, actually we have that played before we go on stage. His lyrics on that - it's very clever.

cc: It seems that a lot of the bands from that era are out playing shows again - some that never made it to the UK the first time round. In the last few months we've had Tuff, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bang Tango . . . I had to go out to LA to see Faster Pussycat, and now they're playing here all the time.

W13: Actually Faster Pussycat's playing in my fuckin' home town on Thursday and I get home on Sunday. Them and Pretty Boy Floyd. So that's fuckin' pissed me off! Faster Pussycat is still one of my favourite bands from that time, and I learnt how to play guitar from their albums.

cc: Is there an undercurrent of new bands out there? Are you leading a big hair revolution?

W13: No, there's not any new things that I've seen. Y'know, for me, I never wanted to come out as a band and go 'Hey, we're bringing rock 'n' roll back to the masses', because when you do that you immediately cut your throat. I never wanted to say that, and we never will say that. All we're saying is that what we do is play a rare breed of music right now. People are digging it, they're discovering it, and a lot of people that understand all these old bands that we grew up on can see the influence. But to some people this is all brand new. They're used to seeing fuckin' rock stars wearing backwards hats and baggy pants for years, and wearing fuckin flannel shirts and all that sad, depressing Seattle shit that came out a long time ago.

cc: I guess if your favourite band was Staind or someone like that, you guys must seem like a total revelation.

W13: Yeah, but I don't think we've really started anything . . . all I know is that we have started this little army of loyal fans that you can pick out a mile away because of the colour code; the red and black army as we call it.

cc: Was the colour scheme a conscious decision? It's a bit like The Zeros, who had that purple thing going on . . .

W13: Yeah, yeah, The Zeros are one of my favourite bands too! But no man, when we all met we all had black and red hair, which was really ironic, and all our clothes y'know, we all wear black. So I didn't want to wear solid black, so the only other colour that seemed right that went with our hair and everything was the red and black theme. And it just took off as this colour code. And it's all because all these kids just totally adapted to it. It's really easy to imitate our image. Which is good. Our clothes aren't made by Versace and all these top designers. We go in the same stores to buy our clothes that these kids can go to.

cc: So you're no longer viewed as the band that has Joey from Slipknot in it . . .

W13: Well at first that was the initial attention grabber. I think any new band would love to have a staple like that to draw attention to the band. Even though we were a new band, we already had the attention with having a guy from Slipknot. But believe me, in the UK that really died down after our first trip here. It was way beyond Joey. I mean now it's not like that all, you will hardly ever see Slipknot shirts at our show anymore. People really accepted the band as a band and it's not about that. People have their own favourite members, so it's kind of like Kiss y'know? We're all characters, it's not a one-man show. It's a band and that's just the way luckily the audience has grasped onto it.