Some bands have a work ethic and a love for what they do bigger than the changing music industry, money and fame in its many guises. Bands like these, bands like Melvins, tend to stick around and will always find a space in which to create and people to take notice, whether releasing albums with other venerable workaholics or being respected enoughto curate their own festivals.
Describing Melvins followers is almost as hard as describing the band themselves. The Irish Centre just outside the city centre of Leeds tonight looks like a Noah’s ark of musical subcultures; the plethora of dress senses reveals that Buzz Osborne’s immortal troupe have in one way or another influenced a huge proportion of the bands that have formed in the last 22 years.
If you want a well balanced perspective on the state of music today, Melvins’ lead singer is the one to talk to. When asked about how he likes the position the band are in right now, and about touring in the UK, he appreciatively replies, "We’re doing a show tonight in Leeds. I think we sold over 600 tickets. To me the world is a right place if that’s the case. That we can come here, as weird a band as we are with no ‘success’ at this stage in our career and have that many people that are willing to come out and spend their hard earned dollars to see us, I couldn’t appreciate that more. I’m really happy about that. And I will do my best to make it a memorable performance for everybody". Hanging out before the gig in Leeds with little to do, Buzz still seems completely enthused about being in a touring band away from his Hollywood home for around five months of the year and makes it clear that he loves gigging when asked what he likes doing when he isn’t on the road, "Well, that’s when you plan everything else you’re gonna do".
Unlike many artists, Melvins understand that they have a responsibility to their audience. That it is disrespectful to develop a celebrity complex, charge people £15 for a ticket and then be drunk or sloppy on stage; "If we’re gonna do a 90-minute set, all 90 minutes are important, and that includes in-between song stuff". Buzz carefully estimates that he spends 70% of his time thinking about Melvins and, describing how they pick each night's set list from their huge catalogue, reveals the meticulous planning that goes into everything they do. "We prefer to work out the set list before we leave and then concentrate on playing that as a whole thing, as opposed to ‘jukebox’ style. We go to great lengths to link it all together in some cohesive fashion. It’s more like performance art". The justification for this method of playing is particularly interesting and emphasises the sheer amount of experience Buzz has in the world of musical performance. As he says, "I’ve seen bands do a different set every night and they lose momentum, some nights it doesn’t work. I’m not really interested in that. It’s more like a play; you’re not going to change the order there. More like going to see a symphony. At least that’s the way I interpret the performance of it".
With this knowledge of intent it's even more enthralling to behold the start of Melvins' set tonight, which reverberates with monastic chants and white noise for a good few minutes before you can just about pick out the sparse drones of ‘Hung Bunny’. They use two drummers, and it's easier, then, to understand why Buzz would want to practice every second of their gigs to the point of exhaustion, as the potential to sound disjointed and loose is a real threat. But the fact that every moment is planned means the double drumming and everything else sounds perfectly tight on songs like the bluesy, chugging ‘The Water Glass’. What Buzz failed to mention was the sheer volume at which Melvins will be playing tonight, and three songs in they have me running for my earplugs - not necessarily to protect my hearing, but more to stop my liquidated brain trickling out of its bony casing (don’t worry, I shut my mouth and hold my nose too). They keep up the piercing racket right up until ‘Billy Fish’, which again showcases the role of twin skin-bashers with its introduction and which Buzz had got excited about earlier; "I really like the song 'Billy Fish' a lot, it’s one of my favourite songs I’ve ever written. I don’t listen to it but I’m really happy with the way it came out and it does pretty much what I want it to do".
Melvins play twenty songs in total tonight that highlight all parts of their career, but Buzz isn’t fazed by the idea of taking on different projects and playing their songs differently. Earlier this year for example, Melvins played shows in seven US cities that stretched over two nights in each, played whole classic albums such as Lysol, Eggnog, Houdini , Bullhead and Stoner Witch and even varied the line-up over the course of the tour for various ‘Melvins Lite’ or ‘Melvins 1983’ incarnations, the latter being just Buzz Osborne and longest remaining bandmate Dale Crover. A huge number of ‘symphonies’ to pin down indeed, but Buzz states that he welcomes this kind of a challenge. When asked if learning all of the material was difficult in any way, he cheerfully responds, "No it wasn’t too bad. I like doing weird stuff and I’m not opposed to working at all. The guys I play with are all extremely talented and I have total faith in them so we could make it work. There’s really no rock song we couldn’t play. We’d figure something out."
Similarly, he makes light of getting together with Jello Biafra to write and record the two albums that they made together not so long ago, "I wrote two thirds of the songs maybe, at least half of the music. Then he came up with all the lyrics". Surely though, logistically it would be a problem to coincide a time and a place for something like that to happen between two veterans of the music industry who no doubt have a lot of other things on their plate? Apparently not, and Jello didn’t even want to indulge in technology to help the process along, "Well, he’s not a big internet guy," excuses Buzz, "We got together on a number of occasions. Down where we live in LA, he came down there".
It is slightly surprising that Melvins collaborated so effectively with Jello, and are clearly such good friends with a musician who has always been particularly outspoken about politics, when you hear Buzz express his views on entertainers who get involved with politics in general. For example, he does not mince his words when asked what he thinks about Tom Morello’s backing of the recent occupation of Wall Street, "he’s stepping out of his area of expertise, which is music, and claiming to be an authority on something like politics. Why would anybody listen to him? I think you should look to higher sources for your political beliefs than entertainers, and if you don’t you’re a fool". Buzz goes on to point out, "He’s staying at the Four Seasons hotel, going down there and talking to these people living in tents and trying to make himself look more important off the back of what they are doing. I have absolutely no reason to not distrust his motives and it’s up to him to prove otherwise". But it’s the more high profile God-complexed celebrities masquerading as philanthropists that Osborne seems to really hate, "Bono did a bunch of blow and decided he could save the world. I’m not buying it". Further distancing himself from the U2 singer, Buzz says, "What can I learn from a multi-millionaire in my life? His world and my world are totally different, his world and the peoples that are occupying Wall Street are totally different. Do you think he would live in a tent down there?"
Melvins continue to be a band that music snobs and air-brained metal-heads can love at the same time, evolving to face an age where fans expect their music for nothing from the internet, but Buzz seems to relish the challenge of existing in a different era for music as the same band saying, "I like the idea of things changing and forcing people to think outside the box. You don’t wanna get too comfortable". It’s also obvious that he appreciates the use of technology for easier spreading of his music and for his own personal enjoyment, "As a teenager I would have loved to have had something like YouTube where I could go, 'What did Syd Barrett sound like?' and I could find out. That’s amazing and it has never been the case, ever. If you wanna hear Creedence Clearwater or Black Flag, there it is. You can’t put a value on that".
But how does playing live shows figure in Buzz’s view of the changing face of the music industry and music itself? As such a personable human being, it’s not surprising that his answer hinges on staying true to why he formed a band in the first place, and thus he stresses that there is "a human element that you can’t get on the computer. That’s what drove me to punk rock in the first place, what was so exciting about it was the intimacy. I would wanna go to a show in a place like this. We try to operate as a band the way that we would appreciate other bands operating".
Melvins certainly manage to make the gig feel intimate despite a minimal amount of audience engagement. You’re right there with them on every note, and Buzz’s stumbled gratitude is both endearing and sincere when he says, "Please, please, thank you for coming". In a room where you can imagine anything from line-dancing to cock fights taking place, Buzz and his cronies dominate and transform it into a collection of beaming smiles and nodding heads. Despite now looking a little like Timothy Spall as Wormtail in the Harry Potter films, Dale Crover keeps the momentum right until the end of the promised hour and a half and cracks out some incredible joint solos to boot. At about 85 minutes Buzz and bassist Jared Warren (who currently looks like a mini-Buzz protégé crossed with Zach Galifianakis) leave the stage, directing full attention to Crover and his co-drummer Coady Willis, who go out snares blazing in style.
Finally, I asked Buzz what keeps him so level-headed and genuinely friendly after 22 years in a business that has chewed up and spat out so many others. His response is full of tongue in cheek self-awareness: "I’m way too much of a Groucho Marxist. I don’t wonna be a member of any club that would have me as a member. I think that also keeps you pretty grounded".