Piggy, Piggy

Rip It Up, Issue 226, 1 June 1996, Page 19

Piggy, Piggy

Ministry's Paul Barker squeals

It’s almost 18 months since I last spoke to Ministry’s Paul Barker about their then-pending new album Filth Pig and its first single ‘Lay Lady Lay’. As anyone worth their bloodied earplugs knows, it took more than a year for that album to actually make it into a store near you. Praise the Red Wiggly One, it was worth the long wait. Unfortunately for Paul, said long wait means he has to endure doing further press for the release in the midst of a tour which began more than a year after the one which brought Ministry to these shores, and got many freaks salivating over the prospect of owning some of the new sounds of the sonic assault witnessed at Ministry’s Big Day Out and Powerstation shows in January 95. He’s on

the line from New Orleans and seems to have left his happy pills in his other bag...

“A tour has ups and downs, and sometimes it’s a little harder than others... but, urn... urn... I dunno... by and... I dunno, right now... I guess I’m not really havin’ a good day, but by and large it’s okay.” Like, don’t jump, dude. My mission, should I be brave and witty enough to accept it, is to make this man laugh. By the end of the interview I believe I have succeeded, and not all of his chuckles sounded born of the frustration some seem to feel at being asked questions and expected to answer. Interviewer, interviewee — geddit?

First up, let’s nutshell the causes for Filth Pig’s delayed release. It seems the Devil (Al Jourgensen) and his henchmen (et al) bought themselves their very own studio, in the form of a compound 50 miles outside of Austin, Texas. Unfortunately it was no package deal, and hence, there was no technician waiting on the premises to smooth out their every technical trouble. There were many technical troubles. Tempers frayed in some sort of direct proportion with that of wiring. Drummer Bill Rieflin left the band. Paul went into hiding a couple of times himself. “I didn’t quit. I just stopped working. You cannot [call that quitting], not unless there’s a press statement or some shit. As if anybody cares, that’s what I can’t believe. Like, who gives a shit?”

The fans, baby, the fans — and while they’ll no doubt be pleased as punch Paul managed to stay put, the case of Bill Reiflin did not have such a happy ending. “He has not given us any indication he would

like to work with us again,” is Paul’s way of saying he guesses Bill has left permanently. He has been replaced by Rey Washam (formerly of Rape Man and Scratch Acid, to name a couple). Paul has known Bill since as far back as 1982 (when Al produced an album for their band the Blackouts), so it’s easy to imagine him having some difficulty accommodating his replacement. “It was very difficult,” he laughs (score!). “But fortunately Rey is very creative, very playful, and he’s not interested in following other people’s footsteps. So, although certainly we had a full body of work which he needed to play, he has managed to put his own stamp on it, his own personality in it, which is wonderful, so he’s not a machine. It was very difficult though, seriously. It was really a great challenge for me, because I guess, perhaps, I was just getting fat and lazy. I was playing with somebody I really enjoyed playing with, who was really competent and really a lot of fun. It doesn’t matter what venue it is, when you’re working with someone over that

amount of time, you kind of know what to expect. Of course that works in your favour, but also, a change is always good.” When I suggest the problems which cropped up throughout the recording were probably not what a band would anticipate from the creation of a personal studio, he laughs again (double score!), and agrees with me. Still, there was more to it than the mere lack of a technician... much more. Paul also puts the frequent 50-mile journey to the studio’s middle-of-nowhere location, and the ever lethal cabin fever in front of the blame-firing squad. Another ingredient in this volatile mix was the one known as “the same shit”. Now, I can’t speak for you, but I’m pretty sure “the same shit” for Paul Barker is not of the same brand it is for me, so I ask him to elaborate on its respective ingredients. “Well, we are not bankers. You can’t just put a suit on and say: ‘Okay, now I want to be creative.’ So, that’s a huge problem. I mean, you have no idea what the creative process is, or when inspi-

ration’s going to hit you. Sure, we can churn out music, but then we don’t end up using it because it’s boring, it’s boring for us, we’re just doin’ it because we’re supposed to. So, by and large, all that material is just so much more bullshit, so much more rehash, same old idea, maybe a different chord structure or something, but it’s not really challenging us. That’s the hardest thing, to be satisfied with something and know that you’re challenging yourself. Anybody can make the same record again. That’s not interesting.” Kinda makes cleaning up cat turds seem positively rosy in comparison, doesn’t it? On the subject of such filthy gigs, Paul has bestowed his seal of approval on the idea of the recent actual Filth Gigs, held in the dirty city we call Auckland. Nevertheless, when I suggest people may be in need of Ministry incarnate if they have resorted to paying to hear the band’s album played really loudly, he reassures me by saying they are considering an offer to tour in October.

BRONWYN TRUDGEON