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Written by Mike Thomas
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Monday, 01 January 2007 |
 The Melvins
an interview with drummer Dale Crover
The Melvins continue to challenge the notions of rock, one album and member at a time The Melvins have been making music for nearly three decades now, and in that time have burrowed into a thoroughly enigmatic niche creating rampantly sludgy and wonderfully odd melodies coupled with stories.
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A style that has been labeled everything from prototypical stoner rock to alt metal, and the obligatory grunge tag just to name a few. But as prolific as the Melvins have been for over two decades now, it doesn’t mean the band has become any less of an anomaly in the music world. In fact, it may seem as if the subterranean legends have grown more elusive over time, especially when you consider the continuous revolving door policy the band seems to live by.
Guitarist/frontman Buzz Osborne (commonly referred to as King Buzzo or just Buzz) and drummer Dale Crover have been the constant for over 20 years, but the list of other members that have recorded and hit the road with the Washington-turned L.A. natives is exhausting. No less than nine musicians have joined forces with Crover and Osborne after Crover replaced original drummer Matt Lukin in the mid-80s. Since then, the two has seen additional members come and go like a winter storm, the most notable being punk rock superhero Jello Biafra.
But the Melvins seem to like it that way, and Osborne and Crover have never seemed to be bothered by the fact that their portfolio remains deep under the radar after all these years of hard work. Ironically, some of the Melvins biggest fans are also some of rock’s biggest names. Perhaps the longest running of those bands to emerge from Seattle’s famed grunge scene in the early 90s. It took Nirvana’s astronomical rise to god-like status to propel the Melvins record deal with Atlantic, now a thing of the past. But Crover will make you a believer that he and Osborne couldn’t care less about getting recognition from the masses or a big payday. In fact he finds humor in the whole situation.
“It’s pretty funny because I would say we’ve had a longer history than every band that came out of Seattle,” Crover says. “I know what we’ve done and that’s all that matters. The whole Nirvana thing was weird and a fluke and it happened, and then all the other labels saw and that’s how we got signed. Atlantic was like, ‘Wait a minute, those guys are friends with Nirvana and Nirvana talks about them all the time so let’s sign them.’ I don’t know if they thought we would change the way we sound or anything like that, but that’s how we got signed. And Stone Temple Pilots or any of those other bands, the reason they got popular was because the label put a bunch of money behind them.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with being good at all. Payola, that’s how those bands got popular, that’s how they got on MTV. Universal just got busted for payola again, so I mean we could certainly have a radio hit if we paid a bunch of money for it, but it’s not gonna happen and that’s okay.”
What does matter a great deal to the Melvins is staying fresh and prolific, while quenching fans’ appetites that have grown hip to the magnanimous imprint the band has put on modern music. When the idea hit to bring the Seattle-based duo Big Business in, Osborne and Crover moved pretty quickly, but the idea didn’t just emerge out of thin air.
“We thought that it would be something we wanted to do, have two drummers,” Crover says. “It was something we had talked about for a while and it just kind of worked out.”
|  Big Business just happened to want to get out of Seattle and move to L.A., where the Melvins now call home. Osborne moved there in the mid-90s via San Francisco and Crover followed in ’99. “We played for the first time a year ago last summer and then Big Business ended up moving down in February,” he says. “Once those guys moved down, we started recording right away and were done by July.”
As for the adjustment Crover had to make playing alongside another drummer, Big Business’ Coady Willis seemed to fit in without too much finessing needed. “It’s not much different than having two guitar players; it’s pretty easy. Coady is a quick learner especially when he’s got a glock to his dome. If I don’t want to hit a bass drum beat, I know he’s there to play the beat,” Crover says with a chuckle. “I’m getting older and it’s harder to swing them drumsticks, and some young buck like Coady there covers my a**.” But all joking aside (something nearly impossible to do when you are dealing with Crover), the combination of the two is overpowering and succinct, it seems as if the two were meant to drum side by side. This four piece acts much like a burly 4X4 truck, tearing through the mud and working on two different axles.
No doubt the new Melvins lineup of Willis and Crover as the backbone coupled with Osborne and Warren’s blistering navigation is an intoxicating combination. And making things even more interesting, add the fact that the Melvins and Big Business can both play a show without changing gear or even leaving the stage. On the current tour, which heads to the U.K. over Christmas and wraps up with a New Year’s Eve show in Seattle, Big Business literally morphs into the Melvins when Crover and Osborne hop on stage and spin the final Big Business song into the first Melvins tune of the band’s set. That kind of frantic collaboration can be found on the band’s new album, (A) Senile Animal, where Big Business bassist/singer Jared Warren and Willis’ influence is undeniable. That being said, Osborne is still the proverbial boss of the band, constructing most of the Melvins’ material. But the relationship is hardly a dictatorship.
“Buzz writes most of the material and then we bring it into practice,” Crover says. “We definitely jammed a lot of stuff in practice with these guys, came up with a lot of stuff ourselves, and then Jared [Warren] wrote some lyrics too and also finished a few songs. We definitely involved those guys and used them to their full potential.”
And while Crover is optimistic about the Melvins future with Warren and Willis, he also is careful not to disregard history either. “I can’t make any promises knowing our past, but hopefully it will work,” he says. “I definitely see a future with these guys and I hope it works out for the best. We would certainly like it to last forever, but everyone knows that never happens—nothing ever lasts forever. Eventually it just all falls to pot, right down the dumper.” This is probably as serious of a statement as you will ever get from Crover, but the Melvins have never made a habit of being even remotely predictable. A lot of that comes from the band’s hearty desire to always work and reinvent itself.
“We’re big music fans, and we like to work, and I guess we’re just not lazy. I think we have a very strong work ethic,” Crover says. “[Osborne] just constantly plays guitar and writes and works on our music. I mean, we’ve got songs we’ve had for a while that we still haven’t even gotten to and gotten to record.”
But then again, the Melvins have never had the luxury of choosing to take a break or get lazy.
“We’re not the type of band that can afford to sit around and not work for a while,” Crover says. “That’s what we have to do to pay the bills—keep on working. It’s like a dream job in paradise, I tell you.” Sarcasm aside, Crover is frankly quite positive about the Melvins current relationship with its label, Ipecac. “The deal we have is really good. It’s probably the best deal we’ve ever had in terms of what we make, and those guys are into every stupid idea we come up with and they pay for it, or at least put up the money for it.”
As for putting his money where his mouth is, Crover has never shied away from doing that. But interestingly enough, Crover’s biggest influences growing up were hardly underground bands, but the biggest of the big. “Kiss made me want to become a drummer or at least in a professional rock band,” he says. “When I was like 12 and stuff was when Rush was really popular, so I really loved Neil Peart and after that I was really into Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. I liked more bands than drummers. People always say a band is only as good as its drummer, but that’s a crock, there are plenty of great drummers that aren’t in a band at all.”
While Crover may not be frolicking in all the spoils his greatest influences did as rock gods, he is living his dream of making a career out of being a drummer. The Melvins have also made some very dedicated fans along the way; some of them maybe even more famous than the guys Crover grew up idolizing. Funny how things work out sometimes. | melvins.com
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