The
shuffler:
Jesse "Boots Electric" Hughes, who stomps out grimy boogie-rock in his band,
Eagles Of Death Metal. The mustachioed singer and his good-time gang are
touring the States into December behind the just-released Heart On, recorded with Hughes'
in-studio bandmate, Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age. Having forgotten
each of his four hot-pink iPods at home, Hughes offered to put his "brain on
shuffle" instead: "I'll deny it if it's ever asked of me, but because I love you already, I
am going to do drugs live on this interview." Hence our first Random Rules selection
is a bit out of the ordinary.
Pharma-grade
meth, "full-tilt boogie"
Jesse
Hughes: I'm
excited about this. I spent the better part of six hours yesterday tracking
this UCLA chemistry student down—no shit—and he has built a
laboratory in his parents' house in Pasadena where he makes pharmaceutical-grade
methamphetamine. It's full-tilt boogie. It costs more than cocaine. And it's
quite an expérience. I'm about to snort up two fingers of crank right now, and
we're going to get down. Listen to this, boy, here we go. Hope you can hear the
snorking.
Bob
& Earl, "Harlem Shuffle"
JH: [Audibly snorts twice.]
Oh wow! Oh shit! Oh wow, dude! Oh fuck. Oh my God. [Long pause.] So "Harlem
Shuffle" is one of the first great soul songs which demonstrates you can make a
track that'll never be forgotten, but you can have a band that will be, almost immediately.
You've never heard of Bob & Earl, but you hear part of this song all the
time: the horn section at the beginning of House Of Pain's "Jump Around." My
girl and I—although I'd like to, I can't tell you her name, because it
would be a bit sensational; let's just say her name is Coco Bubbles—every
time Coco and I put on this song, we do the nasty. [Pause.] Man, that shit that
I got… I'm telling you right now, it's so good, it's crazy.
The
A.V. Club: This is your first time trying this guy's stuff?
JH: It's like my third. I
went to rehab a while ago, 'cause everybody was convinced that I had a problem
with drugs, but I was like, "I have no problem. I love them." I went to Promises
[Treatment Center] and I learned something: There is no disease with drugs or
alcohol; there are simply people who whine too much and people who don't.
Watching someone who sold their child to a crack dealer feel sorry for themselves
because it was a "disease" makes me want to beat their fucking head in. I've
learned that if something sucks, I stop. I've never not been able to pay the
bills, and I'll tell you right now: I don't know what any of what I just said
means, but what I'm doing right now makes me want to pay everybody's bills.
Gerry
Rafferty, "Right Down The Line"
JH: Rafferty
is one of my favorite singer-songwriters. He's one of the greatest enigmas of
Hollywood, because he used to be in the band Stealers Wheel, where he wrote
"Stuck In The Middle With You." Then he wrote [soft-rock mainstay] "Baker
Street," you know, with that sax line in the beginning? [Sings.] "Bum-bah-bum-bu-na-na-na."
Listen to that song and you'll hear an artist who deeply influenced Dave
Grohl's songwriting; Foo Fighters actually covered "Baker Street." But "Right
Down The Line" is one of the sweetest love songs of the '70s. And listening to
it as someone who makes music, it has amazing production value, too. This dude
set out to make truly beautiful music.
AVC:
Considering the "shuffle" factor, we're bound to run into a guilty pleasure…
JH: Let me
hit the "shuffle" button in my brain again.
Britney
Spears, "Piece Of Me"
JH: I'll go
on record with this: I love Britney Spears. I think she's great. I really do. I
don't think anyone has the right to look down on her. She's accomplished more
shit simply as a performer than most people will accomplish in their actual
lives. Hold on a second, dude, my mother's on the other line. Let me just tell
her to stop calling. [One minute passes.] Hello? Dude, my mom's so rad. She's
like, "You're doing an interview with The Onion? Awesome!" See, we love The
Onion.
AVC:
That's great, but what about Britney?
JH: I have every Britney
Spears album ever made, and I ain't ashamed of that. She gets the best
producers and songwriters money can buy, and puts them to work on her albums.
That sounds like a pretty good production effort to me. And she's got hot tits
and a wonderful ass and she likes to make herself beautiful, just for me. If
somebody puts on Britney Spears and you ain't dancing, it's probably because
you're Stephen Hawking.
AVC:
Do you aspire to that level of fame and power, to hire the best of the best and
sit back as they do your musical bidding?
JH: I don't have to aspire to
that, because I have the best of the best producing my records already.
AVC:
Should we go to song number four now?
JH: Do you know what time it
is right now?
AVC:
It's about elev—
JH: It's 4:20, baby! It's
4:20. Since I can't "puff-puff-pass," I'm just going to puff-puff the magic dragon.
Queens
Of The Stone Age, "I Never Came"
JH: Lullabies To Paralyze is one of the greatest
records ever made, and it's just sad that nobody knew that. [Sounds of a rolling
paper being licked.] "I Never Came" is one of those songs that can immediately
break your heart, and I use music to make me feel shit—so I can feel it
when I want to, not when the feeling wants me to have it. For instance, if I
know I'm about to feel sad or have a heartbreak, I want to take the punch right
away. Songs like "I Never Came" help me immediately push the issue so I can
make it come to a head.
AVC:
Would you follow that up with something more upbeat to get going again?
JH: Absolutely. I always
follow it with Jungle Brothers' "Straight Out The Jungle."
AVC:
Well fancy that, it just popped up in the iPod.
Jungle
Brothers, "Straight Out The Jungle"
JH: This song is from that
weird, early era of hip-hop when it was trying to be pop-radio-friendly, but
also stay black. I like Jungle Brothers especially because their whole trip is
making the beats really middy—they put 'em in the "mids"—and making
it thump. I actually like to follow this song up with Audio Two's "Top Billin',"
one of the first rap songs of any sort. It's just a drumbeat and MC Lyte's
brother, Milk Dee, rapping. You listen to that, and you're literally hearing
the foundation of almost every rap song that came after. It's a rare thing when
you can hear so much of the source in itself. "Top Billin'" starts right up:
"MC am I, people call me Milk / when I'm busting up a party, I feel no guilt." I
mean, what a fucking great way to start a song!
AVC:
Is the "Daisy Age" period—i.e. Jungle Brothers or A Tribe Called Quest—your
favorite rap era?
JH: A Tribe Called Quest is
one of my favorite fucking bands, period. You can't fuck with Midnight
Marauders.
If you put that record on and there's a girl within a hundred feet of you,
you're getting laid. But I'm a real person who believes good music transcends
time. Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize" is just as good as The Roots' "Web," or
just as good as something by Erykah Badu. I do typically think there was a
greater selection of better rap a long time ago, but that's just the nature of
all things.
AVC:
That's music in general; there's so much available now that the best stuff is
obscured.
JH: All time is happening at
once. I think we've finally gotten to that point.
AVC:
Especially if you're using that UCLA kid's stuff, evidently.
JH: I just levitated my phone
across the room.
AVC:
And, miraculously, your voice stayed with the phone the entire time.
JH: That's the Bluetooth, my
friend.
The
Carter Family, "Carter's Blues"
JH: I'm from
Greenville, South Carolina. I'm a hillbilly. My roots in music are gospel, which
I heard in church, and country—"hillbilly music" is what I call it. And
when Joshua [Homme] and I were first putting together Eagles Of Death Metal,
figuring out what it would be, I always felt like it was hillbilly music. I
don't think that it's a very wise decision to ever get too far from the source.
AVC:
What do you like about this song in particular?
JH: It's one of the first
songs I can remember hearing and liking, and there's great pain and suffering
behind the words. It's the sort of stuff that makes you obsess about what could
have gone on to make that song happen, and it's that kind of curiosity that can
lead you to a place where you can write a song of your own.
KISS,
"King Of The Night Time World"
JH: I listen
to KISS a lot. I should qualify that. I listen to early KISS quite a bit, for
many reasons. First of all, the very first concert I went to was KISS'
Destroyer tour with my dad at the Greenville Memorial Auditorium in 1977. It
changed my life. I remember Ted Nugent opened for them, and that he blew KISS
away.
AVC:
You said it was 1977? That means you were—
JH: Five years old. My daddy
was in a rock band called The Marshall Tucker Band, so I got to go to a lot of
rock shows. I love KISS, and I based a lot of my songwriting formula on those
guys, but when a dude like Ted Nugent can come out with nothing but a codpiece
on and use the power of rock itself to accomplish what KISS needed makeup and
pyrotechnics to do… Well, that's a powerful lesson, my friend, even at age 5. Since,
of course, Gene Simmons has grown into the biggest cocksucker the world has
ever known. I have a copy of his interview with Terry Gross from NPR. If you
had even a slightly decent mother raising you, you want to beat this
motherfucker's ass five minutes into it just for disrespecting a lady so much.
It's vulgar and outrageous, and there's nothing attractive about it, and he
doesn't even realize that, and that's sad.
Eagles
Of Death Metal, "Speaking In Tongues"
JH: I listen
to this song all the time to remind myself that it's good to make music that
doesn't suck. That song is my voodoo magic song, man; that song made me. It's
played now in sporting events along with "We Will Rock You." That's fucking
magic. I believe in God and I believe in the devil, and you know rock 'n' roll
ain't no Bible study, so who is the god of Hollywood? It sure as shit ain't the
Lord himself. The quickening process that took place when I was making my first
album was very bizarre. I was walking home from a bar one night, and I had
smoked some weed. And, I don't know how else to describe it, dude, I went into
a trance while walking. I remember snapping out of it when I got back to my
apartment and I had the words and the music, in total, for "Speaking In
Tongues." I sat down at my computer and I improvised it right there in one
take. I listen to "Speaking In Tongues" to remind me that the devil ain't far
behind me, and he's nipping at my heels.