**The Making of houdini by melvins - featuring buzz osborne**

Intro:

Dan Nordheim: You're listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim.

The Melvins formed in Montesano, Washington in 1983 by Buzz Osborne, Mike Dillard, and Matt Lukin. The three of them went to high school together and decided to form a band. Dale Crover replaced Dillard on drums in 1984 and has been with the band ever since. Their debut EP, 6 Songs, was released in 1986, followed by an album, Gluey Porch Treatments, in 1987. Lukin was replaced by Lori Black, and later Joe Preston, after Osborne and Crover moved to San Francisco. Once they signed with Boner Records, the Melvins released several more EPs and albums, including Ozma in 1989, Bullhead in 1991, and Lysol in 1992. For their fifth album, they signed with Atlantic Records, and brought their friend Kurt Cobain in as producer.

Houdini was eventually released in 1993. In this episode, for the 30th anniversary, Buzz Osborne reflects on how the album came together. This is the making of Houdini.

Buzz Osborne: Hi, my name's Buzz, I play in a band called the Melvins, and we're discussing the record that we did about a hundred years ago called Houdini. Well, when we got signed to Atlantic, they were signing lots of bands. I think that music kind of had turned on its ear as far as what they thought would sell and what wouldn't, and we were caught up in that to some degree, but we didn't have any faith in it. And we didn't look at it like, “Oh, this is our big shot and that's it.” You know, I mean, we were already doing just fine long before we got signed to Atlantic. So I think I quit my job and just survived on music since 1988, I believe. So that was well before that. The Atlantic thing was ‘93. So we were already doing just fine. We could survive by being musicians, which was nice. The Atlantic thing was just an inroad, just a thing that we thought, “Yeah, we should do it.” And we wanted to be on a big label, and so it was fun to be on the same label as Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and Aretha Franklin. That's where we belong, of course.

So we'd put out a bunch of records prior to us getting signed to Atlantic Records. And we didn't have much faith in the major label thing and thought, “Well, we'll do one record, and then they'll drop us, and we'll move on.” And so we said, “We'll do the record that we would have done on an indie.” Basically because we didn't look like boy bands or Kurt Cobain or Chris Cornell so we didn't think it was, that aspect of it wasn't going to help us. And we knew that we were a lot weirder than those bands, as much as we liked those bands, we understood that we were much less commercial sounding, even though a lot of their stuff wasn't that massively commercial sounding. But what was good I thought about those bands was their attitude was different than most of the stuff that had come before them, a little more punk rock, which I liked and they had given us a lot of nods as far as like, us influencing them, both attitude wise and musically, which was cool. And I was also of the understanding that those people had much weirder tastes in music than their fans do. So the people that were buying their records by the millions, the vast majority of them weren't people that would be interested in a lot of the really weird stuff that they were interested in. So they didn't really, their fans didn't really have an intimate understanding of where these people were coming from. At all, really. We understood all of that going in. So we made the record accordingly and some of it was done in some of the studios we'd already used for our, some of our records with Boner, prior to that. And then we did a big mixing session up in Northern California in the same studio that Tom Waits at the time was doing a lot of his stuff. I think it was near where he lived and that was a lot of fun. And we had a really good time making the record all over the place. It has a lot of weird elements to it and we were very ready to do it.

The idea of having Cobain produce, quote unquote, the record was by Danny Goldberg, who was the head of A&R at Atlantic when we got signed. He also ran, owned Gold Mountain management company, which was the management company for Nirvana. So, you know, he got a piece of anything Kurt Cobain did. So I think that it's kind of like, you know, having Kurt do it was a good idea. And then Danny's suggestion then anything that Kurt made off of it, he would also get a percentage of. So he's kind of paying himself to do this, which is, that's kind of interesting (laughs). And that was fun. Kurt was kind of in a lot of trouble with his personal life. Everyone's really aware of all that. And at a certain point in the record, I had had enough of that sort of thing when he didn't show up for sessions and stuff like that. And finally I went into Danny Goldberg's office and told him that we can't work with Kurt anymore and basically fired him. So Danny said, “Well, what we'll say is that Kurt can't do it because of his scheduling, scheduling conflicts.” That's exactly what happened. And I stood him in his office and said this to him and it was my idea. Now subsequently, Danny has changed the story, I don't know why this happened, but it's an absolute and total fabrication on his part, in that, “Kurt Cobain quit the sessions because we wanted him to help us write songs.” And that is total, total, and I don't have any idea why he would Danny would want to write things of that nature about us that are so hideously wrong, and I don't need anybody to help me write songs, clearly I've written and recorded probably close to 500 songs, the last thing I need is for him to write songs. But to me, a producer, what the producer would do is come in and help work on the songs that you already have and you know, I would never have asked, “Oh Kurt, will you write us some songs?” That's just insane. And the idea that Danny would say that undermines what we're doing, paints us in a bad light. I have no idea why someone like that, who has only ever benefited as a result of his association with Kurt Cobain, who in another way is saying, his association with me, why he would want to say that kind of horrible shit about me, I have no idea. I'm still irritated about that. That didn't come out till later, “Well, this is what happened. This is why Kurt couldn't do it.” It's like, you know what buddy, “Fuck you. Just fuck you.” You know, that's all I can say. That's one of the most hideous things anyone's ever done to me, is to say that kind of stuff. And I am like an elephant, I never forget. I never forget. That kind of later soured that whole aspect of it, but I really liked the idea of working with Kurt and I really wanted to do it and bring him in, he was a pal of ours and he was in a lot of trouble, but under certain circumstances of that nature, there's really not more, a lot more you can do. You know, you do what you can, but you're kind of powerless over how people conduct their lives. Well, you know, I mean, the sessions, like nodding off, I can deal with somebody nodding off. I've dealt with people on drugs for a long time, the things of that nature in various forms or another, what I can't handle is people not showing up. So, you know, dealing with him in the studio, if he's not showing up, that's a problem, but being in the studio on drugs, you know, you can wake people up or whatever, that's not, I mean, you know, I've worked with people that were doing drugs during sessions lots of times whether it was weed or alcohol or whatever it is. I mean, it's not really, that's nothing new. Didn't surprise me as far as that's concerned. “He's on dope, he's a heroin addict.” Well, you know, lots of people were. I think William Burroughs wrote great books on dope. So that didn't bother me. I mean, I would advise him and did advise him against it, but you know, it's his life to live as far as that's concerned. And I know, I'm not powerful enough to stop somebody from doing those sorts of things. So you just kind of hope for the best, lead by example and offer up the best you can under those kinds of circumstances and do the best you can and hope for the best, like I said. But he did have some good ideas and I really wish that he would have been in the frame of mind and it really, really worked out because had it worked out, I would have loved to do more stuff with him later, but it all ended so tragically that, you know, all that kind of stuff was just ruined. I don't have a happy outlook on all of that as a result of how it all ended. I wish in all honesty that he was not famous and still alive than famous and dead.

As far as Houdini being a high point for me, I would say it's absolutely not a high point for me. I think it's not the best record we did for Atlantic and certainly not the best record we ever put out. It's a popular record. I think it's probably sold more than any of our other records. I'm not a good judge of things like that because I'm far too close to this stuff than the general public are. So when I hear it, I hear it warts and all, and the Cobain story, it does tarnish it to some degree, but he didn't ruin, even on drugs, he didn't ruin what we were doing. He liked it. As a matter of fact, like songs like “Hooch,” when he saw the lyrics, he goes, “Oh, you should print these lyrics, they’re great,” and stuff like that. So the work that he did on the record, I liked. Whether he was on drugs or not, it made no difference to me. I mean, he, I would say that arguably, he did some of his own best work while he was on drugs, not because of the drugs, but the drugs didn't stop him from making records that tens of millions of people like. So, you know, at some point you have to pay the piper with that kind of thing and stop. Or it kind of does you in and the fact that it did him in does ruin my memories of it, but…. Production-wise, Kurt's not an engineer, what he was mostly doing is just telling us, you know, “That was a good take, this was a good take,” any of that kind of stuff, you know. And I would ask him, “What do you think of, you know, how we played this song out, what we've done?” He also played on a couple things, guitar on I think “Sky Pup,” and then he played drums, helped us play drums on the last song, “Spread Eagle Beagle,” which is a big drum thing. That was really cool. We slowed it way down, that came out really cool. So I mean he wasn't trying to, you know, make us sound like the fucking Breeders or something, which is good. But he's a weird guy, he was a weird guy and liked weird music. I mean, I grew up in such a vacuum in the Northwest. I didn't have older brothers who were turning me on to hip music. I didn't have friends of any kind that were turning me on to any music. And I discovered all that stuff on my own. And so when I laid all that stuff on to him, or people like him, in the area that we lived in, in Washington, it was with the idea that these punk rock bands are really cool, but Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith are really cool too. I never hated any of that stuff. And I think that that mixture of things, melody from bands like Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin into punk rock attitudes, it was a good hybrid. I still like the same bands I liked when I was a teenager, as well as a lot of other stuff, you know. So both of us had an understanding of how that kind of thing worked because we didn't have those kinds of prejudices against music. Like I've actually had people that were you know, pretty hip to underground weird music talk about Led Zeppelin, like they're hippie music. I go, “You can't find one song of theirs that you like?” “No, it's hippie music.” “Okay, well, that's the kind of hippies I like.” Or Alice Cooper or something like that. You know, to me, it's like, “Alice Cooper is the kind of hippie I like.” So, I like all that kind of stuff as well as a whole bunch of other weird stuff. And I kind of think that what we are is a hybrid of all those things with a good dose of Captain Beefheart mixed in. It's really like if Captain Beefheart was playing heavy metal, that's what we're doing, and have always been doing.

“Hooch”

Well, with “Hooch,” what I wanted was a song that, where the vocals are, the drums aren't doing a whole lot. They're just doing, for the verses are doing just the bass drum. And so I knew that that had to carry it. And I knew the guitar part wasn't, it's fairly easy to play as far as the guitar is, but it's odd time signature. And it was mid tempo. I knew it was good from the minute I wrote it. I remember right where I was when I wrote it, it was in my bedroom in San Francisco where I wrote a lot of songs. And I knew pretty quickly that that was going to be a good one. And then I just had to figure out how to make it more interesting. And our drummer Dale was very, very receptive to any ideas I might have about how we should approach the song. And so when I'm thinking of how the drums are going to fit into it, I'm always thinking of this part has to be like this, because I don't want it to step on the vocals and blah, blah, blah. So then I explain it to him and we kind of take it from there, but he's a drummer, the kind of drummer that I can tell him, you know, “I want this to kind of have a John Bonham crossed with the guy from the Gang of Four kind of feel to it with some Miles Davis stuff thrown in there,” and he'll understand what I mean. I knew I wanted him to do a drum intro and then I go do some kind of crazy thing and then end with the bass drum, you know? And that's what we did. (Sings drum intro) Badabumm, bass drum, bass drum, bass drum, then go into the song, you know. The bass drum kind of counts it off. So it's like the bass drum really is the click in and the drum part at the beginning of it is just fills and then counts the song into the bass drum basically is how that works. And I knew that would be really cool, a really cool way to do it, as opposed to “one, two, three, four,” you know, fuck that, you know, you could do a much more interesting thing. We worked really hard on drum stuff, we always have. And that's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. I find that to be really fun because you can take an uninteresting guitar part and make it, that you know is cool, then you can make it much better by having a really cool drum part and a really good vocal part. Yeah I like that one. That one worked good. It was short, to the point. And it really does travel somewhere and takes you where it needs to go and gets it done in a relatively short amount of time.

Lyrics always come for me, almost always come, after the music, although lately in the last five years, I've probably changed that a little bit. I've written down a lot of lyrics, lyrical ideas before I have the music and then try to adapt them But back then the lyrics would always come after the music and so a lot of times what I would do is I would just sing phonetically, whatever came to mind as far as the melody goes then I'd fill in the blanks. That one, I just wrote down what, exactly what I, what I had taped. I'd make little demos on tape and then just say, you know, nonsense and then work out the lyrics. And then that one, I just wrote down the nonsense, whatever I was saying as close as I could get. I thought it was cool. And, you know, had we not printed those lyrics, no one would have noticed. And it kind of bit us in the ass because then after that, people think that that's what we always do. And it's like, no, that's not what we always do. Not at all. I've done it in the grand scheme of things reall not that many times. A few times, but overall, I think the lyrics were really great. And when Cobain saw the lyrics, he's like, “Oh, you gotta print these, you gotta print these in the record, they're great” (laughs). Well, he had a dark sense of humor, as we all do. And it wasn't very PC. And of course, I won't go into any graphic details about what was said, but all I can say is, we all understood that this stuff was jokes. And not for real. And there's a certain amount of absurdity that I can handle and he could certainly handle and that I think people get too uptight about now.

“Night Goat”

Well, I had written “Night Goat” for a single for AmRep and then we put it on the Atlantic record. Neither one of those versions I'm that excited about, as far as a recorded version, but like I said, I'm a little close to it. That riff I remember, I wrote that in the same bedroom in San Francisco. I remember when I wrote it, knowing that that was a good one. And it's a fairly simple song, but I think that the riff, the riff was good enough that I will never tire of playing that song. It's a really good song. I really love it. And it has a certain power to it in its repetitiveness, but I think the definitive version of that song is on an acoustic album we put out a year and a half ago called Five Legged Dog. The version on there is much superior to me to any other version we ever did. I think that that's the version I like the most, but I love that song. It's, you know, most people heard it on Houdini and we've played it thousands of times since then.

Well, I realized really early on with vocals, not just “Night Goat,” but that the best way to approach vocals is to sing it with as much of a cartoon voice as you can. Don't try to use your speaking voice as your singing voice. I think it's a good plan for vocals. A lot of times people are very surprised that my speaking voice is so much different than how I sing, which it is. I don't know, you know, it comes from a different place. I'm not sure exactly how that works. Lyrically, most of my stuff isn't that direct. Some of it is, but I tend to not try to lead people down the garden path and let them have their own experience with it. Usually it's, sometimes what people come up with is their own concepts for what things are song-wise, it's better than what I had originally thought of, and so then I just agree with them, “Yes, that's what it's about.” It's easier that way.

Billy Anderson played some bass on it, but it's either me or Dale. The credits on that record are really wrong in a lot of ways, but the credits on lots of our records are wrong. I think we got it as close as we could at the time, but most of it's me or Dale or Billy, I think the vast majority of it's me. You know songs like “Sky Pup” are me and you know, I don't remember exactly who, probably just me. I think “Night goat,” I'm, not sure. The bass part is really the guitar riff, it's the same, one and the same. I just match what the guitar is doing, or the bass is doing, and then I do a solo. We're kind of fans of feedback and things of that nature, and as much of that as you can use is, I'm always happy about that.

“Lizzy”

I knew I wanted to do some of those loud, quiet, loud, quiet, loud, quiet with “Lizzy,” and that's exactly what it is. I came up with that riff, I can't remember when, that's a pretty old one, it’s a take off on an A chord. But I always liked odd sounding chords that were, you know, dissonant sounding.

Dynamics in songwriting has always been a big deal to me. It makes the loud riffs sound louder. And not a lot of bands of our nature do that very well. Or they just don't do it at all. They're one speed or another. And I never wanted to have flowery sounding guitar parts that make it sound like we're doing the intro to a REO Speedwagon song or something. I never wanted that and I don't like corny sounding guitar, I don't. I think it just it distracts. For me, I like things that are simple. The way I play acoustic guitar is similar to the way I play electric guitar and the way Cobain played acoustic guitar is similar to the way I play acoustic guitar. Except I'm more bombastic than he is or he was and but like, you know really super flowery stuff I mean, I don't like it. And I tend to shy away from it. And I'm certainly never going to play that, that kind of thing. I don't practice that because I don't want to do it. Therefore I can't do it. And it's not because I can't do it, it's because I don't want to do it. So there's a difference.

I don't remember who's singing on the choruses, it's probably just me. We use albums as, recorded albums as a kind of a, just a sketch of what the songs can be. And live, we don't feel too hindered by what exactly was on the records. We change things all the time. A lot of times I'll listen back to a record, I don't listen to them all the time and go, “Wow, we play that totally different than it is in the record.” It doesn't bother me. That's a good one. That's probably one of the best songs on the record. We played that recently. And we played “Hooch” recently. And we play “Night Goat” all the time. But we play quite a few songs off of that. It's great. But “Lizzy,” “Lizzy’s” one of my favorites. Came out good. That one came out good.

I really like the guitar solo in that. It's really quiet. The clean sounding guitar, that solo is, is definitely, that's by choice and it's definitely a songwriting choice. And I am a big fan of the sStones and it definitely has that kind of feel to it to some degree, but they're one of my favorite bands, have been for a long time. I, kind of, I'm suspicious of anybody who doesn't like them. So you gotta take it from there. How can you not like the Stones?

“Goin’ Blind”

“Goin’ Blind” is a Kiss song that we had wanted to cover for a long time. It's a really weird one, off of, I think it's off of, Hotter than Hell. And I think Kiss are a lot better songwriters than people give them credit for. A lot of people don't take it seriously because of the way they look, but they're fairly sophisticated songwriters and good players, despite what people might think, which I think is a mistake, for them.

That was a 100 percent sincere cover by a band that we like. “Goin’ Blind” is a weird song, I have no idea what the lyrics are about, but I always loved that song and I wanted to cover it for a long time, so it was really fun to do it. Ace Frehley is a severely underrated guitar player, especially some of his solos. That one's pretty good, but you know, you listen to solos like his solo in “Dr. Love” and “Strange Ways.” Those two, they're really about as good as you can play a guitar solo, for anybody. People that don't take it seriously have never listened to it.

“Honeybucket”

“Honeybucket’s” a good song. It's a really cool riff. I'm really happy about it, but I never would have guessed when I did that that that's the song that would be the most popular. That's a total surprise to me.

“Honeybucket” was a song I wrote, I wanted it to be fairly aggressive, have some elements of heavy metal, but with still some noise stuff at the beginning, and not do it with the same structure as Chuck Berry, song structure-wise, and that one’s popular, I wouldn't have guessed that that would be the case, but it is. We had a cool video that went along with it. I never had much faith in the video thing, but that one worked. It worked good. I think it was the first thing that Atlantic put out. And we didn't play it for a long time. I was sick of it. And then, lately, we were like, “We should start playing that again,” like, three years ago, something like that. And I'm like, “I wanna play this song now. I wanna play it, maybe, from now on. It's cool” (laughs).

Dale's always been a good player, since he was a kid. This record's no different for him. I think he's an outstanding performer and I'm happy to be playing with him. And he played great on this record and not just this record, but he's great on all our records. So it's always a pleasure. Once we had the song down rehearsing it, it wasn't too bad, hard to do. It's hard to play live, and it's fairly chaotic, but, you know, the chaos kind of adds to it, I think. I'm not afraid of chaos. I'm not afraid of noise and things like that. I mean, you know, Throbbing Gristle mixed with heavy metal, that sounds like a good combo to me. It's a weird song. So it has those kinds of elements in it, but I always wanted to mix that kind of stuff in it, into what we were doing.

“Hag Me”

What people don't really understand is it's a lot harder to play slow than it is to play fast. When you're playing fast, you can cover up a lot of mistakes. When you're playing slow, you can't do that at all. You really have to be on it. Fortunately, I play with people that can do that. Some bands out there, almost every single one of their songs is the same tempo, I just have no interest in that. I don't, personally. But people, a lot of times we'll say, “Oh, they’re “sludge metal, slow.” It's like, “Have you even listened to one of our records?” You know, it's like, “That's such a bullshit way of describing us.” You know, like these people that will say that kind of thing. It's like, “We're all over the map with all kinds of musical styles.” It's just laziness on a journalist's part or a record reviewer's part to say that kind of thing. It's just dumb. It just proves their stupidity right from the very beginning.

Well, a song like “Hag Me,” I think it was the last song I wrote for the record and I realized, “Oh, this record needs a song like this.” And there was a brief period of time early on where we played almost nothing but fast stuff, but even then we had some slower stuff. But, we've always played fast and slow, but from the first records we did, we had stuff on there that was slow to mid tempo. That just kind of moved from there. I'm not afraid of that stuff. I would say we took as much from the Swans and bands like that as we did from any other band. And people always say Sabbath. I'm like, “Yeah, yeah, to some degree, certainly, but Black Flag and the Swans have as much to do with that as anybody else.” Or even Miles Davis, especially like if you listen to like “Bitches Brew” and that amazing bass riff comes in about a quarter of the way through the song, stuff like that's a huge influence on us. Always has been, just nobody picks up on it. Or like, you know, “Station to Station” by David Bowie. When that riff comes in, it's very slow. Those are hugely important to us, that kind of stuff. Certainly to me. You know, we were also big fans of Flipper, stuff like that. I was always a big fan of that song. It's like, “(I Saw You) Shine,” those are huge influences on us. It makes the riffs bigger, but you know, I still like fast songs. I mean, I never quit playing that kind of thing.

Well the lyrics to “Hag Me,” I think are basically about, you know, “If you tell me what to do and I don't like it, you're not going to like what you get.” That's basically it. “Here's what you get. Just leave me alone. I'll be fine. And you will be too.” “Hag Me’s” a really great song. I like the haze at the end. I think it's really cool and that was a fun one to do as far as like how we recorded it. It came together really quickly and next thing you know, you got a song. It's great. That fits in there. We haven't played it for a while, but I would play that one again, it's a fun one.

“Set Me Straight”

“Set Me Straight,” it'd been a song that we'd had around for a long time. And you know, we were looking for songs for this record. I go, “Oh yeah, this would fit in there, let's do that.” And it worked. It's, you know, a really old song. It was nice to put that in there. I thought it would fit on there really well. That's one of the first songs I ever wrote. I think “Snake Appeal” was the very first song I ever wrote, and that's either the second or third song I ever wrote, and it still sounds cool. And we had it, and I was like, “Oh, let's put that on there. That's cool.” That's really all it amounted to, but now when I listen to those songs, I realize that I'd kind of figured out the songwriting thing pretty quickly. It seemed like a long time at the time, but in actuality, it wasn't really that long at all. On “Set Me Straight” was me during the main vocal and then I think me and Dale singing the choruses, I believe. The lyrics for “Set Me Straight,” I don't know, I guess it's about rejection, I guess. I can't remember all of them right off the top of my head.That's on the other side of my brain.

“Sky Pup”

I never would have let myself get into a situation where Atlantic or any other label was going to be telling me what to do. It's like, “You guys have to accept us for who we are. And I’m not listening to, unless you have really good ideas,” which they never would. If we went to them and said, “Please, tell us whatever it would take to make us stars,” I'm sure they would have tried, but basically we turned in the albums with the covers and masters done. So they didn't try to make us do anything, which I was kind of surprised about that they didn't do that. So I don't know what their motivation was or what they were thinking, but they certainly didn't bother us about any of that stuff, which was good. They didn't have to put the records out, but they had to pay us no matter what we turned in. So that's kind of how it worked. It was good. I would sign that same contract today.

“Sky Pup” was a song I wrote a long time ago, probably ‘84. And I played bass on that, I wrote that on the bass. So all the bass riffs are me playing them. And that's a fun one. I think Cobain plays guitar on that. I believe I play bass, he plays guitar. Which was really great to do. And I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that., maybe if the Minutemen were more heavy metal or something? I don't know, maybe.

We'd never played live in the studio. Never. I would want to get my guitar parts better than that. You know, if you're playing it live, then you're going to screw up. Then you have to go back and redo it anyway. So mostly what we do is just record it, try to get the drums down right. And then add everything to it afterwards. Once in a while, we've recorded live. It's few and far between. Takes too long. “Sky Pup,” we laid down a, probably a basic track to get the drums right. And a scratch track for the bass. And then I went back and rerecorded all of it. And then Cobain did his part after we had everything else recorded. That's how I remember it. Well he was always functioning in the studio. I mean, he might be, you know, on drugs, but that doesn't mean he's completely unavailable. And it's not like he's in a coma, you know. I didn't go into those details with him in the studio. Like, you know, “What are you taking? What are you doing? What are you on?” You know, we just did our work. When he was there, it was great. The problem was when he didn't show up, that's the problem. I can't have that. Show up for work or else it's going to be a problem. We had more money to make this record, but we figured it was all the money we were going to get so we were very careful with the money and how we spent it. We didn't take very long to make the record at all. I'd say about two weeks max. That includes mixing and everything. So it was really quick. We didn't have a lot of time to screw around and wait for people to get their act together You know, so that was kind of it. I didn't see any reason to spend a ton of money on that on any recordings. I never have. I mean, what are you gonna get?

“Joan of Arc”

With “Joan of Arc,” I knew I wanted to do something with a strange beginning and then a really bombastic sounding middle part that just kind of goes back and forth. That's a hard one to sing, but we could do that one again. That'd be fun. I would like to do that one. That's probably one of the better songs on the record. I would say, I remember I couldn't do too many of the vocal takes like that, but I did it. So that was good. Very high register. Well, I wanted to have it sound like a big thing, vocal-wise. It's probably, I don't know, three vocals, maybe four on “Joan of Arc” at the end. I wanted it to sound big. I think that's just me doing it a bunch of times. Sounded cool. I mean, I view recordings, records as a completely different animal than live things. So that never worried me too much to do that kind of thing.

That's a good song, I mean, top to bottom, it's good. The lyrics for “Joan of Arc,” I don't know, they're probably, um, probably not about Joan of Arc (laughs). I don't know. I don't really have an answer for exactly what those are about. I'll have to just let it speak for itself. You know, I can't explain it. There might be a, don't look for meaning where there is none, type of thing.

“Teet”

I always spend a lot of time on the sequence of every record. I think it needs to have a beginning, middle, and an ending. And I worry over it a great deal and always have, I mean, those songs are in the order that they're in, just like our set is in the order that it's in, as a result of a lot of time slaving over what's going to work and what's not. Bands that change their set list every night, a lot of times they'll have a set that doesn't really work. And I've been seeing enough bands that have done that, especially touring with bands, “Oh they changed their set. And tonight it's just not working. At all.” If every song is exactly the same, it doesn't really matter. But if you have bands with any kind of dynamics and you picked the wrong setlist, you just lost the audience relatively quickly. And I think it's my job to provide them with something on a record or live, that's not something that they get in their normal everyday life. I worry over it a great deal.

“Teet,” I don't have a lot of memory about how we did it. I don't even remember writing it, it’s probably pretty quick. I don't remember being that satisfied with it. It's okay. You know, in hindsight, it doesn't really make any kind of an impression on me. So it must not have meant that much to me. You know, that happens once in a while. I mean, you write hundreds of songs, that's how it goes. Not all of them are memorable. So “Teet” might be one of those.

“Copache”

“Ko-pachee” is how it's supposed to be pronounced. But we always say “cop ache.” That song is, “Copache,” I guess it's kind of my version of a fast Wipers song. I guess so. I really liked the guitar part. We've been playing that live recently. It's a fun one to play. Really like it. It's kind of a nod to the Wipers and that felt really comfortable. We recorded that really quickly. I think it was recorded in Seattle, I think. And really fun, I had a great time doing it. And had the whole thing done in a day, I think. And mixed, I think. All of it. I think. I could be wrong about that, but that's a good one. We played it live recently and had a lot of fun with it.

I love the Ventures. I saw the original Ventures once, probably 40 years ago. It was really great. With all the original guys. It was really fun. They're a great band. I think probably one of the best bands. Very few lyrics in Ventures songs (laughs). Surprisingly enough. Some. But you know, their musicianship is probably unequaled and uh, they're great songwriters and I would say my top 20 favorite bands of all time. I was thinking more Wipers when I wrote it. It doesn't have a lot of lyrics, but you don't need a lot of lyrics. Sometimes that's better.

“Pearl Bomb”

I wrote that one on a drum machine and then we added the drums later. That's fairly bombastic sounding. It was a lot of fun. Atlantic never had any problem with it. So I never had any problem with it. I liked that song, I think it's probably one of the funner ones on the record. We did a live version of it that was a lot different than the way it sounds on the record. I can't remember how we did it. I think it was a lot of compression, I think, but I don't remember exactly how we got the drum sound on it, but I do believe we compressed the shit out of it. It was just another song I had and seemed to fit in good and “Pearl Bomb,” I wasn't really thinking of it as massively experimental, but in terms of everything else, I guess it is. Yeah for sure.

“Spread Eagle Beagle”

“Spread Eagle Beagle,” we did record live, everybody's playing drums and we just got a really good drum thing going and then we slowed the tape down to nothing. That's what we did. And that's how we got it to sound that way. It was really cool. It was really fun to do. That was one of the best days in the studio with Cobain. You know, he's playing on it, everybody's playing on it and just lined up all the drums in a row. Everybody played their part, you know, it was really fun. Like a drum circle, except it was in a line. So it was a drum line.

Great way to close the album, Atlantic never said a word. All they said to us is, “Record sounds great.” You know, I was kind of surprised. They didn't bitch at all, didn't say a word to us about any of the records. So that was cool. I heard the record when it was mixed in the studio and I liked it, but beyond that I didn't listen to it a whole lot. And I never have listened to any of our records a whole lot beyond that. Usually you can listen to them from the time you mix them up until about the time they come out and then you've kind of moved on. By the time they come out they're old hat to you. I'm working on new stuff and Houdini’s no different than that. I do far too much stuff to get stuck on one thing or another. We're not a legacy band at all. Yeah, I was thinking that the Houdini album, it was like, you know, it's like a “now you see us now you don't” kind of thing. We'll do this one record, Houdini, and then we'll disappear and that'll be the end of it, we won't be on Atlantic anymore. It wasn't true. We actually did two more so that's kind of it. But I'd wanted to call an album Houdini for a long time. So I like all that kind of stuff. You know, you don't know what it's going to be when you hear or see our band name or you see an album title. So I kind of like that.

Well Houdini is probably our most popular record, but I don't think it's our best record. It was the first record we did on a major. I thought it would be the only one, like I said, and Stoner Witch is probably a better record. But even Stoner Witch and Stag are overproduced. I think the production on Houdini is probably more to my liking at this point. But those records, Stag and Stoner Witch were ones we needed to do. I'd say the transitional point was probably Stag for us. So two records from Houdini, but Houdini was a good introduction into all those kinds of things. Then we kind of settled in and made records that we really liked. You know, in hindsight, I wish they weren't quite so polished and produced as they are now. I think the songs on Stoner Witch, we would probably record better now, more to my liking, but they're fine. I wouldn't change anything. They're fine. They sound great. So Houdini, just leave it as it is. I'm glad people enjoy it. And it was a fun thing to do, by and large, even with the problems we had with Cobain, but I worked that all out and it was fine. So I think it sold over a hundred thousand copies, Houdini did, in the end. That's cool. It doesn't bother me, I think it's good, helped us out as far as that's concerned. But that only lasts for so long and then we move on and continue with our lives. So it's great. I'm glad people like it. I like the cover, I like the songs on it, I like the song choices. I like how we did it and it's great. It's a great stone in our packsack full of rocks.

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about the Melvins. You'll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Houdini. Instrumental music by Omega Sun. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

“Hooch”

“Night Goat”

“Lizzy”

“Goin’ Blind”

“Honey Bucket”

“Hag Me”

“Set Me Straight”

“Sky Pup”

“Joan of Arc”

“Teet”

“Copache”

“Pearl Bomb”

“Spread Eagle Beagle”

All songs written by Melvins, except for “Goin’ Blind” by Gene Simmons and Stephen Coronel and “Set Me Straight” by Buzz Osborne, Mike Dillard and Matt Lukin.

“Honey Bucket,” “Lizzy,” “Goin’ Blind,” produced by Melvins. Recorded at Brilliant Studios, San Francisco by Billy Anderson.

“Teet,” “Hag Me” produced by GGGarth Richardson and Melvins. Recorded at Brilliant Studios, San Francisco by Billy Anderson.

“Sky Pup,” “Pearl Bomb” produced by Kurt Cobatin and Melvins. Recorded at Razor’s Edge, San Francisco by Jonathan Burnside.

“Hooch,” “Joan of Arc,” “Set Me Straight,” “Spread Eagle Beagle” produced by Kurt Cobain and Melvins. Recorded at Brilliant Studios, San Francisco by Jonathan Burnside.

“Night Goat” produced by Melvins. Recorded at Razor’s Edge, San Francisco by Billy Anderson.

“Copache” recorded and mixed at Laundry Room, Seattle by Barrett Jones, Billy Anderson and Melvins.

Billy Anderson: bass on “Hag Me” and “Teet”

Bill Bartell: bass and lead guitar on “Goin’ Blind”

Kurt Cobain: guitar on “Sky Pup”

Additional percussion on “Spread Eagle Beagle” by Kurt Cobain, Al Smith and Mike Supple.

King Buzzo: Guitar, vocals

Lorax: Bass

Dale: Drums, vocals

Episode Credits:

Intro/Outro Music:

“Black Dust” by Omega Sun from the album, Roadkill.

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam