{"id":90862,"date":"2020-11-10T15:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T23:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/?p=90862"},"modified":"2022-07-11T16:44:40","modified_gmt":"2022-07-11T23:44:40","slug":"mike-watt-in-conversation-with-jeff-ho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/mike-watt-in-conversation-with-jeff-ho\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Watt in Conversation with Jeff Ho"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MIKE WATT INTERVIEW BY JEFF HO WITH PHOTOS BY DAN LEVY<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hey, Mike, I wanted to ask you a few questions. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Okay. We\u2019re in the boat. We\u2019re not in Pedro. We\u2019re in Santa Monica in the boat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. The boat! You\u2019ve got a new touring van. It\u2019s nice. Thanks for inviting us on board. So you live in San Pedro, but where are you from?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I\u2019m really from Virginia. I came to Pedro when I was nine. My pop is a sailor and it was a lot closer to Vietnam here on this side, so I came to Pedro at nine, and I never left. I\u2019ve been in Pedro now 52 years, almost 53. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They\u2019ve got a skatepark in Pedro called Channel Street and they just got approval to open it back up and rebuild it. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. It\u2019s actually two parks right next to each other. It\u2019s under the Harbor Freeway at Channel Street. The city hired some of the guys to build one at Peck Park too, so we\u2019ve actually got three skate parks. The two you\u2019re talking about are going to be redone because they got closed down for a while, which was very sad. You know who it was? It was Andy Harris. He\u2019s a longshoreman guy with the San Pedro Skatepark Association at sanpedrosk8.org. Andy is the guy. I did some benefits and stuff with the guys to get the money up to get those things built years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
MIKE WATT AT HARVELLES IN SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA. PHOTO \u00a9 DAN LEVY<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Right. Nice. How do you feel about the relationship between punk rock and skateboarding?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tony Alva is a bass player. Do I need to say anything more? That goes way back. I think it\u2019s the same kind of thing where it\u2019s econo. If you want, you can spend very little money on a deck and some trucks, and then you can come up with your own style. When it comes to the punk rock movement and the skate movement, I think they go hand in hand. In fact, when Brian Brannon was doing Thrasher, he had me write a column about why I tried to play my bass like it was a skateboard. I do think they are very much in commune with each other. It\u2019s a whole philosophy, \u2018We jam econo\u2019, that\u2019s tied in with this stuff. When they didn\u2019t have the parks, they used people\u2019s pools. You used the sidewalk or whatever you had. It\u2019s just like playing in the garage or the bedroom or the basement. It\u2019s the same kind of thing. Parallel universe. Sometimes you have to make do. Walt Whitman did it. Leaves of Grass. 1855. DIY is an old thing and skating is a big part of that. The problem I had was that I\u2019m before urethane wheels. It was this red chalk shit and steel wheels where even the tiniest pebble would knock you over. If you could believe it, the dudes in Navy housing, actually sat on them like go-karts to go down the hill, to keep the center of gravity down so you wouldn\u2019t wipe you out. Even the sidewalk cracks would wipe you out because the wheels weren\u2019t flexible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the truth.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those were lame days. Urethane changed everything. When urethane comes out that\u2019s when you started seeing Dogtown stuff. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. Urethane made the skateboard ride like it had four-wheel drive. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. Can you believe people were sitting on them like they were go-karts? They were long too and they had these red clay fucking wheels or steel. The little short red boards had steel wheels and they\u2019d be eight-sided after a month. [Laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes. So what do you remember about Don Kirshner and the rock concerts? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were taped at the Long Beach Auditorium, which got torn down. It\u2019s now called the Long Beach Opera House. The Long Beach Auditorium was where me and D. Boon saw our first gig together. It was T. Rex. We were 14 years old. Then we found out that behind the stage was another smaller place and that\u2019s where all the Don Kirshner\u2019s were being taped. You could see them for free, but you\u2019d have to see the same song 10 times and the assholes holding up a sign that says, \u201cApplaud\u201d but we saw T. Rex, Black Sabbath and Steppenwolf and all that shit. I remember Patti LaBelle coming through the crowd with the cowbell for the eighth or ninth time. He\u2019s the guy who invented The Monkees and then his son ended up hosting the Don Kirshner\u2019s Rock Concert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. So you\u2019ve said that Richard Hell was a big influence on you. How do you translate that into your music and work? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was a huge influence and he is a bass player. I gotta tell you that bass players, that\u2019s where you put your slow friend. It was like right field in Little League. [Laughs] You know, where nobody\u2019s gonna hit the ball. Here\u2019s Richard Hell and not only is he writing the songs and singing them, he\u2019s the leader of the band. I couldn\u2019t believe this. It was just all that hierarchy stuff. D. Boon didn\u2019t dig that anyway. Richard Hell, and also his guitar player, Bob Quine \u2013 D. Boon was way into him too. There was something about Richard Hell that really made me think, \u201cYeah, man, I really am glad I am a bass player. Thank you D. Boon\u2019s mom.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTony Alva is a bass player. Do I need to say anything more? That goes way back. I think it’s the same kind of thing where it’s econo. If you want, you can spend very little money on a deck and some trucks, and then you can come up with your own style. When it comes to the punk rock movement and the skate movement, I think they go hand in hand.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Cool. Yeah. So how did everything get started with New Alliance Records? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

D. Boon started that with Martin Tamburovich. We were inspired by SST. We found out that being in the movement was not just about having a band. It was about putting out records and zines and letting the freak flag fly and doing everything you could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. Okay, you\u2019ve got a radio show. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. I\u2019ve been doing that for 18 years now. All the shows are archived at twfps.com \u2013 The Watt From Pedro Show. I just did one this morning. I do \u2018em  usually once a week, for three hours. For me, it\u2019s like paying on the debt that I owe the movement. They let me and D. Boon play our music and come to Hollywood and play gigs. I thought, now that I can have a show on the internet, why not let all the people that might not be able to get heard, heard, and also talk to them about their journeys through music because everybody has a unique one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. Okay. What movements or causes are you currently backing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, Doctors Without Borders is my favorite charity because they just want to help people that hurt, and I\u2019ve always given money to them. There\u2019s the ACLU and Amnesty International. I belong to those two also. I\u2019ve been a 30 year member of American Federation of Musicians Local 47, so I\u2019m a union man, too. Wilmington always has a Labor Day march and I\u2019m always in the parade. I\u2019m up there with the longshoremen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cool. How would you describe your style as a bass player? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well. That\u2019s kind of hard because I\u2019ve got a lot of influences, but here\u2019s my easiest answer. \u201cWhat kind of bass player are you?\u201d \u201cWell, I\u2019m D Boon\u2019s bass player.\u201d He had the biggest influence on me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right. Let\u2019s talk about Norton Wisdom. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s an incredible artist. Also he was the oldest lifeguard in Malibu for a long time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Norton Wisdom once said, \u201cThere is nobody tougher than Mike Watt. There is no water boarding or anything you could do to this guy to impress him.\u201d Who is the toughest motherfucker that you know?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wow. Well, Norton Wisdom is pretty tough too. I\u2019d say Nels Cline and Hank Rollins and Ian MacKaye. There are a lot of cats from the movement that are tough. Pat Smear. I love them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How long have you known Norton?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, he\u2019s an old buddy of Nels Cline and, when we started helping Perkins with Banyan, he would come on stage and interpret the gig with painting in real time. I thought that was an incredible dimension to add to a gig. He\u2019s very sensitive, so he\u2019s interpreting the music and he always made room for the bass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
MIKE WATT + THE MISSINGMEN AT HARVELLES IN SANTA MONICA, CALIFORNIA. PHOTO \u00a9 DAN LEVY<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. I saw him with you guys when you were playing at the Liquid Kitty.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah, Dave Childs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to thank Dave Childs for what he\u2019s doing and the Punk Rock BBQ.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Absolutely. Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You just described Norton\u2019s art and what that personal impact has made to you. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s real time. He\u2019s adding a dimension that you don\u2019t usually experience at a music gig. He\u2019s  blending in, like my best friend, Raymond Pettibon. He\u2019s a visual guy. Me and his worlds are separate, but I\u2019ve had him write words for me. One time I tried to do that with him in Riverside on top of an art gallery. I was playing bass while he was drawing, but all he could draw was pictures of Joe Stalin. [Laughs] Norton has been doing it a long time. Nels told me he\u2019s been doing it since the \u201870s, and Nels is all about improvisation too. Norton ain\u2019t planning. He\u2019s just feeding off the sitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is. Okay. Stephen Perkins, drummer. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. Beautiful man. Love him. He\u2019s the guy that put together Banyan. That\u2019s his project. I first played with him in Porno for Pyros and did three tours with him. He\u2019s a beautiful man. We do this Hellride thing too where we interpret Stooges with the John Coltrane perspective. He\u2019s a great cat. Peter DiStefano is too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. Peter is great. He\u2019s off the hook. Have you heard the new Iggy Pop record?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No, but it\u2019s called Free. He called me right before the last tour and he told me he had a radio show too in England on the BBC. You know, I got to serve 125 months with him. Three of the Stooges are gone now, but he\u2019s still going. He plays music through his whole career. In fact, I just did an instrumental version with Larry Mullins who is playing drums with Nick Cave now. We just did an instrumental of \u201c1969\u201d because it was the 50th anniversary of the first Stooges album. No Stooges. No movement. They are key to what I\u2019m doing. There would have been no Minutemen without Stooges. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s a whole philosophy, \u2018We jam econo\u2019, that\u2019s tied in with this stuff. When they didn’t have the parks, they used people’s pools. You used the sidewalk or whatever you had. It\u2019s just like playing in the garage or the bedroom or the basement. It\u2019s the same kind of thing. Parallel universe. Sometimes you have to make do. Walt Whitman did it. Leaves of Grass. 1855. DIY is an old thing and skating is a big part of that.\u201d<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So can you tell me how you met D. Boon? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. There\u2019s a documentary on YouTube.com called We Jam Econo. He jumped out of a tree on me. I had just moved to these projects out of the Navy housing because my mom didn\u2019t want to move to Alameda. My pop got on the Enterprise in the engine room. She said, \u201cFuck this. We will stay in Pedro.\u201d So we had moved to this project, which had just got built. It\u2019s shared with an older project in our biggest park called Peck Park. It\u2019s the day after we moved in and I\u2019m walking around. He\u2019s up in a fucking tree and he jumps on me and he goes, \u201cYou\u2019re not Eskimo.\u201d I go, \u201cNo.\u201d He had really bad eyes. I guess his buddy, I met later, everybody called him \u201cEskimo\u201d. He\u2019s a beautiful guy. They had run off, so I was just there. I said, \u201cI just moved here. I\u2019ll show you where I live.\u201d So we\u2019re walking across baseball fields to the new pad. I was 12, so I\u2019d never heard of stand up comedians and shit. He starts reciting these bits and I think, \u201cWhoa, this is the smartest dude in the fucking world.\u201d So I show him my pad and he said, \u201cOkay. Tomorrow you come over and I\u2019ll show you where I live.\u201d I go to his pad the next day and he puts on a cassette and off the TV he had tape recorded this guy, George Carlin. He didn\u2019t make up any of those bits. He memorized them! [Laughs] But it was too late. That day, the second day I met him, I met his mom. His mom played guitar and she goes, \u201cYou\u2019re gonna have a band and you, new guy, you\u2019re going to be the bass.\u201d I didn\u2019t even know what a bass was. That\u2019s why I said I\u2019m very grateful to D. Boon\u2019s mom. She died when we were 18. She died when we were young, but she put something in  motion and, Brother Ho, we\u2019re talking now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes! That\u2019s so cool. So you\u2019ve often said, \u201cIf you\u2019re not playing, you\u2019re paying.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] I took that actually from vaudeville. I\u2019m getting ready to play this tour that starts Thursday. It\u2019s 45 gigs in 45 days, because when you\u2019re not playing, you\u2019re paying. If you\u2019re going to go out there, go out there, man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

[Laughs] All right. Okay. I\u2019m going to say these names and you tell me what comes to mind. Raymond Pettibon.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love him. First guy to play me John Coltrane. I thought John Coltrane was a punk rocker. I didn\u2019t know he was dead. [Laughs] Raymond taught me so much about so much shit \u2013 Dadaism and surrealism and all that stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sonic Youth.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. Thurston. Kim. Lee. Steve. Good people. They helped me a lot when D. Boon got killed. I played on their Evol record. That\u2019s because I stopped playing when he got killed, and Thurston said, \u201cCome on.\u201d We did a project after that called Ciccone Youth. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

J Mascis. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incredible musician. I got to do a couple tours with him. He\u2019s probably the reason the Stooges got back together. I just did an Unknown Instructors album with him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iggy Pop.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iggy is the bow of the boat. Beautiful man. All the Stooges, Ronnie, Scottie, Brother Steve\u2026 I was  finally the youngest guy in the band. [Laughs]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dave Grohl. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slammin\u2019 drummer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Markey.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yeah. I love him. Did a few videos with me \u2013  \u201cMannequin\u201d, \u201cDown With the Bass\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jordan Schwartz.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We go back probably as far as Dave Markey, since the Sin 34 days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Flag.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SST-002. Minutemen, right? Our first recording and first tour. They brought us to Europe for our first time. They brought us to a lot of places. Big, big influence on us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suicidal Tendencies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did some gigs with them, before Mike had all the ink. He was always nice to us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big Boys.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh yeah, beautiful. Tim, Biscuit, Chris\u2026 Our gig with the Minutemen\u2026 Butthole Surfers and Big Boys first gig in Hollywood at the Grandia Room. It was up on Melrose near the old Anti-Club. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

D. Boon. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Always D. Boon. I loved the man. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Pedro. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once I got there, I never left. Even on tour, the bungee cord just springs me back, Brother Ho.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you have anything else you want to say about new stuff you\u2019re doing or your upcoming tours with The Missingmen? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m bringing a drummer with me that\u2019s four months shy of 40 years younger. I have a new Missingmen album coming and a new Secondmen album coming and a new Il Sogno Del Marinaio album coming \u2013 all kinds of stuff. I just turned 62 in December. The clock is running, brother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

FOR THE REST OF THE STORY, GET ISSUE #77 AT THE JUICE SHOP HERE.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MIKE WATT INTERVIEW BY JEFF HO WITH PHOTOS BY DAN LEVY Hey, Mike, I wanted to ask you a few questions.  Okay. We\u2019re in the boat. We\u2019re not in Pedro. We\u2019re in Santa Monica in the boat.  Yes. The boat! You\u2019ve got a new touring van. It\u2019s nice. Thanks for inviting us on board. So […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4027,4028,4034],"tags":[14943,4825,3492,14255,2030,14260,13883,2582,3189],"class_list":["post-90862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-interviews","category-music-2","tag-d-boon","tag-iggy-pop","tag-jeff-ho","tag-juice-magazine","tag-mike-watt","tag-music","tag-norton-wisdom","tag-san-pedro","tag-tony-alva"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/BE8A3667.jpg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90862"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90888,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90862\/revisions\/90888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juicemagazine.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}