Pre-Festival Interviews
Bloodhound Gang
16th August 2000

Butterfly caught up with Evil Jared and Lupus of the Bloodhound Gang - in the country to play v2000 later this week - at London's Astoria...

Lupus said once, "Festivals can be hard, 'cause there's no sound check, so you never know what it's going to sound like on stage…" - What's the most disastrous playing live situation you've experienced?

Evil Jared: 99 in Germany. Horrible. Everything went wrong. Sooo crap.

Lupus: And a crap festival in the Czech Republic. That was pretty bad. The electricity went off three times while we played, and people threw glass bottles at us. When I tried to jump off the stage, noone knew what I was doing and all ran away.

Evil Jared: And the Doctor Music Festival in Spain. They had us waiting for a dressing room for 9 hours! They had us sitting in the middle of a field.

Lupus: The food was covered in flies, you know backstage you get a rider, some beers, but they just gave us a case of beer, and seven sandwiches, I'll never forget. He [points to Jared] is a very conscientious eater, he doesn't eat fatty foods and stuff, but they were all like salami, and covered in butter and there was only seven of them. Now there's five of us in the band, so we could have all eaten if we'd wanted to eat those sandwiches, but then there's a total fourteen of us in the crew and band, which is what that's for and they didn't care.

Evil Jared: Biohazard had a dressing room all day, beer all day, and they were playing on the small stage, we were on the big stage… they wouldn't give us a dressing room, we sat in a field for 9 hours, when they finally give us a dressing room they were surprised when we smashed it up!

Lupus: And even with my pass I couldn't get backstage half the time. I had to push the woman four times. Literally shoved her out of my way. I said "Come near me and I'll kill you." It was pretty ugly.

What was your best festival experience?

Lupus: Glastonbury, this year.

Evil Jared: Hultsfred in Sweden… that was the greatest day of my life. I was making out with this chick on stage, got back to my dressing room, *** *** ** **** *** ** *** *** ***** ***** [sorry, TOO much detail! - Ed.]. Then we got our per diems that day, everyone bet $50 on cards, I drew all the cards, won all the money…

Lupus: Glastonbury was rad. Tommy Lee was there… got to see Fu Manchu, got to watch Perfect Circle…

Evil Jared: Yeh, had a hot tub, got my Czechoslovakian ecstasy… up in the Green fields…

What do you miss when you're on tour?

Evil Jared & Lupus [in unison]: Waffle House.

Lupus: When you do your travels in America, as you're getting into Virginia, every stop has a Waffle House. It's the best food you'll ever have.

You're always touring. What's the most expensive thing you lost on tour?

Lupus: My jacket was free, but it would cost a lot to get a new one.

Evil Jared: I lost a bass when some Irish jackass stole it in Dublin. Another night I lost one of my wireless packs.

Lupus: Lost it?

Evil Jared: I swung my guitar round and it broke off my guitar, pulled the cable off and flew into the crowd.

Lupus: Now some kid's got it and doesn't have a receiver for it, and doesn't know what the hell to do with it.

Lupus, your '97 tour diary on www.bloodhoundgang.com mentions bands that you didn't particularly like supporting… who else pisses you off?

Evil Jared: Noone really at the moment, unless I happen to be watching TV and see that one Gallagher brother with the girly hair.

Lupus: Travis annoy me. They're boring as hell. What's wrong with your country? Your country is boring. Your music is boring. I'm sorry. Where's your sex symbols? The Beatles were more exciting. Why don't you make more rock stars?

Who do you lurve?

Lupus: Right now top of my list would be Queens of the Stone Age, Deftones and Maiden.

Evil Jared: Ah, Maiden. Three new songs in an entire set!

Jimmy said Norwegian girls are 9/10 beautiful. Anywhere else come a close second?

Evil Jared: Danish girls are really hot. The whole Eastern block, but they stink and are hairy. And when they turn 25 they become these babushka wearing hunchbacks.

Lupus: But I'll always back America. America has some hot girls.

Evil Jared: And if they're not born hot we have ways of changing them.

Lupus: Yeh, we can fix them.

What's your fixing strategy?

Evil Jared: They pay a lot of money to go to the doctor and look better.

Did calling your album Hooray For Boobies result in getting to see loads of girl's tits?

Evil Jared: It does in America, but over here, it doesn't.

Lupus: Yeh, what the hell's the matter with you Europeans.

Maybe you should ask more!

Evil Jared: We do, all the time! In America, you ask, you see tits, but not here…

Lupus, you mentioned on your website that you wanted to meet Patrick Stewart at the X Men premiere - did you get to see him?

Lupus: I just saw him. And at the Big Breakfast he walked by me and I was like, "Whoah!". After my disappointment with Famke Jansen that was pretty exciting…

She was a disappointment?

Lupus: She's got an attitude, and she looks like a man in person. In the movies she's hot!

If you had to do a clean song for a change, what cover version would you choose?

Evil Jared: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, but a better version than Lolly.

Lupus: Lolly did that?!

Evil Jared: Yeh - you didn't see that - but she did the chorus Come On and Get My Love… somehow they decided that would be really good to throw that in….

Lupus: Jessie's Song by Rick Springfield.

Or one 80's song?

Evil Jared: Slayer's Plain of Blood. That's an 80's song.

Lupus: Some Iron Maiden? Bizarre Love Triangle? I would do Sweet Child of Mine, but noone else would. Have you ever heard Sheryl Crow's version? If I ever saw her I would slap her just on general principle. Or Tori Amos….

Evil Jared: Yeh, but if you crossed her you'd find a dead rat on your pillow.

Butterfly just about escaped intact...

Catch the Bloodhound Gang at v2000 in Chemlsford & Staffordshire this weekend. There's a review of their Astoria show (where this interview took place) here.