1995 Saw White Zombie release their final studio album Astrocreep 2000 Songs of Love,
Destruction and Other Synthetic Delusions of the Electric Head. The album would be the group’s
most commercially successful record peaking at number 6 on the billboard album charts.
To support the album, White Zombie would hit the road with a variety of bands including the
Toadies, and today’s topic the Melvins. It seemed like an odd pairing and it was. The melvins had
a horrendous time opening for white zombie and frontman king buzzo would describe it as
one of his worst experiences.. Today let’s take a look at what happened on that tour.
In 1995 the melvins were playing support to several high profile bands including today’s
topic White Zombie and Nine Inch Nails, a band we’ll talk about later in the video.
One year prior the melvins released their album Stoner Witch.
The band would spend almost two months on the road with White Zombie from May to June of
1995. And also on the bill for part of the tour was reverend horton heat and babes in toyland.
One review I stumbled upon said the following at one of the shows of the tour in philadelphia.
saying “”Considering today’s lackluster stage shows White Zombie over the top blowout was a
joy. “Opening act the Melvins went over everyone’s heads and
knew it. When the group pointed out that philadelphia was home to the mutter museum
few in the audience had ever heard of the famous repository of medical oddities.
In a separate review i found online from robohara.com who wrote
The Melvins have always been known as being a little bizarre if not temperamental,
and when the anxious crowd began chanting “WHITE. ZOMBIE. WHITE. ZOMBIE.” about two songs into the
Melvins’ set, lead guitarist/vocalist King Buzzo announced something to the effect of, “Here’s
our new song called ’30 Minutes of Feedback’.” With that, the band leaned their instruments up
against the speakers causing a terrible squeal. The sound man, I suspect not knowing if this was
part of the band’s regular show or not, let the instruments scream for a minute or two
before cutting the sound. Everyone in the crowd looked at one another, slightly bewildered. A
few minutes later the stage was cleared, White Zombie came on, and that was the end of that.
Back in 2012 the Melvins were out on tour and frontman King Buzzo published stories
from the road on Spin.com where he discussed the tour with White Zombie in detail saying
“We played a lot of shows with them [Babes In Toyland] back then, and they were always fun.
We did a tour with them and White Zombie, and we both got treated like fucking dogshit
on that tour by the powers that be. It was a massively unnecessary situation of pointless
rock-star behavior. I don’t know what was going through his [Rob Zombie’s] head,
but if making enemies is what you set out to do, well, mission accomplished.
I’ve been around people you would consider a rock star, like the guys in Kiss,
and they never behaved like that. It just makes you hate lower-level fuckheads like
Rob Zombie even more. If I got treated like that by the fing mailman, I’d hate his guts.
The dumbest thing I've ever seen a fellow musician do. Man I don't even know where to begin. One time
we were on a tour, I'm assuming it was the worst tour we ever did, which was opening for
White Zombie & there sound guy made us stop sound checking because it was bothering Rob
as he was eating. I remember thinking what is he eating a fabrige egg omlette, are you
joking. Whatever. There was endless amount of that stuff. Endless, endless. I don't know
people for some reason they either don't believe those stories or they think that
since we haven't sold millions of records our opinion doesn't count.
It was in 2014 that King Buzzo spoke to the phoenix new times
where he once again slammed Rob Zombie saying
I mean, do you think on the White Zombie/Marilyn Manson tour they do
more than two shows in a row? Those guys aren’t working four days a week,
so we’ve already surpassed all that. And lots of other bands don’t do that either.
So tonight we’re playing our ninth show in a row, that’s like literally asking most
rock bands to drop to their knees and slit their wrists. “What do you expect me to do?
Oh yeah! Sure. He really has to protect it when he’s running that tape. I don’t know
how he handles it! Fortunately, in this day and age, you actually have to give props to bands
who literally play their instruments. That’s how fucked up everything is. Totally weird. I mean,
seventy-year-old Paul McCartney can get onstage and play with a real band;
45 year old Rob Zombie can’t do it. That’s just stupid he'd say.
In 1994 Nine Inch Nails released the defining album of their career, The Downward Spiral.
To support the album Nine Inch Nails launched The Self Destruct Tour, which from early 1994,
to middle of 1996. By early 1995 Nine inch nails had started to play bigger venues. On of this
leg of the tour one of the supporting acts included the Melvins, along with Pop Will
Eat Itself and the Jim Rose Circus. Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor was a
big fan of the Melvins and Pop Will Eat Itself was on his label Nothing Records.
Former Nine Inch Nails drummer Chris Vrenna recalled the tour
to author Jon Wiederhorn in the great book Raising Hell saying the following
“I’m a huge melvins fan and we loved those guys. But those guys got booed off stage every
Night” The website Ridleykemp.com posted a review
of one of the tour’s stops in Dallas, Texas at the Fair Park Colleseum. According to the
author of the article “The plywood had been replaced by maybe an eighth of an inch of particle
board. You could feel the cold when you walked on the floor of the arena, or at least, you would
if you weren't wearing army boots like I was.” the author would go on to state that Pop Will
Eat Itself received a ton of radio airplay in Dallas around the time of the concert so
the colosseum was already full by the time the opening acts took the stage. The author
would go on to state: The floor of the colosseum was nearly full when
the lights went down and you could literally feel the edgy energy of a
mosh pit that was about to explode.
And then it all went wrong. He would go on to say that the crowd reacted
poorly to the Melvins set with some people turning their backs on the band. At one point
during the show the audience started to rip the particle board floors and throw them on
stage. And under the particle board was ice. The melvins apparently got pissed and started
to play the same note over and over again with Melvins guitarist and singer King Buzzo
improvising lyrics about how stupid the crowd was.
According to Vrenna he would recall in the same book
“The Melvins got the biggest roar of freedback that they could generate and they walked behind
all their guitar cabinets and sat there on stage and let the noise go for 30 minutes
before they left the stage. I felt so bad for the melvins. Our fans hated them, which
i don’t understand.” By the end of their set, the Melvins slamtheir
instruments on the ground, gave the crowd the finger and then walked off stage. It was
at this point in time that Trent Reznor took the stage and said the following “"Dude.
Not cool. This next act does some seriously dangerous shit (referring to the Jim Rose
Circus), and if anyone throws anything at them, we're not playing tonight" he'd say
It would turn out that that night in Dallas Nine Inch Nails were planning on filming a
long form video for a potential future release, but the project got scrapped. King Buzzo would
take credit for the failed release that night in Dallas telling Wiederhornn “I thought
the Nine inch nails show was going to be so energetic and amazing, but by the time they
took to the stage the audience was totally dead and lifeless. So Nine inch nails shitcanned
the entire thing. We literally took the life out of them and ruined their entire DVD.”
In 2012 The Melvins embarked on a Guiness World Record by playing '51 States in 51 Dates
on' tour, During that tour king buzzo was keeping a tour diary at Spin.com, and he recounted
his experience on tour with n Sioux Falls South Dakota when he played there with Nine
inch nails in 1995 revealing “The only other time we ever played in Sioux
Falls was in the mid ’90s when we were on tour with Nine Inch Nails. After the show,
I watched the cast and crew of NIN do, oh, I’d say $30,000 worth of damage to a brand
new arena dressing room. ” I fortunately got all of that adolescent vandal behavior
out of my system when I was still a teenager. "I honestly didn't know much about NIN before
this tour. I mean I knew they were popular with the MTV baby rock crowd and that they
had sold a lot of records but I had never actually listened to one of them. Why would
I? I usually have no interest in checking out what sort of bands the baby rockers dig.
This is as a result of almost always hating whatever bands the baby rockers dig" he'd
say.
So that does it for today’s video guys thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button
and subscribe. We'll see you again on rock n' roll true stories. Take care.