Monster Magnet: Space Lord Mother Cover
“I’m sitting around in my kitchen, looking out in my backyard, trying to think if whether I should schedule these Spine Of God shows for Christmas or if they’re gonna fuck me over,” muses MONSTER MAGNET frontman Dave Wyndorf. As easy as it would be to spend the next 25 minutes talking about one of the greatest stoner rock records of all time with the mastermind behind it, that’s not the album we’re here for. Instead, we’re discussing the psych rockers’ upcoming 11th studio album, A Better Dystopia.
As a covers album, A Better Dystopia marks a first for the band, who’ve released a record at least every three years since their aforementioned 1991 debut. It’s also territory Wyndorf‘s all too aware has proven pretty hairy for many others. “Because if you blow it you just fucking really blew it man. So many people have tried stuff where it’s like ‘why would you do that?’ Why would this band cover such a popular song and know that they couldn’t add anything to it because it just draws the immediate comparison to a better version? You have to be very careful where you step, and that’s why some cover records I think get a bad rap.”
Eager to avoid such pitfalls, Wyndorf and company have instead set their sights on a far more obscure collection of psych rock and proto-metal tracks from the 60s and 70s. Many of these are songs that Wyndorf has loved for years and years, and make for an obvious fit with the band’s spaced-out rocking. “A lot of them had this kind of psychosis to them that I really like. They’re urgent, and it’s not drippy psych, it’s kinda aggro, and they all more or less rock. More than once do these guys mention their brains, which always gets me. When a singer mentions his brain in a song, I’m in.”
The songs chosen have enabled the band to put a firm stamp of their own identity on the record, to the point that A Better Dystopia feels just as much a MONSTER MAGNET album as classics like Powertrip or Dopes To Infinity. “I think about like if we were doing this live, and it was an in the moment thing, and I put this between two other MONSTER MAGNET songs, would the people be happy or not? And if I think ‘yeah we could pull it off,’ it’s a good cover. I wanted this album to be a MONSTER MAGNET album first and a cover record second.”
A large part of what enables this to happen is the band’s current line-up, a group with whom Wyndorf couldn’t be happier. “Those guys love it, and they’re really funny. Most of those guys I’ve known for years and years and years, and [new recruit Alec Morton] is definitely my favourite bass player we’ve ever had in the band. It’s great, we go on tour and it’s like music club – just all night riding a bus playing obscure music and loving it. It’s a good life. I never thought I would get this old and still have so much fun at it, but I’m still doing it. I was always one of those people that said ‘hope I die before I get old’ but I’ve changed my mind. It’s actually cool.”
As much as he enjoys it, you’d think that after three full decades of near constant touring and record releases, Wyndorf might want to take his foot off the pedal a little. You’d be mistaken. “I wanna be on the road so much. I’ve got really used to a certain way of thinking, which is you have to make something to be worth something to anybody. It doesn’t have to be big, it doesn’t have to be mega commercial, and you don’t have to be a big star or something, but you really have to have some sort of thing in you that wants to create. So if I got disappointed in fame or money or anything else, I just kept thinking ‘what’d I be doing if I wasn’t doing this?’ And that scared me.”
“I wanna make cool stuff as long as I can, and I think that’s how I did it. It was just one thing at a time, and then getting a longing for the road, longing to be out there, to live that kind of life where you meet like-minded people. It’s cool and it’s very addictive. I’m always like ‘I wonder what they’re doing in Prague right now, I wonder what shows they’re going to in Prague, I wonder if that little doner kebab is still on that street – we’ve gotta go to Prague!’ And then the guys feel the same way more or less, they’re like ‘yeah let’s get the hell outta here.’ It’s the power of rock, it’s the power of music. I never get tired of playing it.”
Obviously then, Wyndorf has found a full year forced off the road pretty tough. While he’s been keeping himself busy with his reading and his pushbike, there’s no question he’ll be back out there as soon as possible. Once he is, there’s definitely no intention of slowing the MONSTER MAGNET train down anytime soon. “It never occurred to me to retire. Retire sounds like you’re retiring from something you don’t like to do, but I really like to do this, so I’ll be in music for as long as I possibly can. It’s a good life. Music is good, art’s good for you. It’s good for your head, especially if you’re like me and you can’t deal with the real world very well. I have a lot of problems with the way the real world operates, I’d rather stay in this dimension than be in their dimension.”
A Better Dystopia is out now via Napalm Records.
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