GWAR INTERVIEW WITH BLOTHAR & BOB GORMAN/SLAVE PIT
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN PORK MAGAZINE IN 2014 & 2015
SEAN: PORK would like to welcome the new GWAR members Blothar & Vulvatron to Earth! I immediately noticed both of your pronounced... udders & that your outfits seem like something Jack Kirby was hallucinating.
Blóthar: Ah Yes, Jack Kirby, I understand from talking with Vulvatron that he is one of the only Earth artists to make a serious and lasting impact on the art world in the future. My udders are actually a bag of dicks. We go back and forth about who has the best rack. But being so well-endowed is both a blessing and a curse for me and Vulvatron. I am constantly ducking and dodging redneck hunters who want to mount my antlers on the hood of their pick-up trucks, and she can't cross the street without getting an offer from Hooters.
SEAN: The first time I heard about GWAR was from a protest group called "Gay Women Against Rape", they had a whole pamphlet about how terrible GWAR is, & they were right! Who is protesting GWAR these days?
Blóthar: Well, you are lying human. Gay women love GWAR and why wouldn't they? We are not interested in the sexuality of humans. GWAR comes under fire from fundamentalist religious groups, but we are unconcerned with this. GWAR has no time for the machinations of humans, especially are the pretentious idiots who take rock music so seriously they name their stupid bands after William Faulkner novels, and even worse...those who take heavy metal seriously. We are more concerned with the true enemies of GWAR; the one called Sawborg Destructo and Mr. Perfect, Cardynal Syn and the like.
SEAN: When do we get to see more GWAR comic books?
Blóthar: The pathetic slaves are scratching these out as we speak. Look for these to come out in the next year or so.
SEAN: GWAR is always smoking crack - I didn't think anyone smoked crack anymore, it's so 80s, but then I realized that GWAR probably brought crack to Earth. Has GWAR started to fuck with some of the cool new drugs like bath salts, ocean, krokodil, hand sanitizer & stuff like that?
Blóthar: Well, of course, we've tried krokodil, it had no effect. Bath salts, that shit is like teenager smoking banana peels, it doesnt work. It is great to see humans biting each other's faces off though, that in itself is a high for us!! We smoke crack and will always smoke crack, because it is the stupidest drug humans have ever produced, but mainly we are into Viagra...that shit fucks us up right!!
SEAN: I interviewed GHOUL after they toured with GWAR & they were complaining about how much anal balm they had to steal. What other Punk Ass bands has GWAR been playing with that PORK readers should know about?
Blóthar: Ghoul sucks. Every band sucks. If you are in band...kill yourself. We played with American Sharks. The fat geeky one named Mike, he blows me each night, and I guess he's alright. Decapitated, I feel like that is false advertisement, I was hoping they were actually headless...but no...Lamb of God...fucking horrible. I prefer their old band Jettison Charlie, that was when Adler was great!
SEAN: Your current tour is GWAR ETERNAL - the title being an answer to the question I had immediately when Oderus Urungus returned to Valhalla - which was, "What happens to GWAR?" So - that said, what's next for GWAR?
Blóthar: GWAR cannot be stopped. We are eternal. This tour honors Oderus Urungus. In his name, GWAR will never stop. We have an anniversary coming up, and we will keep pumping out shit as long as humans keep eating it, and when they stop...we will force feed them!
SEAN: I was rewatching GWAR on Jerry Springer with the Mentors - & with the young fan Sean & his mom, there were some weirdly moral lines being drawn & talk of GWAR being empowering, but the weirdest part was when Jerry Springer called GWAR shows "wonderful"!
Blóthar: HE is a wise man. GWAR shows are a wonder. I suppose GWAR can be considered transgressive and empowering for those humans who do not fit in. Your culture is so restrictive and stupid.
SEAN: Did GWAR kill Joan Rivers?
Blóthar: Of course not. She is actually a member of GWAR now. Her severed head lives with us. A fuck doll we use with pleasure.
Last year at this time I interviewed Blothar, the new front monster of GWAR after the disappearance of Oderus Urungus & the arrival of Vulvatron. The interview went great, but after being dismembered & having my guts spread all over a bunch of smelly bohabs, I wasn’t feeling so good. While Katie was sewing me up, she suggested that maybe it would be safer to interview one of the artists from the GWAR Slave Pit! A year passes & my stitches have fallen out & I can almost laugh without bleeding & we get a message from Bob Gorman, head of the Slave Pit that GWAR are coming through town & that they have a new art book to promote! I jumped at the chance to talk to a key cog in the GWAR war machine & see what goes on behind the scenes in one of the most successful DIY Metal Punk Rock&Roll Weirdo Art projects ever launched.
SEAN: Man - this new book is incredible, how did it come about?
BOB: Thank you. I sort of talk about the origins of the book in my introduction. To put it simply, when I took over as shop foreman from Don Drakulich in 1997, I found a file cabinet of old GWAR ephemera. I was instantly aware that our group had no real archive of our collective history, so I just started keeping all the tour schedules, flyers, etc. I started word documents for each year and just listed all the events that happened and who was involved. I had some naive idea that I would be able to put it all together for a book really quickly. That was 16 years ago. Hah! It wasn't until 5 years ago when Roger Gastman got involved that things really started to come together.
SEAN: GWAR is one of the largest & most successful DIY Metal Punk Weirdo Art undertakings in history - it falls into all aspects of what PORK is about. What were some of the elements that were brought together to make GWAR?
BOB: Equal parts Road Warrior, Jack Kirby, Big Daddy Roth, and ECW.
SEAN: You dropped out of Art School to work in the Slave Pit full time & have since become the head of the Slave Pit & a key figure in GWAR - this is a great ad for our campaign of telling kids to drop out of art school & pursue their art on their own. When you were a kid, what did you want to do for a living & how did the failings of art school direct you to the strange success of GWAR?
BOB: I pretty much wanted to be an artist from day one. I also had a different idea about what art school was going to be. In the 80's the art school I attended was still stuck in the curriculum of the 60's. Figurative art was not accepted in art school in the 80's. Juxtapoz Magazine really changed things in those realms. Most art schools had to adapt to the culture. Anyway, I got to art school and was pretty disappointed. I was heavily involved in the local music scene and going to shows 6 or 7 nights a week. I ended up at a GWAR/Butthole Surfers show one night and it really melted my tiny teenage mind. I slowly worked my way into that scene, as it was closer to what I felt like I wanted to do.
SEAN: How does the GWAR/Slave-Pit creative process work? How has it changed over the years?
BOB: The artistic process at the Slave-Pit is pretty fluid and organic. One of the great things about it is how open it is. The process is pretty much the same as it has been from the early days. Someone or a group start talking about some insane idea, other people join in with more ideas, but in the end it has to work and/or be wearable. A good portion of the last few years Brockie would come up with some utterly impossible to pull off and we would have to rein it in to make it doable. That push/pull dynamic is important for true creativity. Artists who don't play music making suggestions, and musicians who don't build costumes also having a say really challenges us to push the boundaries.
SEAN: Every time I've seen GWAR I just lose it over the elaborate stage-show & costumes, from the book I've garnered that most of the know-how for doing the prosthetics & everything has been self-generated which is incredible & again, another ad for dropping out of school. Describe how things have developed over the years.
BOB: Pretty much, when something you make breaks, you make it different the next time. After a while, you start finding what materials and processes work for a particular application. Early on, when their wasn't as much spew, we could use cardboard and wood glue for some props. That would not survive the way we tour now. We make things mostly out of latex rubber and fiberglass now. Things are made quite differently for videos as well.Fabrication in our shop is constantly evolving.
SEAN: We were talking about it being 15 years since GWAR funnies have been published, the BOHABS are hungry for more comics! This new book is the largest selection of GWAR visuals ever presented, but man, some comics would be nice. Maybe we could do a GWAR strip for PORK?
BOB: Matt Maguire is currently in pre-production for an graphic novel or possible comic series which tells the entire GWAR story. He is putting together a series of pages to pitch the entire idea to independent comic publishers. Keep your fingers crossed.
SEAN: Did you guys ever play WARHAMMER?
BOB: Hunter, Dave, Chuck, Don, Scott, Matt, even Mike Derks and Bishop used to play constantly. Hunter had evolved WARHAMMER into a really specific game called "Space Melee". He made a metal game board and magnetized the game pieces so they could play on the bumpy tour bus.
SEAN: With GWAR weathering hard hits like Hunter Jackson leaving the group & Dave Brockie dying - it would seem like GWAR can last forever - true to form. What's next for GWAR?
BOB: Well, we seem to have proven that people still want to see us perform. The logical next thing seems to be to get the current incarnation of the band to write and record new material. Planning our festival, GWARBQ eats up lots of time. It gets bigger and better every year. Matt Maguire's GWAR comic. I started a documentary on the early days of GWAR that I wanted to get released at the same time as the book, but things just got too crazy. I really want to get back to finishing it up. It still needs tons of work. More to do in GWAR world than ever!
SEAN: Thanks so much & we'd really like to get down with GWAR/the Slave Pit, do some kind of GWAR comic in PORK, whatever, but it would be incredible to bring our camps together, it'd be like Alice Cooper on the Muppet Show!
BOB: Hell yes, PORK is welcome anytime!