Rusty: Mornings are pretty rare for me to be
awake.
Martha: What
kind of books do you read?
Rusty: I just read "Harpo Speaks,"
the autobiography of Harpo Marx, and I loved it.
Martha: What
made you choose that?
Rusty: I had some time off and I was wandering
about London and there was a used bookstore and I was sick of
not having a book. I saw it and I thought, well, it has to be
stupid because these are all the books that nobody wants any more,
you know how you can have that mind set? Like this is a bunch
of used junk. All of a sudden, I looked at it and thought, I want
that! My mind was saying, why do I want to read this dumb thing
but something deeper was pulling me towards it, going buy it,
pick it up, read it. I just sort of did without thinking much
about it and, oh my God, this is great. One of my favorite books
I've ever read. I'm starting to see the point now. The nice thing
about vintage clothes stores or bookstores is that they're not
trying to sell you anything. There's no marketing involved. These
are totally random things that are there for you to select at
your own will. That's what is so great about them.
Martha: You
were reading "Cats Cradle" last time I talked to you.
Rusty: I'm on the last few pages. I liked it.
It's the first Kurt Vonnegut I ever read. "Breakfast of Champions"
is next. I meant to read that but they didn't have it. It's good.
His style of writing is very influential, not so modern now because
he's one of those great writers that influenced so many people.
It's like Deep Purple, they're my favorite example of this. They
were so good, but you go back and listen to them and everyone
goes, oh they were a heavy metal band. They associate them with
Motley Crue or Judas Priest - no offense to either one of those
bands, "Living After Midnight" is one of my favorite
songs of all time. Deep Purple was incredibly innovative and incredibly
unique but because so many people borrowed their sound, it became
passé. They are credible, they still sell shows, there
are a lot of people that like them. But they don't get the respect
that they should because people cheapened their sound by taking
bits of it in this banal, cliché way that typecast it into
this uncool stereotype. I guess I inadvertently stumbled upon
one of my soapbox concepts and got sidetracked. Yes, I liked "Cats
Cradle."
Martha: Do
you collect anything besides guitars?
Rusty: Well, I got some chotchkies here in my
house. This is my Saddam dollar (points to a dollar bill from
Iraq with Saddam's picture on it). You can bet your Saddam dollar!
Martha (looking
around): And your wounded army men.
Rusty: Yeah, my wounded soldiers I love them.
And this cat I got this cat from Creep on the tour.
Martha: It
looks real.
Rusty: It's not real. You know those old ladies'
cats where they're curled up, haven't you seen those? I kinda
like this because Creep is this real nice guy on the tour. He's
from Budapest originally and he was tutoring Paul on how to speak
Hungarian. He gave it to me so it has a special meaning.
I've been buying some art here
and there, mostly prints. I collect musical instruments, guitars,
amps, vibes, hammer dulcimer, pedal steel, but I use those. They're
tools. I don't collect salt and pepper shakers. As far as clothes,
I try to buy clothes that I wear, that I'll like. You could kind
of look at it as collecting vintage clothes but I'm looking at
it as something I can wear.
I used to collect chemicals
but they were tools too. I used them for chemistry experiments
and to make explosives when I was a teenager, like 8 through 15.
I had tons of them, potassium chlorate, powdered Magnesium, metallic
sodium, pure phosphorus, red phosphorus, sodium dichromate, all
these cool things. I felt like I was collecting them and then
I stopped using them because I stopped blowing up things and started
looking at girls. I remember one day Myles, who was the singer
in Eulogy, runs up to me and goes, Rusty, Rusty, your chemicals
are on fire! See, the yellow phosphorus needs to be kept in water
because if it gets to the air, it will ignite. So what happened
was that somehow all the water evaporated. After a year or two
of it sitting in its little canister, it caught on fire. They're
going, get the hose! I said no, you can't do that because if you
have a chemical fire, don't ever use water on it or it will spread.
Martha: What
happened to the fire?
Rusty: You need sand to put out the fire but
the only thing I could find was a cat box. I dumped kitty litter
from the cat box all over it. It smelled really bad but it put
the fire out. I thought, I have to get rid of all these chemicals.
It was a sad day. It was also kind of cool, kind of freeing. I
was like, okay, I can take all this knowledge and all this work
and say, this is the end of this chapter. I think of it that way
now. At the time, I thought I'd better do this before I catch
the house on fire!
I had all these different chemicals,
this reacts with this, this with this. In fact, I have a scar
on my leg. I had this powder, from the fertilizer bomber, the
Timothy McVeigh formula, mixed with zinc dust. You grind it up
and mix it all together and if it gets wet, it ignites. Well,
I put it in my pocket to give to a friend and it blew up in my
pocket. It was third degree, blood, it was awful! I still have
a scar from it.
Martha: Oh
my God. You were really lucky, you know that?
Rusty: Yeah. I think I was 10. I read that Frank
Zappa had some very close calls too. He was into chemicals. His
dad was a chemist. He had balls of mercury floating around the
corners of his house.
Martha: Have
you ever been arrested?
Rusty: Actually, that ties into the chemicals.
It was some event, the 4th of July I think. I made up a whole
bunch of fireworks and bombs, had stuff in my pockets, and was
with my friends and we were hanging out with all the cool kids.
I think I was in 8th grade. My big grand finale firework was a
banana bomb. I took a banana and made an explosive, a novel idea
I know, and this guy Rick Sharpentier who later became a dynamiter
for a living, said he wanted to light it. He was a real tough
guy, he was cool but very tough. I said okay. He goes into the
middle of the street, lights it off, and just as he's lighting
the fuse and it starts to spark, a cop car comes. Everybody runs,
it explodes, the banana goes everywhere and the cop runs after
us. Of course he catches me. He says, what's in your pockets?
They take me home, they're looking at my laboratory with flashlights
and going oh my God. We went down to the police station and my
parents had to come and get us out, me and my friend Dirk who
was in Eulogy also. That was pretty funny.
I think that's the only time
I've really been anything close to arrested. Well, there was a
riot when Eulogy played. The place held 2000, there were 4000
people there. It was crazy, all the cops came, crashed the whole
thing. I looked over and saw what looked like this big beehive,
like a honeycomb, it was all the helmets, shields and face guards
from all the cops. They maced the place and all of a sudden I
couldn't see or breathe. I ran outside, I was holding my guitar
and this cop goes, get back inside. I said, I can't breathe and
he started bashing me with a billy club so I ran back in. That
was a crazy night.
Martha: What
tunes are in your CD player right now?
Rusty: Skip James, the old Blues guy. I really
like the Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin. Raw Power by Iggy Pop
is incredible. Todd Rundgren, some of his stuff is amazing.
Martha: I wore
out a copy of Something/Anything.
Rusty: Something/Anything's a great record.
Hermit of Mink Hollow's really great. I really love old Genesis,
Nursery Crimes and Foxtrot, Selling England by the Pound. Nursery
Crimes especially.
Martha: You've
mentioned that you listen to Gershwin - which of his pieces is
your favorite?
Rusty: I like the melodies of his tunes, like
The Man I Love is incredible. Prelude No. 2 is really great. Rhapsody
in Blue, Someone to Watch Over Me, but I think I've heard Rhapsody
in Blue too many times, sort of like some great Beatles song or
Stones song, like Satisfaction, you've heard it so many times
that if it catches you in the right mood you love it but it's
hard to hear freshly.
Martha: Where
is your favorite place to write music?
Rusty: Wherever I am. I mean, wherever that
inspiration hits. I might be in traffic, in the house, in the
hotel room and I'll jot down an idea. I seem to write in a fragmented
fashion. I might write a part or a bit or a riff. We were jamming
today and I started playing this riff and it was cool. We didn't
have a tape recorder so I had to go upstairs and get the tape
player out of my bag. The problem with tape recorders in your
bag is that lots of times it'll hit play and it'll go to the end
of the tape and you have to somehow find where you left off. Very
irritating but I suppose it's the price you pay. I do have an
enclosed porch upstairs with lots of windows and that's been quite
inspirational.
Martha: What's
your favorite song to slow dance to?
Rusty: I really used to like that song on that
Syd Barrett record The Madcap Laughs, Octopus, but now it brings
back some really bad memories. I don't know. Jeff Buckley, Coldplay,
there's a lot of really cool music in that vein. Radiohead. There
are a lot of great Paul McCartney songs that are really melodically
beautiful, Nick Drake, he's fantastic. Velvet Underground.
Martha: Which
instrument in a symphony orchestra do you feel best represents
your personality?
Rusty: Did you hear about the cello that got
stolen? Someone stole the cello from the principal cellist of
the LA Philharmonic Orchestra, a Stradivarius worth $3,000,000.
I think it actually belongs to the Philharmonic. Can you believe
that? They'll probably get it back because I don't know how long
it can really travel on the black market.
Martha: So
are you saying you'd be a cello?
Rusty: Nah, that's more of a chick instrument,
or a bird as they say- the curves you know? I don't know. Probably
one of those Dr. Suess horns that are really complicated with
this bizarre sound and doesn't quite fit into any category.
Martha: What
song or classical work do you feel best describes your life?
Rusty: Nice Work if You Can Get It? No, Life
on Mars by David Bowie, probably. I was at this party and all
they were playing was hip-hop, but they played Life on Mars and
then it went back to hip-hop. I thought, wow, that's a song that
really speaks to a lot of people.
Martha: If
you look at your past, what is the most important thing you have
learned about life?
Rusty: There's no free lunch (laughs) That's
what my Dad always said. He's that old school mentality. But he's
probably right, you know? Don't go looking for a bunch of free
sh*t without paying the price.
No, actually I'm still learning how to listen to and learn from
others, and what it means to be in the moment.
Martha: How
would you spend your ideal day'?
Rusty: I love the Northern California coast.
I'd just kind of go around Big Sur. I love Yosemite, the Sierras,
Santa Barbara, Utah, Zion and all that. I guess it's a long list:
Hana in Maui, Ana Capri in Italy, etc.
Martha: Are
you a hiker?
Rusty: I like to hike, being in really beautiful
nature, riding bikes around, white water rafting, being out in
it. I'm not a bungee jumper or anything like that. I climbed the
back side of Half Dome once. That was breathtaking. My ideal day
would be having a really great nature experience. I haven't had
one in a while.
I went to Mad Ludwig's castle
when we were on tour in Bavaria. It was pretty rad. I had a day
to trip off so I went out by myself. It was really beautiful up
there. I learned a lot of interesting things about the ruins.
They still had some old relics from the Romans, who were conquering
everybody. Then the Germans sort of won that piece and that became
Germany. It's such a trip. Europe has all that history. The boundaries
of Germany are really pretty fresh. So, a really good exploring
day, seeing new things with friends, hanging out, that sounds
good to me.
Martha: You
didn't get a chance to do that while you were home this year?
Rusty: Part of the problem is that one of my
dreams goals was to make that record. So I was doing all this
stuff to get it out. The discipline involved in making a record
is insane, especially when you don't have a bunch of people breathing
down your neck to finish, or helping you finish it. Most of it
I had to self-motivate. Even though I'm very self-motivated, my
motivational skills are not natural, I have to force them. I have
this desire to be organized but I don't have the natural skill.
So lately it seems like I've either been touring or recording.
My way is to be more of a dreamer or more impulsive, oh, lets
do so and so and try something weird or experimental, that's my
nature. You know, I'm on the cusp.
Martha: You're
air but you want to be more earth.
Rusty: Yeah I'm always trying to be more earth.
I see that things don't get done in the air- or they are created
but they don't always get communicated. It's a different realm,
more of an internal realm. To me, the earth is more external,
the air is internal.
Martha: Boxers
or briefs?
Rusty: Boxers or nothing. Usually.
Martha: You
know why that was asked, don't you? There's an ongoing debate
about Paul.
Rusty: Boxers or briefs? I don't
even know.
Martha: No
one does. It's a mystery.
Rusty: Paul's funny. In a way, he's the private
Englishman guy. In another way, he comes from the crazy, free
love and drugs sixties, the exact opposite. It's cool, he's this
weird combination of polar opposites.
Martha: How
did Russell Anderson come to be known as Rusty?
Rusty: It's actually a strange answer. My name's
Russell Scott Anderson, right? For some reason, there's this trend
in my family to call people by their middle names. They just assumed
I wanted to be called by my middle name, which is Scott. So they
called me Scotty. By the time I was 5, I said, I really don't
like that name. I had this friend named Rusty so I said, I like
his name, call me Rusty. By the time I was 7, no one had mentioned
it to me but I realized, hey wow, my name really is Rusty. So
it was completely a coincidence. However, I do have two cousins
named Rusty.
Martha: How
does it feel to have a song (Zallen's, aka Mike Jones, "Efinbubyo")
written about you?
Rusty: It's very sweet of Mike to write it. We
were in a band together for about 6 months to a year when I was
13. He's an old friend.
Martha: What
does Efinbubyo mean?
Rusty: It's from a song that a friend and I
wrote. We wrote it when we were like 15. But the tape got lost
forever. It was called the Groovy Ricos, I think. The Groovy Ricos
were this Mexican duo that played at Nachos, this Mexican restaurant
in La Habra when we were growing up. We called the tape the Groovy
Ricos. We recorded billions of songs. There were 2 tapes, one
called Appraising The Phrasing and one called Groovy Ricos, both
of which I lent to someone and they lost it. There were probably
50 songs on each one of those. I couldn't believe it. The implications
didn't occur to me at the time. Now, knowing what I know, A -
I would never have loaned it out and B - I would have made copies
and C - I would have ransacked their homes. "Motherf*ker,
were not leaving this house until we find it, your house, your
car, your friend's car, you know what I mean?"
So, the concept of the song
"Efinbubyo" is something that you never find out what
it is. You listen to the whole song and you don't know what it
is. I think there are some things in life like that, you spend
your whole life trying to figure out what life even is and you
never find out, to my knowledge (laughs) something that's an eternal
mystery.
Martha: Were
the Alice in Wonderland type links (eat me, drink me, humor me)
on the web site your idea?
Rusty: Uh huh.
Martha: Do
you have a special connection with the Alice stories?
Rusty: Obviously, I thought it was a brilliant
book. I read some pieces from "The Annotated Alice."
It talks about things like the mad hatter was actually a character
created out of a real person. Mad as a hatter is from hat glue.
They glue the felt together with some sort of mercury compound
that would drive people crazy. They'd lick it, breathe it, and
go crazy, so go mad as a hatter came from the fact that these
people were being driven insane by the glue. The Mad Hatter was
patterned after this inventor. He made all these crazy inventions
and one of them was called the alarm clock bed. At a certain set
time, the sleeper would actually get catapulted out of the bed,
which sounds pretty brutal but I thought it was kind of fascinating.
Martha: Are
you ever going to put the audience photos you took on the last
tour on your website?
Rusty: I have put those pictures up.
Martha: A couple
of them. I think people think that there are hundreds of them
in a vault somewhere.
Rusty: Well, there are. But the problem is
that a lot of the pictures I took were a bit blurry and nondescript.
I realized that I needed to have the spotlight put on the audience
instead of on me. They're not that worth looking at. I did finally
figure out how to do it.
Martha: So
do you think you'll do that again?
Rusty: Maybe. Guess I'm going to have to start
thinking about that soon.
Martha: You're
a part of the biggest touring band out there, you're doing your
solo stuff and still fitting in studio work when you can. What
else is out there that you still want to do?
Rusty: I don't know. I like writing songs, creating
stuff. There's the Maltmen. The Maltmen is rad, that's something
I really want to do but the development factor has taken a back
burner. When it's ready, it's ready. That's something I'm really
looking forward to. I love what I do. I love playing my songs.
I love playing on peoples' records. I love playing with Paul.
Maybe some film scoring, who knows?
Martha: Is
Paul coming back to America in 2005?
Rusty: Rumor has it. That's all I can say.
Martha: You're
lucky, getting to do what you love.
Rusty: I feel incredibly lucky. The hardest
part is to not stress out. I don't really control any of this
stuff. It happens as long as it happens. That's the trick. To
somehow enjoy it without stressing out. Just go, yeah, these are
good times.
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