Murderdolls: The most fun I´ve ever had

After a nine year long break, they are finally back on stage: THE MURDERDOLLS. The new record by guitarist Joey Jordison and vocalist Wednesday 13 called “Women and Children Last” makes one thing very clear: this band is better than ever before. At the moment the Murderdolls are touring in Europe and Stalker took that chance to meet up with fronter Wednesday 13 before their show in Zurich, Switzerland. Opposite to me is a calm, maybe even little bit shy guy with a very fascinating, interesting personality.

How are you doing?
Good. I got some rest last night and I slept most of the day, so I just woke up for sound check. I´m still kind of “waking up”.

How has the tour been so far? How is it to be back on the road again with Murderdolls?
It´s been good. It´s been a lot of travelling and a lot of these long days when you are like: “Ah…” (Makes a gesture of being bored) If you think about bands what bands are doing on their bus and most people don´t know what we do. Most of us just sit around like: “Ohhh” (makes the gesture again)”What time do we play?” or “I´m hungry!” or “My clothes smell”(laughs) That are the things we do all day so I can get tired after awhile. Because this is our 20th day and we played 6 shows.

20 days on the road and only 6 shows so far?
Well, not in Europe, it´s since I left home for rehearsal. So we had rehearsal in America and the flight and a day off, travel, show, day off and travel again. It´s just like: I think “Fuck I´ve been here for three weeks and then six shows. (makes a face and starts laughing) But now we have, like, five in a row and then we go to France, Belgium and then we go to the UK and then we´re gonna perform for almost two weeks in the UK so that´s gonna be cool. Last night was kind of our last day that was like 🙁 breathes deeply)”Take a breath! “And now it´s just bang, bang, bang. Which is great because I love to play everyday. I hate that waiting there is no point.

How has the response from the fans been on the tour?
It´s been great. I didn´t know what to expect because I didn´t know if their where fans from 8, 9 years ago or new fans. Every night, you will hear it too, I will say: Who has the old record? And not everybody says anything and then I will say: Who has the new record? And then not everybody says anything. It´s kind of half and half so I don´t really know how to interpret it. But when we play the songs, everybody goes crazy. So I don´t know if it´s the new fans or old fans but anyway they are here and the response so far has been great. We played Amsterdam, we did some German shows and we did Italy so far and the reactions have been great. Seems they like the new stuff as much as the old stuff. And we play a long time. I think some people think: How long are these fuckers gonna play? (laughs) Well, for us it´s been such a long time since we played so we wanna play a long intense set. You get pretty much. You don´t get both albums in all. But you get the best of both of them.

You released your record “Women and Children Last” last summer, why did it take 9 years between the new and the old record “Beyond the Valley of Murderdolls”, which was released in 2002?
We all got so busy. It´s really easy to get out of contact with someone and especially when you don´t live in the same area. So take for example Joey and I. Joey lives in Iowa and I live in North Carolina — that´s very far away. And then Joey has his band Slipknot, so when Murderdolls took their break, we stopped in June or July 2003, Joey started to work on the new Slipknot record. And they are such a massive band, you know they did a two-year tour. First we heard” It will be a short tour!” and then it became longer and longer. So I sat around and was like “Fuck, it´s now almost been close to a year, I don´t do anything!” so I just went, trying my stuff out for fun and then I started doing Wednesday 13 and Joey was with Slipknot again more. And then I did another record and he played with Korn and then I did another record (laughs) and he played with Ministry and Satyricon. So it seems like a long time, yeah it´s been a long time. But if you look at everything that he has done and I´ve done in those years it´s a lot. (laughs) I don´t know how may records I put out since then. I think I put out two country records, three solo albums and a different band, Gunfire 76.

So every year something new?
Every year I put out something, yeah, that´s been cool. And then he put out two Slipknot records, and this Roadrunner United thing and took part at the Rob Zombie Tour. It´s just like we worked, we didn´t stop cause we are not that kind of guys, who are sitting around. Especially Joey, he is probably even more so then I. He is like, when he is sitting around and has nothing to do, he is always like: “I gotta do something!”

Why did you choose the title “Women and Children Last”?
Well, there is a Van Halen album called “Women and Children First”. And with everything we have done, I think also in the past, we always tried to, not make fun but just kind of …you know. Like the song “Drug me to hell!” I haven´t even seen this movie “drag me to hell”. I thought I wrote it down in a book before and instead of “Drag me to hell” I wrote “Drug me to hell”. Just this kind of play on words, we liked “Women and Children Last” that was a funny take on “Women and Children First”. And it is just kind of the same spirit but we all always try to push buttons and make people mad. (with a higher voice) “They can´t say that, that´s mean!” But we are not being serious.

So it just isn´t meant that serious!
Yeah. People that take it seriously, get mad and that´s the people we were trying to piss off, anyway. So it works out! (laughs)

Who of you guys is responsible for the songwriting, are you doing this together or separated and then present the ready song to the others?
We both, I mean, it´s the same as with the first album. And I respect that we both combine our stuff, like partly, we had all these song ideas. We´ve never been in a room playing guitar, it was all phone calls, chat and so on from 2005 till March of last year. All in phone calls, no meeting in person, no visits.

So you just shared files with each other?
All internet. “Hey, I got this song I send it to you”, “Ok, I like it, it´s cool!” From 2003 till last year was years of doing that. So imagine how many songs we had. So when we went to the studio to record the new album, we had 50-60 songs, I think. And we were like “Alright, that one is ok!” We just kind of started to cut them down. And by the time we were done, we were left with 18, which ended up in all the stuff we did on the new record. And it was just he and I, we just had the idea for the song and tried and were like “Oh, let´s change that part!” It was really easy! Some people were like, everything will be hard but for us it was such a natural, never negative, never like “Oh, I gotta get out of the studio, I hate you!” We were just like “Let´s stay longer, let´s record more.” It was really, really fun. That was the most fun I´ve ever had recording a record. Cause in the studio it gets boring some time. It was just sooo much fun doing it.

So is there any chance that you don´t wait another 8 years until you do the next one?
Me and Joey said: “We had such a blast recording this record!” And I´m sure once we take a break from this, I don´t know what he plans to do, I mean I can only imagine he´s doing something, drumming and, of course, he should cause he´s been voted this year as the greatest drummer on earth. And he is on stage playing guitar, which is amazing because he is a great performer but I think once we are done, he will be back doing some drumming. And once in a while, we will get back together and try another. We have fun together, there is no doubt. It´s not that the band took a break because we don´t like each other, it´s because we got busy and we kind of got lost in our own worlds. And then once we get back together it really was like we are reintroducing ourselves. Cause we are, both… the shit he´s been through and the shit I´ve been through for five years, we´re different people now. So it was like becoming friends again. Was like you and I, strangers! You know we had memories but it was just lot of work to do. But that is all good now. So everything is cool and hopefully next year and a half we´ll be working on another record or it can happen even sooner than that. I don´t know.

You did the guest vocals for “Zombie Zoo” on the new Stoneman record. How did it come to this co-operation?
You know, I totally forgot I did that until about a month ago and I was online and I saw their video and was like: “Oh f.., I totally forgot because I was so busy. Cause I did that in the middle of a tour, I recorded the vocal parts. Stoneman supported Wednesday 13 when I did a solo tour in 2008 and I was on tour with my Gunfire band and they wanted me to sing on their “Zombie Zoo” song and I thought they were cool guys and then they send me the track. I remember the hardest part was recording the track because I wasn´t in the studio, I was in a tour bus in Brighton, England. It was so cold outside you could even feel the wind coming through the window of the bus and we were trying to record on this little laptop and everyone was standing around me and only I hear the music and I´m just going, singing their song, feeling like an idiot cause all of them, they only could hear my voice. But it was cool and these guys were nice guys. I don´t even have a copy of the record, I just saw the video. Are they from here, right?

Yes, they are!
I don´t have any contacts of the guys in the band and don´t even know if they are coming to the show or if they are on tour. I think I saw a flyer about a tour or something. It was cool and it was something different than what I know.

Can you tell us something about your tattoos you have quite a lot. What are those pictures you have on your arms and do you have plans for a new one?
Yeah, I have pretty much everything covered from here to here (wrist to wirst) over my chest and so on. They are all from this different horror movies. I have Frankenstein, the monsters, Nosferatu and so on. They are just basically all my favorite horror movies when I was a kid. When I look down at them, it´s just like “ah, cool”. I see my childhood there. I really take good care about the artist and I wont go just to any tattoo guy, cause I mean I´m gonna wear that stuff forever and I´m really fortunate to get some really great tattoos, and get compliments all the time. If I get a bad tattoo, I just would be stupid.

Do you have some final words for the STALKER readers?
I just honestly say thank you to all the fans, we can´t do without them. I hope we will be back with a new record sooner than the last one (laughs)

Yeah, yeah I think so! We just had too much fun to put it off now!

Ok then, thank you very much and all the best.
Cool, thanks, was nice to meet you!

Klaudia Weber
