Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets speaks
Friday, June 12th, 2009
Chad Radford: I had a hard time with Meat Puppets when I was a teenager. You guys were an SST band, which in my limited understanding meant something specific, i.e. punk rock. I loved Black Flag and the Minutemen, and I guess the first couple of Husker Du records, but I couldn’t get my head around what you were doing because there was always so much more to your music than punk rock. Ironically, the thing that I didn’t like is what gave you longevity, and is what I’m drawn to now. Did you feel like your natural inclination to incorporate so much more was confusing to listeners?
Curt Kirkwood: We thought those bands were all posers; all style and no substance. That’s pretty much what I still think. Even back then someone had already done it. the Germs did it… the fucking Ramones did it first, you know? If it’s loud and fast it qualifies as punk? We were a lot more hateful than all of those people. We hated them and we hated our fucking audience. That’s why we played country music, so they’d get pissed off and leave. We knew what we were doing and we wanted to evolve the medium — if it was a medium at all. We liked the style, just like we like bluegrass and metal. There isn’t much that I don’t like.
SST sought us out and invited us to make a record. All the punk bands sought us out too, and I mean all of them: Flipper, TSOL, Dead Kennedys… we played with all of them. I can say it now because it was a long time ago, but we were the ones who didn’t buy into it, and saw that they were putting themselves in a corner by doing that. It was an intentional thing and it has worked to a degree. People are capitalizing on that era now and all I can ever think about is that I wish I hadn’t ever fired the fiddle player.
