“Dead Mexican in my Headphones”

By Martin Popoff
illustrations by Jonathan Ian Mathers

Phil Lewis from L.A. Guns…
I like a dead Mexican in my headphones and I’m ready to go.

I interview rock guys two, three times a week. I use voice recognition software to transcribe these interviews. Works like this: I tape the phone conversation, then take the tape and speak my questions and their answers into a headset and voila, it’s a transcribed text file. It doesn’t always come out as planned though. Fun game: Repeat the wrongness out loud and you might be able to figure out what the guy actually said. Here are some of the more memorable miscues. More than a few of these gems ring truer than the actual words spoken…

Rex Brown from Down…
“You’ve got to give kudos to the cat. He wrote all this fucking shit when we were down there. When we were down there banging algorithm tracks, he was upstairs writing the lyrics to it.”

Joey DeMaio from Manowar…
“You can imagine some of the strange stuff that happens. When you are dragging around this many people, three or four colour bosses, three for some mimes…”

Tony Levin from King Crimson…
“In fact, I’m pretty good at playing pop music. Paula Cole’s palms I really like; I played on the last two.”

Martin Popoff to Rob Halford…
“Now when Glenn gave you a lyric, did you like it right off the bat? Weather problems? Freezing problems?”

Wino from Spirit Caravan…
“I didn’t really realize how prolific I was until I looked at my disposal fee on paper.”