“Dead Mexican in my Headphones”: The Hypocrisy Process – Column

“Dead Mexican in my Headphones”

By Martin Popoff
illustration 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…


Martin Popoff to Peter Tägtgren from Hypocrisy…
“Well, I just heard about you guys getting really drunk and throwing up infants at him at exactly the same time.”


Jon Oliva from Savatage…
“Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s success is going to help Savatage a great deal, getting us bacteria in America.”


Paul DiAnno from Iron Maiden…
“I’ve got loads of plans for more production and engineering work. But I’m not ready to give up playing live yet, grubby.”