“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…
James Hetfield from Metallica…
“It’s not like we’re ruining anything. We’ve done festivals in Europe since day one that are exactly like that. We played a European festival where we went on after Peter Gabriel, many rabbits and Neil Young.”
Martin Popoff on Skyclad…
“A cool thing about Folkemon is how the band have figured out how to layer in their Cal Tech flavorings.”
Marty Friedman from Megadeth…
“It made it all the easier for Dave to go into what he does most comfortably, which is placate gas metal. There are very few who can do it as well as he does.”
Martin Popoff on For Those About to Rock…
“The record’s main purpose was to extend the release party for Back In Black for another 12, 18 months, to press on with a honeymoon period until more mortal and manageable record sales would ensue with Catholic of the Switch and every album after.”