“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…

Nick Menza from Megadeth…
“I left to go have surgery down on my knee, which was just a routine thing. I was out for maybe seven to ten days until they took off the staples and I was fine. It was just a little sister I had removed on my tendon on my right knee.”

Bill Ward from Black Sabbath…
“We would all obviously do our thing with guitars and drums and whatever, but we would do different things, like Tony would cock certain meals, or Ozzy with coke, certain things. With any fire called.”

Rick Santers from Santers…
“He’s originally from the States. Once he heard I was there, he really wanted to beat me and talk about that.”

Martin Popoff to Dave Lombardo…
“Now, when do you guys get back together again and start to worry?”