“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…

Bruce Dickinson on Dance of Death…
“There’s always a message, like the song ‘Pachendale,’ which is a ten-minute extravaganza. We haven’t written a song like this since ‘Orion of The Agent Error.'”

Neil Fallon on the sound of the Clutch live album…
“Other people like a sound that is more dry. This was recorded very simply on an eight-track ADAT tape machine. When we were doing it, we had no idea we were recording a live record. Jean-Paul and our soundman Lee, put this up just, you know, for shifts in vehicles.”

Vivian Campbell on Dio…
“I really, really thought it was a great, great band, and I have a lot of respect for him as a singer and musician. He’s probably got the greatest voice in rock and he’s a good writer. He wasn’t a fungi to work for, but there’s no point getting into any mudslinging or anything.”