Garage rock hasn’t been the
same since Indo-Canadian wildman Arish “King” Khan first picked up the bass as
a high schooler growing up in Montreal. Traversing genres like trash-punk with The
Spaceshits, doo-wop with King Khan & BBQ Show, gospel with Almighty
Defenders, countrified rock with Tandoori Knights, and psychedelic soul with
King Khan & The Shrines, the 35-year-old Berlin resident has cultivated an
outlandish onstage persona that doesn’t seem to jibe with his domestic life as
a happily married father of two daughters. There’s the fascination with voodoo
and the occult, along with the crazy costumes that come with such interests.
The drunken time he spent living on a Mohawk Indian reservation. The countless
equipment destruction sessions, drug binges and arrests, audience urinations
and defecations, and one well-publicized ass parade in Lindsey Lohan’s face (http://bit.ly/AqK5Dx), But throughout it all, King Khan has done his part
to keep raw American music and its attendant punk rock spirit alive. EasternSurf.com was lucky enough to chat
with King Khan about living in Germany, the upcoming Bruise Cruise out of Miami,
and music’s revolutionary spirit.
ESM: So you
and The Shrines are passing through the Southeast on your way to Miami for the
2nd Annual Bruise Cruise, which is your first appearance on the boat, right?
King Khan: Yeah,
BBQ [Mark Sultan] and I got invited last year but we couldn’t go. I’m excited,
The Shrines are all really excited, and I think it’s going to be a wild time.
ESM: You’re
famous for shenanigans over the years that include getting naked on
stage, several drug-related affairs, destroying your equipment, etc. etc. As
you’ve gotten older have you started to mellow out some?
KK: In
some ways, yeah. Back in the day we used shock as an element of the show to
lure people in or repel people. But I guess the older I get, the mellower I become.
The music has always been the most important thing. It depends, though; if the
crowd gives a lot more then they receive a lot more. It still gets pretty nutty
and crazy — maybe just less frequently.
ESM: How
did you get started playing music growing up in Montreal?
KK: I
started playing guitar when I was 12 years old. Before that my parents told me
they used to play Indian classical music on my mom’s belly through these big
‘70s headphones, so that was my first exposure to music before I was born. For
all you young parents out there, that’s probably a good idea. Then in high
school I got into Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, and that evolved into metal,
which I was into for a while before I discovered punk. By the age of 17 I had left
home, when The Spaceshits asked me to replace their bass player for a summer,
so I wound up taking my brother’s electric bass, which he never used, moved out,
and started from there. I played with The Spaceshits for five or six years
traveling all over the world. It’s funny when I look back at that time… when we
did the first tour with BBQ and Black Lips there were no laptops or GPS or all
these other luxuries that everyone has touring. I remember touring with ripped
pieces of an atlas we took from some gas station.
ESM: You’re
probably making a little bit more money now, too, huh?
KK: I found
an old list of receipts and we’d play cities for a $25 guarantee [laughs]. It was pretty crazy how we were
able to do it. You have to start off that way, though, and if it’s the right
thing to do it gets better and better. Now I have two kids and I’m raising a
family.
ESM: How
did you end up living in Germany?
KK: Actually
the last The Spaceshits tour ever was in Europe, and I was 21 and fell in love.
But I also loved being here and felt like bands were treated differently here;
in every city there was a cool niche of punk rock and people really knew about
good music, which was really exciting. Plus when you’re that age going as far
away as possible from home sounds great. So after doing that for a few months I
fell in love with the girl who is now my wife and started a family, which is
weird because never in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up living in
Germany. But I like it here a lot, the people are wonderful, and it’s a good place
to raise kids too.
ESM: You’ve
collaborated with tons of people over the years. What’s new for you right now?
KK: I have
this one thing I’m working on with this amazing German singer Rummelsnuff. He’s probably one of my favorite acts in
Germany, more like Rammstein-esque stuff, dark electro… I think it’s called
EBM, electronic body music. I ran into him through a major photographer I know who
asked me to be in one of his videos and we became friends. I saw him play live
and it’s an incredible show, but his music is very German and electronic. Most
of my life I’ve been playing old-school rock ‘n roll, so I thought it’d be
funny to venture into this electronic world. We put this band together, started
recording, and it’s pretty exciting. I’ve been writing the lyrics and singing
in German, and the other guys in the band really liked it — they said I
sounded like some deeply inbred German. I try to sing a little bit The
Spits-inspired, so it’s this weird electro-punk thing I’ve never tried before.
I just put out The King Khan Experience too, which is just some recordings from
the last couple of years that I had sitting around waiting to release. Mostly
I’ve been focusing on the new The Shrines record, though; we got a studio here,
and it’s been almost three years since we put one out, so we’re working in a
really nice studio with a friend of mine who does Afro-funk stuff. I’m excited.
ESM: What’s
your fascination with playing all of these raw forms of American music like
rock, funk, jazz, soul, R&B, and blues?
KK: I’ve always loved desperation in
music. That's a quality that appeals to me. If you listen to something, whether
it’s super punk or James Brown or any kind of music, if it’s got that degree of
desperation it adds depth and makes you really feel it deep inside your heart.
My intentions in music have always been pure and not tainted with delusions of
grandeur or trying to attain some big golden bucket at the end of the rainbow,
and in keeping it humble it really becomes more of a message from deep within.
The people who come to our shows feel that too — they see the music for
its integrity and honesty. And
life isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. Too many bands try so hard and
don’t get anywhere, but the true people who do get attention… well, sometimes
they’re the people who really deserve it — they’re not really asking for
it and it just kind of happens. I think that music is a lot like magic, voodoo
magic or any kind of spiritual magic — if it’s done with the right
intentions it can give you great spiritual benefits. But obviously if it’s done
in the wrong way you can get the bad side of that too. In that way I feel
pretty blessed and I think people who are my fans have followed all these
different things that I’m doing, but they feel that in every single one of
those things there’s this honesty that’s no bullshit.
ESM: Your
live shows, especially with The Shrines, are so infectious, so you’re right about the
fans definitely feeling that energy.
KK: The
thing that inspired me to do The Shrines when I first moved to Germany was I
got into a lot of Sun Ra and Art Ensemble Chicago, a lot of avant-garde black
music from the ‘60s, and in that music especially you see so much revolution in
the sound and the intention of those songs. If you listen to AEC, it’s super
punk what they’re doing with free jazz. It’s important to preserve all these elements
of revolution in music, and with The Shrines we try to bring everything together.
In all my projects there might be a hint at a certain era, but it’s pretty much
original — it’s not just a carbon copy of something. It’s important to
keep that revolutionary spirit alive, otherwise we turn into robots.
ESM: You’re
also well known for your costumes onstage, which I understand your wife helps
you out with.
KK: It really
is like a family business the way I’ve been doing it. I started a family when I
was 22 years old, when my first daughter was born, so basically the bands grew
up with the kids, whether they were always there or just orbiting in this universe.
The studio was in my living room for a long time. My poor neighbor downstairs
would sometimes freak out when I would be recording all day. When I did the Let It Bloom album for Black Lips I had
literally just moved into my apartment and it was full of boxes, so I pulled
out all this stuff and we were playing all afternoon. I tried to do black metal
once in that apartment, and the old man downstairs was knocking on the door for
five minutes and I couldn’t hear him. For one second we stopped playing music
and I was like, “Oh, what is that sound?” I heard the knocking, and my wife was
hiding in the kitchen, so I opened the door and the old man had been standing
there and he was so angry that he couldn’t say anything. He was just turning
red. Now I have other places to make noise. But the family thing, yeah, my wife
has always been a part of it, and the kids too. The Black Lips just came over
and stayed here for a couple days, which was wonderful. When they first came
here the kids weren’t even talking and now they’re almost teenagers. They’ve
got good uncles.
ESM: Do
you see your kids going down the same musical path as you?
KK: It
would be great if they did, but I also totally don’t mind if they don’t. You
know how some people like to keep a photo album? Well, I have all these
recordings of them throughout their life. If you see your parents doing
something all their lives and see the enjoyment they get from it, the guitars
laying around, you become so accustomed to it that it’s part of your soul. I’m
really proud of them, too; they have really good taste in music. They don’t
hate all modern music, but if you play a song they can critique it in a great
way. I’ve given them room, and that’s important — you can’t force things
down their throats.
ESM: This
tour finds The Shrines coming back to Florida for the first time since 2009.
Being in the Sunshine State, we’re pretty damn excited.
KK: Isn’t
there an alligator problem right now in Florida? Like an overpopulation thing?
ESM: No,
but we do hunt them at certain times of the year.
KK: Really?
I thought there were too many of them.
ESM: Maybe
you guys could get on an alligator hunt before or after the Bruise Cruise.
KK: That
would be amazing. I’ve always wanted to feed raw chicken to them. I saw some
crazy African tribe on YouTube, I think they were called the Alligator Tribe,
and their initiation for young boys to become men is they get these crazy open
cuts — like diagonal slits all down their backs — and infect them
with this leaf so they get swollen. The video was so gruesome, fathers holding their
sons in their laps and slicing their backs open… but this leaf was an
antiseptic and made a specific scar so they’d have these gator marks on their
backs, and after the initiation they’d spend one night in the swamp with just
their eyes out of the water and become an alligator for a whole night. Can you
imagine how scary that would be?
ESM: We
don’t do anything quite like that down here.
KK: There
must be a biker crew out there that does.
For all things King Khan & The
Shrines, visit www.Facebook.com/KingKhanAndTheShrines
UPCOMING KING KHAN & THE SHRINES TOUR DATES:
1/31 The Basement @ Graveyard
Tavern Atlanta,
GA
2/1 Club Downunder Tallahassee,
FL
2/2 Bottletree Birmingham,
AL
2/3 LBC Quad @ Tulane
University New
Orleans, LA
2/4 The Mohawk Austin,
TX
2/6 Sons Of Hermann Hall Dallas,
TX
2/8 Original Café Eleven St.
Augustine, FL
2/9 Bruise Cruise Kick-Off
Party @ The Stage Miami,
FL
2/10-13 Bruise Cruise At
Sea
