by JOHNSON CUMMINS

How do you come off bad-ass when every band in your Norwegian hometown is a bunch of church-burning, death-fetishizing, nihilistic black-metal knuckleheads? Adopt a butch homo image, of course. With an all-denim dress code, Tammy Faye makeup, leather accessories and sailor caps, Turbonegro had most of their local competion scratching their heads as they spat out gay anthems like “The Midnight Nambla,” “Good Head,” “I Got Erection” and the classic “Rendezvous With Anus.” Their first album, ’98’s Apocalypse Dudes, helped jumpstart the Nordic riff-rock insurgency, but just as they’d established their cult status, shit went south (details below). Now that they’ve got things straight again, so to speak, they’re back with Scandinavian Leather and a second chance for all their rabid fans who’d never seen ’em live. The Mirror spoke with keyboardist Pal Pot Pamparius from his home in Oslo.

Mirror: What exactly happened on the Apocalypse Dudes tour?

Pal Pot Pamparius: Hank [Von Helvete, singer] was just completely out of it mentally and was really sick. It turned out that he was a bad junkie at the time. When your singer is hallucinating 98 per cent of the time and he doesn’t really know what planet he is on, you have to recognize you have a problem and take a break.

M: How bad did it get?

PPP: I remember we went to SXSW in Austin, Texas, and he was supposed to come two days after us and he didn’t show up. We called back home and it ended up he was committed into a mental hospital and sold his airline ticket for drugs. In the end he wasn’t really looking like a human being and was hearing voices. He would just curl up in a fetal position in the tour bus and talk to fantasy friends that lived inside of his head.

M: Was it difficult watching your friend have a breakdown in front of your eyes?

PPP: The problems had been rising for so long so there was more frustration than sympathy coming from us. We thought we made a really, really good record but there was one person sabotaging the whole thing. It was only scary at times because I felt like I could just take a kitchen knife and slit his throat.

From blackface to buttless chaps

M: Turbonegro always existed outside of scenes—was this intentional?

PPP: We never belonged to a scene and were always looked upon as bastards. We didn’t have any friends in the Scandinavian rock scene, or at least we didn’t back then. Now we really don’t pay attention to much and just focus on what we do. We have always been outcasts because we speak very freely about what we think of other people and their music or whatever and people don’t take that well.

M: In the beginning you would play in minstrel-style blackface but kind of traded that in for [gay erotica illustrator] Tom of Finland imagery. Was a strong image always important?

PPP: We once did a show with the Bad Brains and decided that we would try and have some fun, so we wore afro wigs and blackface. That didn’t last for long though because it looked too stupid and it would take days for the shoe polish to come off. After that we were at rehearsal and we got really drunk and started talking about actually finding a good image. We didn’t really remember anything but the next day there was a piece of paper that just said “denim homo” and that’s basically how it started.

Turbojugend on the march

M: So when did the band get back together and start working on Scandinavian Leather?

PPP: Happy Tom [bassist] was talking to Hank on a weekly basis and he got into a methadone program. Tom asked him if he was ready to rejoin the band and Hank said he was. We then did a festival in Scandinavia and Germany to test it and it worked out really well. After that we wanted to work on a new record and wrote some new songs quickly and started looking for a new record deal.

M: Your rabid fan club, Turbojugend, have chapters in each city as well as sporting Turbonegro tattoos. Did it surprise you that your fans would be so hardcore?

PPP: Yeah, we’ve created a monster. After ’98, a lot of people started talking about us but few people have actually seen us so that just created this vibe going on and the fan club kind of kept it going even without the band.

M: This being your first time to Montreal, what can people expect from a Turbonegro show?

PPP: It’s like a theatre for the mentally retarded combined with lots of blood and male bonding. n

With Bad Wizard at cabaret on Thursday, Sept. 18, 9pm, sold out

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