If the measure of a band's popularity is the number of records they sell, then the measure of a band's greatness must be the longevity of their legacy. Does anyone remember Ugly Kid Joe? They sold a lot of records but their musical legacy is nonexistent. If you [like me] cling to the ideal of music as an art form and not a commercial product, then a band like that is merely a waste of recording material.
The great band is one that maybe didn't sell many records when they were around, but they are on everyone's lips
now as an influence. A great band transcends scenes and genres and in fact creates them. They always
appeal on an underlying emotional level rather than a superficial stylistic one.
Kyuss is the definition of that kind of band. The incredible emotional content of their classic "Blues for the Red Sun" and "Kyuss" [often
called Sky Valley] records has moved and influenced people in many different bands spanning many
types of music.
One listen is all it usually takes. The combination of raw power and delicate beauty spinning
out like a psychedelic spider web painted on the desert hardpan is almost impossible to resist.
The glorious organic flow and rhythm of their music transports you into a different psychic
environment and the self is left behind.
Inside a Kyuss record, there is no place for the overdue bills, your crappy job, your busy schedule or any
of your worldly concerns. Inside a Kyuss record there is another world where the important things
are the intricate layering of tones between the guitar and bass, the glorious pulsing beats that
throb like some elemental heartbeat, and visceral honest vocals that give you a new
understanding of musical passion.
And these were just a bunch of kids from the desert doing their own thing and trying to
have fun
>> READ ON
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KYUSS RETROSPECTIVE
Words | drew, a.
Thanks to Brant Bjork, John Garcia & Scott Reeder
EARLY DAYS
BRANT BJORK: The First Line Up
"I met Josh when we were about 11 or 12 years old. We played local soccer together. I first knew Nick around the
same time, except we were playing little league baseball. I met John later in high school when I was 15.
"I became friends with Josh simply because he was the only other kid in town who was my age and who was listening
to punk rock.
"Most of the other kids listening to punk rock were 4 to 5 years older. We liked a lot of the same
bands and turned each other on to stuff we hadn't heard. Stuff we dug was Black Flag, Ramones,
G.B.H., Discharge, Misfits."
"I really don't know if we were the in crowd or the out crowd. We were the guys who did what the fuck
we wanted to do and didn't give a shit what people thought in or out."
"Nick and I became close friends my first year of high school. We jammed a lot together playing Ramones and
Damned songs. Nick back then was a longhair, a metal dude and he was discovering punk through a girlfriend. So we
just kinda became friends. Nick's a great guitar player.
"I met John around the same time. He too was a music lover. He wasn't really into punk rock. I remember he
liked Earth Wind and Fire, ZZ Top and The Cult. He'd never been in a band but had a great voice and became
our singer."
"The first line up of Kyuss consisted of John, Josh, myself and Chris [Cockrell] our original bass
player. Nick played 2nd guitar for a while when we first started but took off for a year and came back to town
and took Chris' place on bass. We recorded our first record 'Sons of Kyuss’ with Chris and recorded 'Wretch' with
Nick."
JOHN GARCIA: Plain Fun
"Brant, Josh and Chris, the very first three, started the band, and they needed a singer. I went up after
school one day, and Josh started to play some Cult, and I said, "Fuck. Do you have a microphone?", and I
started to sing a little bit of 'Wildflower.' Brant came up to me a few days later and he goes, like "I want
you to sing in my band." I was in high school, and said, "Sure! Fuck yeah!"
"It was fun. Just a hobby. An after school project, and it was good, clean fun. I smoked some weed
back then, the other guys didn't. We used to go up to Brant Bjork's house every day after school or
every weekend. His parents were real cool; they used to let us play as loud as we want and as long as
we wanted, and we just had a good ol' time playing music, jumping in the pool, swimming. Having parties."
"I developed my voice through trail and error, because at first when I started singing, I sucked. I was horrible
and didn't care. But Brant handed me some lyrics and he goes: "Here, try singing this." And I went dadada...dadaa
daa...just like punk rockers would do. And he goes, "No! Don't sing it like that, sing it like this, melodic,
melodic, melodic." And I said: "Oh I'll try it that way!"
"I'm just self-taught, I didn't have a singing teacher. The majority of the time, Josh and Brant were
my teachers. They always gave me pointers; Josh wrote the majority of the lyrics including the melodies in
Kyuss. There are a few things that I'd put in. Josh would start me off on an idea being completely
his or part Brant [or part me], but the majority was all Josh."
BRANT BJORK: Punk Rock Steppenwolf
"Even though Josh and I were from a punk background we both loved all kinds of music
and bands. We knew early on that our band was not going to be 'punk rock.' We set out to create a
sound that wasn't Metallica and wasn't Black Flag. We wanted something more organic. We weren't afraid
to take ideas from all kinds of music and bands. Even movies inspired us."
"Punk wasn't happening for us anymore and we weren't into the speed metal thing. Kyuss was the result
of this frustration. Naturally we were labeled a metal band because we were long hairs and our singer would
sing. And of course the music was heavy. It would sometimes frustrate us cause at the
time we were young, idealistic musicians. We had a solid awareness of what
Kyuss was and we knew then that Kyuss is closer to Steppenwolf than Motorhead or Metallica. I think people
nowadays recognize this."
SCOTT REEDER: Rockin' the Desert
"We all lived in the same area, but I'm eight years older than Josh and Brant - they were 12 years old when
Across The River [Mario Lalli's seminal band, Lalli is now in Fatso Jetson] was rockin' the desert. Later
on, Josh and Brant got into some pretty cool bands, from Ramones, to Discharge, to G.B.H. They were
really young, but they had a good sense of what bands were great and which ones had their heads up their asses."
I'd been in the punk scene since around '81. We'd been playing big generator parties near Los Angeles
with a lot of SST bands, and then our friend Dave Travis brought out a generator to the desert in '85, and
we started setting up parties way out in the desert -it was better than any club in the world!"
BRANT BJORK: Swallowed Up By Fire
"The desert influenced our sound. That's all we knew as our environment. Kyuss was like the
desert in many ways. All the desert bands were. We were all natural and the sounds were harsh
and beautiful at the same time. Kind of lazy, too. It was too hot to work too hard."
"Living in a small desert town there was no place for kids to play music. So we would get a
generator [usually belonging to Mario Lalli], some beer and go out to a remote spot in
the desert, set up and play. We'd tell our friends where and they would tell their friends. All
word of mouth. We'd play all night. This was a very natural thing for us to do.
Kids before us did it. I guess it's just something that goes down in the desert.
People were doing it in the late sixties."
"Generator parties influenced Kyuss as far as our volume and improvised jamming. Playing in open
air like that forces you to really create a sound that surrounds people like a liquid. And you didn't just
showcase your songs like a headlining act. You played like the house band for a bunch of freaks in
the middle of nowhere. You would jam. Like bands did in the 60's and 70's. There was no time limit. Even the
local hardcore punk band would jam. Why not?"
"The weirdest thing that happened to me while at a generator party was when some guys accidentally
started a fire and it raged so fast everybody had to evacuate while the band was playing and we didn't know
because of our volume. We just noticed people running away from us. I could feel the heat on
my back while I was playing. I remember thinking at the time 'wow, It sure is hot tonight.' One guy couldn't
get his car out in time and it was swallowed up by the fire. It made local headlines the next day. Hundreds
of acres burned. That was trippy."
RECORDS AND ROAD TRIPS
BRANT BJORK: Wretch and Blues
" 'Wretch' for us at the time of it's recording, was a chance to document some songs we had been
playing for awhile. A year later when our label said they wanted to release it, we were a
little concerned because we had already evolved from that. We wanted to record and release new stuff, which
was to be 'Blues.' Our label insisted we release 'Wretch' to establish ourselves. Get something on the
shelves quick. At the time we didn't understand but it makes sense now. I think we are glad now that it
was released then otherwise it might never have come out. I love it. It's a great rock n roll record.
Not bad for 16-17 year old kids."
"In my opinion. 'Blues' was a natural progression from 'Wretch.' We were older, wiser more confident. In a
lot of ways we had nothing left to prove. We just got stoned, drank some wine and jammed."
"Chris Goss was there from the beginning. We would play some little bar in Hollywood in front
of nine people and two of them would be Chris and his wife Cynthia. When our label gave us the go-ahead to
do 'Blues' we of course asked Chris to help us capture our sound and get it moving in a natural direction."
"He helped us with our confidence to evolve. Not to question our natural instincts. 'Blues' was the
result. Recorded and mixed in something like three weeks. We went in and rocked. We would
listen to all playbacks on the biggest speakers as loud as possible. We knew we were creating
something beautiful."
SCOTT REEDER: Keeping the Vibe
"We always called Chris 'the shit shield.' The wrong producer definitely could've ruined the vibe of that
stuff - luckily Chris and the band were on the same page about keeping the rawness that needed to
be there, instead of polishing it to death."
"I've got a great respect for Chris as a songwriter, but I know my way around a recording studio - I don't
need anyone to hold my hand to get a record done. Chris spent three days tweaking tones at the
beginning of 'Sky Valley.' Three days!
"He actually got out the master tapes from the 'Blues' sessions and was trying to get the bass and guitar
tones to match exactly. I was like, "Jesus Fucking Christ! It's a different amp, a different bass and
a different guy playing it!"
"One time, the sounds were pretty happening and we had a few friends at the studio, we had the incense
burning, the liquid oil-projectors lighting the walls, burning some good herb. The vibe was perfect, and we
busted out about half the songs and had a great time. The next day, I walk into the control room, and Chris
said that none of it's any good - the tones aren't quite meshing right. I freaked! I knew we were
never gonna top some of those performances. I managed to salvage 'Odyssey' for the album.
I said: "Just split the bass and guitar left and right - fuck it!" And it worked."
"I joined Kyuss just before 'Blues For The Red Sun' came out. My first show was the record-release party. Those
guys were really into my old band, Across The River, with Mario Lalli and Alfredo Hernandez, that was together
around '84 through '86. Later on when I played in The Obsessed, we got to tour together on the West
coast. They asked me to join on that trip, but I turned 'em down, then a few months later they called
and said Nick was out, and we hooked up. I was just supposed to fill in for a few shows
until they found a bass player, but things gelled pretty quick, and I said, "Stop lookin!"
"Creatively, I felt completely welcome from day one. Josh and I threw a lot of 'Space Cadet' together the
very first day we jammed. We had Pete Moffet from Wool and Government Issue come in and play on
that one, coz’ Brant quit after he finished his parts."
JOHN GARCIA: Stay in the Van
"At that point in time, Kyuss got to a certain amount of success. I think Brant wasn't afraid, but he wasn't
in it to being successful. He didn't want to do it, to become this huge rock star. We never would have done
it anyway, but Brant said that it was too big already, and he started another project."
"We were really afraid of becoming big. We didn't want to become this huge supergroup, especially
Josh, and he kept a lit on it. He didn't want anything to do with being big in that band. In my
view, in my eye and that's the way I feel, he might say something different, but he kept a lid on
it where Kyuss got only this big. He only let the record company push us this much and we did
everything in our power to stay in the van."
"There was one time that we wanted to go on the road with Biohazard and Fishbone, and the record
company said: "No... we're not going to put you on the road anymore. And Josh said: "Who are
you to tell us who we can and can't play with." We wanted to tour, and did the tour anyway. It was
an underground thing."
" don't actually know why Brant left the band. I drove up on my motorcycle one day to talk to him because
he wanted to talk to me. He said he was quitting and wanted to move to Hawaii and live there for the
rest of life. His plans were constantly changing, and I think he just wanted out.
"Brant was the backbone of Kyuss. When he quit, Josh told me that he wanted to see if he could do
it without him. I was following Josh back then and we were the only two remaining original band members. Josh
said, "Do you want to do it, fucking continue the band, or do you want to break up?" I said: "I don't want to
break up because Brant quit. Let's continue on."
"I think Josh's quest was to say, "I can do it without Brant", and he did. He took the ball and kept on
rollin.' He is extremely smart, and he has always something up his sleeve. He has a lot of people
that support him and alot of fans with Queens of The Stone Age. He's gonna break the USA."
SCOTT REEDER: Perception vs. Reality
"Kyuss was just the same old standard guitar, bass and drums with a singer. Same thing that's been done
a million times, but there was some intangible thing about it that struck a nerve with a lot
of people that heard it. There was just something about the combination of personalities pushing
and pulling, churning out this weird sound. We were pretty inconsistent live, but when we
were on, I don't think there was a band on the planet that could touch us."
"I think everyone was really protective of what we had. We sensed that something special was going on, and we
were really paranoid about the industry trying fuck to things up. We turned down a lot of things that most
bands would've killed for. I think we were a little too paranoid, sometimes.
" think we were on too big of a label, though. We were competing for the attention of the same
people who were pushing Metallica and Motley Crüe, and I think we were getting lost in the shuffle,
because we were obviously not selling as many records as those guys! There was no conscious
direction about which way the next record would go, we just messed around with ideas at sound check, and
started incorporating stuff into the live set one by one."
"We had acoustic guitars on the road and jammed in hotel rooms a lot. 'Whitewater' was written that way. A lot
of the songs would start with someone bringing in a riff or two, and everyone helped arrange
the stuff, and there were a lot of jam sections, so I definitely felt like it was a band effort. Its hard
to keep an eight minute song with two riffs interesting.
"When 'Sky Valley' came out, though, the songs were
credited to whoever brought in the first riff and with the credit goes the money. Every other band I've been
in has split things evenly, so it was kinda weird. I'd really put my heart
into 'Sky Valley.' The record was held up for around a year, and Alfredo Hernandez joined a little
before it got released. When it came time to do 'Circus', my attitude wasn't really in the right
place to do my best."
THE CIRCUS LEAVES TOWN
JOHN GARCIA: Fish Tanks and Friction
"For '...And The Circus Leaves Town’ we went into a studio that was a 's get this done. Let's get
this over with." We were in a studio with fish tanks on the wall, and we felt like, "We don't
need this."
" 'Circus'was probably a lot more my record than Josh's record. I did a lot of writing with
Scott on that album. I just wanted to go off on something we hadn't done before, musically. Like a song
like 'One Inch Man', that was the direction I wanted to go into -adding a kind of swing and
more choppy vocals."
"But it was a horrible fuckin’ record to make. Josh and I were clashing all the time and had
creative differences. I wanted to sing certain songs this way, and Josh would go, "Try it that way." And I felt
something like, "Let's meet somewhere in the middle." And that's were we kinda started to get a little bit
of friction, but it was just about whatever we thought the songs would sound best. It all came down
to the music and the partying and the weed and the booze. We stayed loaded, and all the recordings were
done while we were fucked up."
SCOTT REEDER: Blown Money and Wasted Time
" '...And The Circus Leaves Town' was just the next batch of songs. I had two or three songs that
got cut from the album because they were too different. I'm working on a solo album right now, so some
of those songs that never got finished will finally see the light of day soon."
While recording 'Circus' soooooo much money was just getting thrown out the window. We were in one of
the most expensive studios in Hollywood just for recording overdubs. People running around to get
you food, cigarettes, anything you wanted. We could've been in a smaller place with a couple of good
microphone preamps, got the mix done in the expensive place, and we would've all walked away with a
bunch of money, but it just got blown. Stupid."
"There was also a bit of bickering going on, and I was pretty stressed. Too many weird vibes. It wasn't the
way things are supposed to be. And I had this crazy idea that you should actually be able to hear
the bass! A lot of the stuff had to get remixed because the bass was almost inaudible when you got it
outside that studio. I'd been worried about it the whole time. Everybody was a little too stoned, I guess. We
had Keith Richard's bong in the studio - that was pretty cool. Made for a lot of wasted time, though.
No pun intended!"
" 'Fatso Forgetso', the last song Kyuss ever recorded, was done on mushroom margaritas! That was
probably my favorite recording that we ever did. Josh came up with the riff for the first
part, and then on the jam we just went for it. The mushrooms were kicking in hard by the time
we got to the jam. I just remember listening to the playback, digging it, and giggling uncontrollably, somebody
saying, "Scott, what's so fucking funny?", and Josh saying, "Scott just ripped balls, that's what." Later we
went outside, and heard a pack of coyotes making a kill nearby. And Fred Drake's horse turning his ass towards
me and John and cutting a huge fart!"
"We had such a great time that night - I had renewed optimism for the future. We recorded that stuff on a
shoestring budget with no outside producer, and I thought it sounded better than our albums. If we'd done
another record out there in Joshua Tree, I think it could've been the best thing ever, but it
wasn't meant to be."
"John called and woke me up one morning asked me to meet at Josh's parent's house in a half hour. I walked
in, and they were just staring at the ground, and I said "Spit it out." They just said "We can't do
this anymore". They both have different stories about what happened. I think I know what the real
truth was, but it doesn't really matter now."
"On our last tour through the States, the shows were actually packed for the first time. It felt
like we were finally starting to get the word out. Pulling the plug at that point in time to me was
just as senseless as committing suicide to preserve your youth. Sometimes I think we could've
pulled it together and gone on to grow and create a lot more music together. There were bad
times, but man, we had some really great times during those last couple of years!"
JOHN GARCIA: Split
"As a band, we got out of touch. Tensions were high, because there were some personal things in the
band that we didn't like, and that we needed to fix. And they weren't fixed. Josh wasn't about to fix
them, so the tension grew even higher, and it was very difficult. The pressure was building, and personal things
came between us, pretty much. It had nothing to do with creative differences or the music that
broke Kyuss apart."
"Josh and I sat down at this bar in Palm Desert, and I wanted to talk to him about some things. Within 5 minutes
of the conversation, Josh said that he wanted to break up the band and I said, "OK, you wanna break
up the band. Forget the band."
"It was just time to split up, and we got off to do our own thing. It all just
happened and I didn't even know that Kyuss was an underground type of cult or band until we broke up.
All of a sudden, people start talking about Kyuss this and Kyuss that. It was actually when we
broke up that people got interested in the band, and that's kinda weird.
"I was just in it for the ride. I was completely in it for the ride, and I was very lucky to have been part of that ride, because
I fuckin' rode it real long and hard as much as I could."
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