After overcoming his addiction to sleeping pills, MONSTER MAGNET singer/songwriter/guitarist Dave Wyndorf spoke exclusively with BW&BK; scribe Aaron Small about his band’s new album, 4-Way Diablo. Released in November 2007 on SPV, 4-Way Diablo features striking black and white cover art that emits an old school vibe, much like MOTÖRHEAD’s instantly recognizable logo.

“Both the sad and happy story of that album cover for me is; this is the first album cover I actually had nothing to do with. This German guy named Alexander Von Wieding did it all. I met him a couple years ago and he was doing stuff on spec and he just asked to be put in. Record covers are put together months before the record’s done and I wasn’t paying attention to anything. My brain just didn’t want to worry about anything; I didn’t care. I looked at this guy’s stuff and he was obviously good enough to put a package together, so I told my manager to tell him to use his instinct and I trust him implicitly. And the guy did it! So I didn’t have anything to do with it and I wasn’t even interested. The black and white thing is kind of cool; it really is old school and it does kind of remind me of Motorhead. But this guy loves Monster Magnet so much – just look at that picture – he’s not fucking around! There’s all this great stuff in there; so I lucked out with that guy.”

The 4-Way Diablo booklet contains 16 pages, yet there are no lyrics and no band photos?

“I know. Lyrics – my fault, I just didn’t have them ready at the time. All the lyrics you hear on this record were literally written the day I sang them. I’d wake up in a hotel and sit down with a pad and a giant cup of coffee and write the lyrics. Not quite that easy, sometimes I’d be looking at the page – fuck, I’ve got to fucking sing this tonight! I was in this crazy Hollywood apartment complex where future child stars stay. It’s weird ‘cause there’s busloads of teenage models walking around in bathing suits. But at that point, the stuff was in production. My lyrics were literally written down on cereal boxes and stuff – so much for the modern age – not on a laptop, not even on a piece of paper. I’m sitting by the pool staring at the Ford Agency’s latest crop of nine-foot girls, writing this stuff down. So that’s why it didn’t appear. I think I’m going to put them on the vinyl, but I’m really sorry about that – we’ve got this package with all this space and no lyrics. No photos came because I just didn’t feel like taking any pictures. Again, I totally dropped the ball on this whole thing.”

For this album, Monster Magnet covered THE ROLLING STONES’ song ‘2000 Light Years From Home’. The Stones have a catalogue as massive as THE BEATLES – why that particular tune?

“It’s the only Rolling Stones song I figured I could do and still have it live in Monster Magnetland. It’s a dark horse Rolling Stones song. It’s from the album that everybody hates the most – Their Satanic Majesties Request. I always thought that song and ‘Citadel’ were fucking awesome! It was the band’s idea. Those guys came up with it right at the last minute. At first I didn’t know, but it doesn’t hurt to try, so we just worked it out over the course of an afternoon and it sounded pretty cool. So we did it. Regardless of what people think of that stuff, that song itself is really quite singularly unique. Everyone thought they were ripping off Sgt. Pepper but I’d never heard a song like that before. It stands out. It’s right up there with all the great PINK FLOYD songs of the time. ‘2000 Light Years From Home’ – what’s to complain about? What a great title! It’s got all that mellotron.”

A couple years back there had been talk of a Monster Magnet DVD. Where’s that standing?

“I don’t know where the hell that thing is? I know we’re contracted to do one. I haven’t done any work on it. I haven’t researched any archives. I always hated that kind of stuff. There’s only so many BLACK SABBATH – Paris 1970 and LED ZEPPELIN live on Danish television 1969. For the most part, when you see a film of a rock concert, it pretty much sucks. This isn’t live – it’s a film of live and I’m really sensitive to that shit. Is there anyway I could go through life without releasing a DVD? ‘Cause I don’t like it! All these people in the business are saying you can make a ton of money off this stuff – I still haven’t poked my nose in there. To tell you the truth, it’ll probably come out. But I don’t know what it’s going to be.”

At the time of this interview, no tour dates had been scheduled. Since then, Monster Magnet has announced they will be performing at the Metaltown Festival in Sweden in June 2008. Yet there’s still no word on any North American dates.

“I never say never but there’s a lot of lost time I need to make up for. Just being able to consume stimuli. I took a year getting over this, just reading books. I hadn’t read more than a book a month in five or six years. This past summer, I was reading three to five books a week – not creating anything. When I was done and finally went in to finish the record, my brain started spitting back out this kind of electric energy that happens when you read a lot. You may not retain all that stuff in your short-term memory, but your brain’s full and this is the time to write! It’s not the time to go on tour. Even in addition to the sleeping pill problem, when somebody wants to write, let them write. You don’t say no – go out and sell t-shirts for six months and get really tired. I’m at the point in my life where it’s not important for me to… the only thing that would get me thinking about touring, or feeling bad about not touring, is the fact that people would expect it of me. Obviously you can make money on tour, but that’s not the main concern with me. I don’t have a lot of money, but I don’t need a lot of money either.

My main thing is, what’s going to be best for my creativity? How much more creative can I be as a live performer? Not much. I can change it, but in the context of Monster Magnet, not that much. I burn guitars. I fuck strippers on stage. I shine spotlights into people’s faces. I throw water on people. What else can you do? The thing is… all that stuff is fine, as long as you’re enjoying it. But if you don’t really enjoy it and you’re just going through the motions – then you’re just Broadway; that ain’t rock. Believe me, no matter how much people would complain that I didn’t tour, they would complain even more if I went on tour and I wasn’t into it. There’s nothing worse than wishing you hadn’t seen that. So I have to look at things realistically. Besides tying your girlfriend up to a door and feeding squirrels, what do I like doing? Writing! I’m writing like a fucking maniac, in a couple of different styles. One for a soundtrack and then for a Wyndorf solo record which is an ongoing thing – it’s just me singing songs like ‘ Little Bag Of Gloom’. Then there’s the next Monster Magnet thing, which I just decided is going to be full-on space rock. It’s not going to be a varied album at all. But I’m going to do the best to invite the listener into our sonic world, which is really, really pleasing and cool. I’ve got plans to hit a room on my own in late January. I’m going into that room and something’s going to come out of it.”

Look for an in-depth Monster Magnet feature in issue 109 of BW&BK; – on newsstands mid-February.