By Martin Popoff

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES legend Mike Muir hasn’t done a lot of interviews over the years, so it was very cool finally getting the nod to rap with the bandana man about all things Suicidal, Infectious (Grooves) and Cyco. And through the course of our chat, it soon became clear why he doesn’t talk much, namely, that it’s all part and parcel of a career philosophy of the man and band(s) measuring twice and cutting once, being able to say “No” sorta more often than “Yes,” picking one’s spots even if career advancement might suffer an’ slow.

In a nutcase, the man just doesn’t play the game.

“That’s not planned,” begins Muir, asked first about his lack of interviews over the years. “I just don’t like doing them. I’m not good at it. People say I can talk forever, but it just drives me kind of crazy. I think that I’m a fairly honest person, to a fault. And I don’t drink, I don’t party, so I’m not like, ‘Yeah dude, fuckin’, yeah, all right dude, all right, yeah, dude!’ I’m not a politician, I’m not a salesman, and I would probably try to not sell a record before I did sell it, you know what I mean? I honestly believe that I’m not a negative personality or whatever, but I’m like, ‘People won’t like it.’ Honestly, I don’t think people should buy things… I think they should do it the way I did. It’s not really important to me, and I just think there are a lot of things that are a lot more important and bigger. Still, there are certain songs I think a lot of people would benefit from hearing. I like to put it in the sense of, when I was a certain young age or when I was in a situation where I’d go, ‘Wow, I wish I could hear a song like that.’ It’s not delusions of grandeur or superiority, it’s just like I’ve been through a certain amount of experiences, and I think I’ve benefited from having an amazing father, and having sort of really good experiences with people and some really bad ones. And I just think, like my dad said, when all is said and done, you can either feel sorry for yourself or you can do something about it, and that’s my whole point.”

With the not wanting to do interviews, do you sometimes figure that you’re a little hesitant that you might say something dangerous that you might regret?

“Oh, no, not at all. Some people say, ‘Well, you just say the truth recklessly.’ But one of my best times was when old management pulled in an article that said, ‘Mike Muir is the reason why Suicidal should be a big band and it’s the reason why they never will be,’ and he asked me what I thought about that. And I said, ‘I’m doing something right,’ you know? And I think about that a lot, and not to be a smartass, but I never bought a record because of something somebody said (laughs). It’s just that a lot of things that people view as effective is stuff that I question. You know, being in that position, I want to be happy, but like Johnny Rotten said years ago, ‘You’ve got all these miserable rock stars. Just fucking quit!’ (laughs). And I go, I would never want to be a rock star. I just want to be a good person and a good dad. If my kids love me as much as I love my dad, then dude, that’s as rock star as you can get. You know, I’m the type of person who… like in a recent situation, I wanted to tell somebody thank you for something, and just like, I thought about it, and I thought, they’ll never understand that I don’t say that to people unless I mean it. And that’s one problem I’ve always had, is that when I say something, I mean it. People think, you’re supposed to say that even if there’s not the belief and conviction, but they don’t realize how heavy and powerful those words are.”

Did I mention not playing the game? Well, as talk turned to the new record, The Mad Mad Muir Musical Tour, a collection of new Cyco (or solo) tunes and unreleased Infectious and Suicidal tracks, I’d never heard a guy make his point about an album so elliptically and yet refreshingly.

“Well, for one, I wanted a chance to put out some new Suicidal and Infectious songs, give a taste of what’s coming out. But also it kind of allows them to put out some old stuff that wouldn’t have been put out, and maybe just get away from the standard way that people do stuff. Originally, there were 30 odd tracks from various different projects we did with different people. A lot of things got cut down due to contract things or situation like that, or us saying, ‘No, don’t want that to be on it.’ And that’s cool. Nowadays, the way music is, it doesn’t sell, first of all, and second of all, the idea of a record, when we do a record, we like to create a roller coaster ride, and have all the turns and the ups and downs, not just go up and down fast, but have things that surprise you without giving you whiplash and breaking your neck, so to speak. I think nowadays, a lot of people are into instant gratification, very short-term, they want to hear something and sing along with it and like it right away and stuff, and to me, this is a record that is very uncomfortable, that a lot of people won’t like if they listen to the whole thing, which they won’t. But I think years later, if they actually listen to it or listen to a song out of context, they’ll go, ‘Oh wait, that’s pretty cool.’ And that’s what we always try to do musically. Years later, you get a little more accepted and people don’t realize at the time how it was outside of the box. I think that’s the whole view, what we wanted to do. Rather than that whole kind of repetitive, ‘Here it is! You’re going to love the new record!’ when you do interviews, when you tell people, ‘Oh, it’s what you wanted! It’s what you expect!’ No, if it was me, I’d say, ‘You probably won’t like it; it’s not what you expect. But I think you’ll appreciate it if you give it a fair shot and listen to it in the context of what it is, rather than what you wanted to hear.’”

And so life goes on for Mike, challenging his Suicidal army to assimilate his music in disparate pieces, content to have his projects buzz below the radar. And so we get another confounding record (but a very cool one exactly for the reasons cited above). It’s somewhat reassuring – for the integrity of art, anyway – and it’s the same modus operandi that applies to Mike’s bands as live entities.

“We’ve always turned down lots of things, and I’m very thankful we did,” continues Muir. “And like my dad said, ‘Regret lasts forever. Think before you do it.’ There have been people who have tried to talk us into doing things and saying what a great opportunity it is, and a couple of times that I was on the fence, we’d have whatever band meetings that we did, and it was like, they can say whatever they wanted, but I was miserable. So it doesn’t matter how many records you sell if you’re miserable. And the same thing, a manager way back in those days, said, ‘Mike, it doesn’t matter who’s buying your records as long as somebody does.’ And I’m like, hmm, you know what? When you walk out in the crowd and you don’t want to talk to the people who bought your record or say they are going to buy your record, and you don’t want those people to keep buying it… it’s not saying I’m better than them, but I know that class of people from when I went to school, and I don’t want to hang out with them. And it’s like, sometimes you go out and it’s like, ‘Dude, you fuckin’… dude, you rock, dude! I’ve gotta buy… dude, fucking rawk!’ And I’m like… I don’t like being around people like that. And it’s like, ‘No, please don’t.’”
“It’s a different time,” muses Muir in closing, “because, like I said, obviously records don’t sell. But I’m very… I haven’t done a show where I’m uncomfortable. We had the experience with Infectious on our first tour with Ozzy, and saw some of the stuff behind the scenes as far as security is concerned. Some guy was going to take him to his underground city of gold – crazy people. And Ozzy was saying, (whispering in a very good Ozzy accent), ‘I’m scared of my fucking fans. They’re crazy!’ And I was like wow, I would hate to do a show where I was scared. I mean sometimes when we play in LA, there are fans that… but I would hate to be in a situation where I felt I had to have bodyguards and this and that. That’s not the way I was brought up. There’s just that division, that separation that scares me as a human being…”