The feeling of being on stage, as most artists can attest, is unlike any other emotion you can experience in life. Imagine an entire city focused on transmitting positive energy, celebrating and having fun. For me, the joy of being on stage also came from the bond created between the band members. While we were up there, the target of my rebellious metalhead idiocy was usually John. I would scream, facing the audience, with the intensity of death metal, then I would turn and look at him, usually the most serious and composed guy on stage, and I would do something to make him laugh: a funny grimace, a gesture. On the rare occasions when this made him miss a joke and I managed to make him laugh, I felt like I had won who knows what. Furthermore, this victory of mine also made Shavo and Daron laugh, because when the drummer makes a mistake, all you can do is grin and make fun of him together. Obviously, on stage I often messed up: I sang the wrong words, I couldn't catch a note… The difference was that, when it happened, everyone else continued playing without getting upset.
Ultimately, the sixty minutes or so you spent on stage each night filled you with endorphins, but once the high wore off, the aftershock could be harsh. If you've ever wondered why so many musicians end up with drug problems, the answer must have to do with the disconnect between the natural euphoria you feel on stage and the other twenty-three hours of monotonous routine that make up each day.
My sleep deprivation contributed to making this already surreal situation even more gloomy and interminable. In the first years of touring I ate badly. After a while I became irritable. Of course, there were also beautiful moments. I have made some great friends around the world. Having lunch with some friends, spending an afternoon wandering around a museum, visiting an interesting music shop or sitting down with a good coffee and a millefeuille, gave me the feeling of having spent my time well. Instead, most days on tour felt rigidly scheduled and inconsistent. I was surrounded by friends, but I felt isolated. As I traveled with this lively carnival of souls, I dreamed of being in the car, alone, driving to some destination, enjoying the silence, isolation and tranquility. My only escape was a quiet cafe where I could eat a decent meal and drink good coffee, or an afternoon trip to a local gallery.
Growing up I had struggled with the concept of home, trying to figure out how to locate it on a map; but now, in its absence, I began to realize that it was not so much a place as a feeling. For me, home is the place where your spirit feels free. For this reason I often found comfort in simply observing the places that passed by from the bus window: a welcoming lounge with soft lights, a beautiful lawn with a large tree, a bar where jazz was played and you could smell the scent of coffee, a wooded area full of pine trees. All eyes were on us when we were on stage but, off stage, I felt like a voyeur, envious of the ordinary daily lives of others. I once felt compassion for those who, from smiling and ambitious children, had become disappointed and professionally banal adults, but now, as we covered kilometres, I realized that I envied them.
Reflecting on the frenetic whirlwind of those three years spent on tour, some memories begin to surface: Motörhead's Lemmy, in a bathing suit and cowboy hat, sprawled on a deck chair outside his bus backstage at Ozzfest. The Ryder truck, with all our tools and equipment, stolen in Philadelphia and then found empty and burned in New Jersey. The tense encounter with local police who wanted to arrest me for “causing a disturbance” after we played a free concert hosted by KROQ radio in the parking lot of a Best Buy store in Burbank. When I explained to Ozzy Osbourne how excited I was to sing Snowblind with him in his hometown of Birmingham, England, and he replied teasingly: “In this fucking industrial dump?”
Some tours have become memorable simply because of the people with whom we shared them. The first two Ozzfests allowed us to discover that the community of alternative metal fans we had begun to discover in Southern California extended far beyond the state's borders. We also made connections with bands like Incubus, Tool, Deftones and Limp Bizkit, who we played with several times over the next few years.
During the 2000 SnoCore tour I spent a lot of time with Mike Patton, the lead singer of Faith No More and Mr. Bungle. Mike had a huge influence on me. As a singer, he uses his voice as an instrument with which he seems to be able to do anything. He can growl, scream, rap, whisper, chant, sob, you know… anything. Artists like him, like Frank Zappa or Tom Waits, demonstrate how musicians can be instinctive and experimental, thoughtful and unbalanced.
Like me, Mike couldn't sleep on a moving vehicle, so we both stayed up late at night on his coach, chatting. It was perfect, because the System bus had somehow become the center of the party during that tour. At all hours of the night, every TV screen in the bus was on, hip-hop was blasting from the speakers, and everywhere you looked there were girls, booze, drugs, and all the other wonderful clichés of rock 'n' roll.
One evening, in the parking lot of the club after a show, Mike told me he had an idea to clear out our bus. Once everyone on board was well drunk, I turned down the music and Mike inserted a German cassette of a Scheisse video into the coach's VCR. If you don't know what a scheisse video is, I'll ruin your day. Suddenly, all the TV screens lit up showing images of Germans having sex while defecating. People suddenly couldn't wait to get off the bus. I think at least one person vomited. Even rock'n'roll debauchery has its limits, I guess.
Mike loved upending the expectations of life on the road. During a concert in Utah, a couple of fans snuck backstage and caught us chatting. The two were excited to meet him. After a few minutes, they asked if they could have passes to access everything backstage. “Do you want backstage passes?” he asked. “Okay, but I have a request.” The boys were clearly ready for anything. “Do you see that little hill over there?” Mike said, pointing to a steep snow-covered embankment a few feet away. “You have to undress and run naked down the hill.” As soon as he said those words, the two boys stripped completely and ran towards the hill, full of adrenaline. Mike turned to me, shrugged, and said, “If they're going to act that stupid, they deserve the consequences.” However, he kept his promise and gave the two fans passes as agreed.
I spent my teens and twenties living quite rigorously. I went to college, worked hard, started a software company, spent time with my family, and while most of my peers were having fun, I was meeting lawyers and translating legal documents. It was precisely in that period, when I was in my early thirties, that I tried to make up for lost time. By rock 'n' roll standards, my share of decadence was relatively moderate. I drank almost every day, smoked a lot of marijuana, and tried drugs that were offered to me. I was lucky enough not to have the predisposition to addiction that others had. Maybe my way of seeing that stuff was different from that of some of my peers.
For me, drugs were an opportunity to experience, to get to know myself better, and to create a deep connection with the people I hung out with. For others perhaps this was not the case. The first time I tried magic mushrooms was, with Daron, at a Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson concert. Between sets, the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow performed, a sort of traveling circus of freaks, and I vividly remember seeing a guy on stage hanging things from his testicles while I was in a total trip. I looked at my hand, convinced it was covered in blood. Alarmed, I pointed this out to Daron. “Don't worry, brother,” he told me. “You're just under the influence of drugs.” Later, however, he admitted that he too had seen the blood on my hand, but that he had tried to reassure us both.
I took magic mushrooms again after our last concert at Ozzfest in Los Angeles in 1998. After the tour ended, we had another concert planned in Las Vegas with Primus. Walking through the hot desert, high on mushrooms, after not sleeping all night, was something my body could only handle in my early twenties. At another Ozzfest, I took the stuff while riding through Kansas on our friends Clutch's bus. As endless rows of wheat, soybeans, and rolling fields rolled past outside the window, I stared at green pastures filled with cows, sure I could feel my forehead growing in real time. I don't know if there was any wisdom to be gleaned from it, but it made the time much more interesting.
Taken from Down with the System – An autobiography (or almost) by Serj Tankian, The Castle.
