seven months pass...
SLEEP
by Stephen OMalley & Tyler Davis
10/98
Ah, SLEEP. If you know this band you know why they just had to appear within the pages of the magazine. Although they have moved on to other projects I think SLEEP still deserves a large amount of attention.
I talked with two members, Matt Pike and Justin(know known as Monk John) Mahler. I want to thank both of them for their time. Just getting this interview was hard enough. We were hoping for some "Dope Smoker" t-shirts or stickers to materialize, or some photos of the famed Green amps, but no such luck. If anyone out there wants to part with any related Sleep paraphernalia please contact us via Descent! Enjoy...
Matt Pike of SLEEP.
I just got a copy of the 'Jerusalem' CD.
The one that the bootleg guy is putting out? That's kind of weird. I had seen a copy in the store and I was tripping out on it. I guess it's cool because it would have been shelved anyway.
So you don't have a copy of it then?
No. I have a copy of the original DAT, but I don't have the bootleg or anything. There is some other guy trying to buy the rights to it and this and that.
Are you glad to see that it is available to the public?
If it gets in the public, I guess that's cool. I don't care. It's not like I'm going to make a lot of money off of it either way. There were a lot of things that were different about that album than what Sleep did in the past. Just a lot of trippy things were going on and eventually all the stress of making that album led to the break up of Sleep. But it was at a good time. I think that was a good last mark to leave with that band.
What did you think about seeing the bootleg in a store?
It was like a mountain range or something and I was like, "Woah". I thought it was kind of cool, but I thought it was kind of weird how it just kind of came out of nowhere. That's cool. I am glad some people can get to hear it.
Everyone I know that's heard it is pleased with it.
That was the weirdest and hardest thing to remember. 72 minutes of music in your head. It makes you feel like a human computer. You freak out after a while. It's really stressful to try and remember all that. It got to the point where we remembered every little thing, every beat of the whole thing.
So you didn't improvise on it at all?!!
None. Every note was placed exactly in the precise spot. It was a fucking weird thing because we spent so much damn time working on that thing. We put four years into it. Altering this and that, changing this and that. We were just trying to perfect it so that when we did come back from the grave it would just wipe everyone out. I don't know if we did that?
There are a lot of rumors about that record. I have heard that there is another version of the recording called "Dope Smoker".
That was the development of it. "Dope Smoker" was what we played live on tour. Nothing was worked out. A lot of the lyrics changed from what they originally were.
You were signed to London for a while and they put out that promo CD. What happened with that?
Well, they put out the promo and we broke up and couldn't go on tour. No record label is going to want to put out an album without a backing of some sort, except maybe a small label or a bootleg label like that guy. It would have to be on a small basis. London can't press 100,000 albums and expect to sell them all if we are not on tour. That's their point of view. I understand that. I don't hold anything against them. They helped us out. They got us recorded.
Do you know about the rumors surrounding the recording?
No, I don't.
You guys got quite a bit of money and smoked most of it.
(Laughter). I'll put a 'no comment' on that. Yeah, I smoked a lot of grass when we recorded. I didn't smoke that much of it.
You guys have quite a reputation. I heard you are doing some music now, too.
Yeah, I've got a new band. Actually, our first show should be around September, or October, and hopefully soon after that we'll be recording an album with some label. That's what I'd liked to do anyway. It's a three piece and I'm singing in it of all weird things. I have come to find out that I am not such a terrible singer as I am quite active. It just makes me way more active. I have all of these crazy guitar riffs and then I've got these crazy vocals and lyrics and I got leads on top of that and I am busy and always thinking. With Sleep, a lot of times, I could take the back seat and play riffs and focus on that. Now I can see how Al's torture was.
Are you playing with any of the same guys?
No, actually. I don't think those guys are really involved with anything. Probably playing by themselves or being recluse or something.
What's the name of your new project?
We're still trying to think of a name. I came across a bunch of names. You know names are kind of stupid anyway. You're not ever going to find one that's not dumb.
Sleep was pretty good.
That was a lucky one. I couldn't believe that no one had had it. Actually me and Al were sitting around getting high, and Al said we should name the band Sleep. We both just looked at each other and said, "Fuck dude, that's pretty bad." That was from Asbestos Death. We had parted with our guitarist, Tom Choi, who is doing this new project called Operator Generator.
Same genre?
It's really heavy. Not exactly the same, but if you are familiar with Asbestos Death it has some of that guitar playing on it. That was like nine years ago, but his band is pretty tough.
So, you like heavy music?
I am into all sorts of music actually, but for some reason that's all God gave me. I am good at playing heavy music. You know, I can play other kinds of music but I wasn't cut out for it. For some reason I end up taking bong hits and drinking beers and playing heavy riffs.
What's up with all the religious influence?
A lot of people curse me or say whatnot about me because they went to Catholic school or something. I am not like what you would call an Orthodox Christian, but I suppose you could call me an Un-orthodox Christian. All my riffs come from Jesus Christ. It's weird how I came to be that way. I saw something. It was like a calling. It was directed at me and Chris, from the band, and it was a real heavy time. I hope no one curses me or anything. I hope they don't think I am trying to push anything down their throats. I just want to play good, heavy music that people will enjoy. My beliefs are my beliefs. If I sing about them I sing about them. I kind of have to honor that because that is where they come from.
Not from pot, but from Jesus?
Well, both. Pot and prayer. I pray and I smoke herb right before I start writing, and what comes out of it is always good. You can't go wrong with that. If it works for me... It may not work for someone else, but it does for me. I don't judge everyone else by what they think or believe or whatever.
Where did the name 'Holy Mountain' come from?
Actually I was watching "The Ten Commandments" and I just thought of it. I called Al right away and I go, "Dude, the next album is called 'Holy Mountain'." Actually that would be a good band name, but I wouldn't want to disgrace the work I did with Sleep. That was a kick ass album. That was the funnest to play. We went into the studio and it was down the first take every time. It was weird, but we would do like two songs and get $600. Then we got a couple hundred more bucks and we'd go record a couple more songs. That is why that album sounds like that, all different. Your sounds are totally changed and you have different amps.
How about drugs and music. Do they go hand in hand?
I quit doing any sort of other drugs, like speed, or something like that, for a long time, except for once in a while I'll do 'shrooms.
Go organic.
Yeah. Probably beer is the worst thing I drink. Now I have lost my composure for health. For a while I was trying to exercise a lot and get my mind like that and go on tour. It was weird the way the bottom fell out.
How much did you guys tour?
We did all of the tours for 'Holy Mountain' and then we did a United States tour. We were supposed to be playing 'Holy Mountain' and then we started on that new song all of the time. We started to get pretty good so we were getting longer sets so we'd do like two 'Holy Mountain' songs and then we'd do "Dope Smoker" and then after that we wanted off Earache. I do have a grudge against that label.
What happened?
We were locked onto them for three years.
Was it detrimental to the band?
Well, it gave us a lot of time, but then it gave us too much time in between playing shows and making records and this and that. It sucked. A lot of this stuff I speak on behalf of the other guys and the rest is just myself. All I do is work and play music and work. I am just trying to kick ass while I am still young. Dude, if you are a Sleep fan you will be way pleased with the new stuff. It's my guitar playing. It's got a lot of the same stuff. Just enough that you'll still like it, but then it's not a rip off of something I did in the past. It's a span of that. We are getting fucking tight.
Are drugs and God still pretty big themes?
Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I wrote a song about Bruce Lee recently because he is like my total hero. About like that and cars and some different shit. My mom just died not too long ago and there is kind of a death song and it's about my mom and a friend of mine that was like a brother since I was young. Just a lot of weird stuff. On this one, I don't think that I am confident enough that I am going to print the lyrics. I am just going to let everybody figure it out.
Did Ozzy's religious view influence your own?
I didn't know Ozzy had a religious influence. Well, yeah, I guess some of the Black Sabbath stuff I appreciate for that. I had that upbringing and my Mom was like one of the most beautiful and trippy people you would ever want to meet. The way that she was, by example, was an example to me. When I was a kid I was so into the devil and I was a car thief and drugs and not even caring. Just stupid shit that gets you in trouble. I was just a little more mania than your standard youth. Then I saw the thing that I saw and felt this calling that I had and it was weird how my mother had a place in that. It was trippy spiritually. I have this thing where I can understand everyone's point of view, or I try to. The thing that I really hate though, a lot of the people that are totally anti-religion, and hate me for my beliefs, even though I am not entitled to my beliefs, is that people are going to these academies for four years and getting molested and beaten by a priest and getting cracked on the knuckles by a nun, and that's what's supposed to represent Jesus Christ. Tell me what's corrupt? That is fucked up. Those people are fucked up. The people who don't even believe, because, what is God going to say about that? When you die, and if I am totally wrong, okay, never mind, but if you die and you have to look God in the eye and God existed, what would you say? Think about the way the world is now. Tell me something ain't fucked up? It's so obvious. And someone that can't see that is totally blind. I won't say nothing to no one about nothing, but if they come to me and ask then they will get an answer. There are certain times when I believe that God does deliver someone onto me like that so that they might find some way in their own heart, by their own means, so they are inspired to think about it. I am not Billy Graham or something.
I was talking with Monk John...
He's hardened, dude. That guy batters. I love that guy. With all my heart, although I only get to talk to him every couple of years. What that guy did when he left Sleep was truly, truly...well, let's say I have a lot of respect for that guy. That's hardened. I mean that in a good way.
I thought that was curious that he found God and then Sleep went that way.
When Justin left it was for his calling. And then Chris and I had this calling and then Al went gradually for some reason. One day he(Al) was just all testament. But, yeah, there is a religious influence. I don't mean for anyone to feel left out. Take the music for what it is. Take it at face value. If I was an artist the picture is there to look at for what it is, just like the music is there to listen to.
Do you guys have any other recordings?
All of our studio recordings are out. There are some live recordings of Sleep out there and if you find any you are lucky 'cause I haven't got one. We never objected to bootlegs. It's kind of cool to hear all these different versions of the same songs. That's how a lot of our songs developed. Test it out live and develop it from there and just start jamming it out. Pretty soon you start getting focused.
Monk John (formerly Justin) of SLEEP:
I am curious to know how you found this place in the world that you are in now?
When I was in Sleep and we were playing shows and recording I was going through hell. I would cut myself with razor blades at night and cry and pound my breast trying to grapple with the question, "Why in the world do I exist?" At that point, on the third day of recording our first CD I went home to my apartment and I had this screaming headache and I wanted to kill myself basically, so I just cried out if there is anybody there help me before I die. So I sold my guitar and went to Israel just trying to find something. I don't know what. And I spent a month there just walking around and talking to people and meeting people and didn't find what I was looking for. Then when I got home, to my hometown in northern California, I ran into an old monk and he invited me to go to an old monastery and I never left. It just answered all of those questions that I had. It was interesting because it articulated everything that I believed up to that point. I didn't agree with organized religion for one, and two, I didn't believe what these Christian believed- that if you are not Christian you are going to hell and all this nine yards that goes with it. Then I went to a monastery they didn't have all of these beliefs. I studied on my own in the monastery. I studied biology because I wanted to see this whole idea of us being evolved from a monkey. I wanted to see what it is. What is the bottom line, the whole truth behind that question. Number two, about the other religions in the world. I studied Buddhism and just, not totally in depth, but on my own level, these other religions and looked back at Orthodoxy and realized that it reflected what I had sort of been crying out for my whole life. I just never left the monastery.
Why did you pick Israel?
From the punk scene in Berkeley I knew this girl whose family is from Israel, just north of Tel-Aviv, and she said why don't you go to Israel. I was talking of getting out of the country before I ended up hurting myself or someone else, and I thought it was an interesting idea. I just sort of went there. I had thought about going to Germany and getting involved in punk bands there, but just choose Israel instead. When I was in Israel I spent my last bit of money on getting a boat to Greece that was going to Germany. After about four days on the boat I ran out of money and was hungry and didn't have any food. The boat ended up in Greece and I decided that if I ended up in Germany I was going to get involved in the same thing and was going to end up totally miserable. It was not going to help me. So what I ended up doing was staying on the boat- being a stowaway actually- wondering where the boat was going to go, and I was really hungry by that point, and we ended up seeing land. It was Israel again. So I got off the boat and stayed in Haifa a while and before I left I got a tattoo of a Russian Orthodox cross on my arm, before I knew what it was. While I was in Haifa some Russian girls saw it and were blown away because you don't see that. They asked me if I was Russian Orthodox, but I didn't even know what they meant, so I said no, and later on when I went to the front of the monastery cloister it was shocking but it made sense to me. The reason why I got the cross tattooed on me was a form of protection because I was living in the ghettoes in Oakland. Lots of gunfire outside my window. Chaos and prostitution and I was going crazy. I just choose this cross out of the blue.
So you left Sleep after the first CD then?
Yeah. Right after we were done with the first CD I left and I got letters in the monastery saying we just signed with Earache and we're getting $12,000 each. Do you want to come back? It was pretty alluring, but at that point it was either I stay and live, or I go and die. It was really life or death. I don't know how else to put it. I just couldn't do it. I was sort of a key member because I was a songwriter. When I left they were sort of struggling to write songs other then that last album that came out- what was it called? It had the big circle on the cover...
Holy Mountain?
It just sort of fell apart. I had to quit. We played a couple of concerts and I had some weird things happen. I felt that the music that I was trying to express myself, what was going on inside, all the music that was supposed to be helping me was harming me. Because I had all of that anger and frustration and flat out evil bottled up inside me. The problem was that I was letting it out on a bunch of other young people. And at our concerts we had some pretty crazy things happen due to the energy that we would let develop. I wasn't too proud of that. I knew the music had an effect on the people and that was pretty crazy.
It seems to me that would have been more applicable during the Asbestos Death days and then as it went into 'Holy Mountain' you were reconciling things within yourself?
It's true. But we were still grappling.
How did you decide to do this book, Youth Of The Apocalypse?
I was sitting up here in this monastery on Spruce Island, Alaska, and we live way out in the woods where there is no electricity or phones and I decided I wanted to write an article for Death Of The World dealing with a lot of the issues young people are dealing with. That article grew into a huge thing like that. After writing it we had some editors edit it. Then we wanted to send it off to see if it would be publishable. Our own press wanted to publish it and it all happened in about a month and a half. It went so fast. So now the fruit that is coming out of that is that Penguin Books contacted us and asked us to write another book. But, instead of being so direct and uncompromising it is more of an allegory, or fiction, based on actual experiences.
And you will be writing that?
It's already done. It's on their desk being reviewed.
Will that benefit the monastery?
It could, but I don't want it to. I want it to going into helping more young people instead of going to the monastery, if we see anything from it at all.
And how would it do that?
In the way of trying to get the message out there that there is hope in a hopeless world. Kind of the same thing as Death Of The World. It sounds kind of like we are pushing religion because that is the context that it comes out of, that's what we know, and that's what we live. But, religion is between the soul and God. Our first thing is to say that there is a hope. I just got a call from a kid in Canada that is just falling apart without some fulcrum or focal point. He just wanted to hear a sane voice that things will be okay. And from there there is a God. I don't care how much people say there is not a God or God is dead. He's not. He's alive. That one crucial point of the existence of whether there is a God or not is actually the dividing factor in people's souls as to whether there is a reason to live or not. It really is. No matter how much modern man kicks against that idea, that principle, it is necessary for human existence. At least from my experience of dealing with people, especially young people.
I think I would agree to an extent because "God" is a universal image and is ancient, arcane.
Yes, it's ancient. Every ancient society has always had that fundamental foundation in life. They didn't exist without it. I have never heard of a pre-historical culture that had no God. It just didn't exist.
They might have had more than one, or different facets of one, but they do have it. What will this book be called?
The Scream For Silence.
I think the sort of proselytizing which is fundamental to Western Christianity is not present in the eastern form of Christianity. Is that what was the appeal to you- the lack of pushing the faith?
If I was proselytized to I never would have become Orthodox. Because when it is forced upon you it doesn't work. When it is laid out in front of you like cards on a table then the human being can actually have a free role, rather than having it pushed upon you. I don't want to proselytize. I will never compromise that at all. When dealing with people you deal with the base, even before God, you start with morality. I am not a fan of proselytizing.
I see a lot of comparisons between the idea of what is expressed in the book and magazine- the endless sorrow and misery and death- and certain genres of punk rock. Was that your audience?
Since I came out of the punk movement a lot of it comes out of it, of course, but that philosophy is pervasive in all groups and all social cliques. It's intrinsic. It's in its blood. This nihilism and frustration at the state of the world and so on. I think it is there with all young people.
So you think that people lose that outlook after a certain stage in their life or do they see things in a different light?
There are several different ways I have seen things go. I had a friend who just went to the grave, shot himself in the head. Some people are able to become superficial, and through that superficiality weasel their way out of it and live a superficial existence, which is internally frustrating. I have seen people come out of it that way and then I have seen people sincerely trying to understand. They will read and study and search for an answer or meaning. That is not necessarily a religion, but standing for something that is absolutely true, even against the world. That will pull them out too, because there is a meaning to that. Like Martin Luther King said, " If you don't have anything to die for then life is not worth living."
Is there anything you miss?
To be honest with you, the one temptation has been the want to play loud and angry and depressing music and enter into that whole realm again. But it has no appeal to me anymore, because there is no need to play that kind of music and to enter that state anymore. The playing of music and live concerts- that is the one thing if anything that would drive me away.
But you do still make music don't you?
Yes, but it's acoustic music. I am more at peace with it because I can express myself with it.
Do you play with other people up there?
Yeah, I like playing with other people. I like playing on the top of a mountain and just talking and playing.
― am0n (am0n), Saturday, 7 October 2006 02:27 (nineteen years ago)
four months pass...