Rocket From the Tombs had just broken up - when setting out to form Pere Ubu, how strong were your ideas of the direction you wanted to go in?

Fairly strong but as always with me I think in terms of methodology and the "style" follows. (Though I wouldn't have expressed it that way back then.) Sound follows production method. I was aware of a strong nucleus of musicians around who seemed to me, with my limited experience, to be unique-ish. I thought these guys could be harnessed and whatever happened would be unique and worth doing. Besides, what else was I going to do?

How did you go about recruiting the other members of the band?

I told Peter Laughner I was starting a new band and it was going to be called Pere Ubu and it was only going to work in the studio. That's as far as I got before he said he wanted to be in it. He knew some people living at The Plaza (3206 Prospect Av) and suggested some of them. Tom Herman was a steel worker who lived nearby and jammed at a house with a drummer from the Plaza. That was Scott Krauss. Allen Ravenstine was the co-owner / janitor at The Plaza and he had been assembling odd sound boxes for a few years and did some electronics shows in arty places. Tim Wright was a friend of ours and sometimes the soundman for Rocket From The Tombs. I asked him to join because he seemed the right material. He said he would learn bass. He went out and bought a Dan Electro 6-string bass and learned it.

What exactly happened in Cleveland during the early-Seventies to make it such an insanely creative spot? Most people think of these years as a bit of a black hole for outsider rock 'n' roll - how come it was so different in Cleveland? Was the fact that The Velvet Underground had pulled through there a couple of times really that significant?

Alot of things came together in one place and one time. I'm tired of going thru the story but I'll give it a shot one last time.

1. It was a unique generational window. Charlotte Pressler described it best in her piece, "Those Were Different Times." I quote the first few paragraphs:
   "This is a story about life in Cleveland from 1968 to 1975, when a small group of people were evolving styles of music that would, much later, come to be called "New Wave." Misleadingly so, because that term suggests the current situation, in which an already evolved, recognized "New Wave" style exists for new bands to aim at. The task of this group was different: to evolve the style itself, while at the same time struggling to find in themselves the authority and confidence to play it. And they had to do this in a total vacuum. The whole system of New Wave interconnections which made it possible for every second person on Manhattan's Lower East Side to become a star did not exist. There were no stars in Cleveland. Nobody cared what these people were doing. If they did anything at all, they did it for themselves. They adapted to those conditions in different ways. Some are famous. Some are still struggling. One is dead.
   
   "There are questions I would like to know the answers to. Why, for example, are so many of the people in this story drawn from the same background? Most of them were from middle or upper-middle class families. Most were very intelligent. Many of them could have been anything they chose to be. There was no reason why they should not have effected an entry into the world of their parents. Yet all of them turned their backs on this world, and that meant making a number of very painful choices. First, there was the decision not to go to college at a time when the draft was still in effect and the Vietnam War was still going on; and several of these people were drafted. Most of these people did not marry; those that did generally did not have children; few of them worked jobs for very long; and the jobs they did hold were low-paying and dull, a long ways from a "career." Yet they were not drop-outs in the Sixties sense; they felt, if anything, a certain affection for consumerist society, and a total contempt for the so-called counterculture. The Sixties drop-outs dropped in to a whole world of people just like themselves but these people were on their own.
   
   "You can ask, also, why they all turned to rock 'n' roll. Most of these people were not natural musicians. Peter perhaps was, and Albert Dennis, and Scott Krauss; but John Morton and David Thomas and Allen Ravenstine and Jaime Klimek would probably have done something else, if there had been anything else for them to do. One can ask why there wasn't; why rock 'n' roll seemed to be the only choice.
   
   "I would like to know too the source of the deep rage that runs through this story like a razor-edged wire. It was a desperate, stubborn refusal of the world, a total rejection; the kind of thing that once drove men into the desert, but our desert was the Flats. Remember that the people who did this music had an uncompromising stance that gave them no way up and no way out. It was the inward-turning, defiant stance of a beleaguered few who felt themselves to be outside music, beneath media attention, and without hope of an audience. It seems that the years from 1974 to 1978 in Cleveland were a flash point, a quick and brilliant explosion, even epochal, but over with and done. No amount of nostalgia can bring those years back; they were different times. Still, I can't imagine living any other way than the way I learned to live in Cleveland during those years. We found it hard, in 1975, to imagine that anyone would live to see the year 2000. It's not that hard to imagine it now. What's become hard to imagine - but then why would we want to recapture it? - is the timeless, frozen, quality of life as we lived it in 1975, in the terminal landscape of Cleveland, with our drivenness, our rage, and our dreams of breaking through."
   
   
2. Cleveland was, in the early 70s, a nexus for all music. Record shops competed for the new and cutting, for the complete and final word. Almost everyone I can think of who was in a band was working in a record store. Not only the college radio stations but even local commercial FM stations played radical music. So the "scene" in Cleveland was compact, informed, tough and protected from any threat of fame or acceptance.
   
   
3. We were the Ghoulardi kids. It's been suggested by any number of us that the Cleveland/Akron event of the early 70s was attributable in large part to his influence. I was ten in 1963 when he went on air and 13 when he left Cleveland in 1966. After him I believe that I could only have perceived the nature of media and the possibilities of the narrative voice in particular ways. Describing how he devastated the authority of the media, and of the Great and the Good, how he turned the world upside down, would take too long and would be too hard to translate - a dumb slogan or two, some primitive blue screen technique, and a couple firecrackers for 90 minutes on the TV every Friday night, how unsafe could that be? You have no idea. He was the Flibberty Jib Man.
   
   
4. Don't dismiss the power of The Velvets. Yes, it was a big deal. It changed lives. Every underground band in Cleveland in the early 70s could do Foggy Notion, for example - all that unreleased stuff that would later appear on bootlegs - but we learned from cassettes recorded at Cleveland appearances. Doing Sweet Jane was such a rube thing to do it came to be a litmus test for naffness - like doing Smoke On The Water or something. Bands from AKRON would do Sweet Jane!

What do you think of the subsequent near-deification of Peter Laughner in the rock and fan press? What are your memories of him now? What do you think he would have done had he lived? You ever read Lester Bangs's tribute to him? What did you think of that?

I have nothing to say to outsiders about Peter. Do what you want. Believe what you want. Use him for any agenda you have in mind. Leave me out of it. I hate the nonsense these people talk. All it accomplishes is the death of another Peter Laughner in another town.

Your RFTT bandmate Peter Laughner left the band before you recorded the Modern Dance - why did he end up leaving? Was there any one event that led to his departure?

Drugs and alcohol in massive quantities. Tim Wright and I were pretty fed up with the situation and part of the situation was that it was obvious he was a dead man walking and we didn't want to be part of the process so we had one of those meetings that ends up being you-go-your-way-and-we'll-go-ours. He thought this was a good idea as well. We were all relieved.

You kind of alternated between Scott Kraus and Anton Fier on drums during a certain time period. Was there any particular reason why one or the other didn't just stay as the permanent drummer?

No, Scott was the drummer but he would quit alot and during one of those times, just before the release of The Modern Dance, Anton was asked to join the band. He rehearsed for a week or two but then Scott made it known that he wanted back in. Anton graciously stepped aside. That's the reason we thank him on the Datapanik In The Year Zero EP. He later joined and recorded Song Of The Bailing Man when Scott quit again.

Prior to your debut album coming out, I imagine you were still playing around Cleveland a bit. How did the scene in the later part of the seventies differ from the way things were when Rocket first started playing?

Not much except there were alot of poppy / arty sorts of new-comers who mostly never measured up to the originals. Easter Monkeys were good. A couple others.

Did you feel like Ubu was a part of the punk and new wave scenes that were happening in the latter half of the seventies, or do you feel more affinity with the progressive/experimental/avant garde type rock bands of the earlier part of the decade?

We were never part of anything but a Cle scene.

I think a lot of people are under the impression that you actively dislike Cleveland now. Is that true, or is it just simply (as you told me in our other interview) that everything you knew about the town is gone and you're more or less indifferent to the city now?

I don't care about Cleveland now. Indifferent is a good word.

Looking back on the historical tapes now, how do you feel about them?

I'm not sure what you mean. Am I nostalgic about them? No. Am I embarrassed or shy about them? No. Do they reveal anything to me? No. I suppose one of the problems has always been that this phase of our history has never been made public. We started out dedicated to hard, groove rock. Midwestern garage rock. We remain dedicated to hard, groove rock. Midwestern garage rock. This is the foundation but like many foundations maybe it rests unnoticed. You have to remember the Prime Directive: Never repeat yourself. At all costs, and beyond any reason or logic, keep moving. So we made this music in 1974-5. It's hard, groove rock played with passion and unwavering dedication. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? And once you've proved that you HAVE the Right Stuff you move forward or you slip backwards. Only the dead remain secure.

Rocket From The Tombs almost seem now like some kind of early testing ground for the new punk rock/avant rock. Their impact seems to be more in the way that they infected other groups - Pere Ubu, Dead Boys etc - was there something so intense and charged about that grouping that meant it would always be an unstable entity? Does the fact that its legacy is so fractured bother you?

RFTT was always doomed. Everything from Cleveland was doomed. RFTT is totally inconsequential and irrelevant. Pere Ubu is totally inconsequential and irrelevant. That is the power of Cleveland. Embrace, my brothers, the utter futility of ambition and desire. Your only reward is a genuine shot at being the best. The caveat is that no one but your brothers will ever know it. That's the deal we agreed to.

Looking back at the lyrical pre-occupations and the casualties that resulted, that whole scene seems an intensely nihilistic/apocalyptic one - would you agree with this perception? What was it that fuelled such nihilism? Or was it just an as-serous-as-your-life approach to art?

I don't know what drove it. Of course we were serious. What kind of question is that? It was a compact and isolated group of people. The rivalries were intense. The disdain for anything anodyne was immediate and severe. It was a hothouse environment. Lots of the people lived on the urban frontier. Allen, Peter and all the crew at the Plaza were real urban pioneers. It could get weird. And we were young. We had turned our backs on the hippies and we had rejected the safe course thru college. (Until just recently no Ubu member had ever graduated from college-- or even lasted more than a year! And we were smart kids and EVERYBODY went to college in those days.) So we were drawn to art and in the early 70s rock music was the only valid art form. Rock music was the cutting edge. If you were good you went into rock. If you were 2nd string, if you were not quite good enough, then maybe you wrote or painted or made films. Who cares?

How do Pere Ubu and Rocket relate? Are the Ubu seeds to be found in Rocket or would you say Ubu's project was distinctly different?

They relate because Peter and I went on to form Pere Ubu and so for us it was a continuum. For Scott Krauss, for example, or Allen Ravenstine, or Tom Herman, it was not.

Were you consciously trying to bring the techniques of the avant-garde to rock music? Was it as theoretical as that or was it more to do with taking rock 'n' roll at its word and freaking with it?

Rock is the avant garde. There was no question of taking one to the other. This is a racial problem. Because you are a foreigner you don't understand the nature of rock music as a cultural voice, as the American folk experience, so you are always looking to interpret it in alien terms. This was the problem with punk. Punk was an imperialistic grab at someone else's culture fueled by chicken-hawkers, multi-national corporations and a guy who wanted to sell clothes. It provided a dumbed-down template aimed at the lowest-common denominator that sold the Big Lie that art was something ANYBODY could do. Well it wasn't. It isn't. It never will be. (I always had this problem at Rough Trade in any Desert Island Disk debate-- no one believed, that given one record to take, I wouldn't hesitate a nanosecond to choose John Cougar Mellenkamp's out-takes to any Smiths record. John Cougar was playing the music of his culture with an authentic voice, that Smiths guy, hard as he tried, as great as he was, as much as I liked what he did, could never disguise the stone cold fact that he was a foreigner and once removed from the True Moment.)

Do you see a direct line of descent from RFTT through to your current stuff?

Yes.

Do you ever get sad and nostalgic for those "different times"? Could rock music ever be so free and full of possibilities again?

I am not nostalgic. Rock music remains the only music that is free and full of possibilities. All the endless variants of dance / ambiance are a deadend. Jazz suffers on without the human voice and rose as far as it could under that restriction many years ago. World Music is MOR background music for TV shows about women's problems. No, I am not nostalgic. I still walk the narrow road. Say, how's things in YOUR town?

Do you think of Crocus Behemoth as being a different person? How do you feel about that particular incarnation?

No. And there was no "incarnation." It was simply an alias to disguise the fact that I was writing inordinate amounts of the magazine. I happened to use it for certain kinds of writing that became "popular" among the readers so I kept it as a commercial or ego consideration. Also because it's an artifact of the year I spent in a White Panther commune it had fond personal memories for me but that's about it.

What were your first thoughts when you heard Allen Ravenstine's unique synth playing?

I don't remember. Clearly I thought it was cool / impressive / powerful / unique. Remember these were the days when people were starting to add analog synthesizers to rock music. I'm not sure anyone was doing it so extremely or integrating it to the degree we did but then again nobody said we shouldn't / couldn't. Seemed the obvious thing to do. It all seemed like the obvious thing to do.

How did you feel when Pere Ubu started writing songs together - did it feel like you were doing something original?

The intention was always to write songs. This had been a big bone of contention in Rocket From The Tombs. Peter was always wanting to do cover versions and I really hated doing them. I didn't see the point... and I was no good at it. The first Ubu song was Heart of Darkness which we jammed while learning Tokyo & Solution to do as the first Ubu single. We didn't sit there and say to ourselves, Gee, we're doing something original. As I said, it was all pretty obvious to us that this was what you were supposed to do. Not to be disingenuous: we did realize that we might just be the best band in the world. But every kid thinks his band was the best thing that's ever happened and we were, at the same time, aware of that. And besides it didn't matter - no one would ever hear us.

The critics say that british punk was very important for a social change, and a change in the way of thinking. Looking back, now do you agree with that idea, or would you say that the ideas changed the music?

British critics are trapped into making great claims for punk. Punk was and is reactionary. It rejects the craft nature of art. It is cowardly and weak. It fears all human experience that doesn't come prepackaged in licentious, cartoon characterizations.

Soon after we began working together it was clear to us that we were the right people in the right place at the right time. We possessed the Right Stuff. We had positioned ourselves at the living edge of rock as an art form. Our forebears had passed the torch onto us and watched us with expectation and hope.

How did people initially react to Pere Ubu when you started playing live?

To the established rock bands, the ones playing the rock clubs, we were amateurish. We looked plain. We were too incompetent, it seemed, to learn the conventions of the craft, or, worse, we were ignorant that such things might exist. Our method, according to one local "celeb," involved taking lots of drugs and banging around on our instruments in a stupor until it was time to stop. (Which was very insulting considering how much rehearsing we did and how tight we were.) Our supposed "peers" in the local rock scene considered us to be unworthy. We occupied an underground. But, worse, an underground in the life of a city that was itself considered to be nothing more than a backwater. Everything meaningful, cutting edge, avant garde, we were patiently informed, was to be found only in New York City. We were nothing but provincial rubes.

We quickly acquired a hardcore of about 150 local fans but considering that the entire "underground" scene probably consisted of no more than 100-200 people there wasn't much room for growth. Nobody outside a very small, and very tightly defined group seemed to like what we did. Nobody outside this small world, it seemed, would ever know or hear of us. Choices can become simple: change your ideas or accept your "fate." Knowing what we knew, feeling the tug of historical imperative, how could we back down? So, rejection, once chosen, is personalized, backs turn against outsiders and our world view constricts. Nobody likes what we do so we may as well do what we want. It is burned into our souls. We are "free." Years later, and, ironically, as we neared the possibility of a previously unimagined commercial success the lesson was reinforced.

In "England's Dreaming" Jon Savage writes that most of the original "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" singles were sold in England and not in the States. Is this true?

I have no clear memory on it. We pressed 3-4000 copies of that single over 2 years. I don't remember personally shipping many to England. We sold stocks to distributers and they must have done so in some numbers but I also remember selling lots to shops in New York City, Minneapolis, Chicago and other American towns. The numbers, in any case, were not significant enough to draw conclusions from. It may be Mr Savage has access to paperwork that confirms his view. It's also possible his evidence is anecdotal and his conclusion wishful.

When I hear a coupla cool tracks, "Its-a-Happenin" by The Magic Mushrooms and stuff by Monks, I hear some kinda (however vague or strong) semblance of the Ubu-style. Were you ever into or rather what U.S. punk bands of the 60s were you inspired by?

David replies, "I was always into the American garage punk of the 60s. You have to remember we grew up listening to all that stuff on the radio. That was what was on the radio. All that stuff was hits. Strong influence on Pere Ubu along with Velvets, Stooges, Can and MC5. Our first engineer and father of our current engineer, Ken Hamann, was the engineer for songs like Nobody But Me, Time Won't Let Me, Green Tambourine, all the early Terry Knight stuff, Bloodrock, James Gang, etc."

If Pere Ubu was a response to post-war industrial america, what is Pere Ubu's response to post-industrial information age or digital age america?

Pere Ubu is not a response to post-war industrial America in the way I suspect you mean to suggest. Pere Ubu is a celebration of post-war industrial America. We have to this day a deep and abiding affection for its consumer society. But we were, from the beginning, acutely aware of our place in the stream of history. We were the last of the Americans... like the last of the Mohicans. We were the last ones to have known the Golden Age and we saw the dimness come, and we knew what that meant, and yet we could not find it in ourselves to weep. Still we had seen for ourselves how the sun used to shine off its polished surfaces. So clearly and pure. (After us come the barbarians.) I don't recognize any "information age" unless you are using the term ironically. The Datapanik Manifesto (1977) dictates that information will become a weapon to be used against us as notions of value and meaning are ridiculed in a storm of confetti. Is that what you mean? If so, silence is the only adequate response but we have another agenda and we are not required to pay any attention at all to anything outside our field of interest. We are not required to be socially responsible or adept - we are rock musicians. It's like watching the game from the bleachers. The fly balls slowly and grandly arc across the green pastures and who wins or loses is a thing of distance and perspective. That's what I learned, at least, from being an Indians fan all those years. Max Alvis, Chico Salmon, Larry Brown, Leon "Daddy Wags" Wagner, Sudden Sam McDowell. And the "Curse" of Rocky Colavito.

What was the Viking Saloon?

A bar in Cleveland on Chester Avenue at approx E.22nd St, next to Cleveland State University - hence the name, "Viking," and, lo, the agent of its eventual urban renewal. Booked interesting, often original bands. In the early 70s Mirrors, Electric Eels, Rocket From The Tombs, and Pere Ubu played there before it was torn down. Site of the legendary Extermination Nights. David was, for awhile, the doorman.

Pere Ubu comes straight from the dada tradition. How much have you been influenced by this movement?

Pere Ubu, the character, was conceived by Alfred Jarry. Pere Ubu, the band, was conceived by us and has nothing to do with dada. Dada and surrealism - at this point - are historical curiosities with no relevance as a living art. There are important lessons to be learned, of course - valuable production methodologies and narrative tools all fundamental to producing and understanding art in the 20th / 21st Centuries. But to endulge in a regeneration of it is akin to starting a band in the year 2007 that does doo-wop. Why bother? It was done better the first time around when it was alive and fresh. Dada and surrealism is what you do when you're 17, a thing of youth that should be put away with maturity.

Some days ago I was casually reading a Lester Bang's article about Peter Laughner. Since then, I began listening to "Life Stinks" from "Modern Dance" in a different way. How do you remember those years (Rocket from the Tombs and first Pere Ubu Singles)? Is there something of that period that has remained unchanged? What? And what else changed?

I don't "remember" them until somebody asks me a question about them. I don't look back. I am not nostalgic. The question you ask is too unspecific to prompt any memories. Nothing of that period has changed. The past does not change. It's locked down and sealed tight. The way I approach music is precisely the same now as it was 30 years ago. I've not changed a single idea. The world changes. Pere Ubu does not.

Pere Ubu cannot be understood unless you start with the fundamentals. We are a Midwestern hard groove rock band in the tradition of the MC5 and Stooges. Tom Herman used to say the best guitar part is the one that requires you to move your fingers the least. If you can't make it work with one chord and the will to rock then you oughta find other work. Rocket From The Tombs was and still is a brutal rock experience. When it finished I was determined to find out where else it could go. I have said over the decades that Pere Ubu was founded on that principle, that the foundation of Pere Ubu, as far as I am concerned, is the ability to produce brutal groove rock. That's the base camp from which we launch expeditions. But because we have proved we can do it we don't have to keep proving it every subsequent album. The mission is/was to go forward from that point.

You often use the term "avant-..." in your comments. What does avant-garde mean to you?

Nothing. Mostly I use the prefix "avant-" as applied to "garage." Avant-garage satirizes the idea of the avant-garde. We are midwesterners. Art is the thing that goes on album sleeves. I don't mean to endorse anti-intellectualism. We are well-rounded and informed. We are well-read. We get it. We just choose to ignore it... officially.

Let me tell you a story. In the early days there was a Cleveland musician into electronica who was going to New York to make his name. First thing he did was buy a pair of sunglasses to wear when he got off the plane. I have never forgotten that story. It seems to crystallize my feelings in re "avant" anything.

It has to also be said that "avant-garage" was a useful term to adopt in that it summarizes what has always been considered to be the bipolar schism of Ubu: art and pop. Now, we have never considered these poles to be in any way significant. We like pop music. We like "art" - difficult - music. What's the big deal? We love hard groove rock with hooks and choruses and all that stuff. We love making abstract noise and playing with structure and narrative. What exactly is so strange about any of that? Who says these are "poles"? Who makes the rules? We do.

The romantic media myth machine made much over Peter Laughner's Ubu contributions after his death; Clinton Heylin's "From the Velvets to the Voidoids" even goes so far as to call "Modern Dance" Peter's album, "Dub Housing" Tom's album, all the rest, David's albums. (I forget who Heylin was quoting there, though.)

This is nonsense. The only Ubu album that I ever "took over" is Raygun Suitcase, the album hailed (wrongly) as a return to the "old values," and all I did was take on production responsibilities because things were fragmenting and somebody had to do something. These interpretations are glib. They demean the other musicians. Peter's style was rooted in more familiar idioms. Tom Herman, however, was a more radical guitar player. But Tom Herman wore dozy looking clothes and was a steel worker. Peter wore black leather and shades and he went to New York City. Tim Wright was a more radical player but his style wasn't rooted in a familiar idiom. Mayo Thompson was a more radical conceptualist. But the issue isn't even radicalism versus the familiar. Pere Ubu is a mix. When we parted with Peter we stopped doing cover versions and abandoned the 60's idioms that he loved. Is that bad? Is it good? The answer is neither. It's true the albums changed. They were supposed to.

There's something else you need to account for. In the early days Musician X was learning his instrument and he was in the band. He would go home at night and practice at the same time he was taking lessons and working out parts with his teacher and the next day he would come to rehearsals and throw in the things he learned the night before in a desperate bid to stem the tide, to hold his ground, to keep his head above water. There's a different quality to the work when the children and young girls are turning out the tanks that drive straight off the assembly line down the road to the front just outside Moscow at such a ferocious rate of production that it's probably never been equalled. And probably more than any other singular event, that broke the Nazi war machine. There's a different quality to the work that can never be recaptured as the years go by and abilities grow and come to a mature fruition. The question is: Are you then supposed to imitate who you were for the rest of your life? Isn't that what everyone was criticizing the Rolling Stones for?

Not to be disrespectful to the departed . . . but I don't (and never have) been able to divine just where the (myth-inflated?) contributions reside. How important was Laughner really in shaping the early Ubu aesthetic?

The Cleveland aesthetic can be described very concisely: nobody likes what we do, nobody will ever like what we do - let's do what we want. Peter's fatal weakness was that he wanted to be accepted. He wanted to be liked. In this way he was out of step with the rest of us. Look at the songs he wrote and performed. Peter was immensely talented. But now you must account for the pastiches he did. Now you must account for the preponderance of cover material in his sets. You must deal with the whole picture not just the slice that appeals to you. You must deal with the whole person not just a processable icon that feeds your prejudices. Peter wanted to be from New York City and it killed him. Most people think being from New York City is the thing you should want. It reinforces what they want to believe. Peter in a terrible way got what he wanted. All it took was to die. I hate the nonsense these people talk. All it accomplishes is the death of another Peter Laughner in another town. Peter was important. He was immensely talented. But no more than Tim. Or Tom. Or Scott. Or Allen. Or me. And no less.

I'm not aware of any other small indie record companies that existed prior to Hearpen. Did you actually have a model for what you were doing, or are the singles Hearpen released as ground-breaking as they seem today - from both an artistic and a business standpoint?

Television actually beat us to the punch by a couple months with Little Johnny Jewel. The model for what we were doing was the Salvation Army used record bins. I wanted to make a record of what we had been working on from 1973 to 1975 and I figured somebody someday would find it in a used record bin (and at that point the only used record bins were at SA) and that would be our legacy. That was the extent of the plan.

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