Originally published in American Music Press (1992)
Interview by Devorah Ostrov |
| Mojo Nixon (Photo from "The Mojo Manifesto: The Life & Times of Mojo Nixon") |
During his onstage banter at a local club, Mojo Nixon described himself as a cross between Bigfoot and Roddy McDowell in Planet of the Apes. It's a pretty accurate image. He's a mountain of a man, with a booming hillbilly accent and a razor-sharp wit.
As well as getting him in some hot water with Benson & Hedges, Nixon's wicked sense of humor is responsible for the irreverent pop culture classics "Elvis is Everywhere" and "Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child" (both of which he recorded in the '80s with onetime collaborator Skid Roper), as well as the wildly irreverent "Don Henley Must Die" which sneers: "Pumped up with hot air/He's serious, pretentious/And I just don't care..." (Rumor has it that the former Eagle recently joined Nixon onstage in Austin to sing the song's rousing chorus: "Don Henley must die, don't let him get back together with Glen Frey!")
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| Horny Holidays LP (Triple X Records - 1992) |
The offbeat LP includes some unconventional takes on Xmas standards like "Good King Wenceslas" and "Jingle Bells." While other treats like James Brown's "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto," and the perennial family fave, "Mr. Grinch," are given that special Mojo twist.
I caught up with the affable Mr. Nixon in time to give him a cheap plastic Cat in the Hat for Christmas and ask a few questions about his latest project.
Q: What possessed you to record a Christmas album?
MOJO: I've been wanting to do a Christmas album for a while. I thought that the bad eggs, the mutants, the weirdos, the doomed and the damned of the world needed one.
Q: I love that you included your version of "Mr. Grinch." Covering a song from How the Grinch Stole Christmas is a stroke of genius!
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| Mojo wearing a WEBN t-shirt |
Q: Where did you find all the other bizarre Christmas songs that you cover on the album? Like the lecherous "Trim Yo' Tree."
MOJO: I have a huge collection of weirdo Christmas albums. I've been collecting 'em for 10 years, and I have about 100 or so. Most of 'em are by people you wouldn't think would do a Christmas album, like "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto" by James Brown or Huey "Piano" Smith's "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus." And I wanna carry on that tradition.
Q: So, it wasn't Elvis Presley's Christmas collection that inspired you?
MOJO: No... Well, that was part of it. In fact, I think on my next Christmas album, Naked New Year — the first one is always so successful you have to do a second one — we'll do Elvis' version of "Merry Christmas Baby."
Q: You also wrote a couple of new Christmas tunes for the album...
MOJO: I wrote a couple; I rewrote a couple of things... I wrote the "Little Man Song," which had been floating around in the Mojo archives for a while but had never made it onto an album, and the soul-groove song, "It's Christmas Time."
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| Mojo Nixon (Rock Musician) on CNN |
Q: What about the "Head Crushing Yuletide Sing-A-Long"? To me, it sounds kinda like the Christmas classic "Winter Wonderland," although it's less than a minute long.
MOJO: Uh... that's actually just one of our miscues.
Q: I also want to mention your brilliant rendering of "Good King Wenceslas." You barely start the song, admit you don't know the lyrics, and just keep going "la, la, la." Did you truly not know the words, or was it planned that way?
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| Custom Condoms promo merch for Horny Holidays |
Q: Was the project really as spontaneous as it sounds?
MOJO: It was pretty spontaneous. We did it all in four days. We didn't know the words to any of those songs before we started. We didn't know how to play 'em. We didn't know what key they were in. We didn't know the arrangements. So, we had to learn 'em, record 'em, overdub, and mix everything in four days.
Q: Is that the way you've recorded all your albums?
MOJO: Nah! The first one [Mojo Nixon and Skid Roper released in 1985] took eight hours — four hours to record and four hours to mix! We didn't even know we were making an album. We thought we were just making demos.
Q: That's amazing! Kind of makes you wonder what took Guns N' Roses so long.
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| "Elvis is Everywhere" - Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper Picture sleeve 45 released in 1987 on Australia's Liberation label. |
Q: When you were recording the song "Elvis is Everywhere" [from Bo-Day-Shus!!! released in 1987], did you think it was going to become a hit and your signature tune?
MOJO: No! After we recorded it, I realized it was gonna come out right when the 10th-anniversary [of Elvis' death] was happening. I didn't know that when we recorded it. There was just a whole bunch of Elvis stuff happening at that time, and I just kind of picked up on it and wrote a song about it. When it came out, the 10th-anniversary thing was huge! It was on the cover of Newsweek!
Q: But your timing was just a fluke?
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| Mojo Nixon circa 1990 Enigma Records publicity photo |
Q: Do you ever want to be taken more seriously? Or write less humorous songs?
MOJO: Nah! There's a real trap there. Unfortunately, you're either perceived as being serious like Don Henley, and you wanna save the rain forest and critics love you. Or you're perceived as being a buffoon. There's no in-between. Even if I did an alleged serious album, in the middle of it, I'd let a fart! I couldn't stop myself.
Q: I read that your sense of humor recently got you into trouble with the Benson & Hedges people. Apparently, a quote of yours caused them to drop you from their Blues & Rhythm concert series.
(The quote in question was: "I'm running for the Presidency on the Mushroom Party. The basic overriding platform is that having sex is better than killing. The people who take mushrooms and get laid a lot aren't going to be pushing the button.")
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| Recent pic of Mojo Nixon and Little Steven promoting Nixon's SiriusXM show "The Loon in the Afternoon." |
MOJO: This friend of mine [Chris Morris] writes for Billboard and he was just quoting all the crazy shit I normally say, and Benson & Hedges freaked. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I was spewing forth my normal, you know, anarchy rhetoric, and some guy goes, "Oh, no! We can't have him!" I also got dropped by TNN. Same deal.
Q: What's TNN?
MOJO: The Nashville Network. That's the reason why I haven't been on [David] Letterman and stuff.
Q: That's awful!
MOJO: Hell, it's their loss. When I'm King of the Universe, they'll be sucking my boots!
Q: I've been wondering, whatever happened to your old pal and collaborator Skid Roper?
MOJO: Oh, god! He's in prison in Arkansas. He was cross-dressing at this Liberace tribute, and they don't like that in Arkansas. So, they took him to the women's prison! But Governor Bubba, soon to be President Bubba — the first draft dodger, wife swapper, dope smoker, saxophone player to be in the White House — is gonna release him before he goes to D.C.
Q: Is this true?
MOJO: Sure! Need you ask?
(Actually, Skid Roper has two albums of his own on Triple X Records: Trails Plowed Under released in 1989 and Lydias Cafe released in '91. A spokesman for the label would neither confirm nor deny Mojo's story, only saying that last he heard, Roper was running a used drum shop "just before the legal problems...")
Q: In addition to the usual Triple X label on your latest release, I noticed the name Triple NiXXXon Records. Is this a subsidiary deal you have?
MOJO: I do have a little subsidiary label. It has Fish Karma, One Foot in the Grave... Who's the next one we're gonna put out? Eugene Chadmore... crazy, nutty people who would probably never get a record deal anywhere else. Enigma's out of business and IRS has been absorbed by Capitol [Mojo's former labels], so we put Horny Holidays out ourselves. Even if I had a major-label deal, they wouldn't let me make the drunken Christmas record I wanted to make. Record company people — you can't imagine how small their brains are. If you rammed their brains up a gnat's ass it'd look like a BB in a boxcar. You get the picture? Brains up a gnat's ass... BB... boxcar.
Q: You live in San Diego, and your band [the Toadliquors] is based in Austin. But you recorded Horny Holidays as well as two other albums [Root Hog or Die and Otis] in Memphis. Is there a particular reason you like to record there?
MOJO: The guy who produces my albums, Jim Dickinson, lives in Memphis. Although he didn't do this one, me and the engineer did it. But Memphis is just a great place. It's, you know, where Elvis is from. That's where we're going! If it's good enough for Elvis and Howlin' Wolf, it's good enough for us.
Q: Do you hang around at Graceland?
MOJO: Nah! It's kinda weird down there. There's other places to go. Secret Elvis hide-outs!
Mojo: No, I never did. When I was in high school, it was supremely unhip. I didn't quite realize it was so unhip that it was hip. I hadn't passed that hurdle yet.
Q: I've been told that you're a big collector of odd junk.
MOJO: My house is a monument to weird junk!
Q: What's the strangest thing you own?
MOJO: A shingle from the house John Wayne was born in; it's kind of a religious artifact. And I have a painting of a rooster by Evil Knievel. If I could just get Hitler and Johnny Cougar, I'd have all the big painters!
Q: Just out of curiosity, what does the Nixon household look like at Christmas? Do you put the lights on the house and reindeer on the roof?
MOJO: Uh-huh! Really hideous! The neighbors really hate it. I just saw something in a J.C. Penny catalog... My mom was making me look at it when I was back in Virginia during the early part of the tour. She's saying, "You have to pick out something I can get you for Christmas." I see this four-foot-high plastic Santa Claus, and the ad says: "New this year — Afro American Santa Claus!" I said, "That's what I want!" But she wouldn't get it for me.
Q: What's TNN?
MOJO: The Nashville Network. That's the reason why I haven't been on [David] Letterman and stuff.
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| Fabulous poster for a series of Mojo Nixon shows in Texas. |
MOJO: Hell, it's their loss. When I'm King of the Universe, they'll be sucking my boots!
Q: I've been wondering, whatever happened to your old pal and collaborator Skid Roper?
MOJO: Oh, god! He's in prison in Arkansas. He was cross-dressing at this Liberace tribute, and they don't like that in Arkansas. So, they took him to the women's prison! But Governor Bubba, soon to be President Bubba — the first draft dodger, wife swapper, dope smoker, saxophone player to be in the White House — is gonna release him before he goes to D.C.
Q: Is this true?
MOJO: Sure! Need you ask?
(Actually, Skid Roper has two albums of his own on Triple X Records: Trails Plowed Under released in 1989 and Lydias Cafe released in '91. A spokesman for the label would neither confirm nor deny Mojo's story, only saying that last he heard, Roper was running a used drum shop "just before the legal problems...")
Q: In addition to the usual Triple X label on your latest release, I noticed the name Triple NiXXXon Records. Is this a subsidiary deal you have?
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| Mojo Nixon (promo photo) |
Q: You live in San Diego, and your band [the Toadliquors] is based in Austin. But you recorded Horny Holidays as well as two other albums [Root Hog or Die and Otis] in Memphis. Is there a particular reason you like to record there?
MOJO: The guy who produces my albums, Jim Dickinson, lives in Memphis. Although he didn't do this one, me and the engineer did it. But Memphis is just a great place. It's, you know, where Elvis is from. That's where we're going! If it's good enough for Elvis and Howlin' Wolf, it's good enough for us.
Q: Do you hang around at Graceland?
MOJO: Nah! It's kinda weird down there. There's other places to go. Secret Elvis hide-outs!
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| Poster for the Jello Biafra/Mojo Nixon 1994 Prairie Home Invasion LP (Alternative Tentacles) |
Q: Did you ever see Elvis in concert?
Q: I've been told that you're a big collector of odd junk.
MOJO: My house is a monument to weird junk!
Q: What's the strangest thing you own?
MOJO: A shingle from the house John Wayne was born in; it's kind of a religious artifact. And I have a painting of a rooster by Evil Knievel. If I could just get Hitler and Johnny Cougar, I'd have all the big painters!
Q: Just out of curiosity, what does the Nixon household look like at Christmas? Do you put the lights on the house and reindeer on the roof?
MOJO: Uh-huh! Really hideous! The neighbors really hate it. I just saw something in a J.C. Penny catalog... My mom was making me look at it when I was back in Virginia during the early part of the tour. She's saying, "You have to pick out something I can get you for Christmas." I see this four-foot-high plastic Santa Claus, and the ad says: "New this year — Afro American Santa Claus!" I said, "That's what I want!" But she wouldn't get it for me.
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| Mojo's story is told by Jay Allen Sanford in this "Famous Former Neighbors" cartoon strip. |
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