Page 2 - "Hated in America : An Interview with Merle Allin of The Murder Junkies" By Sarah L. Myers

---

 

Did he ever meet G.G.?

No, he never met G.G. He had told me that he was planning on coming to one of our shows back in the early 1990s but for some reason he didn’t make it. He had a gig or something. But he is a big fan, and it was really great touring with him because I’ve been friends with him and I became friends with all the guys in his band and they’re all super cool guys. So I would get up on stage and do a song with them every other night and their fiddle player would get up and sing a song with us, and their guitar tech would get up and play a song with us. We’re like friends and it was like hanging out with your family for seven weeks, traveling around the country.

You collect serial killer artwork and many of the inmates have painted portraits of G.G. alongside portraits of Elvis and Hank Williams. What does this say about your brother?

He’s a legend, you know? He’s becoming more of a legend every year, becoming more popular every year. People that you would never think would know who he is know who he is now. People from Hank III to Chad from CKY to different people from different genres of music are all into G.G. and they all know who he is, and they’re all covering his songs. They wanted to use one of G.G.’s songs in the Jackass movie but they didn’t use it, which kind of sucked. But Bam (Margera) has used some stuff in things before and the CKY DVD that’s out, “Bite It You Scum” is in there. Yeah, I mean, he’s just becoming more popular every year, for sure. He’s definitely a legend, and his music, nobody is every going to top what G.G. did, that’s for sure.

People can be a fan of G.G.’s but not necessarily a fan of how he lived his life. Where do you think that disconnect comes in for some of the fans? Do you think they’re living vicariously?

I think a lot of them are. I think a lot of the new fans don’t really understand what it was really like when G.G. was alive so they don’t really have to listen to G.G. and hear some of the things he would do or say. He doesn’t piss people off because he’s not alive. If he was alive there’s no way he’d be as popular as he is now because he would still be pissing everybody off. The new fans really don’t have … they like the music, and they like the idea that he did this and that on stage, but watching a video don’t mean shit. If you weren’t there than you really can’t begin to understand it, you know? Those people weren’t there, so a lot of those people just think it’s cool, and they think it’s funny, and they’d probably like to do it themselves but they won’t and that’s why they like G.G. so much. The fact is they like his music. There’s always the people who are like, ‘I like this guy because he shits on stage,’ but he wouldn’t be as popular as he is today if his music wasn’t as good as it was. All the other stuff aside. Anybody can do this, that, and the other but if your music doesn’t stand up, people aren’t going to remember you fifteen years after you’re dead.

If G.G. were alive now, do you think he’d still be performing and doing spoken word?

Yeah, he’s still be performing, he’d probably doing more country stuff, he’d probably be doing a lot of spoken word. He could never get through a spoken word performance, He’d still be doing something to piss people off I’m sure. But I don’t think he ever intended to live to be as old as we are these days. (laughs)

What’s the one thing you want people to know about G.G.?

That he was a genius. He really was. He could write a song in five minutes. He was kind of like the Hank Williams of his time, you know? They always say Hank Williams you could put him in a room and give him a subject and he could write a hit song in five minutes. G.G. was like the same way. He could pump out record after record after record. His discography - I couldn’t even begin to put it in order it’s so extensive. People don’t even probably realize that, there’s so many G.G. recordings, and records and CD’s and singles and this, that, and the other. He was just a genius. He could write a song in no time. You wouldn’t even have to give him a subject. We were like writing the music for the last, the Brutality and Bloodshed for All CD while he was in prison. We wrote the music, and he got out of prison in April, or March of 1993 and in April of 1993 we were in the studio recording the record. We had the music, and I sent him a tape of the music. A week later he calls me up and is like, ‘book the time, I got it all put together.’ I’m like, ‘wow.’ I mean, he was a genius as far as writing a song and coming up with a melody and stuff like that. Just because his music was real crude, and some of it was real raw and stuff like that - the songs and the lyrics and the melodies are great, you know? You can see a lyric like ‘expose yourself to kids’ and stuff like that, and you can look at the lyrics and be like, ‘oh my god that’s disgusting’ but if you heard the song you’d be humming along right with it.

So what’s next for the Murder Junkies?

Well, like I said, we’ve got the DVD coming out next month from the 2005 European tour. We’ve got a bunch of new songs that we’re planning on recording next year and then we’re just going to look for another record label and we’re going to do some more touring and we’re just going to keep playing, as long as people want to hear us and probably as long they don’t want to hear us!

 

www.ggallin.com