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AVN Associate Editor and part-time
rock star Frank Majors gives readers a monthly guide to all
that is cool and hip in the world of sex, rock and rap.
This kick-off addition of the
monthly column casts the spotlight on Turbonegro, a
tremendous group whose latest effort, a reunion album on
Epitaph called Scandinavian Leather, is among the best
albums these ears have heard in years and is a genre
defining/defying tour de force that revels in sex and
depravity. Various band members confess to being HUGE porn
fans, their songs reveal in violent sex and depravity, and
they flirt with gayness and sadomasochism.
Let the floodgates open...
Straight outta the streets of Oslo,
Norway, the home of black metal, church burning and a fiery
underground rock n' roll scenes, comes Turbonegro, a
sex-piece outfit that plays a merciless brand of punk rock as
fueled through heavy metal riffing, arena rock posing, glam
outing, goth nihilism and comic book cartoonishness. Not
since the Ramones or the Misfits has a band displayed such a
strong image, yet backed it up with such ferociously
fantastic music.
Lead by Lester
Bangs-by-way-of-Zodiac Mindwarp frontman Hank Von Helvete,
bassist Happy Tom, guitarists Rune Rebellion and Euroboy,
keyboardist Pâl Pot Pamparius, and drummer Chris
Summers, Turbonegro is maelstrom of sounds, sweat and images,
simultaneously sounding old school and new school fresh at
the same time.
Throughout the '90s the band
released a handful of indie albums (with 1997's
Asscobra and 1998's death-punk classsic Apocalypse
Dudes being the best), documenting their love for pizza,
hobbits, violence, Blazing Saddles, and gay sex before
breaking up because of "religious differences."
Yet even after they split, the
legend grew...
Cut to 2002, Apocalypse Dudes
has become an underground classic, Turbonegro: The
Movie helps spread the madness, and they even inspire a
tribute album feature heavyweights such as Queens of the
Stone Age, the Supersuckers, and Nashville Pussy. The band is
asked to headline some European summer festivals and,
amazingly, pull the rarely-seen feat of returning to the
stage ten times better than when they left. Word spreads and
the band is quickly snatch up by Epitaph Records to record a
new album, Scandinavian Leather, released this month. A fan
described it as "Exile on Mean Street," and he is not far off
the mark.
All the while, their massive fan
club, known officially as Turbojugend, swells, with
denim-clad fans roaming the alleys spreading the word
street-team-style and giving the KISS Army a run for their
money in terms of dedication and sheer costumery.
I recently had a chance to catch the
guys in action as they stormed the stage of Hollywood's
Troubadour, wrapping up the first leg of their first American
tour and using their daytime downtime to shoot their second
video. The first one, "Fuck the World," features the Romanian
National Ballet, while the new one, "Sell Your Body (To the
Night)," is directed by Spike Jonez (Being John
Malkovich) and features the band, the Jackass crew
and an army of denim-clad fans marching down the streets of
downtown as Hank walks a live grizzly bear. I was curious as
to what makes the Apocalyptic ones tick, the true natural of
their sexuality and what kind of role sex and porn play in
their music and lyrics.
AVN.com: There is so much sex and violence in Turbonegro's
music and lyrics, I wonder where it all comes from. What
drives this band sexually? What kind of porn do you
watch?
Happy Tom: Gonzo! My favorite is the king, Buttman. I don't
like that big budget stuff, Andrew Blake and Vivid. Too many
champagne glasses, vinyl, gloves, and all that shit. I like
it raw! The first Buttman video is a classic! I like the
democratization of gonzo because it's the POV of the
subjective camera, the viewer is the doer. It's like everyday
realism but with good-looking girls, and that's been really
healthy for porn. I'm not into the real extreme stuff
through, I like it when it's more subtle. There's a lot of
power in sexuality but you don't have to spell it out with a
flamethrower.
AVN.com: Who are your favorite porn stars?
Euroboy: There's so many porn heads in the band, but I'm not
one of them actually. If you really want the shit, you should
ask Tom.
Happy Tom: I used to like Trinity Loren a lot. As far as
current stars I like, Anna Malle is pretty cool, pretty wild.
Jenna Jameson of course. I've loved Raquel Welch when I was 6
years old. I've always been focused on that.
Hank Von Helvete: I used to watch a lot of porn but not so
much anymore. These days I like old, vintage '70s porn,
especially anything with Ron Jeremy and Sasha Gabor. Ron is
great because he proved that you don't have to be good
looking or in good shape to be a porn star, you just have to
get hard, stay hard and cum on call.
Chris Summers: I don't really watch porn. My girlfriend is
my own little porno star. I have sex all the time so it's
quantity and quality!
AVN.com: Have you ever met any of your porn idols?
Happy Tom: I used to work for a National Broadcasting
Company in Norway and we brought over Sasha Gabor. You know,
the Burt Reynolds look-alike? He's part Norwegian and lived
in Norway and we wanted to trace all these Norwegians who had
had a special life, special careers. We were all so excited.
We picked him up at the airport and took him to a café
and within like 20 minutes he had has cock out and was trying
to pick up girls and get them in a movie. It was so funny!
He's a fuckin' circus, a one-man show.
AVN.com: When did you lose your virginity?
Euroboy: I lost my virginity when I was 17. It was actually
during a Nirvana show at a festival in Holland. They were on
stage playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit."
AVN.com: Do you remember the first time you found a girlie
magazine?
Happy Tom: I had a brother who was five years older so it
goes without saying I found some stuff laying around and in
drawers. I was like, "This is great!"
Euroboy: When I was like six years old, me, my older brother
and his friend found a bunch of soggy old adult magazines in
a wooden cabin in the forest behind the railroad tracks. That
was the first time I saw cock sucking. I remember thinking,
"Why are they naked?"
AVN.com: Are you guys into porn magazines?
Hank: We read a lot of porn mags, rock biographies,
fanzines, and stuff to get our ideas and lyrics. We are
massive consumers of Anglo pop culture. You have to realize,
English is our second language so we pick up a lot of things
from reading and just talking to people. We try to write
lyrics in the rock n' roll language so the kids can get it
but we throw in little jokes and subversive ideas too. We
listen to lots of different styles of music and try to throw
it all into our sound. From punk (well, actually I don't
listen to much punk anymore) to metal to classic rock to
David Crosby!
AVN.com: You guys flirt with the gay lifestyle on your albums
yet seem quite heterosexual off stage. So, er, what is it? Do
you guys dig guys or girls?
Hank: We are not gay, but we like toying with it. We like
the aesthetics of being gay, but not the politics. So many
punks and metalheads dress gay, with their hair and clothes
and fashion, but then they act all homophobic. We are just
throwing it in their face. Hey you look gay anyways so why
are you so uptight about it? Rob Halford kinda brought the
whole leather thing into heavy metal so we're just doing that
with punk. We aren't really gay but we like that people might
think we are. And if it helps some gay kid come out of the
closet, then that's cool. Or if it helps some guy that hates
queer rethink his position, then that's great too. But we
make gay jokes and horse around, so we don't take it too
seriously.
Chris: We like playing games with our audience.
Hank: We've always done everything wrong. From our name, to
our image, to people thinking we're gay, to the music we
play.
AVN.com: Yet now you are having a major comeback. Why?
Hank: When we broke up it was due to my heroin addiction, I
need to get away and I went to some islands and really
thought about everything and realized how important this band
was to me. So when we came back I was very focused, all of us
were. We realized we were a better band and the time off had
actually made us bigger. We always though we were ahead of
our time, so coming back and having all this happen just
proved it. In RnR the rule is if you're gone longer than two
years it's over, people forget and move on. So when we came
back after four years and were even bigger it felt really
good. Like, ha, we knew along we were doing something
right!
Euroboy: When I joined Turbo I hated a lot of the scene they
came from, like the politically correct crusty punks living
together in squats with their dreadlocks and vegetarian food
and stupid tattoos and piercing. I hated it. The first shows
I did with Turbo a lot of the people in the front rows were
giving me the masturbation sign, "Oh, you fucking guitar
wanker," every time I went down on my knees and did my solo
bit. Five years later the same people are standing there
themselves with slick greasy hair and chain wallets going
"yeah, rock 'n' roll!" So I just think we were kind of
progressive, it was a reaction to grunge, indie, shoe-gazing.
AVN.com: So now that you guys getting big, has the groupie
scenes gotten any better? It seems to have dried up over the
last decade.
Euroboy: The groupie scene has changed quite a bit since we
broke up in '98. During those four years the band wasn't
together we became more aware of the qualities of Turbonegro.
We always loved bands that really had their own identity like
the Ramones or Misfits or Alice Cooper, almost bands that
have a cartoonish touch, you can call it formula bands. Then
we realized, hey Turbo is a classic band in that sense. So we
became more aware of that and when we got back together again
it's like there was no doubt anymore and we went all the way
and everything became much more playful with the audience. I
have no trouble stroking a girl's chin and take my thumb into
her mouth because it's part of the stage theatrics and we
approach being onstage much more as a performance now than we
did in '98. Then we were confused about should it be real or
not? Now we don't give a fuck, we just wanna amaze people.
That creates a certain affect on the audience as well. They
become more playful. I can ask a girl in front of the stage
to show her titties and she'll do it right away because it's
a very fun, playful atmosphere. It's like punk rock spring
break. But that would never have happened in the
mid-'90s.
Hank: We are bringing back something that many people feel
has been missing for twenty years, the theatrics, the posing,
the pomp, the fun, the humor, the whole show, the whole
package. We love guys like Bowie and Cooper and are just
brining back some of that showmanship and tongue in cheek
humor. I mean, who wants to get up on stage and look like
they do in real life. I'd rather look like a space alien...
(Mid-way through his sentence, we are interrupted by a roadie
who delivers Hank a bouquet of flowers and a love letter sent
by an adoring fan). We are bringing back groupies too...
AVN.com: Well, the last time the groupie scene was really
thriving was during the hair metal era of the '80s? Does that
make you the new wave of metal?
Euroboy: I don't think we're the new metal. We're more like
the new version of punk. The first wave of punk rock was
really into '50s rock n' roll and '60 garage rock. We pick up
from our own childhood influences, which are the classic rock
bands, but Turbo is ahead of the game. We'll always be a
little cooler than the rest of the sect.
So how does it feel after years of struggling in the
underground to finally be on your way up to the big leagues
here in America?
Euroboy: Of course it's very nice but, I know it's a
cliché, but the only thing that really matters is to
me is to make a good album. That's really satisfying and for
me is the most fun part. I enjoy making the albums more than
touring.
AVN.com: Well, you sure made a coupla great ones with
Apocalypse Dudes and Scandinavian Leather,
that's for damn sure.
Euroboy: When we made Dudes we went into the studio
with five songs to record an EP and it sounded really good.
Tom decided we should do an entire album, so we had to write
the rest in the studio. Then we kind of came up with the
Turbonegro sound as it is today. Half was through the
recording we broke the code and invented our own genre. We
went from Death Punk to what we call Rainbow Rock, because
it's a lot of raw energy, really hard, negative riffs
combined with sweet layer of vocals, catchy hooks, and pop
sensibility. There's some humor in there too but there's an
emotional, melancholic bottom line as well. I'm a bit of a
hippie, you know, so I love a little psychedelic too. That's
why we call it Rainbow Rock!
And with that, the band hit the stage
and unleashed their feverish brand of rainbow Rock on the
star struck crowd. Never have these eyes seen a reaction from
a Hollywood crowd like Turbonegro received at this show. The
normally reserved, jaded Tinseltown audience quite literally
lost their mind over the denim demons and received them like
the rock royalty they are surely soon to be. I have a feeling
in the near future, in hip clubs and high schools across the
globe, you're going to see a lot of kids with hungry eyes,
bulges in their denim jeans, and makeup on their twisted
faces stripping down to their Scandinavian Leather to give it
up for their heroes, the mighty men of Turbonegro.
Under the Rainbow, indeed!
Learn More about Turbonegro at these fine sites:
http://www.Turbojugend.net
http://home.t-online.de/home/trbarkiv/
http://www.burningheart.com/turbonegro/
www.turbonegro.com/
www.bitzcore.de/turbo/turbofra.htm
www.geocities.com/ultimatepage/turbonegro.htm
Watch the "Fuck The World" video here:
http://epitaph.com/videos/
To check out Frank's own brand of rock 'n' roll go to www.thestreetwalkincheetahs.com
Stay tuned next month for the next edition of Frankly Speaking: The Rock And Porn Connection or email Frank at [email protected].
