Part Six: GG Allin On Being On the Road

Interviewer's words are in boldface; GG's words are in regular text
--------------------------------

I saw you a couple years ago in San Francisco. And just a normal GG Allin show is pretty intense.

Well, they're very... they're all intense. I mean, I thought that Frisco show was pretty intense, too, considering that most people just go to see the shows, and don't realize that what goes on before the shows and after the shows are actually more intense than the shows themselves. The shows, as intense as they are, are nothing compared to the lifestyle.

It's almost like... we rehearsed the day of the gig. We tried to get... the Drug Whores were a band that I could not get together with, because everybody in the band was a junkie, and at that point I was. And we tried to get rehearsals together, and every time we'd go to a rehearsal, nobody would show up. And then, if they showed up, I wouldn't show up. So, I mean... I spent that whole two weeks in San Francisco just flyin', high out of my mind. So when we did the show, we rehearsed it... it went well, because the band was just... everybody was in their own frame of mind, and just did what they did, and it went well.

But after the show was... you know, I got blood poisoning and went to the hospital. And I'm just... I'm staying with this girl, and I didn't even realize I had blood poisoning. I had slept with these three girls that night in a bed. And I woke up in the morning, and I woke up, and I looked, and there's blood all over the bed. I mean, there's blood everywhere. The girls are waking up, like, "what's going on?" "There's, like, blood all over the sheets!" I got up, I looked at my foot. It was swollen. I couldn't put my boot on. I didn't think nothin' of it. Got high. We smoked two joints. Shot some coke, some speed. And that night, I was sitting there on a couch, and I had this blanket wrapped around me. There's, like, all these people sitting in a room. And I'm just like, sitting, shaking. And I didn't even know what the hell was wrong with me. I'm just, you know, shaking... I thought maybe it was the drugs kicking in.

The next day I woke up, and I'm drooling on myself. And I was limping, fuckin' falling all over... "shit, I've got to go to the hospital." And I tried to get back to Chicago, and I just barely made it. The doctor said if I'd have been three or four days longer, man, I could have died. Temperature's to a hundred and... fever... I mean, that's a common thing. I mean, that's happened to me so many times. It's just one in a million.

So, I mean, the before and after of shows, rehearsing with the bands, and... or trying to rehearse with the band, and trying to deal with places to... it's not like, "okay, we're gonna do a show, we're gonna go to a Holiday Inn, we're gonna have a nice place to sleep, we're gonna have a sound check, we're gonna... everything is gonna be set up, we've got food platters". It's like, "where are we gonna stay? Shit, are we gonna... we've got to break into a place tonight? Where are we gonna stay? When are we gonna rehearse? What band are we gonna use?" You know, that's why when people come to see me, if my band sucks, and... you know, fuck it. It's like, who cares? "Man, we've been though so much shit just to get here, you're lucky we even made it". I mean, it's not like... "So what if we suck? We're here." You know. "Be thankful."

So, it was really tough, you know, going around the country in a little Toyota, freezing to death. No heat, no brakes. You know, seven people riding around with equipment stacked on each other. Taking shifts in the front. We virtually broke into apartments and places to stay. Stealing shit. We stole a PA one time in Connecticut and sold it for 100 bucks. You know, out of this club. The guy let us stay there, and at night we packed the shit in the back, and just took off! Like, "give us 100 bucks, it's yours"! Yeah, we're never gonna play there again. [laughs]

But that's how we toured. It was just, anything but a normal tour. I mean, most people would just not want to do that. It would be like, "we're not making money and we're not eating". And, you know, it's like GG Allin is the basic training for rock 'n' roll. You know, I've played with 'em all. Kramer, Thurston Moore, all these motherfuckers, you know. I've played with 'em all.

Who are some of your other idols, or interesting people?

I don't have any idols anymore. I know I'm the guy. I'm that guy. I'm the one, you know? Nobody's gonna do what I do, so I mean, I don't have to idolize anybody.

I mean, people that I used to idolize, I look down on now. It's like... I mean, they stopped; they're not doing shit. You know, I thought the Dead Boys were great in their prime, and they gave up. And Johnny Thunders was cool, and he got really pathetic at the end. And, like... all these great people that just should have kept going. You know, fuck it, keep going! So what if you're a junkie, you're getting high? You can still keep going. You know, I do. You can't stop at one album and try to live off that forever, you know. And a lot of those bands, that's what they do.

It's like, man... my albums get more intense as I put 'em out, all the time. So I can't... I can't really have any... I don't have any idols. I don't really respect anybody at all, man. Especially bands today. It's just... real lame.