Some bands are reluctant to reform because they're worried that the chemistry may not be there anymore. Others are concerned with integrity, anxious to avoid accusations that they're merely cynical money grabbers milking nostalgic fans for a little more moolah. But for Butthole Surfers, the reasons are rather different. As founder member Paul Leary told the Guardian's Daniel Dylan Wray, "[w]e're really lucky not to be in prison and I don't want to push that any more. I don't want to be sending a bandmate home in a body bag or for a venue to burn down".
It's not hyperbole, either - Butthole Surfers gigs were routinely raucous, dangerous affairs (though, admittedly, not by the time I saw them, at Reading '96, when they'd somehow become MTV palatable).
Wray's article - published to mark the release of a trio of reissues, reviewed here by Buzz's Adam Jones - gives a potted history of the band and their modus operandi, with contributions from Leary, drummer King Coffey and (to a lesser extent) frontman Gibby Haynes, who is now (it seems) suffering from the consequences of his druggy excesses. If it whets your appetite, then allow me to point you (not for the first time) in the direction of Michael Azerrad's superlative tome Our Band Could Be Your Life - the Butthole Surfers chapter therein is a riotously entertaining insight into the insanity of their world.
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