Interview: Pigface
It's great to go and look back at this period, because it was so intensely creative. When Pigface started, I was in Killing Joke, and on tour with Ministry.
Martin Atkins has had a storied musical career in which he has played drums with Public Image Ltd, Killing Joke, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and more. As well as these legendary artists, he has led industrial supergroup Pigface since their inception, and the list of collaborators the band has had is far too many to name, one though was with Throbbing Gristle/Psychic TV ‘s Genesis P-Orridge on Howler – An English Breakfast, which has just recently been re-released. Gavin Brown had the pleasure of talking to Martin about this collaboration as well as delving into his fascinating musical history and getting the lowdown on his Museum Of Post Punk and Industrial Music in Chicago.
E&D: Howler – An English Breakfast, the Pigface album you did with Genesis P Orridge has been re-released. Can you tell us about the album?
Martin: It was originally released as part of a double album with Pigface. I’ve had my museum for five years now, and as we go through the archives and find things, these are different mixes, and it just seemed like it should be like a standalone piece. It’s such a wild example of Genesis’ creativity and their effect on Pigface, that I just thought it should stand on its own.
E&D: What was it like for you musically at that time?
Martin: The first years of Pigface were pretty crazy, five or six albums, lots of tours, we all might have had 150 members at that point. It’s about 800 now! It’s great to go and look back at this period, because it was so intensely creative. When Pigface started, I was in Killing Joke, and on tour with Ministry, so you had Ministry themselves, then Revolting Cocks led into 1000 Homo DJs, Pailhead, everybody is working on all of these projects all the time, so it’s a kind of waving a flag from this insane period of creativity for all of us.
E&D: How does it feel looking back on that time 30 years on?
Martin: Over the last couple of years, I put a band together, which sounds frivolous but It was actually a lot of work. It was me, Randy from Lamb of God, Mark Gemini Thwaite from The Mission and Justin Pearson from The Locust, to celebrate the Killing Joke Extremities, Dirt, and Various Repressed Emotions album. Then I put a different band together to celebrate PIL’s Flowers of Romance, 35 and 45 years old, respectively, so to get to look at all of this stuff, to go through the songs and immerse myself in those feelings and memories, it’s been pretty special and luxurious on the one hand to get to reflect and think about that creativity as I move forward, and still being creative, but also sad and emotional, and inspiring to keep going, because a few of us don’t have the ability to keep going, so many of us are not around anymore. Raven, and Genesis themselves.
E&D: How was the experience of working on the project with Genesis, and is it something someone you’d wanted to work on for a while at that time?
Martin: It was an accident, have to say. I think I was at the Skinny Puppy house in Malibu, Rick Rubin’s house, Shangri-La, working on the Process album. I’d actually gone over to take a break from Skinny Puppy to visit with Trent, who was at the Sharon Tate house, one nightmare to another, working on The Downward Spiral but Trent wasn’t there. Genesis was there with Dr. Timothy Leary though, and next thing you know, Genesis is involved with turning Pigface songs inside out, improvised at another level, and then we released six or seven Psychic TV albums that had been released, and then we started to collaborate with Gen. The whole idea of Pigface is every show is different with the lineup and the songs, so it was wildly different. My first shows with PIL, we didn’t rehearse, so it wasn’t alien, but it was 10 times crazier than improvisations I’d experienced in the past, and in retrospect, I had my ups and downs with Gen, but these people are exceedingly rare, and I think that’s another reason I wanted to not sandwich this part of a Pigface album, but separate it out. Here’s this moment in time, not just memorialising Gen’s contribution, but memorialising this way of working and organic dub mixing, which I don’t know that exists much anymore.
E&D: Wth the subtitle of the album being called An English breakfast, what is your English breakfast of choice, and is it difficult to get a good one in America?
Martin: There’s a pub up the street from us, 18th and Holston, in Chicago and it’s called the Pleasant House Pub. I was out on tour and my wife called me, maybe 10 years ago you’ll never guess, a pie shop has opened up. I’m like, “Oh, fucking hell, this is gonna be absolute bullshit, horrifying, embarrassing. She’s like, “No, no, the pies are really good. The first time I was in there, I was standing in line, I get a tap on the shoulder. It’s Jon Langford from The Mekons! They do an English breakfast, which is decent. There’s a few English breakfasts in Chicago that are okay, but more so now I’m happy to put the football, on and I can watch football from like nine in the morning so I tend to cook my own English breakfast these days.
E&D: Going back to Pigface, what have you got planned for the future?
Martin: It’s the 35th anniversary of Pigface this year. Interesting people of substance are reaching out to me. Look, are we doing something? What’s good? I don’t know. We might do something. It’s not simple anymore to just pick up some sticks and play, but I’m in drumming shape now, so we might do something towards the end of the year.
E&D: Was Pigface always meant to have as many members as possible, and just doing something different each time?
Martin: Yeah, because I think I’m always trying to look at everything that I can do for a situation, what can I bring to this equation that somebody else can’t, right? So with Pigface, I think initially it was like, what risks can I take because I’m in a position through hard work and luck and circumstance that we can have a really shitty Pigface gig, and it’s not the end of my career. I still did all this other stuff, so how can I use everything to do something different moving forwards? And I think that was part of Pigface. I don’t think we intended it to be 800 people, and people playing bagpipes and harp and cello, and a guy with a shopping cart, but it just happened to. We’re just open to stuff, and the more open you are, the more interesting it gets, I think.
E&D: Wave been some of the highlights of your time in Pigface in that 35 years, and does it seem that long?
Martin: No, it doesn’t, but that’s just old age, It’s easy to say Trent Reznor singing in the studio on ‘Suck’. Steve Albini turned around to me in the studio and said we could save $160 working on this album right now. I’m like, how are we going to do that, Steve? Because we were flat broke. He’s like, well, this kid from Cleveland is going to play keyboards. I’m a keyboard player, we don’t have to fly this kid out. He said it’s Trent Reznor, he’s my friend. I think he might sing on a song. There was a time when Trent’s involvement, other than our personal friendship, had no meaning at all to the outcome. Of course, it’s different now, so it’d be easy to say, “Oh, playing with Trent Reznor or Danny Carey from Tool. When Danny came out with us originally in 94 on the Lowest Of The Low tour, Tool were bubbling but they weren’t what they became and Danny was insane, the most insane drummer, just to look to my right and see fucking Danny Carey, in a club that holds 450 people playing drums with Pigface, that was pretty wild. Randy Blythe from Lamb of God, holy shit! Lots of moments like the bagpipes, the harp and cello in Baton Rouge, Louisiana was just magical. I don’t know how many times I’ve been in a room with a harp, but it’s sparkling and interesting and different, and that’s what Pigface wanted to be, and I think our fans were surprised, and I kind of hammed it up a bit, you know, a little bit pantomime. Are you ready for industrial music?! And you pull back the screens, and it’s harp and cello to begin with, just to punch people in the face and confuse their expectations!
E&D: You mentioned earlier about the Museum of Post Punk and Industrial in Chicago. Can you tell us about that and your involvement in it?
Martin: I have this funeral home, and I was down in the basement, where my studio is, and I started to do zooms during the pandemic and we did a Killing Joke zoom, a Pigface zoom, a Ministry zoom, all these different zooms, and I think, in a way, the basement became a kind of a pop-up of the potential museum, and it made me think, we’d have 180-200 people on these Zooms, because everybody was losing their minds during the pandemic, and I just thought this could be something. I didn’t think for a second that the museum would be so interesting, and forward thinking. I think everyone would think this is going to be a nostalgia trip looking backwards, but what happened was things started to be donated to the museum, some things that were in my possession 50 years ago that came back to me, and then we started to rehearse at the museum, so then my drum kit started to be used instead of being an object, and I used other people sit behind the kit and have that experience, the bass rig that was Paul Ravens, and then Charles Levi’s. Jah Wobble was there. He played through the bass rig. Justin from the Locust was there doing the Extremeties project, he played through the bass rig. Suddenly things started to come alive, and then everybody asked me about the studio, and I hadn’t spent much time in the studio for 16 years, so I’m like, I’d be silly not to open up the studio for interested people to look at it, but then it’s like, well, what are we going to play? So we found unreleased Skinny Puppy, so much unreleased PIL, Killing Joke demos, so much unreleased stuff, it starts to become a thing. I just found unreleased Damage Manual last week from before Chris Connelly joined. At the same time I’m spending time in the studio and getting more familiar with that part of my past and thinking about doing more studio stuff in the future. It’s been really wild.
E&D: So, is it more of an immersive experience as well?
Martin: Yeah, and here’s a really wild thing. I would have said it’s going to be older and older people coming, bumbling around with bad memories, me included, but it’s actually younger and younger people. It’s really strange and very surprising, young people who weren’t born, never mind PIL or Killing Joke, who were born when Pretty Hate Machine came out! Like, what the hell?! But they’re so into this music, but also so knowledgeable, that they’re finishing some of my sentences, telling me bits and pieces of information. Like, holy shit, it’s kind of weird, and I’m no longer surprised when two kids come in with an older person. I used to think this is the dad, he’s going to love this. The kids are going to be bored. The dad’s going to want to stay for hours, and it’s the other way around. The kids have dragged their dad. It’s just joyful. People are coming in from all over the world. I give guided tours. The questions are always different and interesting, and then we get to sit and listen to some of this music, and people smile and laugh and cry. It’s just been wild.
E&D: Can you tell us a bit about your time with Public Image Ltd?
Martin: I think I was in PIL for the good years. 1979 to 85. I love what Jim Walker did, and the five other drummers before me, I joined just in time to contribute one song, the first take of a song I helped co-write, called ‘Bad Baby’. My first gig was the live album Paris au Peintemps, then I came to America with them, then I was fired, and they asked me to work on what became Flowers of Romance, and then Live in Tokyo. This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get too. I mean, it was pretty wild as a 20 year old to do all of that with John. He was very different back then, I think, in himself and also everyone’s view of John. People would walk into walls and pillars at airports, like that’s John you know, he was more dangerous, more charismatic, more interesting, and it was wild to be in that band. To play to 10,000 people in Los Angeles with riot police on horseback, just as punk was exploding in California. He’s wild. I quit the band eventually, but I don’t regret any of my time in it. And some of that music.. holy shit, I just saw last week, Chris Connolly sent me an email with a new TV series called Half Man from the guy who did Baby Reindeer. They used to track ‘The Order Of Death’ off of This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get. Some of this music won’t quit
E&D: Was being in Ministry as wild as it’s made out to be?
Martin: So, for me to say it was wild, I spent five years with John Lydon and Levene and Jah Wobble, and when I was in Ministry, I was still in Killing Joke, so there’s Jaz and Raven. I’d experienced some crazy shit. That tour was insane. It coincided with the rise of industrial metal in the States. The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste album. Somebody just sent me a two inch tape of an unreleased song with me and Bill Rieflin from those 1989 sessions, I’d forgotten I was involved in that. What a time! If you could pick any time to be involved in Ministry, I think that was it. Pigface grew out of that. My relationship with Ogre, my involvement with the Skinny Puppy album, and the album I made with Olga, Rx, lots of stuff grew out of that Ministry tour. It was one of the reasons I moved to Chicago, and I’m still in Chicago, and I love Chicago. So, yeah, it was crazy. The songs were faster than you would believe. The shows were more violent and intense and imaginative and wonderful. Yeah, it was a wild time for industrial music.
E&D: Do you look on your time with Killing Joke with great fondness as well?
Martin: Sometimes. I think I’ve described the Extremities album as a knife fight, and how I was at that time, was like this: clenched fists. Derek Smith, a photographer, took a picture of me for Extremities, and I’ve got my hands taped up from drumming and punching my glass mirrorball. My hands are all taped up, and that’s what it felt like, and I don’t mean this to sound egotistical or bullshitty, I felt like. I was almost defending Killing Joke from Jaz, and it sounds ridiculous, because he started the band, but at that time Jazhad just made Outside the Gate and was was coming up with some ballads and sending them to me and Geordie, like, here we go, here’s a new song, and I’m like, no, it’s not a new song, we’re not doing this song, you know. And that direction was where Raven left, that’s why Paul Ferguson left, so redoing Extremities, the homage to Extremities last year, I got to sit and listen to these songs and appreciate what Jaz did, I certainly appreciate what Raven and Jordan and John Bechdel did, and relax a little bit, and enjoy it a little bit, but at the time it was like Ministry had been so inspired by Killing Joke that I felt it was important for them not to be anywhere near Jaz on the piano singing a Billy Joel ballad. I just thought it would take away from everything, so I think Geordie was of the same mind. I’m really proud of that album, and I absolutely fucking love Killing Joke. I’ve loved playing all of those early songs that Big Paul played on before me. I mean, oh my god, we opened for The Pixies in Europe, ‘Change’, ‘Wardance’, ‘Love Like Blood’, ‘Eighties’, ‘Kings And Queens’, ‘Night Time’, Pssyche’. What an insane set list! I loved it.
E&D: Do you feel blessed looking back on all the amazing bands you’ve been in, the albums you’ve made and the tours you’ve done?
Martin: Yes, of course, but also I work my fucking ass off. I think about it. It took me a while to get into PIL. I was almost stalking Jeanette Lee and the people at Virgin Records! It took a while for me to join Killing Joke. I had to get on a plane living in New Jersey. I just got married to my first wife, and the state of my immigration was such that if things hadn’t worked out with Killing Joke, I could have been trapped in FBI Scotland Yard paperwork. They have to do background checks, and it takes time. Once you’ve filed the paperwork, you can leave, but then you can’t come casually come back into the States, because you have to say, have you applied for a permanent status. So I could have been trapped in England for a year. I guess some people would say hold on a minute, I’m not going to risk it, but Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I got on a plane and made that happen. So there have been times when I’ve taken some risks, and those risks have paid off. So I just say that, just in case anyone’s out there. Oh, I wish I was blessed, you know? I broke my ass off to make this happen, I have my own label, my own studio that I put together. I taught myself to engineer. I’ve been teaching for 25 years now, and making a go of 10 things at the same time. You know, it’s not simple to start a museum. It’s been five years that so many times I’m like, okay, this weekend this is it, we’ll just do this thing, we’ll make pancakes for people, and we’ll just have a big blow out, we’ll say we did it, and then during that risky pancake weekend, so many people would come by and donate amazing items and have great conversation. I’ve said I’ll keep this going for another couple of months, and in that next couple of months, a guy I sold the earliest Nine Inch Nails demos that we know of, November 1986, Trent gave me that cassette at a birthday party in Cleveland. He played horns with my band Brian Brain, and then the next day there was a party, and I sold that cassette in 2010 for $1,400 and this guy called me up a couple of years ago, said, “Are you interested in this tape?” It seems to me it belongs to the museum, any day of the week, that’s a $15,000 cassette. And he just sent it back to me. So when people do things like that, you’re walking on air. So these five years have not been easy, but here we are. There’s a museum, and people are coming in from all over the world to see it, and it’s been really wonderful. So, yes, I feel blessed, but I’ve also worked my ass off for that. I try and tell my students that I’m trying to concentrate on this one thing, but I’ve got 10 jobs, that’s my reality. So, if you want to be a drummer, that’s great. I’m a drummer, of repute, you know, but I do a bunch of other things so that I can drum when I want to, not because I have to.
