What do you hope to accomplish with your music?

I want to have ghosts pouring out of the ground, color blue, and—taking my guitar apart and wrapping the stringe around my body—set their coffins on fire, shoot Spam out of their eyeballs, and turn them into Star Wars action figures. Turning all the cars on the freeway into a giant ferris wheel. Stacking up all the microwaves in the city, and filling them up with Van Halen records, and then letting the melted vinyl pour onto my amplifier and suck all the music into it like a sponge . . . This is only my second interview.

Wow! It's my first. Your second interview ever?

Yeah. One other time, this guy did a story on me for the L.A. Weekly, but he just sorta hung out with me for a week, and he didn't really ask any questions, and just sorta wrote his own interpretation of me.

Hmm, that's weird. Well, I'm going to ask you questions, and then I'll write it just the way you say it, OK?

OK. You can take out all the "ums" and "uhs," though. I mean, so it hangs together and makes sense. That's your job, right?

Yeah, I guess so. I actually work at a Holiday Inn, but I can do that. So people compare you to a twisted Woody Guthrie on LSD. How do you feel about that?

I think I'm the Bon Jovi of the '60s.

Why did you take so long to sign with Geffen?

I didn't want a record deal. I didn't want things to get cheesy or homogenized. Not that they aren't already; they probably were to begin with, but I didn't want things to be turned into a joke. I didn't want things to be rearranged. I just wanted to speak my mind and not have it have to be in a way that people could sell it, ya know? I just wanted to do what I was doing, without having to cater to anything, and I wanted to be sure that that wouldn't happen, and I'm still not sure if it is going to happen. It's still really early, so who knows? . . .

How do you think people perceive you and your music?

It's a weird thing because I'm sure it seems flippant or whatever. But I'm just not getting into the narrow-minded head that you only play one thing and do one thing. I'm not going to restrain myself. If I need to pick up an electric guitar and play it with a steak knife, then I should do that. I don't have to put it out and make everybody hear it. I like to fool around a lot; otherwise, it gets too serious and too boring. Too predictable, too exciting, too original, too contrived, too concentric, too licentious.

You have a lot of major industry attention on you right now. How does that make you feel?

I fell like going backwards. Getting in the truck and going in reverse and going backwards across the state line. And I feel like a giant poodle with his hair puffing out and growing like a chia pet, and waiting for it to all be shaved off and stuffed into a pillow and put on a giant waterbed with the disco ball that hangs over and spins around and shoots speckled light, and peacocks come and peck at the waterbed until the water spurts out and the pillow soaks with water and molds on the carpet. . . .

What's the best thing about your success?

There are more forks. There are more plates. There are more things to cut with them. There is more food to burn. There is more . . . I'm losing my train of thought . . . there's more trains. There's more heartlessness. There more heartfulness. There's black comatose hearts and there's more foliage to reckon with in the landscape of pretentious croutons.

What are your favorite kinds of places to play?

The best places to play have waterfalls nearby and large straws that go into drinks that have fluids that will intensify your blood and turn it into smoke. I think that playing in places like that enables you to continue channeling the currents that keep you believing in lifefulness—disgusting and delicious, delusting.

What do you think of the LA music scene, especially newer bands like Ethyl Meatplow, Pop Defect, and that dog?

I think they're spurting and they're collating vast modules of comparative sonics. They're evaporatinng cloistered entities into fabulous pathetic siplock bags—erotic, sublime, whimsical. Stretching the fashion into steel-plated rakes. Raking the coals that have burned out years ago and smearing them on their nostrils and smelling the fumes.

Do you have a favorite current band in LA?

My favorite band is Black Fag. They're fronted by a vigilante 6'8" transvestite named Vaginal Cream Davis, and he's spewing the perfect language that will only be understood two years ago. He's scraping the slacker impressions off the cardboard faceless surgeons.

How do you write, and how do you come up with ideas for your songs?

I open up a big cabinet, and I have a collection of helmets, and I put on the different helmets, and I take three bottles of Robitussin, and I drink them really quickly, and then I set my hand on fire, and I have to write down on paper fast before my hand burns off whatever comes to mind.

Have you written poetry your whole life?

I wouldn't call it poetry. I would scribble down ideas from the time I was a little kid. I used to come home from school when I was about 7 or 8, and I had a spy character. I used to write little spy stories, novels, and I used to write these books after school, and I was mainly concerned with James Bond: the intrigues, and flame throwers, and gold-painted skinned ladies in casinos, helicopters, jeeps, golf carts, cocktails, and electric semi-automatic waterskis.

When did music come into it?

I picked up the guitar when I was 17. I had two strings on it; they were the highest one and the lowest one. But most of the music I played was in between, on the strings that weren't there.

Who are your main influences?

Step ladders, Woody Guthrie, Ozzy Osbourne, dollies, forklifts, Jaegermeister pie.

How did you hook up with (Nirvana manager) John Silva and Gold Mountain management?

I put on these really big silver boots, and I stood out on Silverlake Boulevard, and I set them on fire, and John came by, and he had some blankets, and he put out the fire and noticed how beautiful the boots were, even though they'd been burned. And he took me home and offered to clean the boots. And that's where it started.

Where are you from originally?

I'm kind of a mixed mongrel person, part Southern California, part Kansas, part Brooklyn, New York. A little bit of Woodenville, Washington. A little bit European. Spent time in all those places growing up.

Would you consider you or your music political?

I'd like it to be political, but politics doesn't allow flippancy and feathers and sexy death soda cans. So it's hard to reconcile that. Politics are too based on the cholesterol of kindness, and so it's hard to know what arena you're in. Hopefully, I'm in the arena that has to do with sound, and light bulbs, and confetti. Potato soup. Things that really matter.