MALFATED QUOTES - PHILOSOPHY

Karl Steiger 25 May 2006

Ten questions with Malfated frontman Karl Steiger, in which he waxes lyrical over Ozzy Osbourne, abortion, the Eurovision Song Contest, ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, Jack Off Jill, Morrissey, Freddie Mercury’s ‘tache, Sean Connery’s arse, and Bratz dolls...

the last... time someone tried to kill you?

Wow, what a great opening question [laughs]. Hmm... okay, well, I nearly died in hospital a year or so back, I stopped breathing and I turned grey, but I’m presuming it was more negligence than attempted murder, so... I guess the last time I’m aware of someone actually taking steps to end my life was when I was in the womb. My dad’s mother offered my mum a substantial amount of money to get me aborted. Although I was close to my grandmother in the years leading up to her death, and I know she loved me, she wasn’t very happy upon hearing that my mother was expecting her son’s child. She’d paid off everyone else my father had got pregnant, either for them to abort the fetus or to leave the country and never come back, but fortunately my mum was having none of it. So here I am today. Good, eh? Suicide would be a dirty stain on my mother’s blouse, so I shall be around for a while. Better get used to it. Hold on, what’s that Alice Cooper lyric? [Thinks for a bit while drinking.] “You’re something that never should have happened - you even make your grandma sick...”

the last... time you watched television?

I rarely watch anything on the telly nowadays to be honest , aside from watching the news at some point to see what’s going on, because mostly everything on television is shit, and I always forget about anything I do want to watch until about ten minutes after it has finished. I did watch the Eurovision Song Contest last night though, when Lordi won. A great moment, and their inclusion was the only reason I tuned in as it’s always been shit you know? But Lordi, they’re a great, fun band, and thank god they won. Everyone else that competed was shit obviously, and the guy who represented Britain, some middle-aged white bloke with a cheesy grin, rapping in a shit way to a shit tune about how he hates fucking school for fuck’s sake. That guy needs to be shot as a deserter – or, better yet, taken out to Traitor’s Gate to have his head lopped off. His name was Daz I think, and anyone named after a detergent sucks from the outset, you know what I mean? What a fucking bastard. Britain has always made some of the best music in the world, and yet those in charge always enter bland, talentless cunts who think they’re fucking great with every chance of winning. Then they end up getting beat by, I dunno, some bloke on a fucking mandolin from Lithuania singing a song in his native tongue about goats or something. And this show has a combined audience of like a billion people! It’s really quite beyond me.

the last... song that reminded you of somebody you know?

‘Last Of The Famous International Playboys’ by Morrissey. It reminds me of ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser, who lives up the road from me. If you don’t know who he is, he’s a pretty famous gangster who used to work for the Richardsons, rivals to the Kray twins who Morrissey name checks in the song, and he used to go around doing shit like pulling guys teeth out with pliers until they talked. He’s always walking around looking pretty sharp in a well-tailored suit, he’s very well mannered and quite charismatic. He’s very short, and pretty old now, but he still looks like the type of guy you really don’t want to fuck with. It’s not often one gets to share company with someone who’s murdered more people than Ted Bundy, you know what I mean? Plus, Frank really is the last of his kind - all those old school gangsters are dead, but Frank trots on, despite getting shot point blank in the head in the early nineties. You wouldn’t know to meet him that a bullet has pierced his brain. His books are pretty good too, well worth checking out. Unless he’s the bloke who murdered your granddad, I guess.

the last... time somebody told you to cut your hair?

Ah, that old chestnut - as old as time, and always a winner. [Laughs] The last time would be quite recently, actually - about a month ago. I was visiting a friend of mine in Leicester, and she’s bang into cricket, right? Now I don’t really like cricket myself, I’m not a sporty person, but I went along to her local cricket club because she scores for them, and I basically spent all my time in the bar, writing lyrics for a new song I’m working on, which, may I humbly say, is a masterpiece. Anyway, at one point I went to the toilets, and it’s a really tiny room with one cubical and two urinals. Two guys are having a piss, and the cubical is otherwise engaged, so I’m standing there waiting my turn, and these two guys are chatting about some really depressing matter or other, one of them telling his friend heartfelt tales of how he doesn’t talk his son anymore. Then they turn to leave, and the guy who’d been telling his mate about his son sees me, and his face lights into a big grin, and he says, “You need to cut your hair, mate”. I immediately retort with a “no I don’t”, when he says something bizarre to me. He asked me if I know Freddie Mercury. “Yeah,” I respond, “didn’t he have short hair and a ‘tache?” which makes him laugh hysterically, pat me on the shoulder with a grin, point at me and say “I like you!” So, yes, that would be the last time that somebody took it upon themselves to suggest I should cut my hair. A word to the wise, though – don’t go around mentioning Freddie Mercury to strangers in a public convenience. Unless you want your arse kicked or fucked.

the last... boring anecdote you were forced to endure?

I’m not really sure but, let’s face it, it was probably one of Ozzy Osbourne’s. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a likeable and witty guy, and I love his music a great deal, but how many times am I expected to listen to the Alamo story, the dove story, or the bat story, before my head spontaneously explodes like that dude in Scanners? For a guy who’s been around as long as he has, done as many crazy things as he has, and met as many interesting people as he has, you’d think he wouldn’t have to palm the same fucking three stories off on us for forty years. Answering questions from journalists that are brought up in interviews are one thing, and I mean like someone asking someone if their mega-famous band will ever reform, but bringing the same story up of your own accord in every single interview you do is another thing. I mean, think about it – he was telling these stories before I was even born! Is there anyone who hasn’t already heard these anecdotes over and over? Not only that, but these stories have been printed in just about every publication known to man at one point or another. Even kids in Africa who’ve never heard of Elvis Presley have probably heard him tell you that he bit a bat’s head off. Plus, he always laughs when he tells the stories, like he still thinks they’re hilarious, which kind of grates with me more and more with each retelling, and, god, how can someone laugh at their own story when they’ve already told it about 50,000 times? It’s like some bloke winking at himself in the mirror with a knowing nod and a twinkle in his eye as he jerks off. Actually, I did read in the paper the other day that he said something different. He was talking about meeting the Queen and said that she was “lovely”. So I guess a knighthood will happen at some point like it did for people like Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney, and he’ll have four stories. Kind of funny, though, the idea of someone getting a knighthood for pissing on the Alamo.

the last... album you listened to that you hadn’t heard in years?

Probably ‘Clear Hearts Grey Flowers’ by Jack Off Jill. I was listening to it on my daughter’s seventh birthday after the kids had gone to bed, because I’d recommended the band to a friend who hadn’t heard of them, so I put the CD on. It’s a great CD, their “masterpiece” as Jack Off Jill call it. The opening track, ‘When I Am Queen’, sounds too much like Marilyn Manson musically for my liking, which they did have a tendency to do – the best example would be to listen to ‘Cake And Sodomy’ by Marilyn Manson and ‘My Cat’ back to back. I enjoy Marilyn Manson, but if I want to hear Manson then I’ll listen to Manson, not someone ripping him off you know? But songs like ‘Strawberry Gashes’, ‘Vivica’ and ‘Rabbiteen’ are amazing, very sexy, very beautiful and striking, and really don’t sound like anyone else. At their best, Jack Off Jill were a really wonderful band. I would have enjoyed seeing what they did next, had they continued. I think it would be fun to work with Jessicka at some point – I’m not sure if that will ever happen, but I think something awesome and memorable would come out of it. But, yeah, I hadn’t listened to them in like maybe a year or so, so it was nice going back there, it really is a class album. Actually [laughs], my mother, who’s getting on in years having had me late in life, saw the CD cover and asked, “What’s that? A ‘Bratz’ CD?” which I thought was kind of funny. Well, it was a kid’s party, so a fair assumption I guess [laughs].

the last... thing that scared you?

I’d say it was a documentary I watched a week or so ago. I can’t remember the title, but it was something along the lines of ‘The Man Who Killed John Lennon’, and it was all about Mark Chapman’s life all the way up to his incarceration. On one hand, I’ve been a Lennon fan since I was a kid, so I found it upsetting to watch. Yet, on the other hand, I’m a musician. Not just a musician, but the ‘face’, if you like, of The Malfated, and the guy who writes the songs. If any nutcase had a grievance with the lyrics I’m the guy he’s liable to come after, and it could be something I’d written twenty years beforehand and forgot all about. But you can’t let bullies stop you writing what needs to be written, and all the things worth saying are things that are going to aggravate some people, you know? But at least I’ve got my integrity. Chapman has used different shit reasons as to why Lennon had to die, anything from when Lennon said flippantly that he was “bigger than Jesus” to the lyrics to ‘I Am The Walrus’, which remains my favorite song of all time. He compared a picture of John Lennon in 1967, aged 27, which is my age now, to a picture of John Lennon aged 40, and decided that the reason for the difference in looks wasn’t that Lennon had got old, but that Lennon was a “phoney”. So an absolute worthless nobody judged that Lennon should die. But anyway, okay, I could go on about the Chapman thing all day, and I’d have no qualms in killing the man myself if our paths crossed, but what really gave me the creeps was stuff like him signing out of his hotel as “John Lennon” before killing him, and hiding outside his house and stuff, and just the whole way it happened. It scares the shit out of me that something like that could happen to me one day. The scariest thing of all, though, was when the documentary showed a photograph of a Bible that Chapman left open in the hotel room he’d stayed at. It was open at ‘The Gospel Of St. John’, and he’d written the name ‘Lennon’ next to it, and then gone out and murdered John Lennon. Seeing that sent a chill up and down my spine. I mean, when terrible, terrible things like this happen to the people I look up to, what fucking hope have I got? It’s real scary, man. Saying that, ‘regular’ people get knocked off all the time, and I’d rather be remembered as someone who created important things that inspired others, you know what I mean? Something that will live on when I’m gone. If I spent all my time worrying about what other people might say or do in response I’d never get anything done.

the last... thing that got on your nerves?

Well I was making some banners for malfated.com earlier and my mouse was fucking up, I couldn’t get the cursor to move where I wanted it, and some times it wouldn’t move at all; one minute it was in a coma, the next minute it’s on the other side of the screen like it went through a worm hole. I felt like Michael J. Fox trying to have a wank. [Laughs] Seriously, it was horrendous, and my arm hurt like a bastard after hours of dealing with it. I tried to clean it, but the thing that holds the little ball inside wouldn’t fucking open.

the last... time you heard someone murder a classic song?

I was at a friend’s place the other day and she’d popped out, so, bored, I opened up Soulseek on her computer and started downloading random crap. It was then, to my horror, that I downloaded and heard the TaTu cover of ‘How Soon Is Now?’ by The Smiths. I’m rarely shocked, but…. My oh my. It sounds like a Cheeky Girls song sung in the wrong key. Where’s Mark Chapman when he’s actually needed? The Afghan Whigs version of that song is pretty fucking abysmal as well.

the last... time you felt a celebrity was being hypocritical?

Well that would have to be Sean Connery. I’ve been a pretty big James Bond fan since I was a little kid, and the child within me is obsessively looking forward to the new Daniel Craig ‘Bond’ movie, but let’s face it, Sean Connery has always acted like a bit of a prick in real life. The man moans in every interview that Scotland should be independent from the rest of Britain, yet says he has no intention of ever living there. He’s telling Scottish people how they should live their lives, lecturing people who don’t have his millions on how they shouldn’t be united with England and Wales and Northern Ireland - he’s very much one of those ‘do as I say, but not as I do’ sort of characters, and I can’t stand people like that. We’re all guilty of doing it in small ways from time to time, but Sean Connery lives and breathes that kind of attitude 24/7. He certainly had no qualms about accepting a knighthood from the Queen of England, which presumably a Scotsman wouldn’t be able to do if Connery had his way. It’s like that movie he did, ‘Highlander’ - “there can only be one!” [Laughs.] I love a lot of the film work he’s done, but as a person he gets on my nerves. The man’s got ‘Scotland Forever’ tattooed on his bum or wherever it is and he lives in an expensive villa in Spain, playing golf. That, my friends, is a fucking hypocrite.

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