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Butthole Surfers concerts are the stuff of legend: debauched, excessive, and with an element of physical danger. And it’s for that very reason that the avant-rock legends are refusing to reunite.

In a new interview with The Guardian, original members Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary discussed the current state of the band, which is currently in the midst of a major vinyl reissue campaign.

With Butthole Surfers LPs back in print for the first time in years, now is a perfect time for the band to return to the stage. However, Haynes and Leary are hesitant to re-open that door considering the inherent risks involved.

“We’re not as good as we could be today, and that’s because I lost my shit,” admitted Haynes, whose on-stage episodes are well documented. “I did too many drugs. I totally screwed up the deal. It’s my bad. It’s on me.

"Everything will happen." Utopia has revealed the trailer for an indie gem from Cannes this year called The Sweet East, the new film from indie cinematographer / filmmaker Sean Price Williams. It premiered in the Directors' Fortnight at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, then went on to play at the Karlovy Vary, Melbourne, London, New York, Ghent, and Philadelphia Film Festivals this year. Here's the intro: "The mental, social & political disarray of the United States, filmed like a game of hopscotch or a variation on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. High school student Lillian runs away on a school trip and, through a series of encounters, traverses the spectrum of contemporary radicalism & madness, from white supremacists to Islamic radicals, from neo-punks to woke avant-gardists." Talia Ryder stars as Lillian, with an eccentric ensemble cast featuring Earl Cave, Simon Rex, Ayo Edebiri, Jeremy O. Harris, Jacob Elordi, Rish Shah, Gibby Haynes, and Jack Irv.

There’s nothing as sweet as discovering the inner cults behind modern America. Or so it seems to acclaimed cinematographer Sean Price Williams, who makes his directorial debut with twisted coming-of-age dramedy “The Sweet East” that stars a who’s who of millennial–Gen Z talent.

Written by Nick Pinkerton, “The Sweet East” follows a high school senior Lillian (Talia Ryder) who hails from South Carolina and gets her first glimpse of the wider world on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Separated from her schoolmates, she embarks on a fractured road trip in search of America. Along the way, she falls in with a variety of strange factions, each living out their own alternative realities in our present day.

Jacob Elordi, Jeremy O. Harris, Ayo Edebiri, Simon Rex, Early Cave, Rish Shah, and Gibby Haynes also star as the outrageous characters Lillian meets along the way home.

Featuring...

In The Sweet East, a high school senior take a journey through fame, exploitation, and Delaware. Working from a script co-written with the influential critic Nick Pinkerton, Sean Price Williams’ punky directorial debut boasts both the cinematographer’s signature aesthetic and Pinkerton’s idiosyncratic, roguish worldview. Premiering this week in Directors’ Fortnight, The Sweet East––seemingly taking cues from John Waters––is cinema at its most playfully facetious, infectiously puerile, and flagrantly transgressive, and an early highlight of a Cannes Film Festival that, near its midway point, has been somewhat short on provocation.

The Sweet East stars a brilliant Talia Ryder as the Californian Alice in Williams and Pinkerton’s dirty East Coast Wonderland. In her first lead role since breaking out in Never Rarely Sometimes Always, she plays Lillian (one of many nods to D.W. Griffith), a faux-ingénue with a knack for ending up in dicey situations and an...

Jared Leto has been keeping busy. As the vampire superhero star of Morbius, he recently treated an unsuspecting and undeserving world to a ready-made cult classic – a movie so awful yet so addictive it forced us to consider whether “terrible” and “genius” might not be the same thing. But the 50-year-old Oscar winner is merely getting started. He recently revealed to Kerrang! that during lockdown he turned his attention back to his rock band, Thirty Seconds to Mars.

“I wrote about 200 songs,” he said. “And we have maybe two albums, maybe three, worth of material. We’re going to start putting it out momentarily.”

Three new Thirty Seconds to Mars albums? Two hundred songs? Forget the climate crisis or runaway inflation. Here is the nightmare we never saw coming. Because while Leto is one of the great actors of his generation, with Thirty Seconds to Mars he has achieved the...

The Butthole Surfers, one of the bands that influenced some of the biggest rock bands of the 90s including Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers, are getting their own deep dive.

A feature documentary about the band, which was lampooned on The Simpsons and Beavis and Butthead and appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, is currently in the works from director Tom Stern.

Stern is a writer, director, producer and showrunner, whose credits include Netflix’s The Toys That Made Us and Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History.

The Butthole Surfers Movie will tell the story of the Texas-based band that featured members including singer Gibby Haynes, guitarist Paul Leary and drummer King Coffey. The band hs released eight studio albums since they formed in 1981 including Locust Abortion Technician, Hairway to Steven and the Capitol Records-released Electriclarryland, which spawned a surprising hit single with the song Pepper.

Chuck E. Weiss, a longtime presence on the Los Angeles music scene and the subject of a Top 5 hit for Rickie Lee Jones, died Tuesday at age 76. Details on his death were not immediately available, but friends said he died after a long illness.

A staple performer on Mondays at The Central nightclub on the Sunset Strip for 11 years with his band, The Goddamn Liars, Weiss convinced friend Johnny Depp to help revive it when it fell on hard times. It became the Viper Room, one of the hottest music venues in the city. He also became associated with the Kibitz Room, an offshoot of Canter’s Deli on Fairfax Avenue, where a booth was named in his honor for his presence at the room’s frequent jams.

An outpouring on social media came as news of Weiss’s death spread. “Please let people know he was so much more than the title of a song,...

Why would Butthole Surfers want to make a coffee table book to recount their history? Frontman Gibby Haynes’ answer is typically bizarre: “We’re all history buffs. We drink coffee. We like tables. Personally, I’m a big fan of the Cherner oval dining table. And the book wasn’t our idea.”

The limited-edition, 300-page Butthole Surfers: What Does Regret Mean, written by author Aaron Tanner, will come out on March 8th and contain photos, flyers, illustrations and clippings from throughout the group’s nearly 40-year history. It’s available for pre-order now.

For the fourth episode of the Foo Fighters' musical travelogue Sonic Highways, Dave Grohl and Co. headed to Austin, Texas Friday night to explore the history and culture of, as Grohl put it, "some of the weirdest, freakiest stuff in the city that inspires people all over the world." Delving into everything from Austin City Limits and South by Southwest to Willie Nelson, Roky Erickson and Butthole Surfers, the episode deftly cast a wide net on the diverse city. "When you bailed from your hometown," said Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes,...

Dave Grohl and his legendary rock band Foo Fighters are hitting the road in the first trailer for their HBO documentary series Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways. Dave Grohl directs each episode as his band travels to American cities such as Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Seattle and Washington D.C. to collaborate with new artists and studios, to find each city's musical identity. Take a look at the first footage before the eight-episode Season 1 kicks off on Friday, October 17 with the pilot.

Directed by Dave Grohl, each one-hour episode is devoted to a different American musical landmark, chronicling the history, cultural environment and people that define each city's unique musical identity. With episodes set in (in alphabetical order) Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C., Foo Fighters: Sonic Highways features appearances from local legends who have become...

(Charles Pinion‘s Killbillies, which you’ll discover all about below, is one of the great unfinished underground movies. It’s complex, uncompleted production involved a multitude of talents, not least of which was Joey Ramone whose involvement got a write-up in the infamous Page Six gossip column. The scan of that article that you see here was provided to the Underground Film Journal by Killbillies co-producer and actress Marina Lutz. But, this is Charles’s story… and his on-set pictures. Click the article and all pictures to embiggen.)

Underground Film Journal: Ok, so Madball is done and you’re moving into another film project, Killbillies? What’s the story behind that?

Charles Pinion: Killbillies‘ basic notion came from my friend George Cavano, an artist/musician in Gainesville, Florida. (His piece, “A Violent Release of a Large Body of Water” plays over the opening titles of Red Spirit Lake.

We’ve already had one great documentary spinning theories about Kurt Cobain‘s death (Nick Broomfield’s Kurt & Courtney) and one great dramatization of the last days of the Nirvana frontman (Gus Van Sant’s Last Days), but now there’s a (possibly great?) movie coming out that combines both approaches. Today is the 20th anniversary of when Cobain’s body was found dead, so of course the first trailer for this new docudrama has just arrived online. Titled Soaked in Bleach, it combines interviews with people associated with the case, including private detective Tom Grant, with reenactments featuring actors such as Lost‘s Daniel Roebuck as private detective Tom Grant. Others in the drama side’s cast play Cobain (Tyler Brian), Courtney Love (Sarah Scott), Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson (Kale Clauson), Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan (Tor Brown), Butthole Surfers singer Gibby Haynes (David Daskal), Earth front man Dylan Carlson (August Emerson) and a character...

Director Gabriel Sunday is promising psychedelic good times with his latest short film about troubled indie-music icon Daniel Johnston. The work plays like a documentary, but things transform when Johnston’s art, music and other quirks are used to create his internal world — and if you’ve listened to his music, then you know that’s an emotionally complex experience. The footage was captured during the Open Borders Festival in California, inside an abandoned bookstore, shot in just a few days. The soundtrack boasts songs from Tom Waits, Beck, Bright Eyes, Wilco, Death Cab for Cutie, Johnny Depp and Gibby Haynes, Pearl Jam, the Flaming Lips and more. The filmmakers are currently campaigning on Kickstarter to gather funds for the postproduction...

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As you may know, musical pioneer Al Jourgensen has officially closed the book on his legendary industrial-metal band Ministry, sending them out in style with their excellent final album From Beer to Eternity (check out our review here), followed by his eye-opening autobiography Ministry: The Lost Gospels. But Uncle Al ain't settling down just yet. For his next creative endeavor, Jourgensen chose to explore the same themes he's tackled in his music for three decades... but this time, in the guise of a comic book antihero with musical super-powers. Ministry: The Devil's Chord – The Chronicles of Alien F. Jourgensen is a comic series with a unique concept: each of the thirteen issues will be based on one of Ministry's albums – including classics like The Land of Rape and Honey, The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste, Psalm 69, Filth Pig, Rio Grande Blood, The Last Sucker, and Relapse. The overall...

There's very little about Al Jourgensen's legendary band Ministry that hasn't been covered on these pages in some form or another, since I've been a hardcore fan of Uncle Al's output since the late '80s – a period which not only encompasses Ministry's pioneering works of industrial/metal fusion, but side projects like Revolting Cocks and Lard (the latter featuring Dead Kennedys founder and punk icon Jello Biafra), and his collaborations with industrial icons like Skinny Puppy. For those of you still catching up, you can take part in a pretty comprehensive musical journey through the band's catalog via the live album/concert film Adios... Puta Madres (which I covered in depth here), a candid document of the band's "C-u-latour." Several factors at the time led Jourgensen to dissolve Ministry after that run – including the departure of co-founder Paul Barker, the death of legendary bassist Paul Raven, and Al's own declining health.

“Slash”, a SAG feature film starring Maria Olsen (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Para-normal Activity 3, American Horror Story), Todd Farmer (Jason X, My Bloody Valentine, Drive Angry), Gibby Haynes (lead singer of Butthole Surfers) and including several cameos by A-List actors, will be filming in New Mexico for four weeks.

Slash is a story about young people who see their friends butchered around them. They must deal with each other’s … Continue reading →...

By MoreHorror.com

“Slash”, a SAG feature film starring Maria Olsen (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Paranormal Activity 3, American Horror Story), Todd Farmer (Jason X, My Bloody Valentine, Drive Angry), Gibby Haynes (lead singer of Butthole Surfers) and including several cameos by A-List actors, will be filming in New Mexico for four weeks.

Slash is a story about young people who see their friends butchered around them. They must deal with each other’s violent fantasies and face their own demons...or die trying!

The writer/director/producer Rycke Foreman and producer/actress Maria Olsen (of MOnsterworks66) are using Sheryl Roberts to do the Principal Casting. A casting call will be held in New Mexico in April and the production will begin in late June. The film will employ a crew of at least 85, a cast of 25 to 30 speaking roles, and approximately 350 background players. A vast majority...

Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes has teamed up with Jack White’s Third Man Records to release a weird new single. While the upfront info is pretty normal—three songs on vinyl, including a cover of Adrenalin Od’s “Paul’s Not Home”—100 copies of the 7-inch will be released as Flex-Rays, meaning they’ll be pressed onto old medical X-rays because, hey, why not? These fancy and/or creepy records will only be available at Third Man’s rolling record store truck in Austin, Texas during SXSW. Otherwise, regular, non-printed-on-an-old-x-ray copies will go on sale to the general ...

On a recent summer afternoon, Johnny Depp walks into a luxury suite at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles. Oddly, he is dressed like a pirate. A faded paisley do-rag is tied around his head. Smaller strips of cloth are braided into his hair, and he has gold caps on several teeth. His loose white T-shirt, with its blue horizontal stripes, maybe more sailor than pirate, but it's definitely in the nautical family.

We should note that Depp has not come directly from the set of his latest film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest...

In honor of Depp's performance with the Black Keys, we take a look back at his lifelong love affair with rock.

By James Montgomery

Johnny Depp performs with the Black Keys at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/ FilmMagic

As if his myriad of tattoos or swaggering, Keith Richards-indebted performances as Captain Jack Sparrow weren't proof enough, Johnny Depp's MTV Movie Awards jam session with the Black Keys definitely served notice that the Hollywood icon knows a thing or two about rock.

Of course, that Sunday-night performance — in lieu of a traditional acceptance speech for his MTV Generation Award, Depp opted instead to tear through a pair of tunes with the Keys — was just his latest rock and roll moment. Long before he was a big-screen star, music was Depp's first passion ... not to mention the reason he moved to Los Angeles in the first place.

During...

In honor of Depp's performance with the Black Keys, we take a look back at his lifelong love affair with rock.

By James Montgomery

Johnny Depp performs with the Black Keys at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards

Photo: Jeff Kravitz/ FilmMagic

As if his myriad of tattoos or swaggering, Keith Richards-indebted performances as Captain Jack Sparrow weren't proof enough, Johnny Depp's MTV Movie Awards jam session with the Black Keys definitely served notice that the Hollywood icon knows a thing or two about rock.

Of course, that Sunday-night performance — in lieu of a traditional acceptance speech for his MTV Generation Award, Depp opted instead to tear through a pair of tunes with the Keys — was just his latest rock and roll moment. Long before he was a big-screen star, music was Depp's first passion ... not to mention the reason he moved to Los Angeles in the first place.

During...

'He's a really good guitar player,' Dan Auerbach tells MTV News of their MTV Movie Awards collaboration with the superstar.

By Ryan J. Downey with reporting by Jim Cantiello

The Black Keys arrive at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards

Photo: Joe Klamar/ Afp/ Getty Images

Universal City, California — The Black Keys brought Johnny Depp's inner rock star front and center on the stage at Sunday's (June 3) MTV Movie Awards, trading licks with the guitar-wielding (and increasingly tattooed) actor through a steady, polished and rollicking performance of "Gold on the Ceiling."

Depp called the band "up-and-coming legends" as he accepted the Generation Award before joining the band again for "Lonely Boy."

The Black Keys joked that their collaboration with Johnny Depp was forced on them by MTV, but the Generation Award honoree had already impressed the duo with his guitar-slinging skills during rehearsals for their surprise jam session at the Gibson Amphitheatre.

'He's a really good guitar player,' Dan Auerbach tells MTV News of their MTV Movie Awards collaboration with the superstar.

By Ryan J. Downey with reporting by Jim Cantiello

The Black Keys arrive at the 2012 MTV Movie Awards

Photo: Joe Klamar/ Afp/ Getty Images

Universal City, California — The Black Keys brought Johnny Depp's inner rock star front and center on the stage at Sunday's (June 3) MTV Movie Awards, trading licks with the guitar-wielding (and increasingly tattooed) actor through a steady, polished and rollicking performance of "Gold on the Ceiling."

Depp called the band "up-and-coming legends" as he accepted the Generation Award before joining the band again for "Lonely Boy."

The Black Keys joked that their collaboration with Johnny Depp was forced on them by MTV, but the Generation Award honoree had already impressed the duo with his guitar-slinging skills during rehearsals for their surprise jam session at the Gibson Amphitheatre.

The film "21 Jump Street," starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, began 21 years ago as a popular prime-time TV drama about a young undercover police unit.

Responsible for launching the careers of several superstars, including three-time Oscar nominee Johnny Depp, "Extra" wanted to know what happened to all the stars of the '80s teen-craze show. Where are they now?

What Happened to the Original Cast of "21 Jump Street?"Holly Robinson Peete

The only original cast...

Johnny Depp sure proved he's not "all hat and no cattle," as the saying goes, while in town for a showing of "The Rum Diary" at the Austin Film Festival.

The actor surprised fans by rocking out at the Continental Club after the screening. This old school South Austin joint is famous for its live music scene and has hosted a wide range of acts, from Kinky Friedman to Stevie Ray Vaughn. Depp got on the Continental's stage with the Og bearded hipster Billy Gibbons of Zz Top and Bill Carter of Bill Carter and the Blame.

If you need any proof that Johnny Depp has a photo of himself hidden in a closet somewhere a la Dorian Grey, here's a YouTube video of his old band P, which included lead Surfer of Buttholes Gibby Haynes and Bill Carter, playing at SXSW in 1993. (Also worth noting! Gibby Haynes' father...

There have been plenty of creepy songs over the last thousand or so years. (Mozart‘s Requiem anybody? Well everybody, eventually.) We’ve decided to compile The 88 Creepiest Song Titles Of All Time. To be fair, we left out pretty much every death metal title because, frankly, they’re all pretty creepy. Click on the names of each artist to hear the selection. And feel free to weigh in on any song titles we may have left out in the comments. 88. “My Ding-a-Ling” Chuck Berry A no-brainer. It’s a song about a little boy discovering his penis, and it’s sung by a man well into his 40s. Perverted Justice’s favorite tune. 87. “Two Lovely Black Eyes” Charles Coborn What’s lovelier than a woman who was beaten in the face twice? According to Charles Coborn, nothing! 86. “With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm” Stanley Holloway A song about Anne Boleyn,...

Matthew Salacuse Author Mark Yarm

The oral history has become one of publishing’s favorite ways to cover complex topics and broad chronologies, while often luring readers with the sheer volume of famous people quoted. In music, a bar was set for the genre by Legs McNeill’s 1996 book “Please Kill Me,” which emphasized the New York roots of punk rock. Next month a 25th anniversary account of the Def Jam record label will be published. And the 20th anniversary...

By Zachary Swickey

Imagine drinking a beer, waxing nostalgic at an Alice Cooper show and then seeing Captain Jack Sparrow, better known as Johnny Depp, waltz onstage for a song or two. Well, that’s exactly what happened this past weekend at the intimate 100 Club in London.

If you’re wondering how these two souls came together, we assume they are old pals from their time together on the set of 1991’s Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare, the sixth installment of the Freddy Krueger franchise.

Some of the crowd already knew what they were in store for, after Cooper posted a backstage pic on Facebook of Depp preparing to take the stage with guitar in hand. “Johny Depp!! Waiting to jump onstage with Alice for ‘18’ and ‘School’s Out,’” he wrote.

No slouch when it comes to music, Depp was a member of P, which included Gibby Haynes of Butthole Surfers fame,...

For all his accolades and accomplishments as an actor, Johnny Depp ain't too shabby a musician, either.

Depp was the special guest star promised by Alice Cooper at the Rock n' Roll Hall of Famer's Sunday night show at London's 100 Club. The "Pirates of the Caribbean" star rocked out to "I'm Eighteen" and Cooper's iconic "School's Out," for which he ripped a tasty solo riff.

The actor is no stranger to playing with famous musicians; he took lead guitar duty on the Haiti charity recording of the song "I Put A Spell On You," and played lead slide guitar on "Fade In-Out" on Oasis' album "Be Here Now," calling it a career high.

Depp played guitar in the hit film "Chocolat," and even had a series of his own bands, including the 80s garage band, The Kids. He also was in the short lived band P, alongside Butthole Surfers lead Gibby Haynes.

Johnny Depp is set to record a guest appearance on the British indie band Babybird's upcoming album. The "Pirates of the Caribbean" star is making a cameo appearance on the band's new LP.

The group's rep told U.K.'s MTV that Depp, a longtime fan, had hooked frontman Stephen Jones up with new producers.

The new record will hit the stores in February 2010.

Depp is no stranger to playing for a band. He was a member of the band P, which also featured Gibby Haynes and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. He also recorded a solo album and played acoustic guitar on films' soundtracks.

Give Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando credit for tackling an eclectic set of songs and styles for the band’s covers album Varshons. Dando takes on the likes of Gram Parsons, Wire, G.G. Allin, and Townes Van Zandt, with the help of producer Gibby Haynes, guest vocalists Kate Moss and Liv Tyler, and his own so-deadpan-it’s-almost-inert sense of humor. The album clocks in at just over 30 minutes, and when The Lemonheads find a song that’s in their scruffy roots-rock sweet-spot—like their cover of Sam Gopal’s freakbeat chestnut “Yesterlove,” or Leonard Cohen’s ethereal “Hey, That ...