Enter The Enigma: Buckethead
By Dean Bonzani
11.14.05
Man or chicken man?
Separating fact from mythos in regards to supermelodic guitar virtuoso Buckethead is a daunting task, as part of his popular appeal lies in the legend and mystery surrounding this be-bucketed musician. Extremely shy of interviews, he’s only consented to speak to journalists on a handful of occasions, and several of these were conducted through the agent of a disembodied head named, “Herbie.” The bulk of Bucket-lore is to be found in Mr. ‘Head’s own website, named for the perpetually-under-construction theme park that he runs: www.bucketheadland.com, and on sites run by friends and rabid fans.
Rumors abound. Some say that he’s a robot or an android. Some say that he’s an alien, with a taste for human flesh. Some say that he was raised by chickens in a coop, and that the spirits of slain hens and roosters are channeled through the KFC bucket that the guitarist wears—that without it, he is helpless. Some say that he’s actually shredmaster Paul Gilbert under the white no-theater mask that he wears. Some say that he’s a tall man with unusually long fingers and big toes.
The truth is, Buckethead is a towering long-fingered, big-toed guitar madman who was raised in a chicken coop from a young age, and plays some of the most exhilarating, breakneck-speedy, emotional and technically flawless guitar on the planet.
Hailing from “near Disneyland” in Southern California, Buckethead’s most recent claims to fame are his having played in the ill-fated second coming of Guns ‘N Roses, and joining Primus for several performances, a result of his longtime friendship and collaborations with drummer, Brain. Both associations led to a greater exposure of the cult-favorite musician to a much broader audience.
His recent CD release, Enter The Chicken (he’s a devoted Bruce Lee fan and martial arts practitioner), is his most accessible to date, and promises to thrust the masked guitar wiz into a wider spotlight. Produced by System of a Down’s Serj Tankian, Enter The Chicken is a musical theme park ride, with each track taking the listener through an entirely different door. Unlike instrumental jaunts of yore, his latest recording features a total of eleven separate vocalists from a variety of backgrounds. Tankian lends his voice and co-writing skills to cuts like the pummeling “We Are One” and the haunting “Coma,” where he’s joined by Iranian-born, India-raised Azam Ali of Vas. Efrem Schultz of Death By Stereo appears on “Botnus,” rapper/actor/author/activist Saul Williams provides the poetic throb to “Three Fingers” (which appears on the slasher flick “SAW II’s” soundtrack), and Ethiopian singer Ejigayehu “Gigi” Shibabaw and Maura Davis of Denali weave entrancing harmonies through “Running From The Light.” Former band mate and vocalist for the Deli Creeps (an early Buckethead project that reportedly caused Faith No More’s Mike Patton to comment, “They’re so good, it pisses me off!”) co-wrote and sings on “The Hand,” joined by operatic soprano Ani Maldjian. Tankian co-wrote and sings a duet with Shana Halligan on the wistful-yet-driving “Waiting Hare.” Rounding out the lineup are Dirk Rogers and Keith Aazmi, vocalist and guitarist, respectively, of Bad Acid Trip, who give a proper grindcore performance in the withering, nightmarish, semi-comedic “Funbus.” Shades of Johnny Lydon? Interestingly, Rogers is a special effects makeup artist by trade.
Enter The Chicken ends with the soaring majesty and electric power of the 6-½ minute long “Nottingham Lace.” The tune is available as a free download offering on Buckethead’s website, so look for it. Load it into your iPod and play it while driving on a winding mountain road at daybreak.
His latest offering finds Buckethead at the height of his powers. While some will continue to hold up Monsters and Robots as his best work, with its guest appearances by Brain, Les Claypool, and P-Funk bassist extraordinaire Bootsy Collins, and sickos will continue to embrace the output of Bucket’s ongoing “Cornbugs” project with horror film actor Bill Mosely (“Chop Top” in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2”, “Otis” in “The Devil’s Rejects” and “House of 1,000 Corpses), critics will probably hold this disc up as his entry into the “mainstream.”
Buckethead’s in no immediate danger of being pigeonholed, though. He’s always kept musical associations that span a surprising spread of genres. He’s played with Guns ‘N Roses, Primus, Cobra Strike, and Praxis, and has worked with Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell of Parliament Funkadelic, Windham Hill artist William Ackerman, Tony Furtado, Actor/Wielder of the Broken Sword Made Whole Viggo Mortensen, and Jonas Hellborg, among others.
A huge fan of film, particularly horror and sci-fi flicks, Buckethead’s music has appeared on soundtracks like Johnny Mnemonic, Mortal Combat 1 &2, Beverly Hills Ninja, and Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers.
_______________________________________________________________
Enter A Chicken: The Exclusive Fowl Interview
Knowing that Buckethead is famous for his extreme discomfort with giving interviews, I ran some industry channels, and managed to contact a former Disneyland character actor, whose credits include Goofy and Chip, of Chip and Dale, who helped me locate the sole living former coop-mate of Buckethead’s youth, an aging hen named, “Gert.” This is a partial transcript of the conversation we had while walking the grounds of one of the many graveyards in the “city of the dead,” in Colma, California.
Dean Bonzani: Colma has the distinction of being the only city whose population of the dead exceeds its living population. Buckethead recorded an ambient album with Bill Laswell called Colma, to express his feelings about touring the necropolis that accepted over a million of San Francisco’s banished corpses. Are you cool with us conducting this exclusive interview here among the dead?
Gert: Yeah, I’m good. Now, if this was a KFC…
DB: Maybe you could shed some light on Buckethead’s origins. He told an interviewer once that, after seeing the fourth “Halloween” movie, he immediately bought a Michael Meyers-type mask. Later that night, he was eating…sorry…fried chicken from a bucket that his dad had brought home. He was inspired to put on the mask and the bucket, and Buckethead was born. This was the onstage look he was searching for.
Gert: Naaah, that’s a crock of sh*t. He gets nervous, and makes stuff like that up.
DB: What’s the real story?
Gert: He fell off a circus train when he was little, and wandered into our coop, so we took care of him as best as a flock of chickens could, ya know? He had the mask with him at the time. The farmer didn’t know we had a kid living in the coop, until a few years went by.
DB: And the bucket?
Gert: The farmer was a very cruel man. A bad man. I lost a lot of friends, ya know? One night, when the moon was full, the door of the coop opens and bammo! He throws a bucket of fried chicken into the coop, just for kicks.
DB: Original recipe or extra crispy?
Gert: Hell, I don’t know! That was a long time ago. Wait…extra crispy, now that I think about it. I can still hear the farmer laughing. That crazy laugh!
DB: How do you spell the farmer’s name?
Gert: T-H-E F-A-R-M-E-R.
DB: How did Buckethead react? Was he traumatized?
Gert: It wasn’t good. He tried to put the pieces together to “make the chicken better.” He wore the bucket, and tears poured out from under the mask. See, we didn’t tell him much about the Big Stuff before then. Death, evil, girls. It took a long time to calm him down— it was too much. He busted down the coop a few nights later, and hit the road. Him and twenty-one of us.
DB: Where did you go?
Gert: Hollywood. Woooh, now there’s a story.
DB: I’m curious— before that night, when he put the fast food bucket on, what did you call him?
Gert: We called him, “White Face Guy.”
DB: And he played guitar to entertain you in the coop?
Gert: We didn’t have TV, so he played.
DB: He made a guitar out of baling wire and a filthy, rotting board torn from the wall of the coop?
Gert: Pffffffffffffthh! No! Bawk, bawk, BA-A-AWK!! His first guitar was a ’59 Gibson Les Paul Custom that fell off of a freight train boxcar full of guitars. A solar powered Marshall stack fell off another train a coupla days later.
DB: Oh, really?
Gert: He did a lot of chicken-pickin’ at first. Then it was sweep picking arpeggios, inversions, harmonic minor scales, melodic minor scales, Phrygian mode, Mixolydian mode, synthetic scales, bi-dextral unidirectional chromatics …
DB: That’s a lot to learn in a coop.
Gert: He was woodshedding.
DB: How did being raised by chickens effect him for life?
Gert: Have you ever seen him dance? That’s ours.
DB: Axl Rose gave Buckethead a Leatherface doll one Christmas, when he was losing hope of getting one of the hard-to-find dolls. Do you think Axl could have talked Buckethead into joining Guns ‘N Roses if he hadn’t given him the doll?
Gert: No. I lived next door to Axl in the late ‘90’s. No, definitely not.
DB: You grew up with Buckethead, and have probably heard more of his music than anybody has. How would you describe his guitar playing?
Gert: His guitar sounds like the creaking of a hen ramp, and kind of like the wind blowing through the telephone wires along the train tracks. Or like the train engine when it would shake the whole coop.
DB: He regularly placed in the top three in the “Best Experimental Guitarist” in Guitar Player magazine’s annual reader’s poll. Where does Buckethead draw his inspiration?
Gert: He loves movies like Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and TV shows like Giant Robot. Uhm… he likes AC/DC…Disneyland. He’s been to all the Disneylands— he’s been to the original Disneyland more than 500 times.
DB: Cripes!
Gert: Yeah. He wants to be buried there. Did you know that there’s a basketball court up in the top of the Matterhorn? It’s true. We shot some hoops up there with Michael Jackson, Snoop Dogg, and Jan from the Brady Bunch. Buckethead’s almost seven feet tall with his bucket on.
DB: Has he ever visited Colonel Sanders’ grave? Like, to pee on it, maybe?
Gert: He’s got mixed feelings about the Colonel.
DB: Getting back to influences, what guitarists influenced his playing?
Gert: Shawn Lane of Black Oak Arkansas, who was considered the fastest guitarist in the world, back in the day. Randy Rhoads, Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, who he took lessons with. He plays like he’s playing for a monster movie, ya know? Like it’s the music you hear when the big robot picks up a giant lizard and cracks him against a skyscraper. Like that.
DB: When he lived with you in the coop, did Buckethead ever have any “roosterly” feelings toward any of you?
Gert: Uh…I’m going to say, “no” to that.