Vadge, can we speak about your book My Life With the Dwarves.
When and how did they form? When did you meet Blag Dahlia?
I decided to write the book after I saw the Motley Crew movie The Dirt and thought, “Hell, The Dwarves lived through just as many sex, drugs, violence experiences as these guys and we did it all on a shoestring budget!” I also wanted to write the book for The Dwarves fans out there that have stuck with us throughout the years, even through all of the changes of lineup and musical styles. My years in the band was a special time and place; the late eighties and the nineties. There was no internet and nobody carried phones with cameras on them, so we were able to get away with a lot of stuff that the woke cancel culture people would have found repugnant. It was a time of freedom and fun, quite frankly. My Life With The Dwarves is the first book of a trilogy that I’m writing. The second book that I’m working on now is about my time after The Dwarves. It’s pretty dark; my alcohol addiction, which is apparent in the first book, grows to monstrous proportions in the second. If readers thought how incredible it was that I survived my time in The Dwarves, wait until they read this one! The sex, drugs and insanity only got worse, but I came out of it relatively unscathed. Three trips to rehab definitely helped. The last book of the trilogy will be my life from childhood until the time I joined The Dwarves. All three books reflect not only what I went through personally but they also shine a light on the time periods. The first; the late eighties through the nineties, the second book, the two-thousands until today and the final book will cover the late sixties up to the eighties. It’s interesting to see how life and culture has changed over five decades.
The Dwarves formed in the mid-eighties in Chicago Illinois and eventually moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where I met them. I met Blag because his girlfriend at the time was living in the flat on Fell and Fillmore in SF with me and my band Sonic Brain Jam. He was a real asshole back then, but I liked him a lot. He had to convince me to join The Dwarves, believe it or not. I had a cushy job at the time, was playing in a band and really didn’t have any inclination to do anything else. Thank Satan he put some pressure on me or I would have missed an incredible opportunity. I got to travel through out Europe, America, Canada and drink, snort and fuck to my heart’s content. I’ll always be grateful to Blag for that opportunity. Let that be a lesson to you, people: when that brass ring is offered to you, you better grab it. It might not ever come along again.
What was it like being in The Dwarves on a day to day basis?
Daily life with The Dwarves, when not on the road, consisted of; getting up late, heading down to the bar, having a few drinks and finding out what parties were happening that evening, go to band practice, head back to the bar, have a lot of drinks, go to parties, find loose women, indulge in shenanigans, wake up in a strange bed, try to find my pants, head back home for a nap, get up again and repeat. Even with all this indulgence I must emphasize that when it came to rehearsing and recording The Dwarves were deadly serious. We were dedicated to making the best music and albums that we could.
Why were The Dwarves controversial? Their album covers, music etc.?
The Dwarves were controversial because we never let common morality or taste influence us. We listened to that one Muse that was our Freudian Id and the Id was telling us to indulge in all the passions, all the sins, to let nothing restrict us and to always follow our dirty, lustful primordial instincts. We always appealed to people because, you know what? Everyone has that itch, that Id, it’s always there in the basement of your psyche and it ain’t going away any time soon. Maybe the human race will evolve beyond these impulses someday, but not today. I believe this is why The Dwarves are still popular almost forty fucking years later. The craziest thing is, with this attitude and lifestyle not a single member of The Dwarves has passed away; except Hewhocannotbenamed, who miraculously returned from the dead. By all accounts we should have been dead by overdose, homicide, suicide, you name it. But we aren’t; we’re all still here. Hope I didn’t just jinx one of our members: keep breathing Dwarves!
You have written a book about your life after The Dwarves. Could you tell us about this?
My Life After The Dwarves covers my harrowing life after I left the band. As mentioned before, my drug and alcohol use got much worse and without the daily discipline of rehearsing and recording I was left to my own devices, which included ingesting massive amounts of drugs and alcohol. It’s a tale of caution and recovery. I can caution people against certain things, but it’s up to each person to decide for themselves. As I learned, nobody can tell you anything; you have to experience things on your own. Even if you don’t heed my warning at least people can know that there is a way out of that mess, there is a program for recovery that can help you. If it can help me it certainly can help anybody else. People might also be happy to hear that I didn’t have to sell my soul to Jesus; I went the opposite route and was actually saved by Satan! Not really, but I’ve been a practicing Thelemite (The magical and mystical system of Aleister Crowley) pretty much my entire life and between Thelema and meeting the love of my life these are the things that brought me back from the brink of death.
Could you tell us about writing chthonic theory and prose?
I’d been inspired by the word Chthonic for many years, it just spoke to me for some reason. I guess the reason is easy to see actually, because the Chthonic elements of the psyche have to do with the lustful, primordial, animal impulses. In The Dwarves I was able to live out those impulses but after I left the band and no longer had that outlet that’s when I felt the need to write a book about Chthonic. I’d already named my musical side project Chthonic Force and written a lengthy article on it for an online website, yet I knew I needed to write a book to cover all the bases. I wanted the book to be an expression of the Chthonic impulses, so there’s a section of just prose that expresses those impulses and then there’s the final section that describes my theory of Chthonic and it’s history through various artists and historical figures.
How is the experience to look back at your life? Through your books?
It’s been great! I’ve lived a full life. I can’t look back and think, “If only I had done more.” If anything I kinda wish I had done less! At least I wish I had done less drinking, but it’s through all of my experiences that I’ve reached this happy and healthy place I’m in now. The hardest part has been writing this new book because it spans a fourteen year period of constant abuse, insanity and suffering, but it’s made me face a lot of things I probably would rather have not faced. My Life With The Dwarves was really a celebration of life while My Life After The Dwarves is a slow, sturdy march toward death. Once this book is published I can turn my attention to my childhood and teenage years, which were also filled with drugs, violence and insanity. Nietzsche once said, “That which does not kill you only makes you stronger.” I guess I’m proof of that.
