Bernell DorroughPsychedelic, hardcore, pretentious, bad-ass-Mars Volta has been called many things. On Tuesday, October 7th, Mars Volta came to St. Louis and played a set at Mississipi Nights that defied definition and genre, drawing upon all their energy, rage, tragedy and improvisational genius.
Since its formation by former At The Drive-In (ATDI) guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and lead vocalist Cedric Zavala, Mars Volta has been through a rack of bassists including, for a time, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also, the band lost its sound effects and synthesizer member, Jeremy Ward, earlier this year.
Forged in tragedy and armed with a line-up of intelligent, talented, energetic musicians, the sound is somewhere between a funeral dirge and a punk album with the melody and continuity of a Led Zeppelin album.
Mars Volta is obviously influenced by ATDI, a successful band in its own right. ATDI found initial acceptance in the underground punk rock scene, but as the band began to receive more widespread acclaim, it broke up. Omar and Cedric have stated that they simply got bored with the music they were creating.
Mars Volta is anything but boring. Its first release, “Tremulant,” was a three-track EP that sounds very different from its full-length album, “Deloused In The Comatorium.” “Deloused” was a slap in the face to many expectant fans. But Rodriguez-Lopez and Zavala have their own standards.
Frustrated by the restrictions they felt during their time in ATDI, Rodriguez-Lopez and Zavala have alluded to Mars Volta as a chance to come closer to a more creative, personal form of expression. “De-Loused In The Comatorium” has recently gained national recognition, but Rodriguez-Lopez is indifferent to sellout crowds and rave reviews. Mars Volta is definitely not a band willing to waver or cater to anyone but itself.
The album is a dedication to their late friend Julio Venegas, a sort of romantic tragic hero. Venegas took his own life by overdose as the band was forming, and “Deloused” pays tribute to him as a friend and artist. The album is in fact about a fictional character, Cerpin Taxt, who decides to commit suicide by overdosing on morphine. Instead, however, he fails and lands in a state of coma where he battles his mind and the elements of his inner conscience.
I got a chance to sit down and talk to Rodriguez-Lopez before his set on Tuesday, about his band, his influences, and life in general according to Omar.
Student Life: There seems to be a rapid progression between ATDI, “Tremulant” and “Deloused.” Can you speak at all about what went on between these things?
Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: There were a lot of things going on between Cedric and I both mentally, physically and spiritually. The band was like having a wild animal in a cage, and once you set it free it goes everywhere, goes to places you can only imagine. In ATDI it was like we were sleeping. We were beings or animals that were existing in our sleep through ATDI and once we were set free through own volition from that vessel, everything kind of came pouring out. A lot of our ideas were there during ATDI, but we weren’t able to bring them forward because we were being held back by certain people’s concepts of music or their ability to play in a certain way or their ability to really reach inside themselves.
SL: Did you feel restricted at all by being in the punk rock scene?
R-L: We came out of the punk rock scene and those are definitely our roots, just like salsa music is part of my roots. These are all labels and boxes that we are building for our vessels; it’s like building a beautiful ship inside of a box and not allowing it to go anywhere because of your ideas of what it is.
SL: Many authors and artists are often stifled by a first success. Are you at all intimidated by the success of “Deloused”? Where do you see the band heading?
R-L: A lot of people feel that it’s the best thing we could have done, and for some people it will be that, but for us it could never be that. For us, it was a moment in time. And we can only get better. It’s like saying you had your best understanding of the world when you were 15. And you might have felt like that at the time, but as you go on you learn and you grow, new experiences enter your life, new relationships or new lovers. “Deloused In The Comatorium” is just a moment in time for us, which, in a lot of ways, has already passed.
Our thoughts are with a new record, with creating new images and moving away from what we’ve already done. And as far as success and ratings, it’s all external, those are other people’s opinions, those are just reviews. To us the only review that could ever matter would be Julio’s. Not that it isn’t nice to have people accept what we’re doing, it’s just that we can’t let that come inside ourselves and interfere with what we’re doing as artists.
SL: How did Julio affect the album specifically? How did losing Julio and Jeremy affect you and how did Julio affect your outlook on drugs, alcohol and life?
R-L: For us, Julio was a mentor as much as he was a friend. He was the type of man who, by being around him, you felt like you were learning something. It’s hard to decipher what I brought out of [Julio’s death] because it’s still happening. As humans, we attach ourselves to belief systems to help us keep surviving from day to day. As a person you go through many different phases of not understanding or of crying or being angry. But in the end the most important thing, the thing we have to pull out of it, is to laugh. It’s what happens when one feels enlightenment, or some form of understanding because everything is so great, it seems like perfection. At one point I couldn’t understand Julio’s decision to take his own life, but after several years I realized, it’s the most perfect thing that could have happened. It couldn’t happen any other way, which is through his own volition, his destiny.
As far as the outlook on drugs and alcohol or anything else, these are all methods and tools. For myself coming out of my own drug addiction and heroin use or cocaine use, you get into certain things because you’re searching, constantly searching, for I don’t know what. And you think that certain things will help you get there quicker. After a certain point you realize that there’s so much more going on and that you have to evolve, you have to graduate, some people get stuck and stay there all their lives, some people don’t make it and they die, but I’m no one to judge other people’s methods. I know my methods and where it’s gotten me, and that’s all that matters. There are plenty of things I don’t understand.
SL: Do you see the band permanently influenced by such tragedy?
R-L: Definitely everything that happens to us is an influence. I was lucky enough to experience Jeremy. I was lucky enough to experience Julio. A lot of people joke or ask us, how does it feel being so close to death, but I don’t view it as being close to death. I view it as being close to life. Some people are scared of it and push it away but as humans, all through life we experience death. Puberty is a form of death. When a child puts down his toys he does so not because the toys are unworthy, but because that part of him, his learning process has died. That part of his searching is over.
SL: Can you speak at all about your relationship with Cedric?
R-L: We have one of these relationships, it’s an unspoken thing, we don’t know what it is, and it’s so perfect we don’t want to question it. Sometimes you get too into analyzation and you ruin things because you question them instead of just allowing them to be what they are. We’ve had the type of relationship where we’ve been playing music since we were 14 and now we’re 27 and still playing music, and we can finish each other’s sentences and we try not to question it. We always come out at the same goal, which is pure expression.
SL: What do you look for in a band member, and have you found a permanent bass player?
R-L: Juan Andrietta is now our permanent bass player. He’s been with us for the last 3 tours. Many people thought we were searching for virtuosos or people who were musically schooled, and could play up and down the fret board, but nothing could be further from the truth. We’re looking for people who are looking for expression, who need this outlet, who are so-fastiado-I can’t think of the word in English, fastiado. People who are agitated by the fact that they can’t express themselves through one, two, or even three languages, or 35,000 words, and no matter how many words they learn they can’t say what they’re trying to say. These are the people we’re looking for in Mars Volta. When they play their personality comes out and not their training. With Juan, he comes into the room and when he plays his bass he tells me about his suffering, about his joy. When we play we talk to each other through symbols, words in the case of Cedric or notes for the rest of us, through music we awaken the unconscious.
SL: Do you think training can hinder people from expressing themselves?
R-L: I think it comes down to the person; it’s all individual. People can get really caught up, as we were talking about before on drugs or one way and method of thinking. I’ve met people who have benefited from training; it has really awakened their mind, but they graduated from training. Training is the same concept that makes us have masters, if we constantly need someone to teach us, but the fact is that no one can teach us anything except how to look inside ourselves. We don’t need gurus or masters-the only thing they do is teach us how to open the eyes in our hearts and minds.
SL: What other forms of art have inspired you?
R-L: For me the biggest influences are not musical. The biggest influence for me is film and books, people. The works of Alejandro Manuarski, Luis Manuell, Werner Herzog. They come from very different places but somehow they’re saying something similar. They have been as much of an influence as Cynthia Plath or Elijah P. Lovejoy, who printed the first abolitionist newspaper and was chained to his printing press and thrown in a river. People who have always spoken from their hearts and done what they wanted to do even though their time and place may have dictated that they were crazy. These are true inspirations, especially when you take something like this that is not directly related to music; it’s much more pure. To look at a painting, to look at some words, to look at someone’s life and say I want that feeling, to have that transference of energy, you have to use magic somehow.