The Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music Nerds

·E548

Ep548: After the Astronaut - Butthole Surfers' Lost Album w Paul Leary & King Coffey

May 11
58 mins

View Transcript

Episode Description

Butthole Surfers' Paul Leary and King Coffey trace the band's unlikely major label journey — from America's top-grossing indie act to MTV hitmakers to a lost album finally resurrected after nearly three decades.

Preorder "After the Astronaut" LP here

Topics Include:

  • After the Astronaut releases June 26 after sitting unreleased for 28 years.
  • Capitol signed Butthole Surfers when they were America's top-grossing indie band.
  • Label president Hale Milgram believed in them; his firing changed everything.
  • Pepper was written on the spot after a producer demanded one more song.
  • Pepper won radio call-in polls for a month and played MTV hourly.
  • The hit turned them into a "follow-up band," which was never their thing.
  • John Paul Jones produced Worm Saloon and taught Paul Leary how to produce.
  • Jones and the band shared a Lagavulin obsession, running up a $20,000 scotch bill.
  • Capitol's big budgets contrasted sharply with Touch and Go's approach.
  • After the Astronaut was a deliberate return to experimental, art-school Butthole Surfers DNA.
  • Mark Ryden painted the original cover; getting dropped handed it to Marcy Playground.
  • Declining a Hellraiser soundtrack placement created the first real rift with Capitol.
  • Their manager's heroin relapse coincided with the band getting dropped mid-promo cycle.
  • Promo cassettes already pressed now sell for $800–$1,000 on the secondary market.
  • Hollywood Records funded Weird Revolution; Rob Cavallo showed up once a week for ten minutes.
  • Finding two-inch master tapes in a storage locker triggered the After the Astronaut remix.
  • Documentary The Whole Truth and Nothing But took director Tom Stern five years to make.
  • Rob Reiner called it one of the best music docs ever — hours before his murder.
  • A potential box set looms, but Paul prefers naps, his cat, and his bicycle.

High resolution version of this podcast is available at: www.Patreon.com/VinylGuide

See all episodes