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Rock star love to roll out long lists of menial pre-fame day jobs like badges of honor, but you'd be hard-pressed to best Wayne Static's. The Static-X fontman--yes, he of the anti-social hair-beard combo taken to disatrous extremes, spent his teen summers picking asparagus. "It's a baby bush, about four to six inches high, so you're walking along bent over all day with a bucket," explains Static, who grew up in Shelby, a small town in rural Michigan. "It's the asparagus capital of the wolrd. There's an asparagus festival every summer with a parade, an Asparagus Queen, a character called Aspara Gus. It's a big deal." The image of Static--with his tight braid dangling from his chin, his mutton-chop sideburns, the spiked stovepipe hat of hair--toiling in the asparagus fields is only slightly more unlikely that the success of his band's full-length debut, Wisconsin Death Trip. Like the hit single "Push It," the album is a repetive-motion disorder of steel-cutting guitar grind and mechanized thump that blends what used to be called industrial rock with the dissonant metal edge of bands like Korn and Powerman5000. As a vocalist, Static spends musch of the record attempting to hit the same limited but distinctive range as the Cookie Monster. "My mind works in a very logical way--I've always excelled at math-type courses without much effort," says the surprisingly soft-spoken Static. "Listen to what we do. It's all very rigid and very structured. I can't jam, because my mind is worried too much about what I'm playing. I can't just do things spur of the moment." After doing time in the requisite Kiss cover band in high school, Static moved to Chicago in the mid-Eighties, where Billy Corgan briefly played guitar in Static's goth band, Deep Blue Dream. "At the time, Static recalls, laughing, "Billy and I used to joke about him trying to be Little Wayne, because his hair wasn't quite as long as mine an his guitar amp wasn't quite as big as mine and his band wasn't as popular as mine." In 1993, Static and drummer Ken Jay relocated to Los Angeles, where they formed Static-X and hooked up with the rest of the group. Putting his math mind to work, Static hit the clubs, took the notes on bands he considered successful and realized that a common denominator was simplicity--straight-ahead, hard-driving aggression came across through even the worst sound systems, while more complex music tended to get garbled in the bad mix. Inspired by bands like Ministry, Static also picked up a drum machine. now, says jay, "our songs are really minimalistic. You lock into one thing, drive that into somebody's forehead, move to a variation of it and there's your chorus. That's the formula." It's a formula that works. The band has signed with Warner Bros. and played Ozzfest. This month, Static-X begin a tour with Powerman5000. So, now that you've finally got your sound down, Mr. Static, can we talk about that hair? "Everyone thinks they are the first person to ever ask me about it," Static sighs. "One night, after a show, I was on my way to the bathroom and some girl was like, 'I just have to ask you...' I knew what was coming, because that's how everybody starts, and I was tired, and just trying to go to the bathroom and so I was just like, 'No! I can't answer that right now.'" Static chuckles. "And she looks at her boyfriend and goes, 'See? I told you he was a dick.'" � Rolling Stone Magazine. The article was written by Mark Binelli. I take no credit for this article and it has been edited. |