System of a Down on Ho's, Bad Asses and Columbia Records (NY Rock Interview)

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^{L to R: Serj Tankian, Shavo Odadjian, Daron Malakian,
and John Dolmayan}

If one more article about System of a Down refers to the band's sound as “quirky,” we're gonna barf. When heavy metal sounds creative, when it's (ex)pounding on political issues, primitive instruments, and a healthy dose of self-consciousness, why use a cute word like “quirky” to describe it? Why not say the creative process of System of a Down is “finely crafted?” Few of the bands you hear on the radio care as much about the art in their music as Serj Tankian (vocals), Daron Malakian (guitar), Shavo Odadjian (bass), and John Dolmayan (drums). NY Rock met up with Shavo and John in a super-swank hotel room in midtown Manhattan to talk about the band's new album, Toxicity. After a day of talking with the media, you'd think the last thing they'd want to do is sit down with another journalist. But they did and everyone was happy. Shavo, John, and Jeanne Fury shot the shit about everything from Toxicity, to coked-up groupies, to the importance of playing your own songs in a sea of copycat bands.

NYROCK:

How did writing this album differ from writing your debut? Was the creative process at all different?

SHAVO:

The writing process, we sort of came back from tour and said, "Leave us alone" to the label. We got to the studio like old times, a lock out, and went every night. We weren't on a schedule and someone always brought a song in. It's a good process. If we had more time, we'd probably have 10 or 15 more songs because it was still coming. We had to write an album this time. Last time we were writing songs to play live to please the audience, to please ourselves. This time we're writing an album. You dissect each song and see whatever one makes a complete set, a piece, a composition.

NYROCK:

Out of 33 songs, you put 14 on the album. Out of those songs, how did the song "Toxicity" best sum up the album and become the title of the album?

JOHN:

It's not so much that it summed up the album. It came from a word in a song that was a powerful word. When we were throwing around words for an album title, well, we already had the "Hollywood" sign [for the album's cover art]. Shavo had already come up with that idea. So it was like, well, what represents Hollywood, and Daron was pointing out a lyric in the song "Toxicity" and we were like, wow, that does represent Hollywood.

SHAVO:

And it's a cool word in general.

JOHN:

It's kind of like glamorous looking from above, but when you look inside... it's poisonous. It's full of venom, which represents Hollywood.

SHAVO:

Plus it works. Toxic city. That was the best piece of the puzzle that fit. That was the funnest to do because the image, the name, the content just fit. We put the music with the art, and I think that's what connected it. L.A. is where we came from, where we're based. We've seen the poisons that are in L.A. that people don't see. The majority of the people think of L.A. and they see Rodeo Drive. They don't see Kingsley and Sunset. That's the corner where the hookers hang out. That's where we did our video [for "Chop Suey!"] too. We did our video at a motel in East Hollywood...

JOHN:

It's like $30 a day [for a room].

SHAVO:

It's hourly, too. It's toxic; it's poisonous. The hotel rents hourly. It's kind of poisonous. You don't want your kids there.

NYROCK:

The song "Psycho" is about cocaine-addled groupies. Do you guys have a lot of groupies?

SHAVO:

They're around, yes.

JOHN:

Any band that tours will look appealing to girls in the audience. They don't look at us as normal human beings when we're up there. You know what I mean?

NYROCK:

No.

JOHN:

Maybe you don't know. Let me explain it to you. When you have someone coming into your town for one night – let's say you don't live in New York City – and you don't have a band coming in here every day. Let's say you live in Iowa and you have a band coming in once a month and you're impressionable. You haven't seen a lot of the world and here's someone that you've listened to for a year. They're on stage. [The girls in the audience] get star-struck, even though we're not stars and, yes, sometimes they want to do things that normally they wouldn't want to do because they feel it's the only opportunity they'll ever have to be with someone like that. So they'll do stupid things sometimes. I don't really want to get into the explanation of the song so much...

SHAVO:

Can I give you my opinion? I was just gonna say that there are a lot of stupid girls. That's my explanation, honestly. That was a nice way of saying it [Motioning to John.], but there are a lot of stupid girls that are ho's. Period. This world is full of them. There are a lot of guys that are ho's, a lot of band members, too. They go hand-in-hand. You go around the world, and girls are available on tour. They're there. It's actually the guy's choice to do it or not. This song is our ode to [groupies]. You know, saying that these psychos exist. Most of them have a psychological problem, and that's why they're there doing that. We're weird because we've actually talked girls out of doing what they do. We're like, "Why are you here? Why are you on our bus?" Not "we" as in the whole band, but I've done this. I can only speak for myself. I've laughed at them to the point where they understand like, "I'm stupid. I shouldn't offer my body to meet a band."

JOHN:

Then again, some of them are really hot. But then the cocaine part comes in where they're just like psychotic.

SHAVO:

The cocaine just represents a drug, any drug.

JOHN:

We get a lot of strippers that come to the shows. The bigger the band gets in the public's opinion – not in our opinion – the more likely you are to have porn stars, strippers, models, actresses, all that bullshit. They're no different from normal girls, but they're perceived to be different. Just like we're perceived to be different, and we're no different than anyone else.

NYROCK:

I don't want to ask if it bothers you that you have so many girls coming on to you, but is it disconcerting given how you feel?

JOHN:

It bothers me that they could give a fuck about the person. It's the image that they want. Once that image wears off and you find that there's a real person in there, two things could happen. One, you could be disappointed, or two, you could be disappointed in yourself.

SHAVO:

There's a line [in "Psycho"] that goes, "You don't have to be a ho to come and see the show.

JOHN:

You don't have to give your body.... The way we feel, if they're there, great. If they're not, who cares? It's not gonna make a difference to us. We're out there to perform and to play music and to enjoy ourselves artistically. We're not like, "Fuck yeah, we're gonna go on tour this time and there are gonna be hotter chicks!"

NYROCK:

What new songs are you most looking forward to playing live?

SHAVO:

Personally, "Needles" because it's insane to play live. At first it's really hard because my fingers weren't going there with the new bass. It was like, "Fuck, these new songs are hard!" But at the last show I was jumping around playing it.

JOHN:

I don't have a favorite song. One thing I'm looking forward to playing once people have the album and know the songs better is "Ariels" because I think that it's not so much fun to play when people don't know it but when people know it, it's gonna be like a monster. I just wanna hear the kids singing it. They know a lot of the lyrics already... our album is already out.

NYROCK:

It is? I thought it came out September 4th?

JOHN:

It's not in stores, though.... It's in your neighborhood computer.

NYROCK:

Oh. I get it.... But does it make you happy to see them singing the songs?

JOHN:

It makes you happy because they're so amped. They'll do anything to get the album but there used to be a mystery. You knew an album was coming out on a certain date. There was a swell of anticipation happening and now that's deflated in a major way. You don't have that excitement to wait for the album anymore because you can download it. It's not really fair. What sucks is that people are selling it for like $50 on e-bay.

NYROCK:

Oh shit.

JOHN:

They even got the one at the end of the album.

NYROCK:

You mean the hidden track?

JOHN:

Yeah. Except for the album art which luckily no one saw. We have a couple of cool little things that we're doing just as a bonus for people that have been waiting so long.

SHAVO:

And there's an enhanced CD in there. It's a nine-minute version of the making of the album, for people that don't really know System of a Down. They'll actually see how goofy we really are.

JOHN:

We're basically dorks.

SHAVO:

And you see that in there.

NYROCK:

That's good to know.

SHAVO:

This question hasn't been asked lately but it's a cool question that I would ask a band like us: Since you talk so much anti-corporate shit, why are you with a corporation? The answer to that question is that if we weren't with a corporation, you wouldn't be talking to me right now because my label wouldn't have gotten the interview with you. That's very important. You know, like Rage Against the Machine, they're against the machine, well, we're using the machine to our advantage.

JOHN:

Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with capitalism and striving to do better for yourself...

SHAVO:

I'm not saying that...

JOHN:

I'm not that anti-establishment. I think everybody in the band has different opinions. I definitely think we need to be more sensitive to the needs of people and the environment in general, not just the corporations, but everybody needs to do that. But Columbia [Records] has always treated us with respect and given us our artistic freedom. They never tried to make us do something we didn't feel comfortable doing. And there's a lot of good people that work at Columbia. Columbia is not just this big machine; there's actual people. Rick Rubin is an incredible artist himself, and these are the people I correspond with, that I have relationships with. It's not the attorney for Sony. I don't care about that guy. I don't talk to him. I don't need to talk to him. My attorney will talk to him.

NYROCK:

So do you think there's such a thing as selling out? You know, how people say Green Day aren't punk because they "sold out."

SHAVO:

You know what selling out is? It's writing music to cater to other people. That's selling out. Writing music to cater to the radio, to make money. Now, if you write music and the radio picks it up and all of a sudden starts playing it, if MTV wants to play our video "Chop Suey!"...

JOHN:

Of course, Columbia is going to want it out. They want it on the radio. They want to sell more albums, period. That's their job, to market our album. Our job is to be artists and create the product that they're gonna market eventually but it doesn't matter if we create something great or crappy, as long as we love it. If it's great to us, that's all that matters.

NYROCK:

Okay, final question. You have one wish for modern music. What would it be?

JOHN:

I have a couple wishes for modern music. One: stop using covers to make your band a success. That's like a house built out of paper.

SHAVO:

Quite right.

JOHN:

A lot of bands have done it. The first major fucking storm that comes, your house is gonna fall down. There's no base there; there's no reality. The second is always strive to create something that's different, artistic, and that you believe in. If you're 'N Sync, and you believe in it, more power to you.

NYROCK:

[to Shavo] What's your wish?

SHAVO:

[quiet] I have one thing, it's like the last thing he said, but I'm not telling anyone to do what we're doing, you know, but I don't like sheep. And a lot of bands out there... There are a lot of Vanilla Ices nowadays that aren't called Vanilla Ice. You take music that's already been proven to be rad, and you put a beat over it, you rap on top of it, and you sell millions of copies and you think you're bad ass. Do not think you're bad ass because my little brother could do that on his computer in two seconds and rip your ass up.

JOHN:

And if you don't do that and you become a big success, don't be a bad ass. Don't think you're a bad ass. Don't think you're a bad ass for fuckin' playing music. I think you're a bad ass for coming up with a cure for cancer. All we're doing is exploring what we have inside of us, enjoying ourselves. It's art, so it's fun. That's the point of art, to enjoy it. You shouldn't be so full of yourself, you know, so high and mighty. All you're doing is playing music. I'm a drummer for Christ's sake. I go up on stage, and I play drums.

SHAVO:

Not many bands tend to be artists these days.

JOHN:

I actually want to be known as the artist formerly known as John [laughs].... This is our last message: Play your own shit. No covers, just play your own shit.

September 2001

More System of a Down:

09/04/01 - System of a Down Concert Ends Before It Begins
08/17/01 - Slipknot and System of a Down Announce the Pledge of Allegiance Tour with Rammstein and Mudvayne
04/28/01 - System of a Down Auction Memorabilia
11/00/00 - Interview
11/06/00 - System of a Down Raise $20,000 for Armenian Genocide Recognition
10/25/00 - System of a Down Blast President Clinton and Speaker of the House
10/03/00 - System of a Down Busted for Uttering Copyrighted Phrase, "Let's Get Ready To Rumble"

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