'Get Your Motor Runnin'
Turbonegro Must Be Deployed

"You journalists stop mentioning G.G. Allin when you describe me. I have nothing in common with that guy!"

Oh-kaaay. Let it be known that I've never invoked the name of G.G. Allin when describing Turbonegro frontman Hank Von Helvete. There's a difference 'tween squeezing out sparks and squeezing outŠwell, you know. And Von Helvete has absolutely no plot to extinguish himself live on stage at any point. "No, no I don't. Fuck that."

Apparently, though, Hank thinks too many writers have been calling him the bastard son of G.G. or something. At least, that's how he reasons the unusually rowdy, belligerent crowd that greeted Turbonegro at their sold out March 30th headlining gig at New York City's Mercury Lounge. The band hit the stage to pandemonium - not a bad thing, mind you - but then the bottles started flying. Hank felt an empty one or two zonk him, leaving a sting but nothing too major. Then - KAPOW! - a full one right to the head, leaving him a bleeding mess. Which could've been the perfect beginning to a show, were this someone like, say, the late G.G. Allin. As it was, Turbonegro did the wise thing and cut the gig short, wheeling their bloody voicepiece to the hospital.

"I guess this guy thought that throwing stuff at the band was being part of punk rock culture or something," Von Helvete reasons. "But it wasn't that bad, it was just bleeding a lot, and I needed some stitches. But we managed to put on a show at a much bigger venue [The Bowery Ballroom] the day after, and so the people who got their show ruined that night got to come back the day after."

Yay! All is saved!

Turbonegro, in case you haven't heard, rock like a mofo. They've been one of the biggest things going in Norway since the late 1980s, but it's been only recently - after the band's premature breakup, mostly - that they began to build significant word of mouth in the United States. Cool, in-the-know hipsters like Jello Biafra, Dave Grohl and Frank Kozik have been singing their praises, while the Supersuckers and Queens of the Stone Age were among those paying tribute on a 2001 covers album called Alpha Motherfuckers.

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Problem was, the band was already kaput. Or so we thought.

Turbonegro first skulked out of the primordial ooze - I'm sorry, typo; make that metropolitan Oslo - in the cold, closing days of 1988, with a considerably different roster and noisier, uglier sound. Their first single and EP saw release the following year, but a tour of the United States (Sympathy For the Record Industry released a 7" here) was chaotic in all the wrong ways, and the original lineup collapsed upon their return to Oslo. A re-juggled lineup surfaced in 1991 with a refined sound soon termed "deathpunk" - dark, driving hard rock with a sarcastic sense of humor, a mischievous image, irreverent theatricality and a somewhat solidifying lineup, with, finally in April '93, one Alice Cooper lovin' loon named Hans Erik Husby -- later known as Hank Von Helvete - front and center.

"[Turbonegro] were the cool underground band in Oslo, and I was playing in another punk band, not anything big," he recalls. "But the singer Turbo had [Harald Fossberg] had a wife and two kids, and was close to 40, and he had to stop playing in a band. So there was an opening there, and they needed a singer who could do the job, and I could do the job, so I got the job." For yuks if nothing else, the curious should search out Fossberg's finest Turbo moment on a US EP from '93, (He's a) Grunge Whore, for the band's cover of Black Flag's "Six Pack," with Eugene Chadbourne guesting on banjo.

Meanwhile, Hank brought his own style of menace to the proceedings, including wild face paint, an appetite for drugs and a habit of shooting fireworks out of his ass onstage. A rock 'n' roll legend waiting to happen, by all accounts.

What are generally regarded as Turbonegro's crowning moments, 1996's Ass Cobra and especially 1998's Apocalypse Dudes, edged them closer to '70s American proto-punk in flavor, and turned some ears in the States, as Sympathy and Man's Ruin gave them release here. In Europe - certainly in Scandinavia - these proudly un-PC Norwegians (they'd gone through an all-afro look and a hyper-gay image by this point) were regarded as rock saviors, as face it, rock 'n' roll was generally sorta in a slump at that point. But by the end of '98, Turbonegro had split up, seemingly for good, as Von Helvete's erratic behavior and growing heroin abuse crippled him and the band. With their singer inside a psychiatric hospital in Milan, the group canceled the rest of their European tour and bid the world adieu.

"It was very dark. I just needed to get treatment, I needed help," Von Helvete says today. "We were all really bummed out that we had to break up. It was a necessity, because my health was deteriorating fast, so in order to save my life, we just had to stop playing. But that was a hard decision to come to, and it was sad for all of us."

Now 30, Hank says he first dabbled in smack at a time in his life when "I wasn't that afraid of dying. And it was readily available [in Norway]. And there was a wave of heroin coming across America during the '90s too. You know, there are some terrorist groups in the Middle East who found a way to terrorize by hooking their enemies' children on drugs. I think it's a terror act similar to crashing planes into skyscrapers in the West. People don't talk about it being a terrorist act, but it is. And they were pushing heroin really hard into Europe, especially during the '90s. So it was very easy to get ahold of, and very cheap, and very strong heroin."

As for the tour-ending stint in the mental ward, he'd rather not discuss it except to say, "I've been in and out of various institutions. It just happens. It was just a bad mix, I guess, between heritage and environment."

Although he refers to his heroin addiction as "a game I played between tours and between studio work, between band work altogether," Hank nonetheless chose to isolate himself from his friends and his urban surroundings in order to clean up his life.

"I stayed out of Oslo," he says. "I moved north of Norway and lived on a small island there where my family comes from. I didn't see anyone in the band for those four years. Didn't go down to Oslo at all. Didn't go to the city at all. I worked in a fishing village museum."

Unbeknownst to him, throughout the rest of the world, Turbonegro's legend was growing in their absence.

"We split up at the point in our careers when we were actually breaking hard, you know, taking off," he acknowledges. "It is weird. I don't think we became more popular because of breaking up, but of course the reason for breaking up became the fundament for a lot of rumors to spread, you know. So I guess we became somewhat legendary and mythical, alongside the popularity. Luckily the four years we broke up worked for us, both popular-wise and mythology-wise. But also, personally as artists. Because we got four years of really thinking our whole act through. We all got some distance from the band, to rethink our roles in the band, and we were able to choose to come back to the band. And we all came to the same conclusion: that we want to play in Turbonegro, we want to start touring again, we want to release kick-ass albums. So the four years actually worked for us, in many aspects. I'm not complaining."

Indeed, when Turbonegro retook European stages last year, they were playing to more people than ever. Of course, there's been a worldwide recognition of Scandinavian rock in the past couple of years, with The Hives, Soundtrack of Our Lives, The Hellacopters and Sahara Hotnights just a few of the bands breaking big from that region. Many of them cite Turbonegro as a big inspiration. It's a compliment Hank will accept, although personally he doesn't feel much kinship with the current trend.

"Well, I agree that we should get some credit for having instigated something in Scandinavia.," Von Helvete says. "But I personally like to distance myself... I guess I would put the parallel to the Melvins' attitudes toward grunge. You know, they were kind of godfathering it, but when it became it big thing, they realized that this is not necessarily a good thing, you know, to be associated with a wave or trend. And anyway, we don't interact that much with other Scandinavian rock bands. We have more together and more in common with other parts of Scandinavian rock like black metal and that scene. We feel we have more in common with those guys. And I don't think it's necessarily a good thing that the big labels are prepared to sign anyone with a ukulele and a fuzzbox just because they're out of Scandinavia. I hope people see us as a band, and not as a Scandinavian rock band. I know that it can work out for some bands, but for some it will be a curse."

In the States, Epitaph Records re-released Ass Cobra and Apocalypse Dudes last year, and Turbonegro returned to our shores for their first US dates since 1997, this time opening for their fans Queens of the Stone Age. The shows were packed, and despite the bottle incident in NYC, Hank testifies that "it's actually the best tour I've ever been on. We never expected such a following from the fans, that we actually had so many fans over there. The crowds were totally going ape-shit, freaking out on us."

The only thing that hushed them was one of Hank's trademark stage antics, the "sphincter sparkler."

"Well, it's just a small sparkler, you know, like they have on ice cakes in restaurants, and it's just a small flare, it's indoor fireworks, nothing dangerous," he reasons. "But the first show [of the US tour] we did it, and we realized the whole crowd became really silent, and it was really close to breaking out huge panic. It was just like the feeling you get when you sit on a plane and you see three Arabs getting up from their chairs at the same time. You get that littleŠball in your stomach, you know. So, uhhh, we realized that the Great White incident was too close for even indoor fireworks."

It's no wonder, though, that they'd discover they had ideological compatriots in Johnny Knoxville's "Jackass" gang. While in LA on the West Coast leg of the Queens tour, the band shot a video for their new song "Sell Your Body (To the Night)" with some of the Jackasses (not to mention a grizzly).

"It was awesome that they wanted to do that with us, we were totally amazed that they were so fans of us that they wanted to work with us," the singer says. "And when we met, we realized that we are pretty much the same age, we have the same background. When we drove in their car we saw that their road tapes were exactly the same bands that we grew up with. Like Misfits, Suicidal Tendencies, Black Flag, stuff like that. Punk, hardcore and stuff. They are skateboard punks. So, we like the same stuff, like the same music, have the same humor, everything. So, making the video was fun, and the party afterwards was great!"

"Sell You Body" shows up on the brand new Turbonegro album, Scandinavian Leather, which, if the buzz is any indication, marks the launch of a whole new uber-phase of Turbo-wide domination. Nasty, glammy, raw and randy, the album rocks with cock-in-denim-pocket assurance. It could've been birthed in early '70s Detroit if it weren't so self-referential - and reverential in regards to the band's own rock 'n'roll heroes. The cover was designed by Klaus Voormann (The Beatles' Revolver), and the album title pays homage to The Germs. And that's just for starters.

"You know, we have lots of references, and obviously you figured that out," Hank admits. "It's not a big secret that we have references - they're all 'tributing' references, and Germs have been a great inspiration to us, especially lyric-wise. Yah!" he laughs. But despite their humor and eagerness to offend the easily offended, bassist and founding member (and occasional TV comedy writer) "Happy-Tom" Seltzer (the sailor) has stated, "[Turbonegro] has never been a joke/humour band. It's as simple as that. It's all a question of levels of reference. We like to play games, we like to play with words, we like to play with fear, instinct, style and stupidity."

"Yeah," adds Hank, "we have some brilliant creative minds in the band! Can't argue there!"

With Scandinavian Leather hitting the streets as you read these words, if not before, the band is planning more touring, including a headlining stint in the States in the fall. Diving headlong back into the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, does Von Helvete, who's now on methadone, fear a relapse into heroin hell?

"Well, the danger I was grappling with was never part of the rock scene anyway. That is, I tried as much as possible not to mix my drug use with the band. And it was when I was not able to avoid mixing that that we had to break up. So, uh, it's nothing I'm confronted with when I play in the band. We meet people fucked up on different drugs, yeah, but it's very easy to manage to stay away from that when you're actually working. It's a myth that all bands are on drugs all the time - only the bands that break up do too many drugs. You can't be on drugs and play a good show together. That's impossible. The good bands, the bands that last, are the bands that take their work seriously."

Sounding as serious as a man who wears top hats and eyeliner, and sings songs like "Fuck the World," "Wipe it Til it Bleeds" and "Rock Against Ass" can be, he concludes, "there was a series of coincidences working against me for my first 30 years of life. But now I'm happy, it's all working out good for me, soŠ"

stomp and stammer