The Butthole Surfers are an American psychedelic and punk band. The band was founded by Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary in San Antonio, Texas in 1982; the pair met while students at Trinity University. Incorporating elements of hardcore, psychedelia, and performance art, their live shows also made heavy use of strobe lights, background films (of note, footage of penis reconstruction surgery) and naked dancers, the Butthole Surfers' live performances adding a dimension that completely side-stepped the arena-rock grandiosity and secured them a prominent place in the cult annals.
While their line-up has changed frequently over the years, they have maintained a core membership of Haynes (vocals), Leary (guitar), and King Coffey (drums). For much of their career the band also included Teresa Taylor as a second drummer. The band has been through numerous bass players, including Jeff Pinkus and Mark Kramer (of Bongwater and Shimmy Disc).
They recorded their debut EP on Alternative Tentacles replete with thought-provoking titles like The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey's Grave and The Revenge of Anus Presley, before moving to Touch & Go to release their debut album Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sac which featured such cult classics as Cherub and Negro Observer. Guitarist Paul Leary made a much larger lyrical contribution in these early albums, singing almost as much as Gibby Haynes. Along with The Teardrop Explodes in the UK this album might be said to have begun the psychedelic revival (psychedelia having been extremely unfashionable in the five years since punk). It also showed the influence of heavy metal (especially Black Sabbath), again, many years before this sound became fashionable: in marrying punk and heavy metal it might be seen as one of the first precursors of grunge. Their second album Rembrandt Pussyhorse showed the increased influence of the European avant-garde (e.g. bands such as Throbbing Gristle and Einsturzende Neubauten) as well as American eccentrics like Frank Zappa and The Residents. However it was their third album Locust Abortion Technician (Touch & Go - US/ Blast First - UK), that really brought them to the attention of the music press and public, and some critics still argue this is their best album. It is certainly their most extreme, making full use of tape loops, backward instrumentation, and other features. (The story of the creation of this album is told in Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad (Little, Brown) amidst other tales from the American underground in the 1980s). Their increasingly outrageous live shows were also starting to attract attention. The band's rampant drug consumption (especially of LSD) also raised some eyebrows in the days of straight edge. The band's next album Hairway to Steven was powerful, but schizophrenic: half the album contained material as extreme as their previous work, but there were also a few pieces that might be considered conventional songs. Some of them were even vaguely tuneful. (Pioughd) for Rough Trade Records continued in this vein, and featured an increasing use of electronic instrumentation. In 1991 they were part of the first Lollapalooza tour. Soon afterwards the inevitable happened, when they were signed by William Howell of Capitol Records and their increasingly conventional modern rock songs began to be played on radio and Beavis and Butt-head. The 1993 debut for Capitol "Independent Worm Saloon" was produced by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. Their songs also began to turn up on the sountrack of major Hollywood movies, such as Baz Luhrman's Romeo + Juliet and Mission Impossible around this time.
