Unhinged Texan noise-rock legends Butthole Surfers won't be reuniting, despite "six-figure offers" for live shows

(Image credit: Pat Blashill)

Despite receiving "six-figure offers" to reform for live shows, Butthole Surfers insist they won't be re-emerging from their eight-year hiatus, for both their own safety, and the safety of their audiences.

Matador Records recently reissued the oddball Texan noise-rock band's first two albums, 1984's Psychic, Powerless, Another Man’s Sac and 1986's Rembrant Pussyhorse, plus a live EP, the three records being described by Classic Rock's Fraser Lewry as "grotesque, distended, acid-fried, phlegm-powered, hallucinatory and brilliant". But while the release programme has sparked a renewed interest in the dormant group, and more of their catalogue will be hosed down for public consumption later in the year, guitarist Paul Leary says that he's happy to let this particular sleeping dog lie.

The San Antonio group were infamous for a) their wildly experimental albums b) their wildly enthusiastic drug-taking and c) their wildly dangerous live shows, which featured "piss bombs, glitter, fire, nudity, penetration and screwdrivers", as the headline for a 2020 Classic Rock magazine retrospective neatly summarised. And in a new interview with The Guardian, Paul Leary says that it's best for everyone if the band don't end their extended time-out.

“We’ve been getting six-figure offers to play live,” he says. “But I just don’t want to do it. We’re really lucky to not be in prison and I don’t want to push that any more. I don’t want to be sending a bandmate home in a body bag or for a venue to burn down.”

“We were some genuinely fucked up people,” he adds. “We’re good people, but we’re fucked up – we’re damaged.”

For his part, vocalist Gibby Haynes takes responsibility for pushing the band into some inadvisable territories.

“We’re not as good as we could be today, and that’s because I lost my shit,” he acknowledges. “I did too many drugs. I totally screwed up the deal. It’s my bad. It’s on me.”

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.