Behind every freak show there’s always one man in the back, smiling, counting his money. For the intergalactic collision of rock ‘n’ roll and violence going by the name of GWAR, that man is music manager, drug kingpin and exploitative businessman extraordinaire Sleazy P. Martini. Absent from GWAR’s road ranks for the last 13 years, Martini has made sure to collect his cash from the band every time they’ve recorded, toured or filmed a DVD. However, he has been too busy shaking down amateur Web cam porn starlets for his share to really care what’s happened with his rock band as they’ve somehow managed to continue on without him, laying seize to such stages as the Sounds of the Underground Tour. Turns out he’s pissed off about a lot more than just his cut of the loot. Politics and just people in general have gotten him hot enough to get back into the game, and, like he has done before, run for President of the United States. Returning from retirement for one time only, Martini squeezed Recoil into his busy day to give the real story about how he taught GWAR everything they know and made them into the touring abomination they are today, and how his Presidential platform will provide more porn than pensions.

Hey, welcome back to the music biz, Sleazy.Sleazy P. Martini: Well, thanks but no thanks. I’ve been trying to retire from the music biz for over ten years and as you may or may not know in those ten years I’ve basically been cementing my control over the entire world porn business, which is a lot of work in itself. So I thought that I could hire underlings for me to run this GWAR business, but I’ve been getting a look at these returns on the shows and I think we’ve been getting chiseled. So I’ve got to go back out on the road, I’ve gotta crack some skulls, I’ve gotta break some arms, I’ve gotta give some curb jobs and make sure that GWAR’s money is all there and accounted for!

For those who don’t know how you discovered GWAR, fill us in on how you took those scumdogs and made them into rock stars?It’s interesting that you should bring that up. Being that I am heavily involved with politics, it’s not much different at all. As you can see you don’t need talent, obviously George W. Bush made it; you don’t have to have a particularly sterling reputation, i.e. George Bush made it; and you don’t have to have intelligence, i.e. George Bush made it. So, basically, as you may or may not be aware, I was on the lamb – that’s the only reason why I’d be flying over Antarctica. There’s not much of a scene there and I certainly didn’t expect to find a rock band of this star-quality. But there I was and I happened to be hiding out in this ruined, archaic temple that turned out to be GWAR’s, and discovered these guys that were frozen in the walls like chicken pot pies, four for a buck! So then there was a combination of events. As you recall the eighties was heavily affected with glam metal, and all that hairspray created a hole in the ozone and that with my amazing disco glitter suit combined to thaw out all these GWAR characters. And we hit it off immediately. I like manipulating people, they like cocaine – so, naturally, we became friends. I took them back to my home in New York City, at my apartment there, and kept them holed up for a while. I fed them Smurf Berry Crunch and Domino’s Pizza men and that worked for a while, but basically I had to find a way to create income with these guys. So my first attempt was professional wrestling, as it turns out. Obviously they didn’t understand the concept of throwing a match. So when they ripped off The Ultimate Warrior’s head and shit down its neck, needless to say I had a problem. So there goes my family-friendly television contract with the WWF, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Well, shit, now what am I gonna do?’ And it hit I realized at the time that I think America’s ready for full-blown, genocidal rock concerts and we haven’t looked back.

Why’d you decide to bring wrestling back into the mix now? You’ve got GWAR going head-to-head against the tag-team called The Destructo-Destructo Express on this tour.This has been an on again, off again event. Even after I took them out of wrestling they sort of still had that inclination towards violence already instilled in them. It was during this transition period they didn’t understand that they were putting on rock concerts; they thought they were still wrestling. Techno-Destructo, as you may or may not be aware, he is one of the cyber-scumdogs created by The Master who was sent here to Earth to retrieve GWAR to help The Master fight against Cardinal Sin and his legions. However, GWAR’s been basically compromised by drugs and sex and alcohol, and were no longer interested in serving The Master. So Techno-Destructo took out a vendetta against GWAR and has threatened to destroy them every time they meet, and that’s going to be just about every show on this upcoming tour. I figure throw some belts in there, call it Mid-Galactic Wrestling, and you know, some other bullshit like that, and we can pass it off as a combo sporting event rock concert. I mean, how can you lose!?! What else do you need!?! Oh yeah, porn! So we’ve got some of that too. I figure the two just go together. I mean, have you ever been in a GWAR pit? That’s MMA (mixed martial arts) plus a bear pit, pretty much. I figured people are too busy getting kicked in the face to tell what’s going on, so why not merge it all together?

How have you managed to tie all that together with politics and your current run for President?As you may be aware, our government seems to be completely incompetent. This is a misperception by the public. You see, they’re not incompetent at all. They’re simply puppets who are doing the bidding of the puppet masters, such as myself, and they’re getting all the credit. As one of the puppet masters, I’m getting quite pissed off. The Iraq War, which looks like a disaster, is not. That is exactly going to plan. The Afghanistan war, the War on Terror, the financial collapse, these are all things that we the puppet masters have been putting into play for decades now. Everything is coming to fruition! We will soon have the mass execution of the middle class here in the United States that we’ve always hoped for. It’s going to be a beautiful thing! We’re going to get rid of the Fourth of July and instead Labor Day is going to be the biggest holiday of the summer where we load all of the middle class into donkey carts and have them decapitated on the Washington mall. It’s going to be a great, great thing. Everyone’s going to enjoy it, so make sure you bring the kids. There’ll be hot dogs, bottles of wine, picnic baskets. It’ll be the fruition of our greatest dream which is a one-world, globalist dictatorship… run by me!! Who else, right?

So why even campaign?Well, I have to campaign because we have to have some semblance of credibility. [Laughs] You remember President Bush. What’s his approval rating now? Eight percent, nine percent? I don’t know?! But we have to appear to have an election. You remember how complicated that got? We had to rig Florida just to get that dumb fuck into the Presidency. We had to get all those straight-laced young Republicans down there and pretend to be political activists to stop that recount. We had to rig the Supreme Court to get the decision so we could finally get him in as president. I’m getting tired of it!!!

Let’s just cut to the chase!That’s right! Let’s cut to the chase! You want a dictatorship, you got it! What are you afraid you’re going to lose some freedoms?!? Let me tell you, some of the freedoms you’ll still have after I become President. You’ll still be able to watch NASCAR, you’ll still be able to go to Wal-Mart all you want, you’ll still be able to go bass fishing, you’ll still be able to paint your nails with Biblical themes or whatever, you’ll still be able to own as much guns and malt liquor as you want. None of those things will change! I mean, c’mon now, what freedoms are you going to miss? Freedom of speech?? When’s the last time anyone used that? Get real! Freedom of the press? C’mon, they’re all working for me already! What freedoms! People don’t even know what fucking freedom is. People are free to smoke weed and jerk off on the Internet, that I can promise you in spades!

That’s the Sleazy P. platform?That’s the Sleazy P. platform. You will not lose any of the freedoms that matter, only the ones you’re not using.

How’d you get the other Presidential candidates to skip debating and just get up there in the wrestling ring for this upcoming tour?That’s the thing. See, I think America is really disappointed with the whole political process. We don’t feel closure at the end of the election. We don’t feel a satisfaction. So why not just let them fight to the death? Wouldn’t you rather see that? Wouldn’t you have more respect for George Bush if he’d beat the shit out of Al Gore right there on TV and ate his spleen? So that’s basically what we’re pushing here. Let’s do away with the whole waste of time bullshit and let’s just take right from Viking culture and let the best people fight to the death – and what better format than professional wrestling. We’ve got [Barack] Obama and Hilary [Clinton] tag-teaming up against GWAR. We’ve John McCain, he’s going to be wrestling our cave troll, Bone Snapper. And watch out for John McCain. Even though he had both his arms broken there by the VC in the Hanoi Hilton, that guy, he’s a real fireball. He’s a psycho, basically. He’ll rip your head off and throw it to your dying ass. He’s crazy.

I know you’re a busy man, so I’ve only got one more for ya, Sleazy. At what point will you feel comfortable enough to retire again?Basically, I’m in it until GWAR leaves the planet, which could be any day now – which, my God, please let it happen! But right now I’ve gotta ride this out as a matter of pride. Those promoters are snaking my money left and right and I’ve gotta go out there and remind them one by one who’s boss. But as far as GWAR’s concerned [whispers] they don’t know any better. First of all, what are they, sixteen million years old? So you hit them with that Rolling Stones, old-man crap and it bounces right off of them. Seventy years is an eye blink for them. Hell, I’ve seen Oderus sleep for twenty years after one particularly heavy coke binge, so those guys, they’re not going to take anyone’s advice? Irrelevant?? Hardly, that makes it sound like they were relevant at one point! C’mon, let’s get real – this is GWAR we’re talking about! This is a cultural catastrophe! There’s nothing relevant about that. It’s not like they’re going to lose cred; they’ve got no cred to lose!

GWAR’s current tour, Election Dysfunction’08, descends on the Intersection Oct. 24 and Harpo’s in Detroit Oct. 25. Watch Sleazy P. Martini now in GWAR’s latest DVD, Bloodbath and Beyond, available in stores and online. To stomach even more GWAR, experience gwar.net.