Dave Wyndorf hanging out at Jack’s Music Shoppe on Broad Street last week. (Photo by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge.)
By BRIAN DONOHUE
Last week, Dave Wyndorf was living his life of an average Red Bank dude.
A guy who likes to start his day with a ton of coffee, maybe read his beloved comic books and just “sit on my porch and feed the squirrels.”
But this week, Wyndorf is living his other life.
The one in which he’s an international rock star nicknamed “Space Lord” by fans and credited with popularizing the genre “stoner rock.” The guy with 11 albums under his belt, an X-Men mutant named after one of his songs and an improbable 35-year-career that even he can’t believe is still happening.
Yeah, never mind those Red Bank squirrels. This week, Wyndorf is standing once again before crowds of rabid fans on stages across Europe, melting their faces off with guitar licks and lyrics like, “If Satan lived in heaven he’d be me.”
Monster Magnet, with Dave Wyndorf second from left. (Band promotional photo. Click to enlarge.)
Wyndorf is the lead singer, guitarist, sole original member and driving force behind the band Monster Magnet, arguably the forerunners and reigning kings of a genre variously described as space rock, stoner rock and alternative heavy metal.
Monster Magnet this week began a 35th anniversary tour across Europe, with concerts in nine countries, including the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Croatia.
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Monster Magnet on stage Monday night in Glasgow, Scotland.
Before they left for Europe, the band was also cutting a new album at a studio in Keyport.
That he and the band are still rocking, recording and filling concert halls into their fourth decade astonishes no one more than Wyndorf himself.
“Not a day goes by, or at least a week goes by, where I’m like, How did I.. How did we manage this?” he told redbankgreen earlier this month. “I traveled around the world a zillion times, and 35 years later, I’m still doing it. It’s bizarre.”
It’s a life he appreciates as a rare one: a rock star with a loyal global audience whom just about nobody in his home town recognizes.
“It’s kind of like a secret identity to me,” he said. “I was always a big comic book fan. So yeah, I go on tour, I get to act like Spider-Man. When I get home, I’m Peter Parker. I’m telling you, it’s the way to go.”
Born in Riverview Medical Center, he grew up in a family with eight brothers and sisters. At Red Bank Regional High School, he said he was a “terrible student.”
In the 1980’s, Wyndorf worked at a comic book store called Fantasy Zone in downtown Red Bank. He looks fondly back to the days of what is now referred as “Dead Bank” – a time and place in which the low rents and empty storefronts allowed artists to find space, both physically and metaphorically, to create.
“It was a perfect place because nobody was looking,’’ Wyndorf said. “You could get away with stuff. It was a very creative time in Red Bank, I thought. I would say like a good quarter of the artists that live in Asbury Park now probably started out in Red Bank.”
Wyndorf formed Monster Magnet in 1989 with fellow Red Bankers Tim Cronin (pictured above with Wyndorf) and John McBain. In the 1990’s, as vapid hair metal was giving way to mopey, self-absorbed grunge atop the charts, Monster Magnet spat in the face of both sides.
“I couldn’t understand why they were selling the loser angle of it’’ he said of many grunge bands. “You’re a middle class white guy. You have nothing to complain about.”
Instead, Monster Magnet embraced 70’s rock showmanship, with lyrics that plumb the depths of the human psyche with fantastical comic-book style imagery.
Wyndorf’s songs, as one writer put it, sound like the “exultant soundtrack for a galactic dictator’s Nuremberg Rally on some ravaged planet.”
“My first band was a punk band, so I realized the audacity and just boneheadedness of overexcessive rock,” he said. “It’s baked into why it’s great, so it could be simultaneously ridiculous and glorious at the same time, if you want to look at it that way. And that’s the way I look at it.”
The video for Monster Magnet’s “Space Lord,” with 34 million views and counting.
Wyndorf remains the band’s only original member. The early exposure on MTV and tours with bands like Soundgarden gave way to a cult following on the fringe of the heavy metal and alternative scenes, with commercial ups and downs and songs featured in films and TV shows ranging from “Bride of Chucky” to “Sons of Anarchy.”
Monster Magnet has always been more popular in Europe than the U.S., Wyndorf said: that’s one reason the 35th anniversary tour is focused there. “We went to where people liked it,’’ he said.
Unwittingly, that dynamic created the ideal reality for Wyndorf, allowing him to live the life of a rock star on the road then come home to the life in the town where he grew up.
“I definitely did not want to bring the whole rock thing into here, because then it would ruin it,” he said. “I wouldn’t be able to ride my bike around and pretend I was 10 years old, which I could still do.”
And while he has lived in New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, there was never a doubt he wind up back in Red Bank.
“I think it’s the perfect little town,” he said.
The proverbial place he finds himself in with Monster Magnet 35 years in? That’s a bit more of a surprising destination.
“It’s bizarre,” he said. “It’s like I must have turned left when I should have turned left. And I turned right when I should have turned right. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes by mistake.”
redbankgreen editor Brian Donohue may be reached via email at [email protected] or by calling or texting 848-331-8331 or yelling his name loudly as he walks by. Do you value the news coverage provided by redbankgreen? Please become a financial supporter if you haven’t already. Click here to set your own level of monthly or annual contribution.
