Circus Magazine

October 1987 — Issue #342

FOUR VIPERS, ONE ROOM, NO SURVIVORS: THE MOST UNHINGED INTERVIEW OF 1987

We tried to sit down with all four members of Viper Fury at once. We are not the same people we were before.

By Diane Kowalski

I have conducted over three hundred interviews in my career. I have spoken to Ozzy Osbourne while he was eating a raw steak. I once interviewed Nikki Sixx from inside a broom closet because he refused to leave it. None of that prepared me for forty-five minutes in a hotel room with Viper Fury.

The setting: a suite at the Hyatt on Sunset, the afternoon before their sold-out Forum show. Owen is sitting in an armchair drinking tea from an actual porcelain cup he apparently travels with. Jemah is pacing. Sheldon is on the couch, motionless, staring at a point on the wall that — as far as I can tell — contains nothing. Barnel is not in the room. He was in the room five minutes ago. No one saw him leave.

CIRCUS: So, let's start with the new album. "Venom & Velvet" has been getting incredible—

JEMAH: It's a masterpiece. I don't say that lightly. Well, I do say it lightly, because it's obviously true and shouldn't require effort to state.

OWEN: She's been rehearsing that answer since Tuesday.

JEMAH: I have not—

OWEN: I literally watched you say it into the bathroom mirror this morning. Twice. The second time with a hand gesture.

[Jemah throws a pillow at Owen. Owen does not spill his tea. This seems practiced.]

CIRCUS: Owen, what's your take on the album?

OWEN: It's quite good, yeah. We managed to record most of it without anyone being arrested, which is genuinely a first. Low bar, but we cleared it.

CIRCUS: Sheldon, what about you?

[Sheldon looks at me. Looks back at the wall. Seven seconds pass.]

SHELDON: It's heavy.

OWEN: Eloquent as ever, mate.

CIRCUS: And Barnel — does anyone know where Barnel went?

JEMAH: He does this. Last week he disappeared for two days and came back with a full-size traffic cone. No explanation. We've stopped asking.

OWEN: The traffic cone is actually in the room next door. He's named it. I'm not telling you what he's named it because I don't think Circus prints that sort of language.

[The door opens. Barnel walks in carrying a room service tray with nothing on it except a single olive. He sits on the floor. The interview continues.]

CIRCUS: Barnel, great, you're back. We were just talking about the new album—

[Barnel eats the olive. Says nothing.]

CIRCUS: ...Right. Jemah, there's been talk about tension in the studio. Can you address that?

JEMAH: There is no tension. We are a family. A deeply bonded, spiritually connected—

OWEN: She threw a microphone stand at me in week two.

JEMAH: It was a creative disagreement.

OWEN: It hit me in the shin, Jemah. I've still got the bruise. Want to see the bruise?

JEMAH: Nobody wants to see your shin, Owen.

OWEN: The doctors wanted to see my shin. Specifically the part with the dent in it.

CIRCUS: Maybe we can talk about the live show. You're playing the Forum tonight—

JEMAH: It's going to be transcendent. I've been working on a new stage entrance that involves fog, a harness, and what I can only describe as a controlled descent from the rafters.

OWEN: Last time she did a "controlled descent," she kicked a lighting rig and it fell on the drum kit.

JEMAH: The lighting rig was in the wrong place.

OWEN: It was bolted to the ceiling. It was exactly where it was supposed to be. You were in the wrong place. Specifically, thirty feet in the air where no drummer needs to be.

[Sheldon, who has not moved in twelve minutes, suddenly speaks.]

SHELDON: The harness broke last time.

[Everyone stops. This is the most Sheldon has said in one sitting since apparently March.]

JEMAH: The harness did not break. It... released prematurely.

OWEN: Released prematurely. Right. That's what gravity is, is it? A premature release? Brilliant.

CIRCUS: Let's change the subject. What do you all do to unwind on tour?

OWEN: Tea. Crossword. Sometimes I ring my mum.

JEMAH: I do drum warmups and guided meditation.

OWEN: By "guided meditation" she means hitting a practice pad for forty minutes and then phoning her psychic.

JEMAH: Madame Volara is a spiritual advisor, and she predicted the album would go platinum, so—

OWEN: She also predicted Sheldon would "find love in a coastal city." Sheldon hasn't left the bus in six days.

SHELDON: I don't like the coast.

[Barnel, who has been sitting on the floor for the entire interview, stands up, walks to the window, opens it, and climbs out onto the fire escape. We are on the fourth floor. No one reacts.]

CIRCUS: Should... should someone—

OWEN: He'll be fine. He does this. Once he climbed a radio tower in Memphis. Came back with a sunburn and a new riff. Absolute legend.

CIRCUS: One last question. Where do you see Viper Fury in five years?

JEMAH: Headlining stadiums worldwide. A cultural institution. An empire.

OWEN: Alive, ideally. That'd be nice.

SHELDON: [says nothing]

[From outside the window, faintly, we hear Barnel playing a guitar riff. Where he got a guitar on the fire escape of the Hyatt is unclear and, at this point, not worth investigating.]

JEMAH: [standing up] This interview is over. I need to go prepare for tonight. I need to center myself.

OWEN: She's going to call the psychic.

JEMAH: I am going to CENTER. MYSELF.

[Jemah storms out. The door slams. A framed print of a sailboat falls off the wall. Owen takes a sip of tea.]

OWEN: Lovely chat, this. Same time next year?

Editor's Note: The Forum show that evening was, by all accounts, spectacular. Jemah's harness entrance went off without incident, though she did accidentally knock over a cymbal stand during the encore, which Owen later described as "the most predictable thing that has ever happened." Barnel was retrieved from the fire escape by hotel security approximately forty minutes after this interview concluded. He had written two songs.