Haunted George
Interview By: Norma Gonzalez

Are you really haunted? Or do YOU do most of the haunting?

I don’t haunt anyone that I’m aware of. I would say that I’m the one that is haunted. I get creepy thoughts going through my head at the weirdest times. If I’m in the grocery store I might see a mother and her small child in shopping cart and I’ll think to my self, what would they both look like if they were dead for a few weeks? Then I’ll take it a step further and think, what if it was a few weeks after they had burned or drowned or were stuck in a car with the windows rolled up during the summer?... Stuff straight out of Rotten.com or Feral House’s “Death Scenes” book. I’ll indulge the thought till I think about something else. I also have a reoccurring dream that there’s a rotten corpse caught in the wheels of my car or blocking the door of a room I’m in. I need to go somewhere and I’m in a hurry so I’ve got to move it. It’s slimy and falling apart. I’m getting this gore all over me it stinks. In the dream I’m not scared, just annoyed.

What is the meaning of behind the Album’s working title, “Pile o’ Meat”?

Well, I actually had the title “Pile o’ Meat” for the record before I had the song. I was in Driftwood, Texas at a barbeque place called, “The Saltlick”. It was the best barbeque I’ve ever had and I’ve had a lot. I got this big plate of meat with brisket, ribs, hot links and spare ribs. It was a great big beautiful pile of meat. So before I even took a bite, I got my camera out and snapped a picture of it. That picture was going to be the original cover for “Pile o’ Meat”. Somebody asked me about what I meant by it. I thought of all the different possible meanings for the title and then wrote a song around it so there would be a title track.

What can we expect with this latest album?

It’s more Rock and Roll than “Panther Howl” or “Bone Hauler”. Those records were a little more folk & western than this new one. I wrote a bunch of fast ones and then there’s some slow ones. I didn’t know how to properly track the album so I put all the fast songs on one side and all the slow/sad songs on the other side. Side A is going to be called the “Homi-Side” and side B will be the “Sui-Side”… get it? It’s going to end with a Pat Boone cover.

WHY a one man band? Do you ever think you’ll join a band again? Or is that chapter done?

Well, the one-man band is something that works for me on a few levels. I can practice anytime I feel like it. I can pick out any songs I want and there isn’t someone saying, “I don’t want to play THAT song”. Then lastly, I really do like the super-stripped down sound that I can get with it. You can hear everything. It’s not a noisy din. I think a lot of bands play too loud and you can never hear the subtleties or the lyrics in their songs. Some bands are great really loud but some don’t need to be. I would love to be in a band again though. I have a good time playing with other people and I’ve had the opportunity to play with some really great people. I hear guys in other bands talk about how much they just hate their fellow band mates. I could never be in a situation like that.

Haunted George

Death and Murder seems to be a reoccurring theme in your songs. How did your fascination with all things macabre start?

I can’t remember not being into horror and the macabre. I was brought up Catholic so that adds a bit of supernatural drama to your outlook on life to begin with. When I was a kid I was really into monsters more so than straight horror. I liked Godzilla, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and any of those 1950’s atomic, science-fiction mutants. I was into it enough so that friends of my parents bought me a couple of books, one called, “A Pictorial History of Horror Movies” (by Denis Gifford) for my 6th birthday. It was loaded with all kinds of wild pictures. For years it was my favorite book and I wanted to see every movie in it. I brought it to school one time in 1st grade and the teacher freaked out. There was a picture from some Hammer movie that showed a vampire girl with a stake in chest and her boobs hanging out. She told me not to bring it back to school.
I used to get the TV guide out of the Sunday paper and go through it with a red pen. I’d circle all the movies with wild sounding names. Many of them were on after midnight on weekdays. My brother and I used to set the alarm clock and get up at 2 in the morning on school nights to watch these movies. They used to play movies all night long on TV when I was a kid. Channel 5, 9, 11 and 13, from midnight to 4 or 5 am played nothing but westerns, film noir, sci-fi and horror. I used to get a cassette recorder and tape the audio so I could listen later. I still love soundtrack music and abstract noises. I think my “Snuff Maximus Sound Lab” stuff comes from listening to these recordings as a kid.
At some point around 2nd or 3rd grade I became obsessed with mid-evil torture devices and weapons like the rack and the iron maiden, along with crossbows, suits of armor and dungeons. I had seen a movie called, “The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism” (AKA “Die Schlangengrube und das Pende”, German horror film based on Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” from 1967 starring Christopher Lee) and it had a huge impact on me.
That kind of horror was fun but I was also drawn to real things that gave me nightmares. For instance, I used to have a book about sideshow freaks (“Very Special People” by Fredrick Drimmer) and a book that had a bunch of pictures from the “Manson Family Murders” in it. It scared me because of it’s reality but I was still attracted to it because it had many of the same elements in fantasy horror.
I wanted to be a horror filmmaker when I was a kid. Mike Ball (the guitar player from the Beguiled) and I used to make our own super-8mm movies. Many of them were Godzilla-style science fiction stories done with stop-animation using Star Wars action figures and other toys for actors. I got a paper route when I was a ten or eleven and once I had my own money I started buying “Famous Monster of Filmland” and other comic books. Later I subscribed to “Fangoria” magazine just a few issues after it started.
When I got a little older I started getting into Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft plus true crime books. I read everything I could about serial killers, mass-murderers and things like that. I also got a job in a video store when I was in my teens and tried to watch every horror movie they had. Sometimes I’d watch three movies in one night. When the Beguiled started we were all big horror fans and naturally we wrote a lot of horror themed stuff. The Beguiled had songs with names like, “Morella”, “Cryptic”, “The Widow” and “Imp of Satan” early on and we kept with that “psychotic/haunted/loner” theme to the end. I played with “Satan’s Cheerleaders” for a couple of years. All their music was really morbid and creepy. “The Necessary Evils” were also a very morbidly themed band. Haunted George is just following down that same garden path to death.

What are you listening to right now?

I have been listening to pod casts a lot lately. I think it’s one of the great developments in music recently. I found an I-pod knock-off on a trail while hiking. I never really wanted one but now that I have it I use it all the time. Pod casts are great. It’s like listening to good AM radio again but better. It has that compressed low fidelity sound. The DJs have different personalities. Some of them great and some are just OK. But even the ones that are “just OK” play way better stuff than you’ll ever hear on the radio. You have to wade through a bunch of shows to find the really primo stuff but it is well worth it. I’ve gotten turned on to all kinds of things from listening to them.

Aside from music, what are you into?

I’m a huge movie fan. I haven’t watched programmed television in years. I watch movies on DVD instead. I like photography. I like old buildings. I like hiking, camping and just being outdoors. I like rock hounding. I like history. I’ll go to any kind of museum. I like black powder shooting and guns in general. I like old cars and motorcycles. I have a 1958 Chevy Apache truck. I call it “The Bone Hauler” because that’s what it’s used for; hauling away old stuff that folks have “left for dead”.

I know you also like to draw, any plans on posting those somewhere?

I’ve never really thought about it. I think at best my drawing ability is at the level of a talented, but untrained, middle school student. The Necessary Evil’s “The Sicko Inside Me” cover is a painting that I did. I’d like to draw and paint more but I just don’t have the time lately.

What instruments does it take to come up with the Haunted George sound?

It takes a guitar, a snare drum, a bass drum and a pair of lungs. It’s pretty simple. As far as the recording technique that gets the sound on the records? That’s a trade secret I’ll take with me to my grave.

I had the pleasure of seeing you live in Glendale California. You looked very at home on stage. Would you say you enjoy doing live shows?

I hate dragging equipment around and hanging out in clubs all night but when it comes together right there’s not another feeling like it in the world.

Who/ What influences you?

My Grandparents were probably my biggest influence on my life. They collected tons of crap, loved music, lived pretty simple and liked the outdoors. I didn’t realize it till just recently but many things that I’m interested in are things that they exposed me to when I was really little; the desert, rock collecting, old trucks, country/western music, obscure American history and weird spooky shit in general. A couple years ago a found myself working in the garage, listening to a baseball game on the radio. I’m not a big sports fan and it hit me that this is what my grandpa used to do all the time. It was kind of spooky at first and then I just embraced it. Now I feel not like I’m turning into him exactly, but maybe one of his buddies that he’d play cards, go bowling with or share crazy World War II stories with.

Haunted George 101

The Past:
Haunted George started out bassist for the band The Beguiled. And back then he went by his given name of Steve Pallow. They started out in the late eighties in Orange County and they cultivated a true dirty punk sound that was both gritty and smart. They released Gone Away in 1988, a 7” on Estrus in 1990 and Blue Dirge on Crypt Records in 1994. But tragedy struck when guitarist Mike Ball died and the band disbanded soon after.

Before Mike Ball past away both him and Pallow recorded music that could have easily been used in horror movie soundtracks. They recorded about 5 to 10 reel to reel recordings with various tape loops running making everything from straight beats and bass lines to abstract noise. They called it "The Sound Lab" with Ball going by Radio Brain and Pallow calling himself Snuff Maximus. These recordings have slowly made their way onto Haunted George records.

Pallow’s next venture took him to form The Necessary Evils which featured members of the Beguiled and Fireworks. The band released 2 albums of desperate sounding music with songs about drinking, insanity and losing your mind. Spider Fingers on In The Red Records in 1995 and The Sicko Inside Me in 1999. The band ultimately broke up because members began to move out of state.

After the Necessary Evils broke up, Pallow stopped playing music. Hardly touching a guitar and stopped listening to any kind of music that wasn't pre-1940's country or blues.
But he eventually DID pick up the guitar and began to write again.

The Present:

Pallow was fascinated by John Lee Hooker and his infamous sound that was made by tapping on a cutting board with hard soled shoes. He was fascinated enough to toy with the idea of forming his own one man band, and around 2004 he truly embraced it.

Haunted George was born by mixing his old punk, horror rock and country sounds. The name George is actually his middle name and the haunted; well all you have to do is listen to his music to know why it had to be so.

When James Arthur, who played in the bands Fireworks and Necessary Evils, formed Hook or Crook records he approached Pallow about releasing some of his Snuff Maximus recordings. But after listening to his Haunted George material it was agreed that a Haunted George album would be released instead. Soon after Panther Howl was created and released in 2006. The album was both dark and witty.

Next was his release on Dead Beat records, which was a collection of new songs and some from his previous Panther Howl release. The new tunes captured his obsession with murder, monsters and death. His wails were filled with fright and told stories of curses and living a lonely life out in the desert.

The Future:
Haunted George returned to Hook or Crook to release follow-up to Bone Hauler. The tentatively titled album Pile O’ Meat is again filled with macabre story telling and shuddering sounds.

The album begins with a fast paced rock n’ roll sound and slowly mellows to present a softer side of horror. It also includes a Pat Boone cover, Moody River, which in my opinion is ten times better then the sappy original.

The clever title song Pile O Meat plays on the meaning of the words while drawing you into the guitar riffs that make you forget there’s only ONE man making all that sound.

The album is filled with the same fright as his past ventures. But it defiantly boasts a more rock sound. It will not let down fans of his gritty evil sound. It flawlessly picks up where Bone Hauler left off and grasps you till’ the very end.

Look for Pile O’ Meat to be released Mid 2007.

 

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