The Bedlam In Omar: Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta

The lady speaks in a hard to understand yet well spoken accent. She tells me I'll be put on hold and then be back with Omar shortly. A minute and twenty seconds pass until the silence is interrupted by instrumental Indian sounding easy listening pop music. "Thank you for holding, you are now online with Omar please go ahead"

The Dwarf: Thank you. Hello.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez: Hi hi.

D: Has the whole day been full of these things?

O: Oh yeah no, not, not too bad today. Not too bad, just a couple.

D: How have you been travelling, fit and healthy? I remember when we chatted once, before a gig, in sound check; I think you had a sore tummy or something.

O: (laughs) Oh I did! This one, this one has been good.

T: So you're touring most of the material off the last album right? Or are you putting any new ideas out there too?

O: Yeah mostly the, mostly the last record. And then a couple from ... from each record. No, like, one from each other record. No, yeah, like, one. Yeah but mostly new stuff goes out, that's what's mostly interesting right now.

T: True, well it'd get boring for you guys rehashing all the time. How's it going with that fabulous drummer you've had for the last few years?

O: He's great; he brings so much joy to my life. (Laughs) Everything's, you know, so easy when you have the missing piece, someone that actually wants to be there and is not waiting for a paycheck.

I like having uncomfortable recording sessions. You know, I like taking away sophistication from musicians because sophistications usually ruin them and musicians love to talk about music. But, when you can get them to sorta play from a completely emotional place instead of a cerebral and intellectual place that's another thing so..

D: What about your solo stuff? When you get the chance to pump out the odd release here and there....

O: You know, I'm recording all the time, so days off for me aren't days off. I don't really take those days off and I record all the time. I don't think of anything as solo material or Mars Volta material. I just write. I just write constantly and the songs sorta start to organize themselves, and they start asking me, they say “I wanna be on this album” or “I wanna be on that one”. And it’s only a matter of ah…because legally I can only put out one Mars Volta record a year, I have to put out records under my own name, if not, I would put out ten Mars Volta records a year. But hopefully when we get out of this contract that'll, that will be possible but ah, you know...So if you can imagine, in my closet I have twenty something records that are done and mixed and they just sit there (laughs)

And then at some point I decide, maybe from an emotional place, 'oh that was a really nice moment that year, I'd like to share that record.' So sometimes it's just something personal and other times it’s just something, uh, technical like... I gotta pay bills (laughs) so I just put a record out. You know, so it’s either extreme.

D: So do you travel with much of a porta-studio at all or ...

O: Oh yeah for years, I was travelling with almost my entire studio…that's become very expensive and with how expensive fuel is and everything else to do with creating stuff. So now I have one of these simple laptops 'Digi 03’ bullshit (laughs)... But even then the technology just keeps getting better and better and there is just so much you can do once you've actually captured a moment or an idea you can obviously you can re play it or at the same time you can re amp it, send it out to an actual amp and just sorta do things to it to give it a little more color and light.

D: Do you guys get much a chance to see any shows when you tour, because I know you have a day or so off between gigs?

O: No, I work all the time. Probably my musicians do, they go out all the time. I literally don't, I don't have a life (laughs). And its only as of recently that I've started to sort of mellow out a bit and stop and smell the flowers, and enjoy the sunshine, and enjoy the smile of a beautiful girl and ahhh...... (Deep breath and sigh)…. So, yeah..... I haven't seen anything in quite a while.

D: What have you been eating lately?

O: Eating!? Oh yeah let’s talk, I'll talk about that! Lately I've been also incorporating more things into my diet. It’s been nice to taste new foods and stuff.

D: Because you were pretty strict for a while, right?

O: Yeah very strict, very regimented. I mean, I still don't eat sugar or caffeine or anything like that. For a while there, I was just eating ‘no processed foods’ so nothing that wasn't natural. If I could look at it and couldn't define every ingredient that was in it, I just didn't want to put it in my body. But lately I've been eating eggs for protein and stuff. And it’s been strange for me, you know, psychologically (laughs while talking) or mentally, as lame as that sounds. Ha, but my body really loves it and so I have to listen to my body because it knows more than me.

D: So are you finding a lot more energy…?

O: Well, yeah that's what happened is that my body was telling me things, and it was falling apart, and it was giving up on me, and then so it interfered on me being able to work and me being able to express myself correctly. And so I talked to a nutritionalist[sic], and you know I've always fought against the idea you need animal protein and all that blah blah, and I fought that for fifteen years. But at the end of the day I also didn't take care of myself and I didn't take supplements because I didn't want to take pills, blah blah blah. At some point you make some sort of a decision of what's more important. And so I thought of it, he said, "think of it as you're taking medicine. You're sick, and you need medicine. So take it for a while and see what happens." And so I made the egg, I cooked it and I felt bad for this little chicken, that I took her egg, and I ate it and then my body wanted more! It just said "Gimme more of that, I like that!"

D: It must be tough for touring bands when there are members that are vegan or the like, but they love it in Australia because there are so many places you can go to.

O: (very excitedly) Yeah, Australia has something that every airport should, just the airports for example, every airport has a juice bar. And a natural, a real juice bar! Not some bullshit bottled, you know, sugar crap. Like every place should have that. If you're going to travel you should be able to take care of yourself. Yeah, Australia is great like that.

D: Melbourne has them on like every block! That's why you keep coming back right, the food and juice?

O: Yeahhhh (laughs) no, we like it here. Everyone is really mellow here. Everyone is really nice. I remember the first time we came here with At The Drive-in, by the time we got here we were so sick of playing the…I'll use the word the 'single' and, we're so sick of playing it and we were playing some TV show of yours, I can’t remember what it was. And we got there and we said "you know what; we absolutely do not want to play the single. We’ll play any other song." And normally in the States or anywhere else this is a huge, this is a huge deal. And they call the managers and whoever else, and everyone is shitting a brick. And I was inside the control room when they told the producer of the show because I was filming all the cool gear they had and he came over and he leaned over to the producer and goes, (whispered)"the band doesn't want to play the single." And the guy stopped what he was doing and he leaned back in his chair and he goes, "right," he goes, "huh, they're probably pretty sick of it huh!" "I imagine so" "alright." and that was it, that was the end of the discussion. And I said "this place is great".

I wanted to move here, for a while I wanted to move here but you guys have absolutely…you have absolutely no brown people. And I can’t do that, I can’t...You know (giggles) it’s just strange. You need to have more brown people, man. You need to change those visiting laws. Anyone from Mexico or South America needs a visiting permit. Nowhere else needs a visiting permit you can just come here, but they just changed this rule. It seems like Australia is sucking the dick of America with this whole bullshit campaign against immigration and the Mexicans and people who do the shit jobs that none of you want to do anyway, you know what I mean (we both laugh and Omar continues to giggle while talking) for absolutely no pay. And you wanna exclude them. Well not YOU, but you know what I mean?

Your government’s just like our government. Its bullshit, it’s like, it’s crazy, Latin Americans need two weeks and everywhere else you can apply online and they give it to you no problem.

D: Maybe you need to be a spokesperson for this? (Omar cracks up laughing) Latinos for Australia!

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