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System of a Down remade hard rock in its own confounding image but still
draws inspiration from the unglamorous streets of Hollywood.
This is how the beginning ends: right here on the unglamorous streets of east
Hollywood, the land of no film stars, at a seedy motel in Little Armenia. The
band System of a Down is about to begin passing from one world and into another,
and hardly anyone seems to realize what is happening.
It’s just business as
usual for a rising quartet of rockers known mainly to a young cult of metal
fanatics always hungry for more, more, more. The band has returned to the old
neighborhood to make a music video for a new tune, “Chop Suey,” a frantic,
apocalyptic meditation on drugs and confusion, of jangly acoustic guitars and
speed-metal riffs and epic non sequiturs. The September 2001 release date of the
group’s sophomore album, Toxicity, is still weeks away, but some tracks are
already crowding the Internet. Something is brewing.
And where better to begin than at the Oak Tree Inn? There is history here. In
one of these rooms, bassist Shavo Odadjian witnessed his first scene of sexual
conquest as an eight-year-old on a skateboard looking through a motel room
window. He grew up in this neighborhood, not far from the childhood home of
guitarist Daron Malakian, and he still remembers all those mysterious ladies of
the night and day standing on the sidewalk beneath the palm trees as young Shavo
was driven to school at 7:30 a.m. Who were these strange women in the big heels
and short-short skirts? They’re waiting for the bus, Shavo’s mom insisted.
They’re going to work.
Then there was that time, years later, when Mötley Crüe was at the strip club
across the street making a video, with a crowd of big hair and leather and
string bikinis spilling out into the sunlight in 1987. Shavo met his first rock
star that day. “There was a Shakey’s Pizza, a hooker motel, and a strip club on
my block,” he says. “Isn’t that great? Awesome. The best and worst of
everything. And I think I learned more from the worst.”
Now here he is, making his own rock video, a budding rock star himself with a
shaved skull and a goatee braided into a rope hanging off the end of his chin.
This wasn’t the first time for System of a Down by any means. There was that
minor radio/video hit in 1998, “Sugar,” but there are signs that things will be
different this time. Anticipation is in the air, and it’s the kind that can’t be
manufactured by your typical Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man. Word went
out on the band website just days earlier, inviting fans to appear in the video,
and hundreds of young men and women traveled from as far away as Illinois and
New Mexico, maybe farther, an army of System fans in matching black T-shirts
cheering on the band in the Oak Tree courtyard through take after bruising take
of “Chop Suey.”
Between shots on day two of the production, band members find ways to kill time.
Singer Serj Tankian autographs albums and body parts and meets with the
accountant. Others retire to a rented motor home loaded up with McDonald’s
cuisine for Malakian. Comfort food, the same thing he ate every day on the road
in Europe, shying away from that weird foreign grub the locals like. McDonald’s
burgers and fries and shakes. The same stuff he had for breakfast, the same crap
he’s eating now.
That may explain a lot. Malakian is the complex central nervous system of System
of a Down, an anxious, brilliant, obsessive sound scientist. Before this, he was
in a band with Tankian called Soil, a project that reflected their shared
interest in early progressive rock, anything from Frank Zappa to Yes, plus a
certain weakness for speedy Slayer-style death-metal riffs. But talk to them
now, and they will speak much less of metal and more about the Beatles. The hard
stuff is a given. Soil ended, and System was born out of Malakian’s desire to
fit his wildest dreams of noise and melody, rage and hilarity, the whole
confounding landscape of sound, into pop tunes never more than a few minutes in
length. The result is something like a mad, hard-rock version of what Brian
Wilson used to call a “pocket symphony,” an entire universe of pure, epic sound
and beauty in a small, perfect package. Toxicity expands on this ideal, and will
serve as a band foundation for everything to come.
But no one can see this yet, not in 2001: that, amid the band’s urban racket and
crazed visions of rage and politics and joy and excitement, System will redefine
what hard rock can be. Loud, delicate, serious, hilarious. In a few weeks,
Toxicity will debut at the top of the pop album charts. They will be on the
radio, on the TV. There will be rioting in the streets. Celebrity baseball. A
check in the mail.
Just not yet. Malakian reaches for a McBurger. “It hasn’t sold one copy yet,” he
says with another nervous laugh, as the others come and go to say their goodbyes
for the night. “But I feel so proud of it, I don’t care if it sells any copies.
It’s a good piece of work. I’ve got to be behind it before anyone else gets
behind it.”
 True
enough. And one more thing: These guys are going to be huge.
There is a stack of pizzas waiting for you in the little room. But Mr. Serj
Tankian (pronounced Say-rj Tank-ee-an) will have none of this and none of your
McDonald’s, either. He is a smiling monk in pinstripes, a dark, beatific
presence on a vegetarian diet, and a perfect host alternating from gentle high
priest to grinning rock ’n’ roll Groucho. He shares a couch with Malakian, who
wears an elegant coat of black reptilian leather. They are an epic pair, just
sitting there quietly, rock stars at rest.
The release of Toxicity not only represented a milestone of impossible
commercial success, but it also went far in establishing the two System frontmen
as possessing as much potential as Page & Plant. Together, they have created an
unlikely sound mix of musical sophistication colliding with jagged bursts of
electricity and an intense hurricane of words on politics, war, cocaine
casualties, and rough sex.
“I can’t say we don’t get into arguments,” says Malakian. “I get pissed
sometimes, he gets pissed sometimes. Giving birth is not the most simple thing
to do, so it’s got to be painful sometimes. I’ve had a few episodes, but at the
end of it now, we’re close to done. As long as it’s great, and me and him are
still sitting together, and I don’t hate him and he doesn’t hate me, then
everything was right, everything happened for a reason.”
The occasion now is a studio visit in mid-December 2004, somewhere on that slice
of earth and oblivion where North Hollywood meets Burbank and not much else. A
new batch of songs are being mixed and remixed here, so they’ve come to play a
handful of tracks for visitors and to explain their plan to release two albums
in 2005, Mezmerize and Hypnotize, each barely 40 minutes long. Malakian is not a
fan of lengthy albums, so he’d rather just split up the songs. “Attention spans
just aren’t what they use to be,” he says sadly.
It’s soon very clear that System of a Down aims to further expand the boundaries
of hard, hard rock with its first new studio project since 2002’s Steal This
Album!, blending melody, aggression, restraint, and the usual boundless
experimentation across two discs – beginning with Mezmerize, and followed six
months later by Hypnotize. The albums were recorded over the summer of 2004 in
the monumental Laurel Canyon mansion owned by coproducer Rick Rubin. Malakian
says he is anxious to move forward. “Why should we make another Toxicity?” he
says. “I crave to grow. I don’t want to stay doing the same thing just because
it worked. That is boring.”
He goes on: “We’re all still finding our places in this band to where we’re all
comfortable together. It’s like growing pains. As a producer, I’ve been thinking
of the sound of this record for like three years, and what kind of amp should I
use, and listening to albums and thinking, ‘That’s a great drum tone!’ The
Stooges’ Fun House was a reference. … I’m blown away by the way this record
sounds.”
That ambition can be heard in the driving, playful, punishing hard rock of “Kill
Rock and Roll” and the taunting “Cigaro,” with its wild, slashing flourishes of
guitar and Malakian singing crazily: “My cock is bigger that yours/My cock can
walk right through the door!” “B.Y.O.B.” delivers a blunt anti-war screed,
setting livid, dizzying shouts against tranquil passages that could have been
lifted from P-Funk: “Everybody’s going to the party … dancing in the desert
blowing up the sunshine.” On Hypnotize, System again mixes the political and
personal, stretching from Tiananmen Square to Malakian sitting in his car
“waiting for my girl” on the title song.
“It was when I was with my ex-girlfriend, and I remember sitting in the alley
waiting for her to come out of her house,” Malakian says. “And a lot of thoughts
were going through my head, like …”
“Don’t let out too much,” Tankian says quickly, with a laugh.
“Oh, yeah, huh?” Malakian turns to me. “Oh, yeah, it’s not written about
anything. It’s a bunch of bullshit!”
The only mystery is which songs will land on the imminent Mezmerize, and which
will have to wait until November for Hypnotized. Even Serj wants to know. And
Malakian mentions that he wants to put “Hypnotized” first on Mesmerize, and not
on Hypnotize.
“Brain fuck!” says Tankian with a laugh. “Great! I love it. You keep your band
members guessing, that’s the best thing about it!”
Malakian is also doing more singing here. On the surface, that may seem a
strange choice for a band already fronted by one of the most dynamic voices in
popular music, but Daron’s frazzled shrieks make for a startling and engaging
contrast. “I think we’re doing some freaky shit on this one,” says Tankian, who
has always shared some vocal duties with the guitarist. “We both are.”
This is a self-sufficient operation. Daron’s father, Vartan Malakian, did the
artwork for both albums. Shavo has directed or co-directed most band videos since
2002. And Serj keeps busy with his own label, promoting and producing new acts.
He’s also published books of his poetry, and is active as a part of Axis of
Justice, a political action group co-founded with Tom Morello, guitarist for
Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine.
Daron stays to himself at home, working, writing, playing, recording on the same
boombox recorder he’s had for years. He’ll sometimes send his girlfriend away
for weeks at a time, just so he can concentrate. She seems to understand. He
attends the occasional baseball game or hockey contest, the loudest heckler with
the best seats.
Malakian is threatening to leave. It is November 10, 2005, and the band has just
arrived backstage for an epic media event at the old Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel,
where the gathered music press awaits a System of a Down conference in the main
room. Reporters and critics have just heard the new Hypnotized blaring above
them, lyrics flashed on a video screen, while dining on shrimp and other pricey
snacks, beer, and soft drinks. But there’s trouble.
The bandleader has just seen someone he wants nothing to do with. Daron is
looking for the exit, and then the quartet steps into a small dressing room and
closes the door. I am in there with them, and I learn nothing. They speak and
argue in Armenian, talking over each other, with an occasional phrase in
English. (Shavo: “We’ve got something to do, so let’s just do it.”) Then they
hear Shavo and Daron being introduced from the stage, and Daron mutters “What
the fuck?” as he’s ushered away.
On a table sits a box of chili burgers and the same tofu corndogs the band first
tasted with Rubin during the making of Toxicity at Cello Studios on Sunset. Serj
pours himself some tea as he and drummer John Dolmayan sit to chat.
In other encounters with interviewers and photographers, Dolmayan is frequently
the first to head for the exit. Today he has much to say: on the idea of
releasing two albums in one year, about the cost of CDs, and the mystery of
radio and platinum sales.
After all, no sane person would write music like this and expect it to land on
your local rock station. It’s like a miracle. Or, it was the first time.
“Listen, for whatever reason, radio and MTV and the press catered to the System
of a Down,” Dolmayan says. “We have no idea why. It was aligned. Something
happened, and it worked out. It’s as shocking to us as to anyone else, believe
me. We don’t know what the fuck is going on here.”
And so they are back for more, barely six months after releasing Mezmerize and
touring the world, after the tapes sat mostly unheard in a safe. But the
promotional cycle for the last record only ended less than a week ago, on
November 3, when they did the European MTV awards, in Lisbon, and with Daron
refusing to have the band seen strolling down a red carpet.
“In the ’60s, the Beatles used to release at least a record a year, sometimes
two, sometimes even more,” Tankian says. “It’s a modern phenomenon, due to the
commercial restrictions of today’s world and the money poured into radio and
videos and all of this, that people want to focus you in on one record, because
there’s a lot of money being spent on it, etc. Maybe it will commercially work
against us, but I doubt it. It doesn’t matter, ultimately. This is what we
wanted to do, and this is the way that we’re doing it. I’ve been talking to a
lot of artist friends, and now they want to do it.”
Dolmayan adds, “I’m sure the record companies won’t like it and will probably
institute some law against it … . They’re so used to cheating people that they
think everybody is cheating them.”
He’s still irritated by his last visit to a record shop, where he stocked up on
John Lennon music. Each one, he says, cost about $18. “And I felt raped.”
Tankian leans closer. “You should have bought them in Armenia, because they were
all $3 apiece because they were all duplicates.”
“Those are all bootlegs,” Dolmayan replies, “but that’s not the answer, either.”
“I’m just kidding.”
“The answer is not to take the livelihood away from the artist. The answer is to
make it affordable for everyone.”
When their turn comes to step in front of the gathered press, Malakian takes
their place in front of me. He sits quickly and lights his glass pipe. It is
filled with some unnamed herb that he does not share. But it seems to comfort
him. Daron is a conduit of intense musical energy, but things do occasionally
slow down for him. A prime example is the song “Lonely Day,” which comes near
the end of Hypnotized, a respite of calm and sadness before the big finish.
“I actually fuckin’ wrote that the moment shit was going down,” he explains. “It
was a relationship issue. I was stuck between two phone calls, two different
people, two different exes. It was just a miserable day.”
After the press conference, the band is making its way back up to the suite when
Malakian is stopped by a hairless bulldog of a man from a daily newspaper. He
wants to know how Daron justifies the violence and darkness in his music. The
musician brings up “Lonely Day,” but his interrogator focuses on the drugs and
whores elsewhere. And when Malakian says that’s what he sees in life, the
reporter challenges: “You don’t see that.”
Daron laughs at him. “How do you know what I see?” He doesn’t mention the old
neighborhood or the grandparents still living in Iraq. Or what anyone in the
world could see with a quick trip to the other side of Hollywood.
Upstairs in the suite, there is another box of chili burgers, plus those tofu
hotdogs. They pose for some quick pictures, Shavo and his braided beard always
in dramatic profile, and then start to trickle out, their big moment with the
press behind them for now.
A friend has hooked up Shavo with a pair of tickets to an unannounced
performance by comedian Dave Chappelle. Daron isn’t so sure. Plus, he’s got his
own plans tonight, with some important music to buy. “I want to make sure he’s
not going to come out and just say hello,” he says, “and that he’s going to do
90 minutes.”
“No one does 90 minutes!”
“I do,” Malakian says, and then he’s gone, off to Amoeba Music to scour the
racks.
That leaves Odadjian the last rock star in the room, on the cell tracking down
friends, talking to his dad, talking to me about his girlfriends, how he wants
to share his perks with friends back on earth. He’s also excited about a planned
recording project with GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. Shavo reclines on a couch,
flipping through the room’s pay channels, past the porn selection, stopping at a
Will Ferrell movie.
He looks relaxed, but he’s anxious. He’d really love to take one of his old pals
with him, someone who grew up like him, someone else who knows Hollywood as a
real-life urban landscape, not just parties and showbiz. “The reason why we
mention Hollywood so much is ’cause it’s always going to be a part of Daron and
I,” he says. “Especially Daron and I.”
So he’s on the cell again: “Hey, bro. I’m inviting you right now, if you call me
back in the next five minutes, to go see Dave Chappelle live at the Comedy
Store. I have a car and everything. I have a room at the Roosevelt Hotel … .
We’ve got to be there by 10:30. It’s almost 9. Call me, bro. I have one ticket.
It’s badass.”
Within the hour, his friend meets him in the lobby, where the Hollywood party
scene is in full effect. Starlets and actors and deal-makers and wannabes are
spilling from poolside and out to the parking patio. Funnyman David Spade
strolls right past, looking like D’Artagnan in a mustache and hair combed back
into a swashbuckler’s wave.
Shavo is tempted to stay, but Chappelle is somewhere out there, waiting. And
both ends of Hollywood will still be here when he gets back.
By STEVE APPLEFORD
Cover Story of
City Beat magazine
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