Mojo Nixon on Being Loud, Fast, and Full of S**t!

The wild man of roots-rock talks George Thorogood, the great rock ’n’ roll lie, and the musical cure for impotence

Mojo Nixon departed this earthly sphere last week. And he did it exactly how a psychobilly legend should: With the sweat from last night's performance still on his brow. Nixon was on the Outlaw Country Cruise, and according to his official Facebook page, he expired “after a blazing show, a raging night, closing the bar, taking no prisoners.” You might say he died doing what he loved, entertaining the shit out of people.

Nixon was a force of nature. During the ‘80s, he attracted a cult following on college radio and MTV with songs like “Elvis is Everywhere,” “Burn Down the Malls,” “Jesus at McDonald’s,” and “Debbie Gibson is Pregnant with My Two-Headed Love Child.” His self-effacing hootin’ and hollerin’ won him fans like The Dead Milkmen (who name-dropped him in their 1988 hit “Punk Rock Girl”), Winona Ryder, and Jello Biafra.

I was lucky enough to interview him once, and we talked about the records that helped transform him into a rabble-rousing maniac.

ERIC SPITZNAGEL: So where do we start? Do you know the album you want to talk about?

MOJO NIXON: I’ve been thinking about this, and I definitely want to say the album that changed me was something cool like Darkness on the Edge of Town. It’s my favorite Bruce album. You know that album?

ES: I do. It’s a good one.

MN: It’s an album about a guy from a small town who wants to start a fistfight. So, I could relate to it in that way. I saw Bruce three times during the summer of 1978; that’s when I became a Bruce-aholic. At the same time, I was a huge Clash nut. In 1979, I moved to England, lived in a squat in Brixton, and my plan was to somehow get in with the Clash.

ES: Like get invited to join the band?

MN: Yeah. Like they’d put out an ad: “Needed: extra guitar player who kinda knows the chords to ‘Complete Control.’” That was my favorite Clash song! One of my favorite songs of all time. I could stumble my way through that if I had to. But I never got the call from [Joe] Strummer.