Fu Manchu’s Scott Hill: “Surfing, skateboarding, cars – that’s all I know”

At 11 o’clock in the morning, Scott Hill’s long mane of hair is still sopping wet as he greets Kerrang!.

“I’ve been surfing!” he beams. “I live right at the beach. Always have. You can feel the onshore breeze, you can smell the ocean.”

This is exactly what you want from the Fu Manchu frontman. Across three decades and change, he and his band have embodied the cool, loose, slacker vibe of the California coast. Theirs is a world of skateboards, sci-fi, beaches, races, surfing, pinball and weed. And cars. Lots and lots of cars. The coolest cars, drag-racing through the desert, or cruising around simply looking badass. Scott once told Kerrang!, in response to a quiz question about motor racing: “Come on, every song we have is about cars!”

This is all captured in their albums, in which, uniformly, they are unquestionably the kings of fuzz. Members have come and gone – equally legendary stoner rock heroes Nebula were formed of ex-Manchu-ers, while other alumni include former Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork – but where Fu Manchu are at has remained the same. Just listen to their cult In Search Of… album from 1996, or their The Action Is Go breakthrough, or the almost self-referentially-titled King Of The Road. In the world of stoner rock – a handy home, but a limiting one for their rock’n’roll-dipped sound – they are as important as Sabbath.

The adoration and influence stretches far, as well. Metallica have been known to drop their name when talking about the vibe they want out of their slower, heavier riffs, while long-time fan Dave Grohl even called up Fu guitarist Bob Balch for help when struggling to find a riff in Foo Fighters’ Studio 666 movie.

“That's pretty wild,” laughs Scott. “Having Metallica, the biggest band in the world mentioning your name is pretty crazy.”

Crazy, but not undeserved. When we talk to Scott today, he’s preparing to head to Europe for a festival tour to mark the release of Fu Manchu’s excellent 14th album, The Return Of Tomorrow. As ever, it’s a masterclass in riffery and groove, with Scott’s drawl perfectly suiting the vibe. Somewhat ingeniously, they’ve made it a double – one half loud, one half more mellow. All of it, even with this divide, is pure, classic Fu Manchu.

With all this, and still damp from the morning’s activities in the Pacific Ocean, Scott explains all about the record, and takes us back to the band’s roots, learning guitar from the California hardcore scene, being hailed as stoner rock leaders, and tough gigs playing to Type O Negative’s fans…

It’s been 30 years since your No One Rides For Free debut, and you’ve only just released a double album. Where did the idea to do that come from?
“I mean, as you know, we're not the most mellow band. When we were writing this record, we'd come up with three heavy songs, and then I remember going to practice and showing the guys a riff. Whenever we do that, we don't have the fuzz pedals on so you can see what it is, see how it sounds. We all played a song without the fuzz and it sounded kind of cool. Next practice, I said, ‘Hey, what do you guys think about doing six, seven songs, heavy, fuzzy, and then five, six mellow, weird, make it a double record?’ Everyone was into it, and we went back [to some of the songs we’d done] and went, ‘You know what? Those sounded better mellower, without the fuzz.’”

The guy on the cover is the son of the woman dropping the flag for the car race on the cover of In Search Of…, right?
“Yeah, she’s my sister, and on the new album it’s her son, my nephew. We always like to get family and people we know involved. I remember when we did the In Search Of… cover. we had a friend who had a the Mach 1 Mustang, and then another friend had the Chevelle. So we got those together, and my sister was available, and I said, ‘Hey, you want to be on the cover of our record?’ She wasn’t sure about it, but when she saw the shots she loved it.

“With the new record cover, we were talking to the guy that does all our artwork for us, and he was trying to find an image of somebody floating the air. He could not find one. I said, ‘I'm gonna go to my parents’ house, and I'm gonna have my nephew and my sister meet me there. I'll take a picture of my nephew laying down on the ground, looking like he's floating.’ I took the picture and sent it to him as an example, and he was like, ‘Perfect!’

“The idea behind the artwork was, last summer when we were starting to write the record, I'd usually go surfing in the morning And for some reason, for a week straight, I would fall asleep at noon every day. I swear, without drugs, no drugs, I thought I was having out of body experiences where I was floating around and looking down at myself sitting in this chair, sleeping. So, that's just what I had my mind – floating around, floating up to the sky. But there’s no real ‘meaning’, just, me passing out in a chair at the same time for a couple days straight.”

There’s a song on there called Loch Ness Wrecking Machine. Given how much you’ve written about sci-fi and mysterious weird stuff, it’s surprising it’s taken so long for Nessie to come up – he’s classic Fu Manchu!
“Thank you! Yeah, I've been into The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, UFOs, pyramids, The Bermuda Triangle, all that stuff, since I was a kid. I remember being a young kid watching TV and seeing a show about Loch Ness, and they had these weird cult-like, big groups of people that would stand on the shoreline waiting for it. I remember it freaking me out because I was a young kid. There was a TV show, I don't know if you had it over in the UK, called In Search Of, were they looked at UFOs and Bigfoot and all that stuff. When I came up with the title, I loosely remembered what I thought when I was a kid about that show, and that freaked me out, and I thought it sounded cool.”

Fu Manchu, 2009

You didn’t always want to be a singer, though, right?
“Yeah. When we started, the first seven-inch just has me playing guitar. We had a friend singing. I just wanted to play guitar, didn't want to sing, didn't want to write lyrics, didn't want to come up with song titles or anything. But we recorded that first seven-inch in 1990, and then the singer didn't want to do it any longer. We tried out a couple of singers, and no-one ever worked out, so the other guys said, ‘Okay, you're doing it.’ I really didn’t want to, but we couldn’t play without a singer. I remember at practice, we played so loud you couldn't really hear my voice. I thought, ‘Okay, that's not bad. You can't hear my voice.’ And then we get to the first show, playing through a PA having monitors onstage. I was like, ‘Oh God, you can hear me! Ohhhh no.’ I'm used to it now, but back then? ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no!’”

What were your early influences?
“Definitely punk rock. A friend of mine had a cassette; one side had a live Black Flag show, the other side had a live Circle Jerks show. That was around Christmas 1980. I’d never heard punk rock before. I grew up listening to KISS and Deep Purple and stuff as a young kid, but he played me that tape and I just freaked out. From then on, all my KISS records went in the closet. I would just search out punk rock and hardcore stuff, and I would go to shows, and I would watch the guitar player and see how he would set up – ‘Oh, you plug that cord into there, and then into the amp’ – and how he would make chords with his fingers. I learned guitar by watching punk bands. Specifically, I remember Greg Hetson from the Circle Jerks – I would try to make my way up front, not to slam and jump off the stage, but to watch the guitar and how he would do it. It just looked like so much fun. I thought, ‘I gotta do this!’”

That’s a pretty golden time to be in the audience in the California punk scene…
“Yeah, it was great, because there were shows constantly. We lived in Orange County, so there were always shows, and LA is an hour, San Diego is 40 minutes, so you could go to punk shows every night. Black Flag would play, Circle Jerks, Minor Threat would come into town, Misfits would come in… it was just endless. I remember specifically Christmas 1980, my mom asked what I wanted for Christmas. I asked for Circle Jerks’ Group Sex record! She just went, ‘What?!’ It was a great time, there were so many shows and cool record stores and stuff. I still got all my old stuff from then, all my flyers and stuff. It definitely made me want to start a band, going to the shows. I thought, ‘I gotta get a guitar, I gotta do something!’”

You guys are definitely slower than Circle Jerks, though. Where did that Fu Manchu sound come from?
“We were into Melvins. Bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney were happening, but I remember hearing Melvins and we all went, ‘Man, this is insane.’ It was amazing how slow they get, and then fast, and the weird timings. And then, like I said, Soundgarden and TAD and Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr. all came along. There wasn't a lot of slow and heavy bands back then, maybe Saint Vitus, and the Melvins I'd never heard or seen anything like it before. They were just a three-piece, but they were extremely loud, and you’re watching each band member do his thing and getting blown away because they're so gnarly.”

Mid-’90s line-up, 1996

You seemed to have a vibe straight away, this classic California beach dudes thing, that tied in with cool cars and skateboarding and movies from the ’70s and stuff. It sounds like that was a pretty natural thing, growing up where you did…
“Yeah, man. I grew up at the beach, I’ve lived there my whole life, and I’ve always been into surfing and skateboarding. It's all I know! And my dad had muscle cars, custom vans back in the ’70s. So that's a real deal. All that stuff, music and surfing and skateboarding, it all went hand in hand. People would say, ‘You guys are very typical Southern California.’ But that wasn't a bird. We were like, ‘Yeah, that's cool. That's good that you got that impression. It's just me. That’s just normal.’ Everything revolves around the ocean here, we live right at the beach. It's bound to make its way into our artwork or lyrics or song titles. I don't really write anything religious or political, and I don't get too personal. But old cars and stuff, that's what I know!”

All this stuff had you hailed as leaders of the stoner rock scene, but you were touring with all sorts of bands. What was it like doing some of those shows with, say, Type O Negative?
“Oh man, their crowd hated us. They hated us. I mean, Peter Steele and all the dudes in the band were totally cool, but their fans did not like us at all. But yeah, I mean, we'll play with anybody once, see how it goes. We toured with Motörhead. That was great. Monster Magnet took us on our first tour, the Dopes To Infinity tour. We toured with Clutch, went out with the Deftones. We toured with Anthrax, and I’m not a big metal guy at all, but that was cool. But yeah, Type O, maybe because we all had blonde hair and lighter old shirts and stuff, I dunno, but their crowd were not having our music.”

This new album is coming 30 years after your first one – how do you feel looking back at your achievements and legacy and processing that it’s been so long already?
“It’s cool. You know, I never thought it would have been here 34 years after we started the band, and it's cool that people like it and want to come see us play and buy the records. I’m very thankful that we're still able to do all that. I’ve got a load of laundry washing so I can pack up my suitcase and head to Finland in a couple of days and start a tour. It's wild.

“I think what keeps us going is that we just like playing. I mean, all four of us just like getting in a room, turning the amps up. I started playing guitar because I love the sound of a distorted guitar. So, any chance I get to play out of a stack with my buddies and make noise and write some song, it's still fun. That's the whole reason.”

And there's still more surfing, cars and monsters to write about…
"Yeah, man! There's always some stuff in the back of my head that will get pushed to the front when need be, you know? I wrote one of the songs on new record, Haze The Hides. Brad [Davis, bass] and I were having a conversation about how there used to be an old drag strip track where we grew up, and from our houses you could hear the funny cars, the loud dragsters, you could hear this big roar from them. I remember going there with my dad, and just it being so loud. I had to wear earphones because it was so loud. So, when Brad and I were talking, it ended up in a song. That's how it goes, man. It's all I know!"

Fu Manchu's album The Return Of Tomorrow is out now via At The Dojo. The band tour the UK in October.

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