The Ministry gig derailed by a delayed drug dealer: “Completely falling apart”
Showing up unfashionably late to concerts is a deplorable yet common trait among rock stars, and Al Jourgensen of Ministry has been quite transparent about what prompted him to take on that sense of entitlement during his most dysfunctional years.
While the eccentric frontman has cleaned up his act in recent years, there was a time during the 1990s when he and the other members of the band were more consumed by drugs than the music that allowed them to afford those self-destructive habits.
The group’s fixation with heroin ultimately got so bad that they were prioritising it over their own fans, not so much as caring about the consequences of not showing up when and where they were expected to. Because they were so out of it, the group didn’t even care about their success since they weren’t fully privy to its implications.
“We were just junkies,” Jourgensen said about that phase. “We didn’t really enjoy our success. We were just waiting for our dealer to turn up at the studio. We ‘made it’, but we were completely falling apart as a band.”
What’s particularly funny about this mess is that it also produced Ministry’s highest-charting album in the United States, in the form of Filth Pig in 1996. While diehard fans were definitely not thrilled about how the commercially friendly record turned out, members of the group themselves didn’t particularly care about hitting the road to perform it live.
This general lack of interest from the group culminated one night on tour, when they were scheduled to perform at the Rock City venue in Nottingham. If the Sphinctour hadn’t already been plenty messy, this incident took matters to another level.
Jourgensen’s heroin use had escalated to the point where he refused to fulfil his commitments unless he had his fix, and that is exactly what ended up happening. Forced to wait in sweltering heat, fans began vandalising the venue after hours passed without the group appearing. According to the singer, the crowd even ripped the bar off the floor and used it as a ‘battering ram’ to storm the stage.
It was only around 2am that he finally got his hit, by when every business in the city had shut down except the spot hosting Ministry. When the band came on, they managed to belt out a set made up of 13 songs, including an explosive cover of ‘Supernaut’ by Black Sabbath.
While the show in itself was a success, everything surrounding and leading up to it was pure chaos, with Jourgensen even admitting, “It was certainly one of the top five rowdiest crowds we’ve ever had.”
His drug habits had peaked during the mid-1990s, so it’s no surprise that he was so nonchalant about the entire ordeal at the time. Just the year prior, he had been arrested for heroin possession and subsequently put on probation for five years as a result of it. Still, he persisted in his deranged ways on American soil and overseas, and the concert in Nottingham illustrates how bad things were by the time they got there.
“It was definitely my fault. My bad, I’ll take the rap!” the singer briefly admitted once, before quickly redacting his statement. “Actually, you know what, it wasn’t my fault! My dealer should have been there. It was his fault, as a matter of fact. But that was rock in the ’90s.”
