The man knows as Mary Mary is truly a jack-of-all-trades. When we speak he is preparing to fly off in a few hours to cover the Tour de France for a British "lad's" magazine, he works for video production company, was recently asked to portray Kurt Cobain in a movie, he's touring with the notorious Pigface and he plans to work with ex-Buzzcock Pete Shelly on some avant-garde electronic music. Oh, and all of this in addition to his latest project, Hyperhead.

The Mary Mary story begins in the late 80s with his former "grebo" band, Gaye Bykers On Acid. Perhaps the Bykers are best remembered for their album Drill Your Own Hole, the first 1000 or so of which were indeed pressed without a hole. An interesting note here is that "byker" was meant to refer to bicycling. In fact, the first time young Mary came to the US it was to compete in a bicycle race. He clarifies, "Everyone thinks I'm just a greasy motorcyclist, but in fact I'm just a greasy cyclist. After the Bykers demise, Mary went on to become a member of Pigface, for one tour and LP, playing with such industrial luminaries as drummer Martin Atkins and William Tucker on guitar. On the subject of Tucker, Mary just laughs, "He's just an American nightmare. White trash incarnate." It was also during a tour with Pigface that his, umm... "little Mary" was cast for posterity by Cynthia Plastercaster. Afterward, Mary went home to England to work on some solo stuff with friend and ex-Bugblot Karl Leiker, only to return to Minneapolis to enlist the expert aid of Atkins and Tucker for recording. The result of all this fuss is Hyperhead.

Hyperhead began to leak out songs to the masses by late ‘93, their debut single being "Teenage Mind." Now the band is releasing an entire LP Stateside, Metaphasia (Triple XXX). When doing live shows, however, Hyperhead forego the all-star line up, replacing Atkins with Chin and Tucker with Paul Dalloway. The result is an LP that melds a vast variety of music into one unique sound. Melody Maker themselves had to finally eat crow and admit they like it, despite the fact that it's Mary's band. And what is Mary's take on the whole British Press?

"I have no take on the British Press. I don't pay them much attention, because in the Gaye Bykers I went through the whole build-them-up-knock-them-down system. I don't care what they think. I'm just happy to be making music and if they want to write nice things then they do. Fortunately when the album came out in England I actually got a good response from the press. But they hold grudges and they hold it against me because in the past I was always very loud and didn't think before I spoke. The last thing the British press want people to know is that they aren't as intelligent as they make themselves out to be."

Since Mary has been making music for a while, one wonders how his perspective has changed since the beginning of his career. He explains, "Musically it's changed a lot because I know better now what I want to hear and know how to write songs, whereas when the Bykers started it was definitely a punk rock thing. I was in a band with my mates first and foremost and was like finishing my apprenticeship; I had to work with different musicians. And I feel a lot more mature, if you know what I mean, without sounding too boring. I just feel that I now know what I want to hear and I can work with whoever I want to work with and I'm not that fussed about being successful or not. Obviously I want things to do well, but if you keep on expecting too much and it doesn't happen you can quite easily get dissatisfied with the industry. So I set my sites high, but I basically do it for fun."

So how does he deal with disillusionment, what makes him persevere?

"Because I'm a slut for the stage! I'm a natural born showoff, I suppose. I was at school and here I am at 30 years old and I still hanker for the stage."

Here in America we call someone like that a ham.

"Well, yeah I suppose...but no, I'm too good to be a ham,...(after some more thought) no, darling don't call me a ham! (laughs) I still like preforming and I like traveling and I still like being in a van. There's not a day job I'd rather do than that."

And on the Kurt Cobain movie offer?

"I love myself and I want to live! I still get that feeling that Freddy Mercury got when he went out on stage. No, I mean I get cynical about a lot of things. I wouldn't do something like that, (portray Cobain in a film) but it made me sort of think that - I liked some of their stuff, but I never got into the whole psyche of what he was about, and since his death...It just made me realize that I so still enjoy doing it and I'd never get to that stage. If I felt bad about it I'd just give up."

And by the look of things, that isn't going to happen anytime soon.

- Amy Beth Yates

Hyperhead