Ministry Paperback – September 8, 2015

I just got done reading Alejandro Ramírez Casas' book " Ministry The Lost Gospels According To Al Jourgensen" and boys and girls, let me tell you, there is much debauchery and sin to be had. I've read many musician bios over the years, and I can say with full honesty that Uncle Alain's story is by far the craziest ride I've ever been on, and that's not even an exaggeration. I will say, however, that it is a miracle that he is still alive to this day after all the drugs, alcohol and near fatal episodes he's had. Uncle Al, if you use Instagram and you are reading this right now, I love you, and I'm glad you are still here, and I hope you will be for a long time yet. There's a lot of both funny and omg moments. He opens his story with explicit detail about the very deadly bleeding ulcers he had in his stomach from all the partying he'd done throughout the years before shifting to talking about how he was born in Havana Cuba and how he came to the US. I don't want to give away too much in the case that you all might want to buy yourselves a copy, but he definitely answered a lot of questions I had about the 1981 - 1986 days. A lot of other reviewers complain about how his story is a disappointment because they claim he doesn't give enough detail about Psalm 69, and somehow misconstruing how he supposedly hates his fans, which isn't true. I'm not going to fault him for anything in the story because he was super addicted to every hard core street drug you can ever imagine during the 80s through the 90s so therefore it is understadable why he doesn't really remember some parts of his life. During 2013 when he wrote this book, he was trying to maintain sobriety, but he must have lapsed between then and 2018, because on google it shows he has been sober since 2019, and so far he's been sticking to his guns and I am very proud of him for doing his best. This is definitely a must read for anyone who's done drugs and needs a great reason to stay sober and it is also a great for those who have never touched drugs as a message to stay away from them. As an 80s head, I laughed at how much he puts down With Sympathy. I know some fans get super irritated by that, but then again, he clearly states, "With Sympathy , everything I've done had it's time and place" & "But I've never wanted to repeat myself." which I have a lot of respect for because he spent his life thinking outside the box. Fast forward to the 2020s, obviously he doesn't hate the 1983 album completely because he has played a few of the songs live. This is a great book, and it is definitely worth a re read in the future.⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don't normally read biographies of famous musicians. I've never subscribed to the belief that their lives are somehow more interesting just because they're famous, nor am I enough of a sycophant to really give a s*** how the other half lives. However, this proved an exception. Jourgensen's long had a reputation for being a larger-than-life, out-of-control, nihilistic, and completely self-destructive drug addict; which, granted, probably describes about 80% of all musicians with any degree of notoriety. However, his antics are the stuff of legend - aliens, Spielberg, ostriches - yeah. They're sufficiently outrageous that other musicians who've crossed paths with him get dragged into on-camera interviews and questioned about them. So I was curious. I glanced through the preview pages, read enough to know that I had to have it, and pre-ordered it - something I never do - and even put down the book I was in the middle of reading to give this one priority.It didn't disappoint.Folks, this is riveting s***. I won't lie; the depravity in this thing is off the charts. I've currently burned through about 2/3 of it (I'm at the Gibby Haynes "Intervention"), and I feel like I need a shower and there isn't enough soap in the world. It's outrageous, depraved, and at times absolutely horrifying, but it's also laugh-out-loud funny. Assuming all of this is true (as far as Al experienced it anyway), and that none of it is embellished for entertainment value, the Dos Equis guy has nothing on Al - stolen cars, IV drug use, stints in an orphanage and mental institution, electro shock therapy, group sex with mental patients, car crashes, alien abductions (with Al, at one point, going so far as to claim extraterrestrials stole his pregnant wife's unborn fetus) - and that's just his childhood. We haven't even gotten to the music industry yet. Once it gets to his music career, things get insane: rampant drug use, stabbings, overdoses, more car crashes, arrests, bestiality, women with blood pouring out of their genitals, severed animal heads, transvestites, bags of bodily fluids, Branch Davidians - if you think you get the idea, you really, really don't...So far, it's covered everything that I hoped it would: the Arista debacle, the Wax Trax era, the '88-'92 lineup, Al's involvement with Puppy's Rabies album, the first RevCo show, Burroughs, Leary, etc. I should probably be mortified by some of this s***, but I'm laughing uncontrollably at a lot of it, and I'm not sure what that says about me. Al's chance encounter with Madonna at a new wave club in the early 80s is priceless (she reappears later in the book in an anecdote involving Mike Scaccia that had me laughing just as hard). The origin of Lard and Al's first sessions with Jello Biafra are worth the price of the book alone. There are also two tour bus incidents so far, one involving some sort of pipe bomb firework, and another involving Anthrax, a groupie, and a pizza that I won't spoil here, but it's good stuff. However, some of it's no laughing matter, like Al and his first wife having to hide their track marks from their daughter's teacher, Jeff Ward's suicide, William Tucker slitting his own throat, Al getting drunk and shooting at Jello Biafra's feet, and so on. A lot of other celebrities and/or musicians get dragged into the madness - Biafra, Ian MacKaye (who gets drunk!), GWAR, Trent Reznor, Layne Staley, Gibby Haynes, El Duce, Ice Cube, Anthrax, Johnny Depp, Tool, etc. Again, I'm only 2/3 of the way through it, but few people emerge from encounters with Al unscathed, and even he's died three times already.As far as Al the person goes, I'm not sure what to think. He seems like an a**hole, but the older Jourgensen in poor health telling the story is at least a strangely likeable a**hole, while the younger variant is so extreme I wouldn't want to have known him, even if his antics are often fun to witness (at least from the safety of my living room armchair). There is a human side to him, in which he touches on his grandmother, wife and daughter, dog Lemmy -- even Tim Leary (whose picture he claims he still carries around in his wallet), but you only get fleeting glimpses of it before he delves back into all the debauchery. His timeline of certain events is questionable despite the ghost writer supposedly having fact-checked them. He also blames the music industry for his drug addiction, despite his own admission that he was using IV drugs in his early teens. In fact, the only musicians he seems to speak fondly of (other than Paul Raven) are the musicians he ran with who were also drunks and/or junkies (e.g., Scaccia, Gibby, Phildo, Ogre, Duce, etc.). He has nothing whatsoever good to say about Chris Connelly, repeatedly calling him a "charlatan" but without explanation. And he absolutely loathes Paul Barker, who the book attempts to portray as some kind of villain (his wife, Angie, in her "intervention" segment, makes some rather serious allegations against Barker but provides no evidence - and refers to winning a lawsuit filed by Jourgensen that was, in actuality, tossed out of court).Even more bizarre, Jourgensen despises his signature music and seems to resent his fan base as much as he does label execs for trying to steer his sound one way or another. He expects his fan base (i.e., consumers) to buy his signature records and has no problem taking credit for the influence they've had on countless other musicians. But then he wants to be released from any obligation to play material from these records live (and still expects fans to pay to see him in concert despite also admitting that he hates performing and would rather be anywhere other than on a stage). They always say, "You should never meet your idols..." - something Al even states in the book. This is probably why the amorphous `They' say it in the first place.Again, I have no idea how much truth there is in any of this, but I'm rating it for sheer entertainment value alone.

Ministry.Take your seat in the pew of Hellfire Church. Rev Al will now preach.Having followed Al J's career for many years I knew very little about this musical genius as a person and what inspired him to produce the killer tracks that he did.The book details his early life his musical influences and the drugs and the drugs and the drugs. I was hoping to get to know Al on an intellectual level, to know what made him tick. There was a trace of it when he preaches about the state of the world and bushism Etc. but I was disappointed in what little I read. He came across as very average unlike his music.The funny thing is the album and songs I like the most AL HATES !!! He hates touring and seems to hate his fans. Thats like being a pretty model who thinks she is too fat and nobody likes her but guys are drooling over her. How can you hate Twitch, Everyday is Halloween , With Sympathy and Filth Pig ???There are many details of crazy touring backstage episodes and down right debauchery but the stories became redundant and at times I felt like I was reading a script from a frat boy college movie. As someone who spent time with William Burroughs and Timothy Leary I expected a more mature individual. The frat boy frenzy seemed contrived.I learned about a few new bands from reading this book that I am now listening to.I am glad I read this book. The curiosity was too much not to have read it.Al is a brilliant musician from CUBAN ROOTS ( Love That ). I wish him well and success with sobriety. His influence in rock n roll will live on forever.Thank You for your contributions ! Peace