An interview with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez

I was late. Any semi-serious journalist knows you should NEVER be late. A time miscalculation coupled with a twenty-minute goose chase at the venue did not sit well with The Mars Volta’s tour manager. Extremely disgruntled, he told me I would not be interviewing Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the band's lead guitarist and composer--and one of the most brilliant men in music. Swallowing my chagrin, I decided to find the Universal Music label rep (my main contact that I should have found first) to see if I could still squeeze something in. Instead, I found Omar. I pled my case and expressed my frustration with jumping through the tour staff’s hoops. Reluctantly, he acquiesced and led me to the backstage bathroom. (No, he didn’t want me to hold it for him.)

I was grateful for his benevolence and made it quick. Though the interview lasted less than ten minutes, I learned a lot about Omar. I wasn’t dazzled after I had left—I still felt like a supreme asshole for being late and inconveniencing Omar—but when I listen to the tape now, I can’t help but feel extremely satisfied with our conversation. It feels different than any other interview I've done--mystical, perhaps. It feels like a subtle, gripping aura glows from that magnetic strip. It's inexplicable.

Five and a half hours in an uncomfortable block of steel for a few, equally uncomfortable, minutes in a tiny bathroom with a short, skinny thirty-something: a fair trade.

The transcript can be found here: http://www.puregrainaudio.com/interviews/the_mars_volta.htm

Some notes that you won't read in the above link:

Omar is a fidgety person. Even if we weren't in an 8 x 6 bathroom, I could not imagine him keeping still. He constantly paced back and forth (two steps to his left, and two steps back). The thing I found the most strange was that he RARELY looked at me. Most of the time he had his head down. Occasionally he stopped to pick up his head and look directly at my eyes, but would quickly return to his shoe-gazing shuffle. Yet, there was not a tremble in his voice. He spoke candidly, and sometimes heatedly.

After The Mars Volta finished their set, Cedric and Omar lingered for a few seconds while their collaborators left the stage. It was quite obvious they had found me in the crowd. I was too shy to meet their gaze for more than a tenth of a second, so I wasn't sure if they were giving me the stink-eye, or if they were trying to get my attention. Perhaps they wanted to berate me for doing an interview I wasn't supposed to do, or maybe they just wanted to talk. Perhaps I'll never know; perhaps someday I'll find out.

In case you missed it, the link to the interview is http://www.puregrainaudio.com/interviews/the_mars_volta.htm