Butthole Surfers – Who Was in My Room Last Night?
1993 · Directed by William Stobaugh
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Best comments
1.“I played this on a jukebox in a small bar. The bartender heard the slow, quiet fade-in of the intro and thought he needed to turn the volume up to 100. I remember thinking 'uh oh'... within seconds, I was berated by an enraged gentleman and his wife. I couldn't hear a word they were saying. They stormed out. I still think about it all the time.”
More comments
- 2.“My Gibby Haynes story: he played at a venue I worked at around 2004, and before the show he was just silently standing in the employee elevator, riding it up and down, for no reason, stopping on every floor... for like an hour.”
- 3.“Going in for my first colonoscopy in a few days, and I'm gonna wear an old Butthole Surfers T-shirt to my procedure. Hope the doctor and staff appreciate my sense of humor.”
The story
The Butthole Surfers started in San Antonio in the late '70s, a couple of Trinity University students named Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary, and spent the '80s as underground legends of noisy, acid-soaked punk. In 1993 they made their first major-label record, Independent Worm Saloon, for Capitol, with Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones producing. Who Was in My Room Last Night? was the lead single, and the video is what introduced a lot of America to the band.
William Stobaugh directed it, with animation by Tom Holleran and Wesley Meyer Archer. A guy with a giant black pompadour (played by members of the band) drives to a bar where the Surfers are playing. Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers tends bar. Therese Kablan is the waitress. One drink in, it all goes sideways: the waitress becomes his girlfriend, then a nurse, creatures pile on, and the band gets more frantic with every vision. He apparently wrecks his car and is last seen falling into a void of cartoon skulls. A lot of the hallucination imagery comes from the work of artist Robert Williams.
Beavis and Butt-head played it in the episode No Laughing and loved it. Nintendo used a censored version in an ad for its Play It Loud! campaign, and the song later landed in Guitar Hero II. A band called the Butthole Surfers, selling Nintendo. The '90s were a strange and generous time.
