Most Richmonders pass by an unassuming white brick building on the outskirts of Scott’s Addition without realizing that world domination is being devised there. The structure has no identifier except the intermittent sounds of heavy metal music and crunching machinery. The anonymous exterior belies the facility’s true function: It is the laboratory and lair of the costumed art collective slash alien metal band GWAR.
On a warm September day, Margaret Rolicki is in the back surrounded by fake severed heads and vats of liquid latex. She’s one of the artists who designs and builds GWAR’s elaborate costumes and stage props in the space affectionately dubbed “The Slave Pit.” After 10 years in The Pit, she’s earned the stage name Maggot. “I came after Dave Brockie [GWAR’s former frontman] died,” says the Maryland Institute College of Art graduate. “One of the first things I did with them was work on the Viking-style funeral they had for Dave at Hadad’s Lake. I helped to paint the knotwork on the Viking ship.” The funeral earned national coverage as, in typical, over-the-top GWAR fashion, Brockie’s stage character, Oderus Urungus, was set ablaze on a floating ship.
The funeral kicked off the band’s 2014 GWAR-B-Q, an event they hosted from 2009 to 2016. Since its founding in 1985, the band has also opened a restaurant, GWARbar on West Clay Street in Richmond, and starred in movies, comic books and even a 1990s commercial for Circuit City. Their performances are legendary. Wearing costumes to portray not-of-this-world characters, the band sings and plays instruments while presenting a spectacle that includes props and mannequins spewing fake blood and other various manufactured fluids onto the audience as pyrotechnics and pulse-pounding riffs blare. There have been dark days and brighter moments. All this and more is why a band that began as a joke blossomed into a cultural phenomenon that has endured for 40 years.
Artists (from left) Bob Gorman, Scott Bryan and Margaret Rolicki work in GWAR’s costume and prop shop, known as The Slave Pit. (Photo by Zaid Hamid)
In The Pit, Rolicki has just finished touching up newly molded legs for Balsac the Jaws of Death, the alter ego of guitarist Michael Derks, who has been a consistent GWAR presence since 1989. “We’re redoing everybody’s costumes,” Rolicki says. The last costume refresh was seven years ago. “These heavy costumes get wet and start to rot,” she says. “It’s an organic material, so they aren’t really archival.”
The Pit staff is gearing up for a big 40th-anniversary tour next year, promising an epic new storyline and guest appearances from retired characters. “Plus, we have a new band member with a new costume — Grodius Maximus,” Rolicki says with a smile. Prior to the tour, GWAR is scheduled to play The National on Nov. 9, four days after the presidential election (see photos from that show below). Judging from the props on hand, the upcoming show will include Taylor Swift giving birth to a football, and a host of presidential likenesses will receive a GWAR show staple: overly theatrical decapitation.
As Rolicki continues to work, a roar emerges from the practice room where RAWG (the name band members call themselves when not in costume) is starting to rehearse. She doesn’t bat an eye. “The good and the bad of GWAR is that it’s a choose-your-own-adventure situation,” she says. “There’s no leadership and yet everybody’s the leader. It’s like the chaos is what makes it work — that’s where the magic is.”
GWAR performing at GWAR-B-Q in 2016 (Photo by Justin Vaughan)
Carnival of Chaos
The inventiveness and spectacle of a band spewing blood and viscous fluids on its audiences have led fans to consider GWAR one of the greatest things to ever come out of Virginia Commonwealth University’s vaunted VCUarts program. “I don’t know about that,” says Bob Gorman, aka Bonesnapper, in response. “We’re all VCU dropouts. The founders of GWAR — Dave Brockie, Hunter Jackson, Don Drakulich — they graduated, but everybody after that — Chuck [Varga], myself, Matt [Maguire] — we left VCU in disgust. No, I think that’s giving VCU too much credit. Richmond had cheap space when GWAR got started, an art school with a lot of cool weirdos ... and that’s what made GWAR.”
Gorman has been a Pit slave (the name bestowed upon prop and costume artists, some of whom also appear on stage) since 1988. He also serves as “GWARchivist,” the keeper of the facts, photos, videos, art and paperwork behind a complicated DIY empire that has seen more than 40 members — including musicians and artists — pass through its realm. Despite obstacles, setbacks and notable deaths (particularly Brockie’s), this ever-shifting ensemble has produced a prolific stream of albums, tours, movies, comics, music videos, board games, plush toys, beer, CBD, whiskey, flannel shirts, action figures and, yes, sex toys.
GWAR is thought of as a band, Gorman says, but it’s really more of an art collective. “The most genius thing that Dave Brockie ever said to me was that art doesn’t sell, but rock ‘n’ roll does,” he says. “It was a very caveman-like marketing scheme to get art to the masses under the guise of a rock ‘n’ roll band. People will pay $5 to see a band but probably not an art installation.”
The group was most prevalent in the mainstream in the late 1980s and early ’90s, when their second album, “Scumdogs of the Universe,” caught the national zeitgeist with hit songs like “Sick of You” and TV appearances on “Beavis and Butt-Head,” “The Jerry Springer Show” and FOX (until the band decapitated Sarah Palin onstage, Oderus was a regular on Greg Gutfeld’s first Fox show, “Red Eye”). GWAR has since endured as a cult band with a devout following. “GWAR makes art for itself,” says drummer Brad Roberts, aka Jizmak da Gusha, a constant in the band since 1989. “There’s a really cool core of people that love GWAR and have supported us all these years. They are weirdos like us, we love them, and we know who they are in their brains. They like something that has a little more teeth to it.”
According to Gorman, GWAR is the product of a movie that was never made. “Hunter Jackson’s idea was that these barbarians from outer space come to Earth. ... It’s a metaphor for growing up. One of the barbarians is in a rock band, one has a girlfriend, one starts smoking too much weed ... so they each got trapped in earthly things. Dave being Dave, he said no, we’re all going to be in a rock band, and we’re going to take these costumes and wear them on stage.”
The artists and musicians of GWAR (clockwise from top center): Tommy Meehan, Bob Gorman, Brad Roberts, Scott Bryan, Michael Bishop, Mike Derks, Casey Orr, Matt Maguire and Margaret Rolicki (Photo by Zaid Hamid)
There is still a perception that the whole enterprise was the sole vision of Brockie, who died of an overdose in 2014. Everyone at The Pit seems to have genuinely loved Brockie, a Canadian who grew up in Northern Virginia. “He really was a genius,” Gorman says. “But GWAR has always worked best when it’s organic, and we’ve always had a process. Dave would often push an agenda and have a strong concept, but it was up to us to make it work.”
“When you are the singer in a band, you are the mouthpiece,” says Roberts. “Dave’s ego was obviously very strong, and he was funny, the best frontman you could have. ... I mean, we wanted him to be the mouthpiece. But obviously, if he’s the only one talking in the press, people are going to think he’s the guy that does it all.”
Longtime Pit slave Matt Maguire, aka Sawborg Destructo, says, “It’s always been a conglomeration. … Someone walks into a room and hears what people are talking about, and they add to it.”
Rolicki explains that there are weekly creative meetings where the five musicians and three artists toss around ideas. “It’s a trial by committee. If a lot of people like it, it passes, and if not, well, you just have to suck it up,” she says.
“Dave was the loudest back then. He was a force, just a lusty, hardy pirate of a guy,” says bassist Casey Orr, aka Beefcake the Mighty. “But there’s the group and there’s the artists, and we all interact and build this thing together. The artists have always been able to come in at any time with an idea or a turn of phrase. ... It’s an open process.”
If Brockie asserted his will, Gorman says, it was around the business. “Because of his personality, if something f--ked up, he could usually talk his way, or our way, out of it. When he was gone, a lot of that just kind of collapsed on us.”
Since his death, the band has taken steps to normalize its operations, hiring professionals to drive buses and sell merchandise. They also endured an ugly trial with Brockie’s father, who contested GWAR ownership (Brockie left no will), and eventually started their own music label, Pit Records, a long-expressed goal. The collective also partners in their themed, namesake restaurant, GWARbar. Guitarist Derks, a veteran restaurateur and chef, oversees the band’s interest in the Jackson Ward eatery.
Rehearsal at The Pit: (from left) Tommy Meehan, Casey Orr, Brad Roberts and Mike Derks (Photo by Zaid Hamid)
In the past, the organization was hesitant to partner or outsource anything. “Dave had this concept of ‘selling out,’” Gorman says. “We all loved him to f--king death, but he tanked our career several times. Any chance of a major distribution or industry deal, he just wouldn’t do it. And we went along with it. He’d say, ‘They’re going to have control of who we are.’”
Brockie’s death plunged the crew into self-doubt, but Blöthar the Berserker, played by lead vocalist Michael Bishop — the original Beefcake the Mighty — has proven to be the perfect replacement for the frontman. “If we just threw a guy into the Oderus costume and continued on as before, the fans wouldn’t accept it,” Roberts says. “We had to get our original bass player back to have any credibility.”
Bishop says, “GWAR is dysfunctional at an essential organizational level. … There’s no way to overcome this deep-seated, long-standing f--ked-upness.”
He should know. For seven years starting in 1987, Bishop was GWAR’s hulking bass player. He contributed to the first four records, two EPs, several movies (including the Grammy-nominated “Phallus in Wonderland”) and those infamous early tours. He later rejoined for a stint as Beefcake when the group needed him. “And then I left and came back when Dave passed,” Bishop explains. “I realized I missed it. I also liked the challenge, because it seemed like the band was somewhat adrift.”
Bishop was a teenager when he first donned the costume. After he graduated from Thomas Dale High School in Chester, Brockie told him, “You’re ours now.” Later, Bishop earned a Ph.D. in music from the University of Virginia. “I think I bring some different perspectives to the band,” Bishop says. “You have to look at GWAR as a political entity. You had so many ideas, and this inexplicable spirit of compromise and common purpose is what always would win out.”
But there were conflicts, too. “I’d never met anybody with such a curious drive than Brockie and Hunter, two of the biggest hard-headed individuals you’d ever meet. And they never got along, ever,” Bishop says.
GWAR in 1986: (left to right, top row) Ron Curry, Greg Ottinger, Chuck Varga, Heather Broome, Adam Green. (Bottom row): Jim Thomson, Mike Delaney, Chris Bopst, Hunter Jackson, Joe Annaruma, Dave Brockie, Colette Miller (Photo by Don Long courtesy GWAR)
The Private Pain of Techno Destructo
“I always get screwed in the press,” Hunter Jackson says, speaking from Los Angeles. “They just did this movie, ‘This is GWAR,’ and acknowledged that I was the original creator of GWAR. But I did four hours of interviews and the only stuff they put in was that I hated Dave Brockie. But the movie didn’t say why.”
Even though Jackson officially left the band in 2000, the man who started the original Slave Pit and conceived of the initial look, costuming and props for what became GWAR, is still angry.
“There’s a weird dynamic with GWAR,” he says. “Dave Brockie nurtured this flaw to his advantage. He worked hard to split GWAR into two specific camps: musicians, that he was in charge of, and the artists, the people he couldn’t quite control. In my case, he was trying to constantly replace me, recruiting new people into the group who did the same things that I did.”
Brockie and Jackson’s contentious relationship was even part of the official GWAR storyline. “All of the characters in a way evolved out of our own personalities. In my case, my character, Techno Destructo, in the storyline, he shows up from outer space and is supposed to be GWAR’s boss, but he tells them, ‘Hey, join me and we’ll conquer the universe together.’ And GWAR says ‘F--k no, we’re rock stars now, we’re having too much fun.’ And then Techno gets mad because GWAR won’t join them and he attacks them, tries to destroy them and gets his ass kicked in return,” Jackson says. “A lot of that plotline was Dave constantly heaping abuse on me publicly on stage to push me to quit the band.”
Pit slave Matt Maguire says, “Hunter really wanted to make movies and do comics, but it was tough. The band started to become more successful, and Dave was getting all of the spotlight.”
Jackson was the one who recruited Maguire, then a VCUarts freshman, into the GWAR world as a “satellite slaver.” After he had painted props, molded costume parts and triggered spew gags for a couple of years, someone told Maguire, “You know you’re in the band, right?” “I was more on Hunter’s side at the time,” Maguire says. “But with perspective, I see that he and Dave were both guilty of not really listening to each other and letting their egos get in the way.”
GWAR is thought of as a band, but it’s really more of an art collective.
Brockie and Jackson had first joined forces in the Richmond Dairy building in Jackson Ward. The former milk factory shaped like a bottle — still standing today — had crumbling ceilings and low rental rates for visual artists and punk bands like the Nazi Killers, Dairy-Aires, Milk Armpit, the Alter Natives and Death Piggy, all of whom would be absorbed into GWAR at various points. “That’s where I had the first Slave Pit, and Dave was practicing there with Death Piggy,” recalls Jackson, whose pet project at the time was a sci-fi movie called “Scumdogs of the Universe.” He spent time designing a film set in the Dairy building and fashioning outrageous costumes for the characters.
One night, Brockie and the rest of Death Piggy borrowed Jackson’s constructions, and the rest is history.
“My beef with Dave was that he was only interested in being a big fish in a little pond,” Jackson says. “I wanted to write a quintessential story, a play, that uses our music — like ‘Rocky Horror.’ But he wanted to do a different show every time, and in hindsight he may have been right. That turned out to be one of GWAR’s strengths.”
Jackson was a part of the group’s “Scumdogs 30th Anniversary Tour” in 2021, a stage celebration of its most famous album. “I hope I get to do it again. In spite of everything, when I went out on that reunion tour, [the band was] really nice to me.”
“It healed a lot of wounds,” Pit slave Bob Gorman recalls. “The fact that we all grew up a little bit and could work together again was fantastic.” He doesn’t rule out a place for Techno Destructo in the forthcoming 40th anniversary tour ... if Jackson is healthy. “When Hunter did that tour with us, he had two heart attacks,” Gorman says.
GWAR’s current lineup: (from left) Balsac the Jaws of Death (Mike Derks), Grodius Maximus (Tommy Meehan), Jizmak da Gusha (Brad Roberts), Blöthar the Berserker (Michael Bishop), Sawborg Destructo (Matt Maguire), Bonesnapper (Bob Gorman) and Beefcake the Mighty (Casey Orr) (Photo by Carter Louthian courtesy GWAR)
The Road Behind
“Most people who work with us know that we’re an odd duck,” says Orr, who has portrayed Beefcake the Mighty 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 (he’s been in and out of the group a lot since 1994). “We’re a strange thing, and the normal rules just don’t matter. It’s not like any other band, and I would say, overall, physically and mentally, we’re the hardest working band in the world.”
Drummer Brad Roberts backs up Orr’s statement by noting the weight and obstructed vision typical of the GWAR costumes. “I defy any band to wear this stuff and play their own songs, and not f--k them up,” Roberts says. “It’s hot, it’s heavy, and I don’t think the guitar players have seen the necks of their guitars for years.”
Adding to their workload, Roberts, Derks, Orr, Maguire and Gorman often dress as policemen and perps and open GWAR shows as the X-Cops. The original brainchild of Brockie and former GWAR guitarist Pete Lee, this punky side group reformed in 2023 and is slated to go on their own tour.
Sitting with GWAR’s new member, guitarist Tommy Meehan, aka Grodius Maximus, in The Slave Pit break room, Orr says that GWAR’s current incarnation reminds him of his early days in the group, 30 years ago. “It was just a band in a room playing music. And as with most bands, the singer would come in and say, ‘This is a song about doo-doo,’” he says with a laugh.
When Meehan says he’s a fan of the band he just joined, he means it. “I had a podcast called the GWARcast with my buddies,” he says. The former high school football star is also used to performing in a cumbersome uniform. “I’ve been training my whole life for this,” he adds with a smile.
Here’s another conversation starter: For all of its many lineups and style shifts, GWAR, the band, has never been better. While no original members remain, the current group features a crew of established longtimers (Derks, Roberts, Bishop and Orr) and an energetic newbie (Meehan). They sound lean, hard and hungry these days. “There’s a spirit. You can feel it,” Bishop says. “GWAR still has a hardy dose of Richmond in it — Richmond from a certain time period, the early ’90s. All of the bands that gave birth to Lamb of God, too — Sliang Laos, Hoi’ Polloi, Alter Natives — all of that Richmond weirdness is still in the band.”
GWAR joined an inspired online session recorded for the A.V. Club’s online Undercover series in July. As the group has done in the past with Billy Ocean’s “Get Outta My Dreams” and Kansas’ “Carry On Wayward Son,” they performed an absurdly incongruous cover of “I’m Just Ken,” from the “Barbie” movie. Bishop and Derks rewrote the lyrics to transform the tune into a crunching self-confessional paean about a band, an art collective, a franchise that seemingly can’t be killed:
“We’re just GWAR. We are shock-rock superstars. Yes, we are clowns, and we exist to take a piss on sacrosanctity.”
Scenes from GWAR’s Nov. 9 concert at The National in Richmond (Photos by Zaid Hamid)
