Dear Superstar: Stephen Malkmus

Blender has only just met Stephen Malkmus’s mother, but it doesn’t take long for us to win her over. “They’re the magazine that named our album No. 1 on their indie-rock list,” Malkmus informs his visiting mom, Mary, shortly after welcoming Blender into the Portland, Oregon, home he shares with his wife and two young kids. The 41-year-old singer-guitarist is referring to our recent feature declaring Slanted and Enchanted—the debut full-length from Pavement, the alt-legends Malkmus fronted from 1989 until their dissolution in 1999—the greatest indie-rock album ever. “We love Blender, then,” says Mary Malkmus, beaming. “It’s our favorite magazine.”

And that’s not Mrs. Malkmus’s only source of maternal pride as of late: There are the matters of her son’s new album, Real Emotional Trash, Malkmus’s latest with his band of indie-scene vets the Jicks (now featuring ex-­Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss); his work on the soundtrack to last year’s Dylan biopic I’m Not There (that’s his singing voice coming out of Cate Blanchett’s mouth); and the November birth of his second daughter, Sunday.

We retreat to Malkmus’s messy basement studio, where he prepares to face the questions submitted by Blender readers. He’s not nervous in the least. “I’ve answered fans’ questions before,” he says. “In the ’90s, I even had a Japanese magazine column called ‘Stephen Malkmus Figures You Out.’ I answered love questions from 16-year-old ­Japanese girls. It was fun, and I got paid like, 2,000 yen a month.” Fortunately for Blender, Malkmus agreed to field your inquiries for free.

Blender named Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted the No. 1 indie-rock album of all time. Were they right?
McDeets74, Collinsville, CT
The big problem with that list was the definition of indie—“records not released by major labels” would be my definition. The [major-label] Velvet Underground were No. 7, and if the Velvet Underground are going to be considered indie, they have to be No. 1. They’re the band that influenced all the other groups on that list. Personally, I wouldn’t put Slanted and Enchanted at No. 1—maybe Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me or Sonic Youth’s Sister or the Butthole Surfers’ Psychic … Powerless …  Another Man’s Sac. Pavement being in the Top 10 would’ve been enough.

As a teenager in California you spent some time in jail for walking on other people’s roofs. What the hell were you doing walking on other people’s roofs?
Piglib99, Austin, TX
I was about 16, and I was drinking beer with a friend before we went to a high school basketball game. We were peeing in the bushes by someone’s house and we got this bright idea to walk on people’s roofs, like they weren’t going to hear us. The police caught us with beer in our car trunk. They kept us in jail for four hours, a “scared straight” type thing. It’s not the only dumb thing I did. I was on probation for drinking at another high school, and I got kicked out for going to a party in the woods where people were taking mushrooms. I didn’t take them, but some guy narc’d on me.

You worked as a security guard at the Whitney Museum in New York. What did you get to bust people for?
Vibraphone333, Anderson, IN
There wasn’t much busting. There was a lot of “Please, don’t touch.” There were rumors that people were having sex in the bathrooms, and once someone wrote his girlfriend’s name on a painting by Willem de Kooning—it turned out a rent-a-guard did it. When I worked as a night guard, I had the run of the place; I definitely thought about how you could take a lot of paintings all in one go.

Your wife, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, is a sculptor. Is there a marble Stephen Malkmus anywhere in your house?
Karen Kenner, Canton, OH
No, but she made some papier-mâché angel wings for me to wear in one of her art pieces. She filmed me wearing them, eating angel food cake. And I wasn’t wearing a shirt. I know I’m supposed to be a sport for her art, but: 1) I don’t like to get my picture taken, 2) I don’t like to have my shirt off and 3) I’m wearing angel wings. I looked very sullen in the video, so I lost credit for that. Luckily, she didn’t use it.

Lemme get this straight: Pavement’s bat-crap-crazy original drummer, Gary Young, handed out cabbage and cinnamon toast to fans at your gigs, passed out in the offices of Sony Records after demanding a $1 million deal and once pulled a gun on you?
Killdozer11, Fort Dodge, IA
He never pulled a gun on me—I would remember that—but everything else is true, I think. He did have a gun; he bought it in New Mexico just because he could, or something. He was just on one giant bender when we were on tour; he would do weird stuff. Once, he found a dead rabbit somewhere. He supposedly put it in my luggage and then decided to take it out. [Laughs.] I don’t think that I was antagonizing him, but I was kind of a jerk back then sometimes.

Billy Corgan reportedly was so upset about the Pavement song “Range Life,” in which you dis Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots, that he refused to play Lollapalooza ’94 if you were on the bill. Have you and Billy settled that beef?
Jumper08, Spring Valley, NV
No, but I have a feeling that Billy’s gotten over it. I made a game of it in the press, like there was some kind of war between us. I don’t even know if the Lollapalooza story was true. The lyric wasn’t even a particularly bad jab. Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots are both just names that I thought sounded really funny. I would like to apologize to them for making fun of their names. It’s not like Pavement was the best name, anyway.

I heard that Pavement were supposed to play on Beverly Hills, 90210 but got kicked off the show after getting into a fight with Jason Priestley. Did you punch Brandon Walsh?
Jeff Tipp, Athens, GA
No, I was not involved in any of the violence on that show. I was a fan—you can’t hit your heroes. [Laughs.] We weren’t ever even on that show and didn’t fight anyone. We completely fabricated that for the English press.