Hometown Boy Makes Bad

In the end, the law didn't force Jourgensen to divorce heroin; he did so for his own reasons. "I don't regret a day in my life, but I do have reservations about how long it took me to recognize that I was getting diminishing returns. Pretty soon, it's just like being a diabetic. You're not getting any benefits; you're just taking insulin to avoid getting sick. So you either have to stop or keep going and die or get arrested -- because that's the future."

Hypodermic lust inspired 1999's Dark Side of the Spoon, whose cover photo of a morbidly obese naked woman wearing a dunce cap got it banned from Kmarts nationwide -- one of Jourgensen's proudest achievements. "Bad Blood," from Spoon, earned a 2000 Grammy nomination in the heavy-metal category, but that didn't stop Warner Bros. from cutting the group loose about ten minutes after it lost to Black Sabbath. Jourgensen, who'd known the end was near when he called Warner Bros. and was put on hold for 45 minutes while the Looney Tunes theme played ("That's all, folks!"), says he was relieved to be free. "God works in mysterious ways," he concludes.

So did director Stanley Kubrick, who chose Ministry to contribute to A.I., a film he intended to make following Eyes Wide Shut. After Kubrick died, Steven Spielberg volunteered to complete the project -- an offer that resulted in a severely flawed movie that was infinitely goopier, no doubt, than it would have been under Kubrick's guidance. On the other hand, Spielberg deserves credit for keeping the commitment to Ministry, which performs a scorching version of "What About Us?" against the backdrop of a "flesh fair" at which crazed humans gather to watch robots being destroyed. Youthful actor Haley Joel Osment, as an overtly Pinocchio-like boy-bot, is at the center of the action, as is an animatronic teddy bear that tested Jourgensen's patience. "We had to keep waiting for that fuckin' bear," he groans. "It was like, 'The bear's down! The bear malfunctioned! Cut!' And then they would talk to it and coddle it like it was a person. I was so fuckin' sick of that bear."

He isn't a fan of the movie, either, but he characterizes the filming as a positive experience. "We learned a lot, and by the end, Spielberg even kind of warmed up to us. We had him up there on stage with my cowboy hat on. We had a riot."

On the surface, touring behind Animositisomina would seem sure to be a lot less fun. After all, Ministry no longer has major-label support, and the odds that corporate radio will take a chance on songs like the cold-turkey anthem "Shove" are slimmer than Calista Flockhart. Still, Jourgenson is excited by the band's new material and looking forward to unleashing it live.

"The music business is cyclical, and sometimes within the cycle it's easy -- and sometimes you really have to push a piano uphill," he says. "But we're pretty determined folk, and we're going to keep going on until it doesn't satisfy us anymore. And right now, nothing satisfies me more."