PB - We realized that we couldn't devote enough time to the business aspects, and we didn't really know enough about them either. In the independent world, you can book the shows yourself. We made the records and handed them to the label and they took care of the rest of that. We fended for ourselves in every other aspect, and on that level you don't really have to know that much. Ministry, because of Al's earlier successes, had a fan base, and when I started working with Al the sound started to change, but there was already a fan base which grew along with us.

We were in a position of luxury there in that we could do everything ourselves. Outside of the industrial world, Ministry was seen as a faggot pop band, and so there was zero support from anyone outside of the club scene as far as touring was concerned anyway. For us at that point, touring was how we made money. Touring was what gave us the money to record. We had a first-refusal contract with the label; so we had to complete a record and deliver it to them and say "Take it or leave it." Which meant that we had to pay for it up front. So it was real important for us to hang onto our booking and to do that right. The other aspects weren't as important.

After the Mind record we were finishing a Cocks record, and then we were touring with the Cocks, and we had done a Lard record, and the work never stopped. We love that, but we didn't really have any time for the administrative angles that came with the work. We also realized that there was a lot more money out there than we were seeing, and some new bands were, frankly, getting more than we were, and we didn't have any clout to get this money. We didn't have anyone inside the machine who was willing and able to work it for us. We were totally outside of it; which is where we wanted to be because our aesthetics demanded that if someone was a slimy scumbag, then we didn't deal with him. But that's a quick way to get into a dead-end. So, we wanted to shop around and see what, if anything, management could do for us.

We talked to a few people. For some reason, I guess it was the Mind record, these metal bands like Metalica and Megadeth got really into us. That's cool, and we can see why, but, um, we don't reciprocate. Not that I hate them or anything. Those bands just don't really turn me on. If we are in the metal world, we certainly came in the backdoor. Anyway, the managerial aspect of the metal world became interested in Ministry. We were approached by various metal managers, if you will, and some seemed to have more going for them than others. So we talked to some of the bands that these guys had worked with before, and tried to find out why they had split, and whatever we could about them to help us make a decision. That whole process wasn't very interesting.