Some of my favorite interviews are with people who I've never heard of prior to talking to them. One of the best things about staying open to new people and ideas is that you often find yourself pleasantly surprised. I felt a very strong connection to Pat almost immediately. Whether that has to do with being queer or being into punk isn't quite as important as being unabashedly human. Pat is open and earnest about his past, present, and future. That, more than anything, is where powerful creative work comes from.

Hey Pat, thanks for doing this interview. Please tell me about the history of your band, Psychotica and what you're doing now.

I've been doing this since the mid-eighties. Believe it or not, this is my thirtieth year in the music business. Psychotica came about as sort of a fluke. I started this club Squeezebox with my then-partner Michael Kent. It was a big hit. It brought all the weirdos together under one roof, which hadn't been done since Max's Kansas City and CBGB. It got so big that it was almost a movement. There were a lot of acts that spawned from it. The Toilet Boys, Hedwig and the Angry Itch, and Psychotica all came out of it. I started off just producing the shows and began to yearn to be on stage again. We started out rehearsing X Ray Spex and Devo covers. We got signed after our first show. Things just spiraled from there, quite by accident. Peter Strauss put us in an installation in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right in the costume hall with Bowie, Iggy, and all the forefathers of glam rock. It took on a life of its own immediately, and then things really did get out of control. It was like the Sigue Sigue Sputnik scenario where there was a crazy hype around them before they'd even been heard by anyone.

What were some of the immediate consequences of that kind of attention?

I think people misrepresented us a lot. We got the term "shock rock" thrust on us right away, which was very strange to me because nothing that I did onstage was meant to be shocking. It was more a form of self-expression than anything else. I guess that can be the same thing, but it wasn't for me at the time. I'm not sure we were ready for that. We were thrown into the fire immediately. We were offered a spot on the main stage of Lollapalooza opening for Metallica, The Ramones, Soundgarden, and Rancid. It was a fucking whirlwind for us to be there with our debut record.

If you knew then what you know now, what advice would you give to yourself?

I'm not sure I would have done anything differently because saying that means I'm not happy with how things went down. If I were in control of all of it, I'd try to slow it down a little bit. I would have had a better attitude, because frankly, my head was so far up my own ass at the time. I was so full of myself that it's kind of embarrassing to talk about. I'm sure it was not very enjoyable for anyone around me. Hindsight's 20/20 on that one. I don't know if everyone goes through that asshole stage in their twenties of if it was just me, but there's no doubt I went through it. I made a point to be out in public and I caught a lot of shit for doing openly gay rock and roll. Sometimes, it was a tough life, but other people had done it before. There's Jayne County, who's one of my role models and cohorts that I love dearly.

I read an interview you did in 1999 where you said that you were sick of being compared to Bowie. What do you think of that now?

I get why people made that comparison and there are certainly worse people to be compared to. I think I was just a bit jaded at the time.

You help facilitate the Atlanta drag scene, didn't you? Tell me about your experience with that.

That started because Michael and I saw that a lot of the queens in New York were being treated as gay party clowns when most of them were more talented than the rockstars. When I went to Atlanta, I was trying to perpetuate that. It was always amazing to give stage time to whatever queen in whatever city, be it New York, L.A., or Atlanta and watch them completely tear it up. I could count on one hand the number of people who did not come through, but I'd say nine out of ten of them completely blew me away on their first try. It was amazing to watch these queens flower suddenly and feel like real performers. It empowered a lot of people and I hope that perpetuates somehow.

Do you think that RuPaul's Drag Race helps to perpetuate that or does it tend toward exploitation?

It's hard to say because I don't find Ru's show to be exploitative. Have other people said that about it? I know that Ru's heart is in it and a lot of contestants have had strong careers, so I think it's positive overall.

What are you working on in terms of musical projects now?

Again, quite by accident, I just started a solo project. Psychotica's still together and we're all still very close. We'll probably be close ‘til we die, because it's our dysfunctional family band. Being that this is my thirtieth year in the music business, I felt I had to see if I could do this on my own. I don't know if people know this or not, but to some extent, you can hide behind a band. I enjoy the camaraderie and the cushion of having a band behind me, but I wanted to see if I could go it alone. I'm really happy with the outcome of it so far. I'm sort of worried about what people are going to think without a band to back me up. If anything goes wrong, it's my fault. It's a scary, weird, exciting place to be. I'm definitely re-inspired.

Are you playing any live shows?

I'm not doing live shows. I'm also working on a book and I'm going to Hawaii tomorrow to shoot the video for the single, "You Can't Scrub Your Soul Clean." I'm going to shoot it right on the lip of the volcano, which is actively flowing with lava and I am so excited! The director's name is Devin Mohr and he's amazing. Who gets to do things like this in their lives? Not many people.

Was the concept for the video more Devin's vision or yours?

It was both of ours. I've worked with Devin before; he's a close cohort of mine. We've gelled creatively since we met. We bounce ideas off of each other all the time. You should check out his books and look him up on Facebook.

Tell me more about the book that you're working on.

I'm releasing it online a chapter at a time. There is talk about a print version; I have a publisher in the UK. We're still working out a publishing deal here. I assume there will be one, but I'm not sure. The chapter-at-a-time approach is an attempt at slowing it down a little bit, like I was saying before. When I did this single, things started steamrolling like crazy again and I'm really cautious of that because it turned me into a real asshole and I don't ever want to be that person again. I'm taking great pains to make sure that everything is manageable for me.

What's the hardest thing about staying grounded?

When you're a performer, especially a rock performer, it's all about being narcissistic. It's all focused on you and this image you project of yourself. My whole quest has been learning how to pull my head out of my ass and realize that there are other people on the planet. The hardest thing for me right now is finding a balance where I can be introspective enough to be interesting to an audience without going to the point of no return. Quite frankly, it's been liberating to pull my head out of my ass. When I discovered that there was an entire planet full of other people, it was mind-blowing. These are things that I guess most people are born with, but it took me a long time to get there.

Did you have a specific "a-ha" moment?

I had a life changing experience about twelve years ago, when Psychotica was coming down from all the hype. I met my soul mate, Carrie Hamilton, Carol Burnett's daughter. We were inseparable from the day that we met. When she got cancer, I helped nurse her until she died nine months later. It rocked my world and it completely changed everything for me. Suddenly, shaking my ass in front of teenagers seemed trite, you know? It's taken me until now to process that grief. I embodied all those self-destructive rock star clichés. It's taken until the last year or two for me to have a truce with God over all of it. I'm utilizing all of that in my art.

Do you have any songs about Carrie?

Of course, yeah, two major ones. A large part of the book is about my time with her. My biggest struggle with putting it all down is trying to not make it sound like it was all tragic. It was, but it made me a stronger human being than I ever thought I could be.

Can you give us some lighter or funnier moments from your whole recovery process?

I could look at it all as funny. I don't go through things lightly. I'm messy, strung out on speed, and I've got a needle in my arm. Apparently, I'm so resilient that I can't even kill myself. At some point, you've got to grow up and pull it together. The whole thing's a comedy experience on some level. The tagline of this single, "the laughter muffles the screams," is fully about that. If you don't laugh at that shit, it will fucking kill you. My puberty was rough, my midlife crisis is rough, but I'm going to make it through.

Has collaboration helped you in that process?

Oh, yeah! I really want to do a song with Boy George. I'm trying to see if I can make that happen. Pete Burns, too. All the great musical queers. Jayne County, of course.

Do you identify as trans* in the broader sense of the word?

No, but I am in the corps. I never could explain myself on that level. I don't know, there was a long time where I was dressing very femme because I felt like somebody had to go out there and put their head on the chopping block. It's a bullshit reason, I guess, but it's what I thought at the time. I don't know where I am with that and it's not the most important thing to me. I do what I do, you know, and I never thought of identifying any way. I always thought I was gay, and then I met Carrie. We were with other people during that time too. Calling myself bisexual just seems so boring; I'll go for pansexual.

Have you read The Ethical Slut?

No, but I know of it. It has been recommended to me in the past. I'll have to read it now!

Did you have a lot of contact with the people who you mentioned wanting to collaborate with when Psychotica was big?

You've got to remember that for two years prior to us being on the main stage at Lollapalooza, I hosted the festival in drag. I knew almost every major rock star in the world at the time. I was hanging out with Courtney Love, Billy Corgan, Beastie Boys, all of them. My heroes, too, like George Clinton. I'm also writing about my time spent with these people and how it changed me. I was with Green Day on their first major tour. I'd get up and do a medley of Scorpions songs with them. It was a fuckin' trip. The girls from L7 were really close friends of mine. Precious Finch will hopefully be the bass player for my new band when I'm ready to go on the road with this. I'm going to go back into my phonebook, grab some old buddies, and put together an all-star band.

Who is your dream line-up?

I haven't given it much thought yet, but I'd love to get Precious Finch and Traci Gunn in the same room. My first band ever was with Traci Gunn when I was nineteen.

How long are you going to be in Hawaii?

I'll be there for ten days, so hopefully we'll wreak havoc and have a good time. The big island is a really magical place; it's the only place left that's like old Hawaii. There's condos everywhere else.

What was your first time there like?

I was sixteen the first time I went there. Some members of my family live there, so I've spent a lot of time there. That's where I know Devin from. We're two freaks in a jungle. I got fed up one day and put on a pair of thigh-high leather boots and walked onto the beach blasting The Distillers and cleared the entire beach.

What's your biggest hope for the next year?

That I can bring something worthwhile to the table. That's my biggest hope, to make something with substance. I guess that's what every artist wants, to create something that's useful to people. I'm shockingly clear these days, which can be kind of abrasive, but also completely awesome. I'm somewhere in between today. I'm scrambling to get everything together to go, but I feel like the cards are going to fall into place.

Thanks for the interview, Pat. Any words of wisdom for our readers?

Don't let punk rock die. It's brought me so much happiness and an outlet to express myself. Too many people underestimate its value.