In the world of The King Khan & BBQ Show, the stories come whooshing by so quickly that it’s tough to tell which ones are true and which ones are comedic exaggerations.
There’s the one in which Arish Ahmad Khan, the Berlin-based singer from Montreal who sometimes does video interviews with a stuffed lizard on top of his head, took Ambien and became so unruly that he went into a rage of fast-food fish-sandwich consumption. That seems to be untrue. “There were a few fish wrappers around, and I didn’t remember anything,” the singer recalls, by phone while driving to a St. Louis tour stop.
And there’s the one in which Khan’s mother, a microbiologist from Ghazipur, India, went to see his punk-rock band, the Space—–, perform for the first time. The opening band involved a guy kicking his guitar all over the stage and another guy swearing. One of the musicians took a swig of beer and spat it into the audience. “I was watching from behind: ‘Oh my God, I just watched my mom get spat beer all over her face!'” recalls Khan, who was 17 at the time. “I was really proud of her reaction. She pulled Kleenex out of her purse and wiped her face and proceeded to enjoy the show.” Later, Khan cut his hand on a guitar, and his mom was so worried she followed him into the bathroom.
“I begged her to stop following me into the bathroom,” he adds, “but she did.”
“And all the punks laughed,” adds Mark “BBQ” Sultan, Khan’s friend and musical partner since they were growing up in Montreal. That story appears to be true.
But the truth is confusing when it comes to The King Khan & BBQ Show, a boisterous punk band best known for raggedy guitar songs like “I’ll Be Loving You” and “I’ll Never Belong.” For example, they are no longer The King Khan & BBQ Show. On a new video, “We Are the Champion,” they revert to an earlier name, the Bad News Boys. Why? One online rumor — Berlin barbecue joint King Khan Und BBQ filed a lawsuit — is incorrect. Actually, the band just became irritated with the name. “This kid comes up the other day: ‘Are you that guy from King Kong and Barbecue Sauce?'” says BBQ, who is also on the 25-minute phone interview from St. Louis. “I was like, ‘No, man, I’m not.'”
Khan and Sultan formed the Space—– in Montreal in the late ’90s, and when that band split up, they went in opposite musical directions. BBQ transformed himself into a one-man band, playing guitar with his hands and drums with his feet; Khan became the frontman for a rock-and-soul band with horns and guitars, King Khan and the Shrines. (Check out last year’s propulsive “Luckiest Man,” one of the best garage-rock songs in years.) Some 10 years ago, they met again, and formed a duo akin to Dead Milkmen with a good singer, or a Cramps with more poignancy. “Go on and slit your wrists,” Khan sings on “Zombies” from 2006. “I’m gonna drink your blood and cry.”
Khan sees the duo in the same vein as crazed rock lunatics such as Little Richard and James Brown — and he isn’t especially worried about turning into a novelty act. “There’s both sides of it — we can be funny, but we also have serious songs,” he says. “As long as you don’t stick to a one-trick pony thing, we’re basically free to do whatever we want.”
“That’s basically our personalities. When we’re in the car, driving, all we’re doing is cracking jokes,” BBQ adds. “People don’t look at us like Barenaked Ladies or some horrible thing like that. It’s like some really rocking thing!”
Although both musicians have regularly spewed out albums with their other projects — King Khan and the Shrines’ “What Is?!” came out earlier this year — they released an album in 2006 and briefly split up shortly afterward. It seems Khan, who was afflicted with a “common musical bipolar, blah blah blah, manic, mania, whatever you call it, I guess, pretty much like bipolar,” became impossible to live with on tour. In 2010, three of Khan’s close friends, including well-known singer Jay Reatard, had passed away, and the grief was too much for him to take. The duo had been performing on Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson’s invitation at the Sydney Opera House, and afterward they had a “blistering fight.” Khan retreated to a monastery in Korea to deal with his emotions.
“Then the intervention started,” he says, “where my family realized they thought I was losing my mind and I had to seek more contemporary ways of fixing the problem.”
“I knew he’d get better,” BBQ adds, “and I’m glad you did other things, rather than what you were thinking of doing. It’s cool to see my brother back, being the guy I remember, instead of following this path that was looking precarious and dangerous.”
“Sometimes if you don’t grieve, that whole thing clogs your body up and makes you crazy,” says Khan, who is taking what he calls “big medication” to keep his mental illness under control. “I’m glad I had to take time off when I did. I feel stronger than ever now.”
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When: 8 p.m. Saturday
Where: Thalia Hall (Saturday), 1807 S. Allport St.
Tickets: $18-$30; 312-526-3851 or thaliahallchicago.com