Rollingstone.com Interview with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
I wondered if they were done even after the announcement a few years ago. It does sound like Omar and Cedric have a lot ahead of it in terms of priority, namely his solo records and a new At the Drive-In album, which I may check out, but still don't have huge expectations or hopes.
The Volta? especially if Jon Theodore is back, certainly intrigues me and many others.
You mentioned Mars Volta earlier in your list of projects you'd like to revive. Do you have plans to put out another Volta album eventually?
At some point, we'd love to do [Mars Volta] again too, you know what I mean? There's so much to do there as well. Obviously now we're focused on At the Drive-In and making this record great and touring. Jon Theodore is doing Queens of the Stone Age right now. There are only four surviving members of the real Mars Volta, which is Eva Gardner, the original bass player who gave us all our soul but unfortunately had to leave the band because her father died on the second tour; Ikey Owens, who, of course, isn't with us anymore; Jeremy Ward, who isn't with us anymore; and Jon Theodore. Jon and Eva are still alive, and we're so grateful for that. And any true fan of the band knows that's the real chemistry right there. Whenever we get to that time, we hope that it all lines up with whatever Jon's doing and whatever Eva's doing, because she's been touring with Gwen Stefani. I just have a feeling it will. Life has a funny way of working out that way.
Fans were very excited about Antemasque, since it brought you and Cedric back together. Could you talk a bit about how that project actually started? It seemed like a very quick transition between Cedric tweeting about the death of Mars Volta to you guys coming together and making the album in what seemed like a very spontaneous way. Then the project seemed to fly under the radar.
Obviously I'm biased, but I think it's a great record, as well. The most important thing is the fact that it got made and we did it and went through the process. Like you said, there was him tweeting or something, and not long after that, we got another band together. Because we're brothers. We're brothers of 25 years, and we had our very first disagreement, and unfortunately it happened to be in the era where arguments can be made public. But having one disagreement in the span of over two decades, you're not going to find that anywhere else. When you look at musical pairings throughout history – Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page – usually like 10, 15 years is their limit, then they go their separate ways. Ours is much deeper than that. We didn't end up in a band together because we were looking to form a band. We ended up in a band together because we hung out every day and played music every day, so the next logical thing was to take a band out on the road. We had one disagreement about me not wanting to do Volta at the time, and it turned into that.
