\u201cThere were maybe 15 people,\u201d says Tony Campos today. \u201cBut two of the people happened to be Dez [Fafara] and Meegs from Coal Chamber. They said, \u2018You guys are cool, here\u2019s the number for the promoter at [Sunset Strip club] The Roxy.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Within three years of that fortuitous meeting, things had changed for Static. The band\u2019s name, for one \u2013 they added an \u2018X\u2019 to the end, becoming Static-X<\/a>. They recruited a second guitarist, Koichi Fukuda. And then there was their frontman \u2013 crop-haired Wayne Wells became Wayne Static, a juddering, grimacing figure with a gravity-defying tower of hair styled like a man who had rammed his fingers into a live socket. But the biggest thing of all that happened to Static-X was success.<\/p>\n Their debut album, 1999\u2019s Wisconsin Death Trip, placed the band in the centre of nu metal<\/a>\u2019s second wave. It opened with one of the era\u2019s great singles \u2013 a pulsing, pulverising slab of malevolent disco-metal titled Push It that would take the band a long way from Crack Central.<\/p>\n \u201cDid we realise how important it would be for us? Oh, hell no,\u201d says Tony. \u201cWe just wanted to write a song to make people dance.”<\/p>\n Wayne wasn\u2019t what I expected<\/p>\n Tony Campos<\/p>\n Wayne Wells and Ken Jay had been introduced to each other in the late 80s in their hometown of Chicago by a mutual friend, Smashing Pumpkins<\/a> frontman Billy Corgan<\/a>, who sometimes played with Wayne\u2019s band Deep Blue Dream. By the early 90s, they\u2019d swapped the Windy City\u2019s hipper-than-thou music scene for the blazing sunshine and fuel-injected dreams of LA.<\/p>\n \u201cI met Ken when we both worked at Ticketmaster, taking orders for tickets on the phone,\u201d says Tony, a native Angeleno. \u201cHe said, \u2018You should come and try out for my band.’ I was in a death metal band, so I wasn\u2019t keen. But after a week of just sitting round with no gigs, I said, \u2018OK, I\u2019ll jam with you guys.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Ken and Wayne\u2019s band were a grunge-knock off named Drill. Wayne himself looked less like the striking figure he would become and more like a thrift shop version of The Cult<\/a>\u2019s hippie-goth frontman Ian Astbury.<\/p>\n \u201cLong, straight, black hair, bell-bottom corduroy pants, flowery shirt,\u2019 says Tony. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t what I expected. He was a quiet-spoken dude. But he had a dry sense of humour.\u201d<\/p>\n What to read next<\/p>\n With Tony onboard, Drill began searching for a sound. They dispensed with grunge and began dabbling with punk, with just as little success. The lightbulb moment came when Wayne picked up a drum machine and brought it into their dingy Downtown LA rehearsal room.<\/p>\n \u201cHe hit play and started playing a riff over it,\u201d says Tony. \u201cWe were all, like, \u2018Yeah, let\u2019s rip off Ministry!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He laughs about it now, but it wasn\u2019t as cynical as it sounds. Chicago was the home of Wax Trax! Records, the pioneering industrial\/dance label that had given Ministry their first break, and that scene\u2019s jackhammer noise was part of Wayne and Ken\u2019s musical DNA. They had a more legitimate claim to that sound than most bands in their adopted hometown.<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Press)<\/p>\n Tony can\u2019t remember exactly when Drill became Static, but it was before the Bar Deluxe gig in 1996. Wayne Wells\u2019 transformation into the uniquely coiffed Wayne Static happened a little later. The frontman had shaved his head bald before that show, but started growing it out again. One night he turned up to a gig with the beginnings of the swept-up vertical \u2019do that would become his signature.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was pretty out there,\u201d says Tony of Wayne\u2019s new hairstyle, which the singer would jokingly tell journalists was kept aloft by semen (prosaically, it was just the product of time, effort and a lot of a hairspray).<\/p>\n The band had been stockpiling songs while they slogged it out on the LA club circuit. The three-piece line up of Wayne, Tony and Ken recorded a three-track demo tape in 1996 featuring future Wisconsin Death Trip songs Bled For Days and Love Dump, plus Structural Defect, which would be cannibalised for the title track of their second album, 2001\u2019s Machine. A second, six-track cassette followed a year later. The new demo opened with a new track called Push It.<\/p>\n \u201cThe modus operandi we had was, \u2018Let\u2019s see how goofy we can make this \u2013 let\u2019s go really goofy,\u2019\u201d says Tony of the song, which kicked off with a sample of Kiss\u2019 Paul Stanley screaming \u201cAre you ready to rock\u2019n\u2019roll?\u201d, lifted from Kiss\u2019 Alive II album. \u201cI even threw in some death metal vocals.\u201d<\/p>\n The modus operandi we had was, ‘Let\u2019s see how goofy we can make this’<\/p>\n Tony Campos<\/p>\n And the title? \u201cIt was just a straight-up rip-off of the Salt \u2019N\u2019 Pepa song,\u2019 says Tony, referring to the female rap duo\u2019s 1996 hit of the same name.<\/p>\n Wayne Static memorably described his band\u2019s sound as \u201cEvil Disco\u201d, and Push It lived up to that billing even in its demo form. The relentless industrial rhythm and mechanised riff echoed Ministry and Prong, but it had a danceability too.<\/p>\n![\"Static-X](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/VABvhj44G8eSNXAk5guyUJ.jpg\")
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![\"Static-X](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777299611_485_maxresdefault.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Wayne](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/7rttoZcCqvXfAwm5b5m8M4.jpg\")
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