GWAR’s Mike Bishop remembered Dave Brockie’s creative talents and shared the chaotic story of his Viking funeral, speaking on Go With Elmo Lovano. Bishop described how the band’s attempt to honor their late bandmate went wrong when the fiberglass boat they used caught fire and drifted toward the crowd.
Bishop was asked to reflect on Brockie’s abilities and what made him special as a performer. The funeral ceremony took place at a recreational lake with hundreds or even a thousand people in attendance.
“It is just a huge loss, because people don’t really realize how talented Dave was,” Bishop said. “I think they do, but maybe not the full scope of it. He was like Buster Keaton. He was a comedic… He could’ve been a stand-up comedian. He could’ve been an actor. He could’ve done all of that stuff. But he wanted to clown around with mayonnaise in his pants on stage with GWAR, or his other punk rock bands. And [he had] just ridiculous, so much creative energy.”
“So, yeah, it sucked when Dave died,” he continued. “And everybody came, and we had a Viking funeral for him, which was fun. We put [his costume] on a boat. And of course, in typical GWAR fashion, they didn’t get a wooden boat. They got a fiberglass boat. So it didn’t burn. It just kind of melted and smelled really bad, with a plume of black smoke going up in the air… And it was the last costume that he wore.”
“And they put it out there and then pushed the boat off on this… It was at a sort of outdoor lake, like a recreational lake. And there was hundreds of people there, maybe even a thousand people. But the boat goes out and it starts burning. And because it’s not tied, so it just starts swinging close to the crowd and everybody’s running away from the six-foot-high flames. And the fire department comes ’cause they just see it, like, from the highway. But that was fun.”
Bishop’s account came during a tribute to Brockie’s life and legacy with the band.
Brockie died of an accidental heroin overdose on March 23, 2014, according to the Virginia State Medical Examiner’s Office. He was found dead in his Richmond home and had been a founding member of GWAR since the band began in 1984, serving as its only consistent member throughout the years.
The Viking funeral Bishop describes took place in August 2014 as part of a public memorial held just before the annual Gwar-B-Q at Hadad’s Lake in Richmond, Virginia. Brockie’s stage-worn Oderus Urungus costume was set ablaze on a boat and launched into the lake, marking the final farewell to GWAR’s legendary frontman. The event was attended by Brockie’s family, fans of the band, Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe and former Dead Kennedys vocalist Jello Biafra.
Following Brockie’s death, the surviving members of GWAR launched the Dave Brockie Foundation to preserve his creative output and support other artists. The foundation was described as “a charity fund with the mission of promoting the advancement of music, images, letters and performances in the arts”. It also aimed to catalog and preserve Dave’s vast collection of original images, recordings and written words and make them available for the world to appreciate.
