A lot of people talk about “living legends”, particularly with regard to musicians. What exactly makes you one is a fact hotly contested everywhere from the pages of magazines to coffee table pleasantries, but whatever it is, one would be hard-pressed to discount the legacy of Mike Watt.

Since Minutemen’s unexpected and tragic demise in 1985 due to the death of D. Boon, Watt has been on the road or in the studio almost perpetually, not least as bass-for-hire with Iggy and The Stooges. Ryan Drever caught up with the “man in the van with a bass in his hand” to discuss his past, present and future projects. “You wanna hear a mind blow? I’m on tour with my Secondmen and I’m in Tallahassee, Florida and I get a phone call and it’s Ig, and he goes ‘Ronnie [Asheton] says you’re the man’ and I’m like ‘what?!’” Watt laughs. “And I know D. Boon would laugh. I would never have imagined a call like that in my life! But that’s what life is, the kind of things you’d never expect. To be a teenager listening to these records and then you get a call like this! And then you’re playin’ with them!”

Check out the full interview with Watt in Rock-A-Rolla Issue 24!