Ministry’s Al Jourgensen: If I Hadn’t Become a Musician, I Would Have Been a Teacher

Ministry mastermind Al Jourgensen is a true conversationalist. We always love speaking with him, and the other day, we caught up with Jourgensen on the phone for about half an hour. We spoke with the musician about Ministry's upcoming album 'From Beer to Eternity,' his memories of late guitarist Mike Scaccia, alien encounters and much, much more, but perhaps the most fascinating part of our conversation was when 'Uncle Al' told us that if he wasn't a professional musician, he would like to be a teacher.

Can you imagine Al Jourgensen walking into a classroom with a cup of coffee and a manilla folder filled with graded tests and attendance records? Suddenly, school doesn't seem so bad. Of course, Jourgensen doesn't just want to teach any subject, he wants to educate the kids on what he calls "pre-history history."

"I was learning pre-history history before all the Graham Hancock books and all the ancient alien things came out and all that. I was very interested in pre-Mesopotamian culture, which I thought, '3500 to 4000 B.C.? That's not where we started.' This goes way further and we have no evidence of that so I really did my research in college on pre-historical history. Today, if I could get a job, with face tattoos, being a professor, I would do that. I don't know what university would hire me, but that's my passion. What really went the f--- on? Not what the Bible tells us or the Koran or the Torah or whatever, but what really was going on."

He adds, "How much did they know back then and what different types of energy sources did they have? They weren't just in the dark rubbing two sticks together like they try to make you think, like Neanderthals and, 'Ohhhh, we found fire!' and this and that. These people had like, electromagnetic sources, they had solar power, they had wind, they had all renewable resources. They were an advanced civilization, we are the barbarians."

Jourgensen went on to speak about these civilizations, which he says pre-dated the ancient Babylonians and Sumerians. "I'm talking about islands sunken under the sea because of sea level changes over the years in 200-300 feet of water. I'm talking about the supposed Plato's 'Atlantis' and all this. There were civilizations very similar to what Plato describes as Atlantis. I think we were colonized by aliens 250,000 years ago and they genetically altered our DNA to be primates into homo erectus and humans. I'm very interested in how we evolved so suddenly, which obviously ties in with the alien thing. Also, because of civilizations and the technology that we had back then, somebody is holding onto it; some say the Masons or the Rosicrucians. Somebody has that knowledge and they won't let the people know."

After we mentioned various underwater rock formations such as the Yonaguni Momument, which is thought by many to be manmade, Jourgensen continued on the subject. "[People] are so worried about the g--damn Moon and Mars. They should be looking underwater. There's some anomalies that are absolutely unexplainable or have absolutely no contextual comparison to the history we're taught today. Like I was saying, they were the advanced cultures. We're the barbarians, man."

Check out our exclusive premiere of behind-the-scenes footage from Ministry's 'From Beer to Eternity' album art shoot, and be sure to stay tuned for the rest of our exclusive and captivating interview with the legendary Al Jourgensen.