Q&A: Jon Mikl Thor

Forget comic books: There is only one man deserving of the name Thor, and that's a metal musician with a heavy Canadian accent who has stood ready to spit out all his teeth in the name of rock'n'roll since 1976. Jon Mikl Thor and the band bearing his surname never broke into the mainstream or anywhere even close, but that hasn't stopped this sculpted lunatic from putting out album after album (plus an opera) for a good chunk of the past 40 years. Now, Thor is on a new path, playing for the theater crowd in support of a recently released documentary about his life called I Am Thor. I reached Thor over the phone recently to confirm, among other things, that he is still able to bend actual steel bars with his fucking teeth. BRACE BELDEN.

Willamette Week: So, your real name is Thor.

Thor: Yes, that's right. It's my real, legal name. That's who I am. I have a Norwegian-Austrian background. When we go do concerts in Sweden, practically every guy in the audience of 20,000 fans is named Thor. It's a common kind of European name. What with the new movie coming out, it seems like Thor is becoming a name even here in North America. People are naming their kids it again.

What's your workout routine?

I been training since I was 7 years old. Most of my really heavy training for bodybuilding championships, that was during my teens. I kind of retired around 19, 20 years old, to get into show business.

That was when you won Mr. USA?

Actually, that last one was Mr. Universe, in Hawaii. I won some pretty big titles over the years. I had about 40 trophies in my garage. They're all in a big chest. A couple of them I keep out like Mr. Canada and Mr. USA, but then you open up the trunk and they're all crumpled up. I have to glue them all together again. That's what kind of happens. You have to do something with the title. Steve Reems, Arnold Schwarzenegger, they did something with their titles. You gotta go beyond being a title winner and a bodybuilder into other things. It's an open door for you.

You went right to glam after that.

I came out of the glitter rock era. That's when Thor was really coming out strong. I tried playing bass in the '60s. I first started playing accordion, but I didn't want to be like Lawrence Welk. I wanted to be like the Beatles.

You were in a band called the Ticks, right?

Yeah! Then it got heavier; I was in a band called Man, and Iron Falcon. I mean, music got heavier. Led Zeppelin came around, Black Sabbath. In the early '70s, when Thor was really going, I had gone from being a bass player to a frontman, gone from watching Alice Cooper and Ziggy Stardust. I wanted to be like that! The bigger the show, the wilder the show, the more glam, the better. That's why we were considered a glam-rock band. When the first album, Keep the Dogs Away, came out—after I'd put out some EPs with the Imps beforehand—there was that transition between glitter-rock, all those sequins, into the punk era, with leather and studs. We were on the fine line between metal and punk. It was in the '70s, you know?

Let's talk about the movie. What's going on with it? How did they approach you?

It goes about 15 years. I was making a comeback, after over 10 years of retirement from the music or entertainment business, whatever you wanna call it, and I was doing a tour to promote an album I had at the time called Dogs 2, and I was going down the West Coast. We played Seattle, and I was talking to some friends. They introduced me these guys, said "Oh, they're in film school! Maybe you could do some stuff with them." So I met Ryan Wise and Al Higby, told them I'm doing a show the next night. They said, "Sure, I'll come see you." But they didn't know what to expect. They didn't know much about the band at the time. So, they came and saw it, they were blown away by the show, and told me, "Hey, we wanna do a documentary."

Are you excited?

Very excited about it. It's a long time in the making. There were times when it didn't even seem like it was going to be finished. You know, there's been some arduous points along the line with both the producers and myself in our personal lives, touring, a lot of obstacles. Triumphs, as well. There's been many times we just wanted to give up, you know: "What were we thinking of! This isn't going to happen!" You know, there's been filmmakers over the years that I've wanted to make a documentary about Thor, but I've never completed the task.

Well, lucky for them, there's a hell of a lot of archival footage of you.

Yeah, there's a lot of that stuff. There's even more out there. A lot of it got destroyed over the years. We're lucky to even have what we do, because I've moved around a lot in my life and that stuff has been in storage areas and wet basements. Stuff in trunks. My mother kept a lot.

What's your all-time highest bench press?

I got really long arms. My wife says I'm built like an ape. So it's harder for me to bench press, but I did 450 pounds. I was more into the bodybuilding, where I was pumping. I was hanging around with the world's strongest man for a time, his name was Doug Heffner, from Vancouver. He showed me how to bend steel bars. He could bend dimes and railway spikes in his fingers. He could bench press 600 pounds! He had shorter arms. When you've got shorter arms, it gives you more leverage, even when you're arm wrestling. I had 20 inch arms when I was bodybuilding. I wanted to go into Mr. Olympia. If you look at my pictures, I mean, I think my arms were quite big, but if you look at Arnold's arms, his arms are really pumped up. Huge. A lot of it has to do with the structure of your arms, the length, the way the tendons are. One guy can train as much as the other guy, but then it's the way it all comes out in the wash, so to speak. It's because of your heredity, too—how much pump you can really get.

When I saw Thor, as a teenager, you bent a fucking steel bar. You blew up a hot water bottle. Are you the only musician in history to do that kind of act?

No one else can do it!

It's hard to bend a fucking steel bar, man.

Doug Heffner, the former World's Strongest Man, he showed me the secret of the steel. That's how to bend steel. Besides strength, bending steel in your teeth, there's techniques. It goes without saying that, hey, I've broken some teeth on stage. I've had to spit them out. I feel like the Evel Knievel of rock. There was a fellow called Chuck Sykes, he was Mr. Universe. He'd do these stunts in between bodybuilding contests, back in the '70s. He could blow up and explode hot-water bottles, and I thought that was fascinating, so when I developed the character of Thor—and listen, this is my Thor, not Marvel's. This is how I thought how Thor could be. If Alice Cooper could hang himself, Gene Simmons could breathe fire, I needed to do something, right? If I'm going to come out there and do the whole "gladiator rock" thing, I needed to show that, hey, this guy can do something. I've bent steel, blown up and exploded hot water bottles, had bricks smashed on my chest. I went even further, I've experimented with all kinds of strength feats. What kind of things could I do to astound the crowd? I even lifted the heaviest person up from the audience, with a brace around my neck. The person would be in the harness, on a platform, until a 400-pound person came up and the platform broke. I almost broke my neck, and we rolled down into the audience and almost crushed people! I even had a bulldozer roll over my chest.

No!

It came up on a board. The board was leaning on me. That one had to aborted, before I really got crushed. Besides all the ribs I've had broken with sledgehammers, that one would've done far worse. Yes, ripping license plates in two—I've tried everything, a lot of things, to try and entertain. But when you do this kind of stuff, a lot of the critics say, "Oh, it's a freak show! It's a circus!" Then it strays them away from the strength of the music. But that's being discovered now, as I've sort of toned down these strength feats. I feel like I'm finally honed as a performer, after, what? Forty years of performing?

I never understood, because these are good pop songs. Why didn't Thor ever make it?

The movie will show why. I go up there, I give it my all, I do anything and everything to try and have success. But there's certain things. It was like the labors of Hercules. Certain things happened that were…unusual, really unusual. You have to see the movie to understand it. You know, have I made it? I don't know. I've got to stop saying I'm "coming back," and [start] saying "I'm here." Maybe I don't have the No. 1 pop album on the charts right now, but a lot of our songs, because of social media, YouTube, the movie we've got done, the records I've put out—they're all hits in their own right. Whatever it takes to get your movie out there. That's what established these songs as hits.

How do you think global warming has affected the "Thunder on the Tundra"?

I'll have to change the words to "Thunder on the Sun"! I wrote that song when I was on tour, on the train going from Prince Rupert to Prince George. It was in a storm, I looked out, and in my mind I saw giants, all these creatures. That's how I wrote it. I think global warming, I mean, even here in Vancouver, you can see big changes. They say it's only a matter of time before sharks start coming into the bay. You know, the hybrids of polar bears and brown bears that are happening, the foxes—there's foxes taking over territories. All these creatures, they don't know what's happening! It's becoming an enigma. Everything's going to change! We were never able to grow palm trees in Vancouver so much, but you see palm trees all over the place now. Yeah, I'll have to write a song about that!

SEE IT: Thor plays Dante's, 350 W Burnside St., with the Edgar Allen Posers, on Wednesday, Nov. 11. 9 pm. $10. 21+. A screening of I Am Thor precedes the performance.

Willamette Week