Mojo Madness : Court Jester of Rock Targets Stars From Henley to Elvis

The urge to kill Don Henley first hit Mojo Nixon as he watched the pony-tailed former Eagle accept a Grammy for “Record of the Year.”

The end of the innocence? How about the end of Don Henley?

“The Grammys really put me over the top. I didn’t want to watch, but my wife insisted,” singer-songwriter Nixon recalled. “The whole thing just made me furious. . . . Don Henley and Phil Collins and now George Michael--they want to be taken seriously.”

The same can’t be said of Nixon, who was inspired to write “Don Henley Must Die” for his current album, “Otis.” The song is a hysterical, screaming indictment of “big, bloated Henley-esque rock stars,” Mojo said.

“I haven’t talked to Don directly, but he should be honored. Maybe we could get together, have a couple of drinks, I don’t know,” said the 33-year-old Nixon about Henley, whose “The End of the Innocence” took one of the top honors at this year’s Grammys.

It’s not the first time Mojo, the self-described court jester of rock ‘n’ roll, has taken aim at a well-known target.

His last album included “Debbie Gibson Is Pregnant With My Two-Headed Love Child”; in “Elvis Is Everywhere,” he branded Michael J. Fox “the anti-Elvis”; and he once suggested in song a drug-testing method for Nancy Reagan that is too tasteless to print in a family newspaper.

Nixon said the surviving victims of his songs are generally good-natured. But a few Elvis fans became irate over his homage to the King, which credited Presley with creating Stonehenge, the pyramids and the Bermuda Triangle.

“Elvis and his fans are a little nutty, but that’s what makes it great,” said Nixon, who last year set up a phone line for Elvis-spotters to call in their sightings.

“We got 500 calls a day--people with Elvis and Liberace at their house, worshipping Jackie’s hair. People with Elvis out front mowing the lawn. It’s great,” Nixon said.

Nixon’s experiences are not limited to music; he played the role of Jerry Lee Lewis’ drummer in “Great Balls of Fire,” an experience that allowed him to hang out with “The Killer.”

“With Jerry Lee alive, you can’t make the movie you want to see, because Jerry Lee would kill you, and that wouldn’t be good,” Nixon explained.

“Jerry Lee was awfully good to me, but then I wasn’t married to him.”

Finally, there is Mojo’s greatest fantasy: to become the target of the record-stickering movement, to write the lyrics that drive Florida Gov. Bob Martinez crazy.

“I’ve been striving for that,” Nixon said. “I’m sending my records to Tipper Gore and this idiot down in Florida, but it doesn’t seem to be working.”