Sean Yseult: A Photographic Trip Back Through Her Days In White Zombie

She is a lot friendlier than you may expect from someone who has headbanged her way through rock & roll alongside Rob Zombie. She laughs easily and often as she remembers times from her past. And she still has the hair, long and curly and a vibrant blonde. Sitting with her at a local coffee shop in New Orleans, you probably would have never known she was a rock star; an everyday rock chick for sure, but not a superstar on the level she was at in the nineties with a little ole band called White Zombie. This lady seems like one of us.

Sean Yseult has recently published her memoirs in the form of a giant scrapbook. It is fun to read; it is also fun to just sit back and look through the hundreds of personal photographs and memorabilia overflowing on each page. If you didn’t know that much about the band that brought you “Thunderkiss 65” and “More Human Than Human,” you certainly will once you’ve finished this book.

On a sunny afternoon in New Orleans, Sean sat down with me to talk about her book, her music, and why things of a darker nature are more fun than cookie cutter normalcy.

I have to tell you, that when people found out that I was interviewing you, everyone was like really stoked; they wanted to come with me, wanted autographs. How does it feel to still be considered THAT cool?

That’s sweet. You know, it’s pretty awesome, I can’t complain. It’s really nice to have fans come up to me, usually on a daily basis. I love it. I got to say that doing this book, now that the book has been out, doing this book tour, reconnecting with so many fans. You know, White Zombie fans were the best, it’s amazing.

Do you miss being in White Zombie?

I don’t miss being in White Zombie. We did it for a good solid eleven years and I feel like I’ve moved on with my life and I’m happy where I’m at now. But like I said, the fans, when we broke up, we kind of didn’t give any warning that we were breaking up so it’s kind of nice to give them some closure with this book. Then I’ll sort of be able to see them and shake their hands and hang out with them. It’s been great.

Well, you certainly have a lot of projects going on. Not only do you have your book, but you have your photography and your designs, you have not one but two bands – Rock City Morgue and Star & Dagger. How do you do all of this? You have such a full plate.

(laughs) I am really busy. I had to take care of some design orders this morning. I was setting up band practice right before I came to meet you. Sometimes I focus more on one thing than the other. You know obviously the past couple of months I’ve hardly been able to practice. I’ve been mostly on book tours and traveling for the book. But you know the great thing about the book, its not like a record, you can always be out there promoting it. And the design company, I have a couple of people helping me with that so I’m kind of at the point where I don’t have to really do all the work in that and I can just create new designs. I really don’t have to do all the tedious work.

I want to talk about New Orleans for a few minutes. How long have you been living here and what was it about this city that hit you when you first came through here that you knew this was the place you wanted to be?

I moved here right when White Zombie broke up, towards the end of ’96. The first time that I ever saw New Orleans was on a White Zombie van tour, probably 1988, because it was before J. joined and we still had Tom Five as a guitarist. We were doing a van tour, we had set up all the shows ourselves and we were playing at Tipitina’s opening up for Soul Asylum. Now Soul Asylum weren’t that big yet, they were a college band on college radio and WZ was also on college radio; just vinyl that we had mailed out to college stations ourselves.

I’ll never forget driving into town and driving up this street. I didn’t know what it was with all the trolleys and streetcars, now I know it was St Charles Avenue, and we turned, took a left on Napoleon, and seen these huge mansions and I just never knew anything like this existed. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a fairy tale or something. This beautiful city full of history and everything smelled good, they were boiling crawfish at Tipitina’s, I just couldn’t believe it. I grew up in the south, I grew up in North Carolina, but I’d never saw this opulence and old grandeur of the south like New Orleans has.

I’m also kind of fascinated with cities that are kind of decaying and falling to pieces (laughs) and graveyards. You go to graveyards here and there’s bones poking out of the graves and when I moved here, every other house was falling to pieces and I kind of loved it. I love when things look haunted and ancient. It’s great the city has been getting rebuilt lately, especially since Katrina. But I am kind of drawn to disrepair and things like that (laughs). So I just fell in love with it and I knew I had to be here. Every time we came through, I’d try to, if there was a day off or something, I‘d try to make sure my day off was here. I guess it got to the point where when we were touring later on tour buses and we’d have a break in touring, we toured constantly, I’d just put all my stuff in storage in Los Angeles. I was basically homeless for the whole last tour of WZ, the year and a half long tour for ASTRO CREEP, and whenever there was a break, I just said, get me a plane ticket to New Orleans and I’d stay in the French Quarter at a great hotel there, the Bourbon Orleans, and I’d just wander around and run into friends and doing that whole last tour really made me realize that New Orleans was home and I moved here as soon as I could.

Was your house affected by Katrina?

Yeah, all of us were really affected. I live Uptown and nobody Uptown wanted to bitch or complain because people in the 9th Ward lost their homes and their loved ones. Our damage paled in comparison, but yeah, I had $80,000 worth of damage. Somebody also rammed in my driveway gate and stole my hearse. I had a hearse, I collect odd cars (laughs). I’ve always collected hot rods and odd things. But I had a hearse. I didn’t get upset, I figured that maybe somebody needed it; apparently there were a lot of dead bodies floating around. I don’t know, it was a rough time. It rained inside of my house for a solid year after Katrina, everybody had roof damage, including me.

Were you here when it hit?

I evacuated. My husband Chris Lee from Supagroup and I owned a bar called The Saint and that Friday night we were in there at two in the morning. His little brother Benji, who is a guitarist, was bartending and he’s like, “What are you guys doing for the hurricane?” And we’re like, “What hurricane?” And it was Friday night and nobody really knew about it that much … The next morning my husband wakes me up and he’s like, “Pack a small bag, get the dog ready, we’re going to get out of here”. He went and boarded up the bar and by 11:00 we’re on the road, one of the first couple of people to evacuate. We were watching the cops changing the traffic flow and we were watching them blocking off exits to create contraflow as we exited, and we drove up to Memphis and didn’t come home till after Thanksgiving. Ended up he got a tour with Alice Cooper and his band ended up going on tour for a long time and I got a sublet in New York and we really didn’t really have a choice.

New Orleans has certainly fought to rebuild itself.

I make sure to tell everyone when I travel, please come to New Orleans. It’s better than ever. Certainly there are some neighborhoods that got devastated that aren’t back but as far as the city itself, it’s thriving. There’s more clubs and restaurants and coffee shops, some bars, than ever; there’s new businesses. It’s one of the least affected cities in the entire country as far as growth. It’s doing better than the rest of America right now, that’s for sure.

Do you get to see any of the musicians who live here? Doesn’t J. Yuenger live here now as well?

Yeah, J. lives here. We see each other all the time. I never really ran into Lenny K. I was friends with Trent Reznor so I used to see him a bit but he moved away a couple of years ago, back to Los Angeles, so I don’t see him anymore. He comes back usually for Mardi Gras and stuff. You got the guys in Better Than Ezra. And there are so many local bands that I love, like the Happy Talk Band and Luke Allen, who I think is amazing, R. Scully and the Rough Seven, which is one of my favorite bands. I love Eyehategod, they’re local. Down, of course. I’m still friends with Phil from Pantera and Pepper from COC, they’re both in Down. It’s a great scene here, I love it.

Do you watch “Treme?"

I love “Treme." It’s a trip for us to watch it here in New Orleans because we know half of the people in it and the other half are people being depicted, you know. It’s kind of like the young couple that is supposed to be like Anders Osborne and Theresa Anderson loosely. And then there’s the chef who is supposed to be Susan Spicer and Susan Spicer actually did the food for my wedding, like catered my wedding. So she’s a good friend. So that was really cool to have a main character based on Susan Spicer. And Steve Zahn I’ve actually gotten to be friends with. He’s so cool, he hangs out in town all the time. We’ve gotten to be friends with him and we all go to dinner and hang out. It’s like he is a New Orleanian and it’s almost like he is that character, you know (laughs). It’s really funny. We’ll be watching it and there’s Blake Boyd, a local artist here, he’s amazing, and he’s an extra on it all the time. And Kermit Ruffins, you see him on the street and down at Vaughan’s playing and there he is on Tv playing himself, so it’s really interesting.

Your husband is Chris Lee from Supagroup. Is he local or a transplant?

A lot of us are transplants and have been here for a long time. He’s been here a really long time. He moved here to go to college but he grew up in Anchorage, Alaska actually. And he and his brother both grew up in Anchorage and they both moved here to go to Tulane but then they started Supagroup at least ten years ago. We met in a club, you know (laughs). Typical in the rock & roll world (laughs). We met at one bar and then ran into each other at another bar and a month later we saw each other at a third bar (laughs) had some drinks. Then we spent a whole week going to shows, it was really fun.

I want to talk about your book. I think it is really great. It’s like this huge fun scrapbook.

That’s exactly what I intended it to be, was a scrapbook. Thank you.

How hard was it for you to pick exactly which pictures to include? It sounded like you had hundreds to choose from.

I really had to edit, you know. Once I got the photos edited down, it was hard. Some photos would be unflattering of a certain person or a little incriminating (laughs) so I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble and I didn’t want to make anyone look bad. I tried to make sure every photo was a good one. So that was part of the editing process. Then after that I started collaging the photos in a chronological fashion, trying to get them in some type of order. And then the stories that I told were really in response to what I was looking at.

It’s funny, I’ve said this before, but the experience was so surreal. I feel like when you watch a movie on a DVD and then you have that option to watch it with the director’s commentary, that’s how I feel like it was for me when I was writing because I would be looking at these photos almost just like the reader is, for the first time in like fifteen years, cause they’ve been boxed up in my storage place forever. So I’m looking at these photos and they’re bringing back memories and I’m going, ‘Oh ok, this is the day that Darrell ran out and dumped ten thousand pennies into my boots onstage so I couldn’t move’ (laughs). It’s like looking at each page and each photo would like trigger certain memories and stories in my head. So it’s really stream of consciousness almost. Since the book has come out, I’ve had every day people tell me, ‘remember this?’ ‘Oh God, I forgot.’ So there’s definitely a lot more. I could do another updated version of it next time it gets repressed (laughs).

Did you find when you were going through all the photos that a whole afternoon would be gone without you realizing it because of all the memories popping up?

Oh yeah. I spent a solid two years working on this book and certainly I’d get maybe sometimes just a page done a day cause so many things would come to me. Also as I’d be working on the page, I’d be like, “wait a minute, that’s 1989 and we’re in a van. I think that’s when Kozik made us a flyer in Texas and I think I have that flyer”; so I’d start digging again through the flyers and now I’ve got to rearrange the whole page (laughs). I’ve got to photograph or scan this flyer into Photoshop and redo everything.

How did you decide who would write the little extra stories?

That was really fun. It was all people that I could contact and have been in touch with. But I really wanted to get a wide range of people, like I have the first guy that booked us in the East Village, you know, into a club, the Love Club. We played with Dinosaur Jr, who back then were just called Dinosaur. I specifically remember that gig cause it was down in the basement of the Lismar Lounge and Rob immediately, as soon as he started singing, ran off to the back and hurled into this area where the ladder went from the sidewalk down. So everybody thought we were drug addicts after that. But he was just, I don’t know if it was just nerves or sick or whatever, but everyone was like, “Oh my God”. They thought we were just the gnarliest band on the planet (laughs). Dreadlocks and tattoos and throwing up on stage (laughs).

So anyway, I totally always remember that show and that was Steve Blush that booked that; then he interviewed us a lot for his fanzine called “Seconds” which became a magazine, and then he wrote a book called AMERICAN HARDCORE and now he’s made a movie based on that and he’s making another movie so he’s done quite well. Daniel Rey was our first record producer. We did everything ourselves and didn’t even know what production or mastering or anything like that meant, you know. We would just do the basic recording and press a seven inch. So I wanted to get his take on us. Michael Alago is the guy that signed us to Geffen.

I just wanted to get key people and of course wanted to interview past members of the band and present members of the band … well, I guess we’re broken up so I can’t say present (laughs) but the most recent members of the band. So it was really fun to get in touch with these people. I told each person, I said, “write whatever you want – your memory of WZ, your thoughts of WZ, your experience with us whether it was good, bad, funny, awful; I don’t care what you write, just be honest”. So it was really fun to see what people wrote.

I didn’t find that there was anything bad or negative in this book at all. Was there ever a time when you were writing things out that you either slipped and made a comment on something that wasn’t good or made a snipe at someone but then took it out?

I’m not a very negative person but there was actually a few times. You know, I was actually going to leave out a few bad moments in my experience in WZ. One was certainly the time after Rob and I broke up and some of the treatment I received from him and his girlfriend at the time. But I did kind of want to leave that out, didn’t want to bad-mouth people. I didn’t really want to focus on the bad. I was going to leave it out entirely but I just thought that would be a little too sugar coated. I didn’t want people to think I’m the luckiest person in the world, you know, and that my life is awesome all the time. I did have some really hard times. It’s tough when there’s people you got to live with on the road that are being mean to you. I’m not used to that. I’m usually a pretty friendly person and I’ve got friends, you know, and people are friendly back to me. That’s the way I function, so there was some tough times and I put it in there but I tried to be as tactful as possible. There’s a few other people that was in our organization that really fucked shit up, to put it quite bluntly, and pissed us off and kind of didn’t help keeping the band together. But I didn’t even want to name their names but I think they’re kind of referenced in an oblique enough way that it’s there but not naming names (laughs) if people want to figure it out.

But for the most part, the book is full of fun memories … with the exception of when you broke your leg.

Yeah, I twisted my knee and got torn cartilage and there was no time for me to get surgery so I had to perform for another year with a leg brace on. That was not fun. And I’ll tell you, anyone that has to perform, whether it’s somebody in music, theatre, dance or sports, and you hear about people getting hooked on painkillers and stuff, that’s why. I didn’t but I could have, because I was in so much pain and rock docs, as they’re called and they do show up at these big ten thousand seaters and go “here have a vicodin”. Then all of a sudden you feel a lot better and not in total pain and can get through the show. I’ve seen it happen with a lot of musicians and I definitely felt a lot better when I was on those and it did help me get through that year, but I’m really glad I didn’t get hooked on them.

I sympathize when I read about athletes and other people. You know, the show must go on, it’s a huge organization. There’s maybe thirty people traveling with you, including truck drivers and bus drivers and roadies and managers. It’s not just the band. Everybody is depending on a paycheck and there’s fans depending on you playing each night and local crew, probably another fifty to a hundred people setting up lights, and on that scale you can’t just like, “oh, I’m in too much pain”. No, they’re going to give you something to make you able to perform and it’s like you’re just like a cog in the wheel. It’s not really caring about your health … And you know, it wasn’t all pain and misery. I definitely still managed to have a great time. We were touring with amazing bands – the Ramones, the Supersuckers, so many great bands that year. That helped ease the pain a bit too (laughs).

I wanted to ask you about Dimebag from Pantera. You have some great photos and stories about him in your book. But is there one that you could share with us that you didn’t tell?

Some of his humor was so absurd, it was almost like Monty Python-esque or more like Andy Kaufman. Like he had this one character where he would put on a jumpsuit and have like the little phone thing going to his mouth like a walkie-talkie and a baseball hat and he was acting like he was a tech for the theatre or the arena that we were in. And he’d get down in the pit where the security guys were and act like he was messing around and making sure the security guys were ok. I don’t know, he’d like fiddle around with things and come on stage and fiddle around with amps and things. It was like he was this behind-the-scenes like fix-it guy (laughs).

Very strange but then there were other things that I didn’t mention that are a little crude but funny (laughs). One thing I didn’t even know that Phil [Anselmo] just told me that’s hilarious is that every night, I don’t know if you know this but on our last tour Rob had designed these kind of scary clowns that were almost on crucifixes that would lower down during this song called “Grease Paint & Monkey Brains”. So anyway, part of the stageshow is these clowns would come down and Pantera said that every night of the tour they kept trying to tape on these big dildos to the clowns (laughs) but Rob would bust them each time and get furious if he’d catch it. So things like that.

Darrell actually came out in a cape and he had this horrifying old man mask that looked like this decrepit two hundred year old man, and a cape and then he’d whip the cape up only to reveal this enormous dildo that was exploding like dish liquid or whatever all over us and the stage (laughs). That would be just random, not just like the last night is prank night; every night is prank night with Darrell, you know. Like I said, some of it’s not for the faint of heart. It was a little crude but always hilarious.

You must miss him.

Oh yeah, I miss him dearly. He had this thing about the number three. I write about that in the book but it’s hard to explain. If you read the book it kind of makes a little sense. And the weirdest thing, my friend Shannon and I were really close to him. But ever since he passed away we’ll look at a clock and it’ll say 3:33 and we’ll go, “there’s Darrell”. It’s really odd but it’s weird that we both see that on the clock all the time or when we’re out and about. I don’t know, I kind of feel like he’s still around somehow. He was one of those people that was definitely touched from somewhere else, know what I mean; like when you see Hendrix perform he has some extra something in the spirit that is above and beyond everyone else. Darrell had that too.

You’re very vocal about your admiration for The Cramps. For some of the young kids today who may not know anything about them, how would you turn them on this band?

Well, the first record I ever listened to was GRAVEST HITS that goes way back. To me, if you’re into anything creepy and horror movies or garage music, this is the band for you. And you should definitely check them out. What we loved about The Cramps, when Rob and I started WZ, we kind of wanted to model WZ a little bit after The Cramps and the way that The Cramps were not just a band but a lifestyle. They’re very visual the way they dress, the way they live their life. You could tell by their translucent blue skin that they never saw sunlight (laughs). You know they obviously spent all their nights up late watching horror movies on TV and basked in the glow of television (laughs). We loved that, we could tell by their lyrics and the way that they dressed and the way they walked that they were living it. That was definitely a goal for WZ and I think we achieved it because we definitely got a lot of fans early on that kind of started emulating our look and bands started to follow and sound kind of like us. So it was kind of cool.

What first attracted you to Rob?

I have to say that he approached me. It’s not like I was drawn to him first. He actually sent his roommate over to see if I would meet his friend. We were at Parsons School Of Design in the cafeteria. I stayed and got my degree but Rob dropped out the next year. And yeah, he sent his roommate over to see if I would go on a date with him, which I thought was really funny.

Back then we were both into punk and hardcore and that’s the thing, it wasn’t so much about, oh he’s really handsome or she’s really pretty, it wasn’t that. It was more like, he had made a handmade stencil of the Misfits skull on his jacket and I had like a little homemade hand-drawn spiderweb t-shirt and my voodoo necklace with my bird bones on it, and it was more like you could tell by the way you dressed that you were into maybe The Cramps or The Misfits and that’s more of what it was about. What you were into was more evident back then. You didn’t really date people based on if they were good-looking so much. It was more like what are you about and what are you into. And that was how we met. We obviously had common interests.



Really, Sean, what is a nice girl from the south doing running around with coffins in her living room? Did you have like a nightmare and think it was actually kind of cool (laughs)?

(laughs) Ever since I can remember I’ve loved monster movies, horror movies, and my Dad had kind of a very dark sense of humor and was also attracted to kind of dark things. Like when I was little we lived in the woods and we’d also go out to the beach, and this beach we’d go out to in North Carolina was the Outer Banks and there were these nature reserves and we’d find like entire rabbit skeletons like sitting on the beach. My Dad collected a lot of bones and things he’d find like that and I was just always the same way, you know. I loved it. My sister didn’t really get into it. I guess kids that grow up in the city aren’t really exposed to that kind of thing. It’s like part of New Orleans’s attraction definitely is the whole thing with the graveyards. After a heavy rain you go to the graveyard and there are bones sticking up; we found a hip bone sticking out of a grave last week.

I’ve got two human skeletons, six human skulls, a lot of taxidermy, some bats, some snakes … I have them decorating my parlor and dining room. One of them is hanging from the ceiling over the Grand Piano. You know, they’re hanging out (laughs) enjoying life still. I also grew up loving “The Addams Family” so you know … Part of my checklist for décor, you know (laughs).

You said your home life was very encouraging. You were into the arts and music lessons. Did you ever think that you would be in a band like WZ? Or what did you think when you were younger that you wanted to do with your life?

When I was really little I actually thought I was going to be a ballerina. I was in classes for classical and improv piano and composition. I was in classes for violin and I was in classes for ballet and I did all this outside of school every day of the week. But out of those three, the one thing I really thought was amazing was ballet. And of course this is the time of Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland and “The Turning Point” came out, all these things that were really inspiring little girls. They were kind of like the pop stars of their era then. It was like a big thing and I was already taking ballet since I was five years old so by the time I was twelve I got a scholarship to go to the North Carolina School Of The Arts, which has become an amazing school. A lot of filmmakers are out of there that are famous but I went there back in the day and the strongest department there was the ballet department. There was amazing teachers, all the teachers were from French ballet troupes, Russian ballet troupes, just great instructors. So that is kind of how I envisioned my life when I was little.

But even at the same time, I was playing music and even when I was like ten years old I was playing with a group of older teenagers in a rock band. It’s pretty crazy and we played a couple of nightclubs. It was kind of weird but I still didn’t see that as my future. But then when I was at the School Of The Arts for ballet, when I was about sixteen, I got to see Joan Jett. I got a fake ID and I got to see Joan Jett and then I broke my foot and had to switch departments and I got out of ballet and into the visual arts department. When I got into that department I met all these complete freaks that were into cool music and that was around sixteen/seventeen and that’s when I started thinking I wanted to be in a band. I started learning about hardcore and punk bands and The Cramps and all that stuff and I was like, I can do that (laughs).

And that was the great thing about hardcore and punk was that you realized you could do it yourself. Just pick up an instrument and you can play … I wanted to play guitar, to be honest. When I moved to New York I got a really cheap guitar. But when I met Rob, he was like, I want to start this band right now, and I was still struggling with like figuring out chords. Guitar is just a whole other animal from piano or violin. It would take me too long to learn the guitar so I just picked up a bass and that was one note at a time similar enough to violin that I could pick it up easy and play by ear.

So you weren’t inspired by anyone.

No, no, but I think a lot of bass players are like that. I think a lot of bass players are the kind of congenial type person in the band that is there to make it work out. “Oh you need a bass player? Alright, I’ll do that” (laughs). Even in Black Sabbath, I just read the Ozzy autobiography, which is hilarious, and he’s saying Geezer is this amazing guitarist but they needed a bass player so he jumped on bass. It is kind of, you know, just out of convenience kind of thing. So that’s what I did.

Do you consider yourself a trailblazer?

I’ve been told that countless times so I think it’s kind of true when I look back on the history of rock and metal bands, besides the Runaways who were amazing and I love the Runaways, but that was kind of another era. When we were introduced to the metal world, the bands we were playing with were so heavy and so testosterone driven. There were no women in that scene at all, not even managers or anything. It was all men and the fact that I was a girl in one of these super-heavy bands, it was definitely a first, I think.

Were you glad when Beavis & Butthead outed you, so to speak?

It’s always nice to get recognition (laughs). No, it’s funny I think that was kind of the moment. I kind of felt like I snuck by as a guy for awhile there. I was so skinny and we all dressed the same and all the guys had long hair too. I kind of purposefully did that. It was maybe a little bit like a defense mechanism just not to get harassed as a female but I’ve been a little bit of a tomboy. I’ve never wanted to be recognized as a female anyway. I just wanted to be recognized as a musician so I did that on purpose also. But it was definitely nice to get some recognition for that (laughs).

You talk in your book about being a constant presence at the Geffen offices. Do you think if you guys had not been so in-their-face that maybe they would have eventually “forgotten” about you, so to speak?

We would have been dropped, I’m sure of it. They basically said as much down the road because our A&R guy was the lone Geffen A&R guy out in New York; all of Geffen was based in LA, and he was in NY. We were in NY. They really seemed to have no faith or interest in us at all. Once we got out to LA, we were working on the packaging and stuff, so Rob and I went every day because that’s what we usually did. I would do the graphics and he did the illustration and I would do the photography and I’d always create the mechanicals. So we were in the art department at Geffen like every day and the publicity department was just right upstairs with our publicist and everyone.

Every day they would see us and be like, “What do you guys do? Do you have a cot under the stairs? Do you live here?” (laughs) I think we kind of ingratiated ourselves and became friends with some in the department so much that I think they would have felt guilty if they dropped us (laughs) They did wait a good long time before they released the record. We thought it was going to come out right away and it seemed like it was almost a year that it took to come out and it was really amazing that we moved to LA. I did talk the band into doing that but I didn’t realize it was going to be that important because I don’t know if I mentioned this, but our A&R guy, once we moved to LA, he quit Geffen and went back to Elektra where he had signed Metallica. So we didn’t even have an A&R guy. We didn’t have a manager. We had gotten a deal ourselves through our A&R guy. We didn’t have management or anyone helping us and that was one reason Geffen took so long to release our record. They’re like, “We’re not going to release this until you find management. You need a booking agent, you need a manager, you need a lot of things before we can put the record out.” And you know, we didn’t understand all that. We had been doing all these things ourselves for five years already. You have to really want it, you have to be persistent and work hard. It’s a different world now, there’s not that many record labels anymore but on the other hand you don’t have to get out there and slug away hanging up flyers or touring even. You can just post something on YouTube these days and have fans. It’s definitely a different world.

Are you going to tour with Star & Dagger?

You know what, we’ve actually been offered a couple of tours and we don’t even have a record out. We’re definitely going to do a little bit of touring but nothing like WZ. I would never tour for like six weeks in a row or anything like that.

So are you done with all that?

No, like I said, I’ll still tour, we’ll still go out and do a few weeks at a time. Like WZ would tour, literally our first record on Geffen, LE SEXORCISTO, we literally toured for two and a half years straight. We did not take a break. I think we maybe stayed home for Christmas (laughs). We literally went from one tour to the next one and to the next. We never took a break. I’ll never tour like that again, that’s for sure.

I wanted to ask you about Donnington. You have some great photos in the book from this festival.

Look at the bands that played that day. It’s crazy. At that point, I think it was the biggest crowd we had played to. Later we played in Brazil at the Rock In Rio and that was like 300,000. Donnington, I believe, was 80,000. It was just amazing. You get up on that stage and it’s like a sea of ants and in a way it’s less intimidating than playing a club with like three people staring at you cause you can see each and every person (laughs). When it’s a huge crowd like that you can’t see any faces but you see them moving and undulating like a sea, like waves of people. And when they’re responding and dancing, the energy you feel from them is just amazing. You know, I can’t remember what [the weather] felt like, but I just remember having sharp pains in my lungs and my ribcage because the stage was the size of a football field. It was huge. And we were used to running around, and me and J. would always switch sides, and we’re running around and headbanging and to make it from one side of the stage to the other was like, oh my god, we’re panting and out of breath (laughs).

How were the early crowds?

A lot of times people were a little confused. They’d just kind of stand there and watch us, trying to figure it all out because there was no band that looked like us; no band on that level that was trying to put on a stage show, know what I mean. We lived in NY so right down the street was Canal Street with all the lighting stores that had all the rope lights and flashing police lights and those were like $30 or $50 at the time. We’d save up and save up and get one and then get another one and put it on top of our amps. Anything we could do to make it exciting on stage. We’d run around and bang our heads. Other bands we were playing with were kind of like either East Village kind of art bands or there was like the Seattle grunge bands, like Mudhoney. Those bands just kind of stared at their feet or didn’t move around too much so we were definitely the freak show when we came to town (laughs).

I really love some of your designs. The colors are vivid without being overwhelming and they’re pretty, not all skull and cross-boney. Where do you get the inspirations for them?

I always say with the color, if you look at LE SEXORCISTO and WZ and the way we dressed, we were exactly that colorful. We really were. We weren’t just a metal band, you know, we were coming from art school, we were very like into psychedelic stuff and I think that was definitely part of our look and part of our packaging. The first video for “Thunderkiss 65” is extremely colorful. Rob, me, everyone in the band is like star-spangled and tie-dyed, not tie-dyed, but we’d hand dye our clothes crazy colors or dye our hair crazy colors. People are like, “You’re from this dark band”, but no, if you look at WZ we were very colorful.

So what does the rest of this year look like for you?

I’m going to keep doing book events but less, more scattered throughout my travels. For the summer I’m going to actually try to relax for a little bit (laughs), have some vacation time and maybe work on a photo show.

Related Content

Recent Posts

New to Glide

Keep up-to-date with Glide

Twitter