White

Rip It Up, Issue 200, 1 April 1994, Page 26

White

4 band like White Zombie are scary, ugly and loud. They sound like all your rock CDs exploding at once, bodies flying as the crowd hurl themselves at the stage and the band hurl back musical shards.

Riffs that sounds like Eddie Cochrane playing Black Sabbath or Zodiac Mindwarp fighting with Kiss. It’s good, old-fash-ioned primal heavy metal. In person, however, White Zombie are hardly the demonspawn I expected. Big bad dread-locked vocalist Rob Zombie and bassist Sean Yseault are disappointingly pleasantand intelligent. Kind of a let down, but it makes for an easier interview. So where else to start than the history of the band, as told by themselves. Sean: “We started five solid years ago. I guess when we first began Rob and I were just trying to find guitarists and drummers to fit into the band. We put out a couple of 7” singles and an EP. We did everything by ourselves back then, like pressing up 500 copies, totally limited because that’s all we could afford. We didn’t even do a proper tour until after the first EP.” Rob: “It was weird, we just started as a band and we didn’t know why. In New York there’s all these weird scenes of music, like you were a metal band or an art-rock band or a punk band, and we just crossed between all the lines and didn’t really fit in. We had no idea what was going on, we took little pieces of everything we liked and stuck it in one band. We had really

commercial metal like Van Halen and really underground stuff happening at the same time. It was all just squeezed into one band." So why the shift to California? It must have been an alien move after the downtown NYC scene. Sean: “We’d been living in New York for so long and it seemed like the longer we lived there the more expensive it got and the shittier it got. It seemed like every bar, every club, every shop and every theatre that was cool was closing down. There really isn’t much open any more. ” Rob: “New York is always changing, but it always seems to be getting worse. When I first moved there I loved it. By the time ten years was up, I was like ‘This place sucks!’ Everything had closed and you’re either homeless or totally rich. There’s nothing in between.” Which leads us to the obvious question of being signed to Geffen, which surely can’t hurt too much? Rob: “Once you get into a major label and see how it works it’s not that different to an independent. It’s a really loose sort of place. They certainly didn’t say ‘Make your record sound like this’ but they do have the cash to let you make a better sounding album.”

Sean: “A really big thing with all the bands who move to a larger label seems to be a better organised distribution deal. They all say how good it is to actually get the records out to the public finally.”

I imagine it must be hard for a lot of people to deal with you guys going from playing lofts in New York to being based in LA and signed to a major. Rob: “A lot of people in New York said ‘I can’t believe you’re moving to LA, it’s so gross.’ But they’re not into movies and that whole thing. LA is so American that if you don’t appreciate that stuff it’s hopeless because all that’s left is a bunch of freeways. For us however, it’s great! There’s so much of everything that’s really great or really horrible about this country and it’s all in one place.” Sean: “If you love the excess of America, LA is certainly the place to be!” Rob: “New York has this weird underachiever attitude, so if you try to do things bigger and better, they all just hate it, it all has to be small and shitty. That’s why we were fed up, whereas in LA everything is bigger and better and that ‘don’t do anything, don’t succeed attitude’ doesn’t exist.” Sean: “Coincidentally, we have a huge fan base in Texas where everything is actually biggest and best! It’s the only

place bigger and better than LA. You just do what you want there and no-one fucks with you, probably because you’d just up and shoot them. ” Why this obsession with Kiss? You were doing Kiss covers way back before all these grunge people started doing triple albums and the like. Rob: “They were about the first band I heard in my life. It’s not like they influence us in any huge way, I mean we really don’t try to sound like Kiss. It’s just that thing where the first thing you hear has sort of stuck, and they’ve damaged me ever since.” Sean: “Fortunately we haven’t ended up like them but they are the closest band we can relate to in a lot of ways. They’re just so ... so much! In every sense!” Live, you also cover ‘Helter-Skelter’ which is cool as I always hated U2 forthat whole "This song was taken from the Beatles and now we’re stealing it back” schtick, like they were the Beatles interns or something. Sean: “We used to say we were stealing ‘Helter-Skelter’ back from U2 for Charlie!” So how is it being a part of the mainstream all of a sudden? Sean: “It’s just starting to happen for us, and it’s cool with us.”

Rob: “We were driving around listening to a really commercial rock station and they played Warrent, the Stones, then us. It was weird, but it actually sounded cool. With the way music is now, the Butthole Surfers could end up selling out stadiums, they could become the next Grateful Dead!” I thought they already had, except the Buttholes do dance remixes which the Dead would never do. Rob: “Actually, we just did an industrial remix of some of our songs. People were like ‘you can almost dance to this’ so the guy from KMFDM is going to remix it. It should be pretty funny, we’re going to get played in discos and stuff.” So finally, what’s up with rock music? It seems to be taking a real turn for the better with people finally starting to discover that there is something outside of the charts.

Rob: “Yeah, I don’t know when rock turned so wimpy. It used to be like Sabbath and Nugent, real heavy ugly stuff, not pretty and safe like nowdays. Music used to be dangerous, like even back to Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, real nasty stuff, then it turned nice. Nowdays you have bands like Warrant, Slaughter and Poison who are so wimpy. Finally it seems to be going back to the days when bands like Sabbath and Led Zeppelin could never

have a hit single yet would sell out stadi-

ums. Bands like Slayer are doing that now, they don’t have hit songs yet they draw 15,000 kids. It got so you had to have a hit single on MTV but that’s all changing now. As soon as someone hits on something, everyone comes running in that direction.’’ Sean: “People are finally looking for something new, and that can only help bands like us. ” And help it did. In the months that have passed since this interview took place, time has been kind to White Zombie. They toured their butts off with some mighty weak bands like Pantera, Megadeth and Anthrax, usually proving to be a better crowd pleaser than the headliner. This hard work didn’t go unnoticed at MTV who decided to play White Zombie. A touch late, perhaps, but it certainly didn’t hurt, especially when Beavis and Butthead (two cartoon characters who seem to now decide what the cathode damaged segment of the USA should listen to) deemed that White Zombie DID NOT SUCK. The end result? A bunch of noise damaged NYC sickos now have a gold record and are the hot rock ticket all over America. It’s a strange and twisted world we live in folks, but it’s fun.

KIRK GEE