Type O Negative (face-to-face interview, Amsterdam, April 11th, 2003)

Over the years, Type O Negative has released records that made a big impression on me as a fan. Now finally we had the chance to interview Peter Steele and of course we took that chance with both hands. And so on a late Friday afternoon we were in a hotel in Amsterdam. Face to face with Peter Steele who was just ordering “the worst wine that was in the house” leaving the waiter behind stunned. Although he was really tired and wanted to sleep, Peter was extremely talkative. Read how we talked about the new upcoming album Life is Killing Me but also about just life, the thoughts and considerations of this man of Steele.

We did a bit of research, why does it usually take a year or 3 before there is a new Type O Negative record?
Peter:well, usually when a new record comes out, this world is so big. So we need to hit many territories. But unfortunately with this last album we got slowed down a bit. Because first, our keyboard player, Josh, his father has got cancer and is not doing well… I hate to say that it has interfered with the recording process. But we had to stop. That was a problem. And my mother has been in the hospital for a year now because she has got diabetes. But on a good note, Johnny, Kenny and Josh, they have had “new editions” in their family! They have had a bunch of babies. Well not them but their wives of course, I think this time. So they need time off to tend to that. Essentially what happened was, the album was supposed to be finished at Halloween last year and by then we were just half way through. And the studio where we have been going for the last 25 years, since I was 16, so do the math that makes me 41! We are very happy with this studio and we do not want to go anywhere else. So when we needed more time, they were booked. Until I go home actually. I go home and take 5 more days to finish the album but we can only get in there when there is a cancellation. When they loose somebody. So that is how we became backed up. The album is out in June, first show in Europe is in England, I think June 19th. The album has to be mastered 2 weeks from last Wednesday (the 9th of April 2003). So if I got ran over now by some tram here, there will still be the album whether the songs are done or not. It has to be out at that time. I do not want the album to come out during the tour because it is ridiculous. I was not for a 100% satisfied with World Coming Down so if you don’t have something new out then you have to ride on the fans with that album as your latest album. And it could have been better honestly. So it is essential to me that we get this new album out on time.

Did you write all the time between World Coming Down and the recording of Life is Killing Me?
No. I started to write 2 years ago. After World Coming Down was out we toured. For a while. And then we did the Least worst of Type O Negative album and I had to remix some of that. Then we did the DVD. So I have been quite busy. And when we started to rehearse for the new album, that was when Josh’s father got sick, my mother got sick and the guy’s wives had the babies. Half the songs on this album we never even played live. We worked on them at the studio. We never played them all together. Yeah, the bass with drums or guitar.

Was it the time for a new album, did Roadrunner say hey guys it is time that you bring out a new album now?
They said that 2 years ago and that is why we put out the Least Worst of…-album. Then the DVD. We wanted to put something out so that people knew that we were not killed in a train accident! That happens a lot, trains falling of the tracks and a thousand of people die. What is the matter with their engineers!

What is the title of the album, Life is Killing Me, about?
It is my ironic sense of humor. It is like Black Sabbath, killing yourself to live. Or Lemmy said, killed by death. I joined Lemmy and Ozzy.

When we heard the album it did not sound half as depressive as the title makes one suspect!
You know, the former title would have been The Dream is Over. Which sounds really like, oh fuck here we go again, those Type O Negative guys, all happy and peppy. But the actual color of the album did not change. I guess I am going through some sort of midlife crisis being 41 years old now. And all the things I took for granted, my health, my life, people I love dying, people I loved walking away. I was with a girlfriend for 10 years but she left. It is like my dreams are dead. If a man has not realized his dreams by the time he is 41, I guess it is not going to happen anymore. It is a question of acquiring different dreams. I have grown up now, my first concern is to take care of my family, become financially independent. Believe it or not, to find the right person, get married and have kids!

Leading a normal life?
Well I do not know how normal it would be. But when a person gets older, touring becomes less and less fun. I am having a hard time here talking to you and doing all these interviews. Because I am thinking about my mother back there in the hospital in New York. I did not want to come here, nothing personal but I was afraid that something was gonna happen in New York with her while I was in Europe. But life goes on. My family has become much more important to me. Not just my mother but I also have 5 sisters, I have nieces, cousins, bla bla bla. I am the alpha male of my family and I feel I have the responsibility to be there for them when they need help. And when I am away and there is trouble and I cannot help, then I feel guilty about it.

I think part of this was an inspiration for your album, as one of the songs is written for your mother, one is written for your father.
I do not write anything on a spot, I am not like Mozart who can sit down with a piece full of paper and write out an entire symphony that was in his head, from bass and tuba to flute and everything else. I am not like that, it takes me quite a long time to actually write a song.

Now the album is ready, you have done a couple of soundtracks for movies, will there be a song of the new album that will be part of a soundtrack as well?
I hope so, but we haven’t had any offers right now. The first single is going to be I Don’t Want to Be Me, and when we get home from this press tour we are going to do some kind of video for it. But I just found out about it last week, so I am thinking about it, what we are going to do with a certain amount of dollars.

Let’s talk about some of the songs on the album. First, about the song about Hedwig and the Angry Inch. We know that movie, but it is not one that everybody knows.
Nobody knows it, I think you are the first person that actually knows it. It is a great movie, one of my favorite movies. And we always like to put on a cover song on each of our albums. And we do not like to take a heavy song, and just keep it heavy. We like something to change. I guess we are known to have a certain sense of humor. And we thought: this song would work for us, it was such a great movie, the songs were great, and the message that was in there was: all that really matters is that you just have to love yourself, whether you have a vagina or a penis, if you are straight or gay. Black, white, male, female, it does not matter because you just have to love yourself. And that is giving you happiness.

I read somewhere that you were looking forward to play this Angry Inch song live. Do you think the people will understand what you mean by it, do you think you have to explain it to the people in the crowd what this song is about?
Well, hopefully by the time the album comes out and that these interviews have come out, that people will become curious about this movie and they will see it themselves. I am not going to stand up on stage and waste everybody’s time and say: well this song is about a guy that goes in for a sex change and they cut off half of his dick. I just hope people already know it.

When we heard Life is Killing Me for the first time, we noticed a punk aspect in the songs, sometime later acknowledged by the biography. Where is that coming from?
I have always loved hardcore, I always loved hardcore / punk music. My former band Carnivore was like a punk-metal band, and actually I am thinking of doing a side project when I go home. Like a hardcore band. But it is a combination of hardcore music and Blue Grass, it is going to be “Hillbillies playing instruments on crack”. I came up with a term for this type of music that is “Blue Core”. And probably I am going to call the band No One You Know. But there is probably a band out called that already. When I came up with the name Type O Negative, there was already a band called O Positive that challenged us. They were saying that our name was too similar. Too similar? Get the fuck out of here! You have to trademark it, which is quite expensive, and this came up during the trademark. And this was a related name, but I do not think it has anything to do with it. I mean ‘The Who’ and ‘Guess Who’. I mean now there is a band out called Carnivore Posse, but I cannot dispute that.

Although you have always liked punk and hardcore, it was never so clear in the songs as for this album
I am actually getting back to the music that I liked when I was really young. I have always liked the Beatles, I always liked Black Sabbath, I always liked hardcore. And now I take all these things and mix them up. And getting back to my side project, I Like Girls and I don’t want to be me were two songs that were meant for this other band. So when Type O Negative heard that, they asked “Can we please have it?”. And I said: alright, I play it with you on stage. But this side project I have, I would like to play Carnivore stuff and I would like to play the fast Type O Negative stuff, but also the new songs. I do not really have other stuff written for this other band, I want to come up with a couple of other songs, five or six songs. And then, you don’t know. Maybe come over to tour together with this band. But you see, when Type O Negative first started, all these Carnivore fans started screaming: Carnivore, Carnivore! But now with this new band, they are probably going to say: Type O! Type O! And then I say, man, you have got the wrong guy! Maybe the fast stuff we will play.

Do any of the other band-members have side projects?
Ehm, well… Johnny does a tour with Danzig but it is not a side project, he is hired for that. Johnny likes to play live, I do not. It is not one of my favorite things. I like to write songs and to record them but playing live… Well probably what is the case, with Type O Negative it is real important what happens on stage because I need to hear myself real good on stage. I don’t know if you guys are on stage, but it is real important to hear yourself good, because else you have got no idea what you are singing. That is how I learned to play bass with one hand!

Is that why your effects rack is next to you on stage?
That is a wine table too! Also the effects rack is for the bass and I have 2 monitors too. I got the big curve at the back and 2 monitors in front of me and then the vocal monitors. And the other good thing about the rack is that if people start to throw things, I can hide behind it! So it has 3 functions, wine table, effects rack and barrier! No, it is just like that we are known to play for 90 minutes sometimes. And the longer you play, the bass strings get dead. So what I usually do is raise the treble up constantly during the show, every 15 minutes. I can hear them die, because of the sweating. It is not a big deal like oh my sound! But I like to have a very high end sissle in it, I call it that and do not know how other to describe it. It does not sound like my instrument without it so I constantly tweak that.

What I am curious about, the contract with Roadrunner is almost over and you are talking about perhaps having a side project, so?
The contract is over but that does not mean we will leave Roadrunner. It does mean that we are not asked yet to stay. We are looking of staying with Roadrunner as an option. Because I have grown to realize that we have got a lot of friends there. And switching record labels is like changing jobs when you are 41 years old, pretty scary. I have been on this label for 19 years, longer then anyone else! You know people have been in jail for murdering their entire families and gotten out of jail sooner then I am at Roadrunner!

Ha ha! But my point here was, because of all things happening, is Type O Negative going on after this album and the Roadrunner contract ending?
Yes! Type O Negative is not in jeopardy at all! We are looking very forward to this next album. Everybody seems to like it. Or they are just good liars! Believe it or not but we feel very positive about Type O Negative. So this side project thing is simply because I do not think that a real hardcore band with real hardcore songs would have a place within Type O Negative. I mean you have stuff like Christian Women, Love You Till Death and then you have stuff like Let’s Attack Hawaii or better yet, Let’s Attack Canada!

I guess there are always certain limits within this band.
Pretty much. One of the things that I did not realize when we founded Type O Negative was that after playing in hardcore bands for like so long, it was like 95 percent guys that would come to the shows and the other five percent I could determine whether they were men or women. But with Type O was like when we started to play it was like wow, look at all these girls! Who else is playing here tonight? Why are they all in here? And people were like hey Pete they are in for you! And I was like wow! Icing on the cake! So Type O Negative definitely improved my sex life a little bit! It is a fact. But it is ironic that I am now actually looking for a wife! Looking for a wife and have kids. And it does not change anything in the band except for that I will not sleep around anymore. So I want to come home to someone at a night. I have four cats so people say wow, Pete comes home to a lot of pussy every night! So I think I am ready to have kids. Johnny, Kenny and Josh are married now and have kids and I am a bit jealous about it. I like the fact that they have a solid life. I see them getting on with life. They are on the phone with their wives and kids and the happiness that shines off of them is like I have never seen anything like that. I have been thinking about kids for a couple of times. And I do not want to be 60 when my kids are 5 years old. My father was 40 when I was born so by the time I was 18 or 20 there was nothing to talk about because he could have been my grandfather. There were 3 generations between us. He was so old that he could not even play ball with me, just too tired. I felt gypped to spend what little youth I got left with my kids. I want to be able to understand them, what they like, why they like it and things like that and participate in that as well. I do not want to become an old parent.

Such a plan is conflicting with your current life
There is a giant conflict. I mean, even though I know that Kenny, Josh and Johnny are very happy with their home life, I think it does not go together with a touring rock band. It does not seem to me that could ever work. This is going to be the first time that Johnny is away since the baby was born. And he misses his baby like any other father would do. He is constantly on the phone because he misses her. I do not know how it is going to be when we are back here in June. Then we have people that bring their wives and kids to shows. But that is no place. Women backstage is drugs, alcohol, fighting, foul language! This is not a place for a child, no way. Everything you do not want to watch on television happens backstage.

About some new songs of you. Some are already explained in the bio but there were some songs that we were wondering what they are about. Like less then zero. The first thing that came to our mind was 9-11 when reading the lyrics
No no! I will tell you exactly what it is about, you are way off. It is about what I think of myself. That is it, less then zero. I feel like I am less then nothing.

Hey man, that is not ok. When I was like 15 years old, listening to Type O Negative, you were a hero of mine.
To myself I am a failure. Because I had other things on my mind to do for myself and this was not one of them. I would like to be a civil engineer or an architect. I wanted to do civil mechanical core electro-magnetic stuff. Like magnet trains and stuff like that. I like civil engineering because I do not believe in individual art. I don’t believe in somebody painting a picture like it is worth looking at. Art should be for everyone. And what better form of art then something that is functioning art. Like a bridge or building.
Pitfather:or like Type O Negative?!
Peter:that is functionless art. Art by my own opinion is women. Because they are esthetically appealing and they are functional. Men on the other hand are only good for 2 things, making babies and making war. Usually, if making babies lasted as long as it took to make war, men would be quite more superior! If a guy spent a year screwing his wife and war only took 30 seconds? Men got it backwards a little bit.

So what do you then think of Mr. Bush?
I am very proud of Germany and France for staying out of the war in Iraq. Even like more fascinating is that it is the first time in many years that Germany and France agree so much! I think it has something to do to their economy. But to get back at the war in Iraq, I do not think the USA should be there and I do not understand why the USA feels that it has to be the world’s police department. That is why the World Trade Center came down, because we support Israel. Say that back home and people say anti Semite! Just because I do not agree with the Israeli government does not mean I do not like Jewish people. The one has got nothing to do with the other. My point is that when we stick our noses in world business then the World Trade Center is coming down. I found it interesting why we do not walk into Cuba or North Korea. It is because of the oil, that is all. I always think who the fuck are we to go into these middle Eastern countries and go like: we have to save you from yourselves. All the people in Iraq are happy now but it is the same thing that happened when the Germans marched into the Ukraine 63 years ago. First they were happy because they hated the Russians. But a year later they were all dead or prisoners or something. Let’s see how the Iraqi people feel in a year because they will live then in an occupied country. The Americans will not leave.

Another song, talking about war here, If You Don’t Kill Me I Am Gonna Have To Kill You (IYDKMIAGHTKY), first thing that came to our minds was that it is about war. Is it?
No, wrong again! It is about revenge, same for A Dish Best Served Coldly. That is a statement called back in the USA, revenge is a dish best served coldly.

Alright, so it is good to hear it now from you, when one reads the lyrics one gets an idea or so we think of what the song is about. I also read that you were on a tour with Coal Chamber. That is quite different from your band. Is there a band that you think fits together with you on a tour ?
I was not quite happy with that myself, Coal Chamber. I would like to tour with Lybach and Rammstein. When touring with those bands and my reputation as being a totalitarian then the countries we would play would actually feel that they are been invaded. Like why are you here? To take your women!

I think you are a unique band on the Roadrunner label, different from the others. Have you seen what they have signed lately?
I have to admit that I am totally unaware of new music. Everything that I hear, I call it Rap and Roll shit, white guys trying to sound black. You can never sound like that, you are white! You do not have asses! Black people have butts, white not! That is why I have two wallets! Now I got something! That is what keeps a black guy’s pants up, white guys need Duck Tape! But to make a long story short, I do not listen to anything new, even not on Roadrunner and I understand they have signed a lot of new bands lately. They used to have a division called third mine Records years ago and it was like electronic, trance, dance, Shoegazer. Very nice stuff. They just dissolved it. There was this band called Frontline assembly. I haven’t even been to the Roadrunner office in 2 years.

Rammstein is a large and special band.
They have had a lot of problems back in the states because of politics. Their fire show, I am sure you heard what happened a while ago in a disco in the USA (nothing to do with Rammstein, Pitfather)? A club burned down there because these idiots set off a little pyrotechnics and it went wrong. That usually goes wrong because people just think it is part of the show. They do not know what is part of the show and what not. Rammstein is very conscious about safety and stuff because in the States everybody sues each other. If you look at someone, they already say I am going to sue you.

I got the impression on the Internet, after reading what you did with your gold records that selling records is totally not important for you.
I do not have a single Type O Negative thing in my house. It does not mean anything to me. If I had an engineering degree, that would be on the wall but not a gold record.

Why not? Because if you had chosen to be an engineer in the past you probably had thought right now I wish I were a rock star.
Yeah man but there is so many shitty things out there, Type O Negative including, that have gold records. I can name 10 bands now that are shit and have gold records. I think then: these guys really suck, more then us and they have golden records? What does this mean? Nothing, that is the answer. But getting back to the engineering thing. If I get financially independent, I would like to go back to school. For a mechanical degree or something. There is a job that I really like, underwater welding. I am not concerned about the money, it is just an interesting type of welding. With this type of welding you have to have a type of gas to shield the arc. The money does not matter but these people make about 500 dollars an hour. You have to be trained to do that. It is dangerous. You are going down to ships. You have got oxygen tanks on your back and if you come in contact with the ship, they might explode. So you really have to know what you are doing. I am not kidding you! There is this other Type O song that is about studying caves. I love that very much. Especially water bodies that exist in caves. There live very interesting creatures. They are usually white because they live without sunlight. They do not need Oxygen. There are a lot of interesting creatures there.

Do you know these creatures on the bottom of the oceans that live at 5 kilometers deep?
You are talking about these black creatures at the bottom of oceans? Yeah, I believe they are called black smokers. They come up on lava beds at a 500 degrees. All the minerals that come from the lava and these organisms live in it and also of Nitrogen. They have no use for Oxygen. In fact, most creatures do not like Oxygen. Oxy means acid former! You know what? Class is dismissed!

Pitfather: ok, thanks a lot Peter for this interesting interview!

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