As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make punk rock. OK, it doesn’t at all, but when Alkaline Trio’s front man and guitarist, the beloved and enigmatic Matt Skiba, found himself at a personal and professional crossroads he did what any true rocker worth his salt would do: he went back to... more

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make punk rock. OK, it doesn’t at all, but when Alkaline Trio’s front man and guitarist, the beloved and enigmatic Matt Skiba, found himself at a personal and professional crossroads he did what any true rocker worth his salt would do: he went back to his roots, which were in this case, the melodic punk that cemented Alkaline Trio into the skull-tattooed hearts of their devotees.
While preparing for his current tour and his new album’s release this February, Skiba took a moment to chat with SuicideGirls about making the record, and the benefits of drinking beer at the movies.
This Addiction, the new record from Alkaline Trio, arrives in stores February 23rd. Check out ThisAddiction.org for all the updates.


Auren Suicide: Hey Matt!
Matt Skiba: Hi, how ya doing, Lauren?
AS: I’m awesome, how are you?
MS: I’m doing well.
AS: What are you doing?
MS: I am watching [the 2009 Lars Von Trier film] Antichrist, drinking a Perrier and anxiously awaiting a phone call.
AS: Good. From me, I hope?
MS: Yes! Your call.
AS: Excellent. Well then I’m glad I’m not taking you away from a better phone call.
MS: No! Of course not!
AS: Are you in California right now?
MS: Yeah, I’m in Los Angeles.
AS: You’ve lived here for what, five years now?
MS: Actually it’s closer to seven. I was up in the [San Francisco] bay area for a few years but I’ve been down in Los Angeles for almost seven years now, I think.
AS: So it’s been good, right?
MS: Not bad! I never thought I’d say I live in L.A., but I really dig it now.
AS: Why? Because it has a bad reputation?
MS: Not only because it gets a bad rap. I’ve stayed here a lot, I’d come down here and record and work. I didn’t know very many people and that’s one thing that’s key to L.A. I’m a bit of a loner anyway, but after awhile you want to go and have some fun and don’t really know where to go or who to go with. But in living down here I’ve made a small handful of really good friends and I’ve had friends move out here from San Francisco and Chicago, so it’s home now. And the weather’s always nice, there are oceans, there are mountains. There’s everything. And a lot of my work is in Los Angeles so that makes it a lot easier.
AS: Are you still surfing?
MS: Yes.
AS: In Malibu?
MS: In Malibu. All over the place. Wherever there are waves I go.
AS: So you live here, but you went back to Chicago to make This Addiction.
MS: Yes.
AS: There’s been a lot of talk about how this record is a return to your musical roots. What was the impetus to go home to Chicago and explore a different sound from your last few records?
MS: It was an organic thing. We funded the recording ourselves. We’ve always had complete creative control, but there are times when, especially with a major label, things have to be OK’d. We never had to fight with anyone over it, but there is still that outside influence. It’s been a long time since we’ve done exactly what we wanted to do without radio in mind and without anything, quote unquote, working. When we were on tour we started to play a lot of the old stuff and some of the old ideas inspired some new ideas. So it just sort of happened. There was never a finite moment where we decided we’re going to make [Alkaline Trio’s first studio album] Goddamnit part two. There was just a time when we slowly started to realize that we were making a punk rock record which I don’t think we had done in a little while. It was really fun. We went back and recorded with the guy that did the first three records. It definitely brought us back to our roots.
AS: Alkaline Trio has been through so many record labels. Now that you have your own imprint on Epitaph—Heart and Skull—what’s it like to actually be your own boss? 
MS: It’s good [laughs]. I mean, we’ve never gotten ourselves into a position that we didn’t want to be in. There have been times, bumps in the road, but nothing major to speak of. We’ve been very fortunate. We did a lot of label-jumping. Right when we started with labels is when the industry took a nosedive and things started changing really fast. And so we just had to go with it and not really worry about it, and just keep growing up. We’ve never really had too much stress related to outside opinions or anything we’ve always been allowed to make our own decisions and we’ve always been supported in those decisions. Whether that is creatively or business-wise. But it is a good feeling to have something that is ours and have it be a partnership with people that we’re so fond of. Being with Epitaph is perfect for us. And having our imprint, we’ll see what happens with that, but it is a new chapter. So it’s not a relief or anything. It’s just something exciting and new. When we were writing we had no label ideas in mind. We just knew that we were going to try and put it out ourselves.
AS: Right, so it’s a fresh start, this record.
MS: It is. We presented Epitaph with the finished product. And that’s what sealed the deal.
AS: I know you’re a big book guy. Is there anything in particular you were reading during this album process that stuck with you?
MS: Usually I’m reading a bunch of different things. There was a book I highly recommend called Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA [by Richard C. Hoagland and Mike Bara]. There are people who will argue that Dark Mission is a fictional book. But it is a non-fiction book. It was written by two scientists who were with the NASA organization for over 40 years. They exposed some pretty sobering evidence about the mysteries of the universe. For me, I find that pretty exciting. The mysteries of the universe, I don’t think they’ll remain mysteries forever. But I think that there are a lot of things, if people knew, would be terrified. Myself, I find it exhilarating. The New York Times called it, I think, ‘one of the most dangerous books ever written.’ It’s pretty profound.
AS: Really?
MS: Yeah. I was reading Dark Mission and that led to me reading a lot about secret Nazi technology that NASA ended up using. There were Nazi scientists that were pardoned and cleared of their war crimes, brought over here to build rockets for NASA, which was originally a weapons program. I’m going off on a tangent, but there’s nothing about space men or mystery machines in this book. There is just actual proof. I’ll let people find it out for themselves because if I were to just say it they’d be like, ‘no way—that’s not true.’ But it is. So yeah, Dark Mission, that was my main read, from the Feral House publishing company, who also put out the SuicideGirls book!
AS: Yes! So, your inspirational reads were Dark Mission, followed closely by our lovely SuicideGirls pinup book. I agree that the mysteries of the universe will be answered but the scary thing is, those answers just lead to more questions and even harder puzzles to solve. It’s an endless cycle.
MS: When you have mathematical measurements and they’re broken down into laymen’s terms you’re like, ‘wow.’ I was interested in reading this stuff at first because I was skeptical. But I love it. I’ve read the book like three times to try and wrap my head around the concepts. I’m entirely convinced.
AS: I get frustrated when I try to read that stuff.
MS: No way, this stuff is easy. People that have a lot of faith in religion…well, if religion is really making you happy then don’t read this book. I’ll put it that way [laughs].  
AS: Religion makes a lot of people pretty miserable.
MS: Religion has a lot to do with family and upbringing and I respect people with different faiths. My grandmother was Catholic. And she really believed it and I was very close with her and I respect people’s beliefs. I have friends who consider themselves Christians. I think it’s all a universal language all based on the same concepts. It all means the same thing. Science and religion can be synonymous if people are open-minded.
AS: Science is a religion, because science gives you answers.
MS: Yeah. It’s about fact. My religion is the truth. Without the questions and the mysteries that we have life would be boring.
AS: Are you painting these days? 
MS: I haven’t been. I’ve been moving. I just moved into a new house a few weeks ago so I’m waiting to get everything set up. We’ve been really busy with band stuff so I haven’t had the time to paint. But it’s definitely something I love to do when I have the time. And I’ll continue to do more of it.
AS: On your art MySpace page you have a postcard piece up. It looks like it has something to do with Kurt Cobain? It seems like it’s in his writing and its signed ‘Kurdt.’
MS: It’s a replica of a postcard that Kurt wrote to a friend of mine and she kept it. He wrote it to her and it’s exactly what it looked like. The stamp is Buffalo Bill, everything on there is the same. I just projected the actual postcard onto the canvas and traced the handwriting so it’s exactly what the postcard looked like. That’s how he actually spelled his name, with the ‘d.’ You know, whenever Kurt Cobain would sign autographs he would ask people what their name was and he would just write down their name. He was a pretty funny, groovy guy and I have friends who were pretty good friends with. They were all, you know, doing a lot of drugs together, but they spent a lot of good years with him and have a lot of his personal belongings. I thought that postcard was pretty amazing.
AS: Did you ever meet him? Did you ever see Nirvana live?
MS: I never met him, no. I did see Nirvana live though. I liked Nirvana when [their first album, 1989’s] Bleach came out and I was super excited when [1991’s] Nevermind came out, which is a great record. I felt like one of my favorite bands was taking over the world. There were people who were bummed, of course, but for me it’s great when great bands get big. You know? The world needs good music. And Nirvana stayed totally true to themselves. They kept cranking out great music.
AS: I agree! You know, a lot of people are like ‘In Utero, whatever,’ but it’s my favorite, I think it’s a perfect record.
MS: In Utero is my favorite Nirvana record. I love it. Steve Albini, man!
AS: So do the other guys in Alkaline Trio live in Chicago?
MS: [Drummer] Derek [Grant] lives in Chicago again but he was living in Indiana for Awhile. [Bassist and vocalist] Dan [Andriano] lives down in Florida with his wife and daughter.
AS: How do you guys come together to form a cohesive album when you’re not together?
MS: Well we were on tour most of the time we were writing this record so we actually were together the whole time during the writing process. We wrote the record intentionally while we were on the road. I would write a song one night and then the next day at sound check we would run through it. It came together pretty quickly, we were all on the same page. They are fun songs to play and they were fun songs to write. But this was different. In the last couple of years, we did a lot of it digitally. I could send you an MP3 in the next minute.
AS: So you just said that this was a fun album to play and write but a lot of the themes are pretty angst-y and heartbroken.  
MS: Yeah, I was pretty angst-y and heartbroken when I wrote all of those songs. And I think that has a lot to do with the tone of the record because I hadn’t been in that sort of mind frame for a while. I think a lot of people feel angry and heartbroken about whatever it is they might be going through—politics, relationships, friendships, a cat dying—whatever the case may be. And I had some things go on in my life that just brought me back to that very drunk, very angry and sad young man that I was ten years ago. I never went completely off the deep end but I had some dark times and therefore there is some darkness. Not spooky dark, just sad and angry shit.
AS:The title track, This Addiction, points out that love and addiction are the same things. You can be addicted to love or your relationship just like you can be addicted to heroin. What’s worse for you? Taking drugs or getting out of a bad relationship?
MS: Taking drugs you usually feel pretty good! Not to be pro-drug guy or anything but I will say I’m not anti-drug. I don’t do anything and everything, I pick my poison, but I also think that you need to moderate and you also need to handle your shit. I’m a kid 99% of the time, but there are also times, like now, where you gotta man up and have it together. I think even when you’re partying you should have it together. Losing someone, having someone die on you, having someone leave you, is a terrible process. I had a good friend of mine pass away, just as my marriage started to fall apart. Death and divorce are very similar feelings. One almost worse because it’s out of your control. One almost as worse because it is in your control. It depends on the person. You can’t compare grief. But whenever I’m confronted with some opposing force I always try and use it to my advantage. I never let it bring me down too deep.
AS: Well I’m sorry to hear that.
MS: I’m good. I’m good now!
AS: Good! Recently SuicideGirls put up an interview with Dita Von Teese…
MS: Nice, I’m a fan, she’s a sexy lady!
AS: She is a sexy lady! Anyway, in the interview she kind of gave her recipe for getting over a breakup. So do you have one? Since you’re all good now?
MS: I think drinking beer in the movies by yourself a lot is good. I think doing fun, spontaneous things is good. Rather than sitting around feeling sorry for yourself take your new freedom and run with it. Go explore. Have fun. It’s hard to get out of bed sometimes, but you have to understand that there’s going to be a light at the end of the tunnel and rather than walking towards it you should start running towards. Enjoy your life while you have it. So alcohol at the movies, solo, is a good one. That worked good for me. I was there a lot. Beer bottles clanking and stuff. I have a couple of really good friends that were there for me when I was having a rough time. I was on tour and my band mates were always there to yank me out of my bunk and force me to gallivant with them. We were all going through weird things at a certain time and we were all there for each other. You just gotta find yourself again, on your own. I love spending time by myself. I never yell at myself, I never get mad at myself if I’m late. Well, if I miss the previews I might be a little pissed [laughs] but if you can learn to love being solo again, that’s the key. And I think moving on as quickly as you can is good, but definitely not jumping into something else real quick. Have fun and hang out with people but also hang out with yourself. With beer. At the movies.  
AS: Did you make any resolutions for 2010?
MS: No! I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m going to do more of everything. If something’s affecting me negatively I just stop then and there. I don’t wait for the New Year to stop. But 2010 is going to be a good one. It’s going to be a party.
AS: Amen! Good luck on tour and congratulations on the record. Thanks so, so much for talking to SuicideGirls. Have a great day.
MS: Thanks, love!
Alkaline Trio’s seventh studio album, This Addiction comes out February 23rd on Epitaph Records/Heart & Skull. A full U.S. tour with indie rockers Cursive begins on February 16th. Check Alkaline Trio’s official MySpace for dates.

Brendon Small's career has taken him from music student and aspiring guitar hero to creator of some of the best animated comedies on TV. His first show, Home Movies, was part of the original lineup of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Although Brendon wrote the music for Home Movies, he didn't... more

Brendon Small's career has taken him from music student and aspiring guitar hero to creator of some of the best animated comedies on TV. His first show, Home Movies, was part of the original lineup of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Although Brendon wrote the music for Home Movies, he didn't find an outlet for his love of wicked guitar shredding until he created Metalocalypse.

Metalocalypse is the saga of Dethklok, the biggest and most brutal metal band in the world. When they're not fighting amongst themselves, the five members of Dethklok play absurd, elaborate concerts that usually result in death and carnage for the audience. Naturally, Brendon had to take this show on the road.

He put together an all-star metal lineup, with himself on guitar and doing the vocals of lead singer Nathan Explosion, to record full versions of songs like "I Tamper with the Evidence at the Murder Site of Odin." Now Dethklok isn't just the world's most popular metal band on TV. Their latest album, The Dethalbum II, is the best-selling death metal record ever, and they've co-headlined a tour with Mastodon.

Season 3 of Metalocalypse is currently airing on Adult Swim, and Dethklok's song "Laser Cannon Deth Sentence" was just added to Guitar Hero 5.

Jay Hathaway: How did you decide to get into TV instead of becoming a professional musician or joining a band?

Brendon Small: When I went through music school, I went to Berklee College of Music‚ I entered thinking I knew what I was doing or I knew what I wanted out of music school, and I left being very confused by what I wanted out of music. The music I cared about wasn't really being played. Guitar-driven music kind of wasn't cool anymore. In the meantime, I was being drawn toward this world of comedy, and I was hanging out with kids that were at Emerson College in Boston. Everything that they were doing sounded cooler, because you could still do music, you could score stuff, you could write it and you could act in it yourself. So, I think they had a better idea than what my music school was offering, which was basically, "Hey, here's a wedding gig. Learn some old standards and you might scrape by this month."

It wasn't a financial reason, it was because if I can do music and I can do all this other stuff, why wouldn't I do that? Also, somewhere in the middle of all of that, I interned at jingle houses in New York, where they do music for commercials and stuff like that. The musicians were the last people to have a say, creatively. You could come up with something great and have some dildo ad exec come in there and crush the whole thing. I thought, "Whatever I do, I don't want to be in post-production. I want to be in charge of the project." I was probably around 20 or 21 at the time.

JH: Do you find that it's easier to break into doing your own projects in music or in TV, in comedy?

BS: Well, first of all, to have a personality on the guitar is a very difficult thing. There are a handful of people, maybe seven people, where they play three notes and you go "Oh! That's Brian May from Queen," or "That's Jeff Beck," or whoever. But in comedy, your own personality and whatever makes you yourself, no one can actually compete with that. I just thought it made more sense to go with your personality first and add all of the other stuff later. People are looking for a person with a new comedic voice. Not a lot of people are looking for the next new guitar virtuoso. What would you rather hear: someone who's going to make you laugh, or the new guitar player who's going to break all the rules? Most people just want to laugh.

JH: Does that explain why Dethklok has outsold so many other metal bands? Because people just want to laugh?

BS: That may be part of the reason. The records, especially the second record, aren't necessarily funny records. I'm not going for jokes. There are a couple smart-ass and sarcastic things we do in there, but nothing too terribly funny. I think the reason is that it's got a TV show. That why it outsells other metal, because other metal doesn't have a TV show. I really believe that.

JH: When you were a kid, did you want to be in the biggest band in the world?

BS: When I was a kid ... for a while, I wanted to be a dentist. I thought it would be interesting to be a carpenter, for a while, and then I thought it would be interesting to be a toymaker. Then I thought it would be interesting to make monsters in movies. Then I discovered guitar, and thought it would be cool to be a guitarist. Then I went back to the dentist thing, and that's where I am now.

JH: That's your career aspiration at the moment?

BS: I am going to DeVry.

JH: Wow, awesome.

BS: No, when I was 14 years old and I had a guitar, all I did was fantasize about being able to play like Eddie Van Halen or whatever. I didn't know that there was any reality attached to that. I knew that I could study guitar and trick people into letting me go and hang out with this guitar for a long time. Beyond that, I didn't know what the reality of putting a band together was. I was too naive.

JH: Have you run into any metal bands who don't get Metalocalypse or don't like it?

BS: No. I'm sure that there are plenty out there who think it's lame and horribly-written. I'm sure that there are people who don't get the joke, but I don't meet those guys. I think it's good that I don't. Why would we want to hang out with each other? Look at each other, have a weird, stilted conversation, get mad at each other.

JH: Yeah, for sure.

BS: Actually, now I want to do that. I want to have a fancy dinner with one of those guys who doesn't like the show. We'll probably end up going dutch, because they're not going to pick up the bill. I'm not going to pick up the bill. I mean, if they don't respect the show, why would I?

JH: You'd have no reason.

BS: No reason.

JH: Since one of the themes of the show is how bored and jaded the world's biggest celebrities are, what's your own attitude toward getting more well-known? Have you developed a casual disregard for human life?

BS: First of all, you have to understand I work in cartoons. I consider it to be pretend show business. My face isn't plastered everywhere, so I walk down the street and I'm not harmed by or accosted by people. Nobody gives me a better seat at a restaurant. At Starbucks, no one's like, "Hey man, this one's on me." I pay full price for things. Nobody bothers me. I like that I can walk past the line of people that are lining up to see the Dethklok show, and nobody stops their conversation or looks at me. Everything else is Internet bullshit, and that's all fake. That doesn't mean you're really popular. It means people have a lot of curiosity for stupid shit.

JH: I was just reading some of those sites, and people really get into the most minute bits of trivia about Metalocalypse. Did you see that coming at all when you started writing the show?

BS: No, I wasn't expecting that. I'm glad that people enjoy all that stuff, but it doesn't really affect what I end up doing too much. People try to make sense of a lot of the small things like, "Who are these characters all based on?" And the answer is, aside from the singer, nobody. They like to concoct all these thing themselves, but no one seems to be getting hurt, so let 'em do it.

JH: Including all the other voice acting that you've done outside of Metalocalypse, what's the toughest voice you've had to do?

BS: That's an interesting question, because voiceover is the easiest job in the world. The only time it's tough is when you have a director who's bad, who can't really get his point across, and uses absurd metaphors. "Ok, you just got back from Sunday School and you have a very vague notion about you, and you don't know whether you're excited or not. Go!" I've had a couple of bad direction sessions‚ I'm sure I've given them, as well. Doing voiceover is the easiest job in the world if you know how to read. Even if you don't know how to read, someone can tell you the words you should say. I had to create a TV show to get voiceover work, 'cause everyone else figured out it's the easiest thing in the world. I'll tell you the easiest job I ever did ...

JH: Okay.

BS: It was for the Honda Fit campaign. I was like their voice for their car campaign, this big national ad thing. The guy who hired me was a super-nice guy who was a fan of the show, and hired me because of that. They put so many effects on my voice, there's no way you'd ever be able to tell it was me. They asked me to speak like Vicki from Small Wonder. Like a robot lady. [robot voice] But they asked. me. to. talk. like. this. [normal voice] I swear to God, that's exactly what I did. [robot voice] New. from. Honda. The. Honda. Fit. [normal voice] And that was it. The amount of money they pay for that kind of money is just stupid. It's like, the IRS is gonna come down on somebody here, 'cause this is bullshit. Sounding out words and saying them? Not too tough.

JH: What's the most brutal thing that you've done in your personal life?

BS: I know what the most brutal thing I've had to experience is, and that's taxes. I get the feeling of just flopping over and crying, you know? Taxes. Easy. Summer colds would be second. It's the little things.

JH: You're doing longer episodes for Season 3 of Metalocalypse. What was your plan for using the extra time?

BS: There's no one way to do that. If we have a story idea, we try to make it make sense within the thing. Sometimes concluding an episode is ... the Sopranos started doing it a lot time ago. They'd finish, they'd conclude, but they wouldn't totally bookend or stop. It would end in a precarious place. You don't need to know how it's going to finish in order for the episode to be done. You're going to assume that, yes, that thing's going to smash that guy and all those things are going to be released, you know? Aside from the last episode of last season, I think the audience knows what's going on. As far as what we use the time for, it's just trying to develop story. I think, past the first episode, you'll see that it's basically used for comedy.

That's what you're doing when you're working in TV, especially with half-hours. Just trying to make sure that you and the audience both know what your story's about. It's actually very tedious. What is this story about? What does this character want? Simple stuff they teach you in film school.

JH: Metalocalypse is nothing like your previous show, Home Movies. How did you decide to make something so completely different?

BS: Even if Home Movies was successful‚ we consider it a creative success, although it didn't get great numbers ‚ I don't understand why I would want to redo what I did already. Ultimately, I'm doing these weird, absurd little passion projects, and this one seems to have gotten popular. It's stuff that I care about, and if the audience likes it, hey, that's great, but ultimately it's for me. I understand that when networks put a lot of money behind something, they want to let everyone know that This is from the same guy that gave you That. That's fine, but I think it's more fun to be creative and do different stuff.

JH: What's your favorite Dethklok lyric? Is there a line you're particularly proud of writing?

BS: I honestly haven't been particularly proud of any of the lyrics I've written for Dethklok. But I do smirk every night when I sing the "Fan Song" for the kids out there. It's just a direct insult, and they're singing along. I don't truly feel this way, but I think it's very funny to say this to them: "You're a bunch of banks that I'd like to rob / you're my online cash transaction / you're my future stocks." And there are other lyrics, like, "You punched and blinded eunuchs / living in chatrooms / you masturbate on the sheets / your mothers clean for you." I think that's fun. I don't necessarily mean any of that stuff, but I think it's funny to sing that to them, and have them sing it along with me, at the very end of of the night.

Samuel Bayer directed legendary music videos like Nirvana's "Smell's Like Teen Spirit." Back when MTV actually played videos, his work heralded the grunge movement and a gritty visual style for the genre. It took nearly 20 years for him to make the leap to film. Bayer's first... more

Samuel Bayer directed legendary music videos like Nirvana's "Smell's Like Teen Spirit." Back when MTV actually played videos, his work heralded the grunge movement and a gritty visual style for the genre. It took nearly 20 years for him to make the leap to film. Bayer's first feature is a doozy, the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Children of the '80s grew up with Freddy Krueger. The 1984 Wes Craven movie spawned seven sequels (if you count Freddy Vs. Jason, which most count in both series.) Freddy even got his own TV show and made other pop culture appearances, because he was such a charismatic showman. He was the ultimate movie monster with a face covered in burn makeup and a glove with four knives for fingers. In the movies, he was a child killer, but since he ruled the fantasy realm of dreams, he was inherently fun.

The legend is that parents of Springwood rounded up Freddy and burned him alive, since the courts wouldn't dispense a satisfying justice to his crimes. When the Elm Street children grew up, Freddy invaded their dreams. If they died in the dream, they were dead for real. Robert Englund played Freddy until now. For the reinvention, Oscar nominee Jackie Earle Haley put on the burn makeup, the finger-bladed glove and the red and green sweater.

The new version of Freddy was the focus of Bayer's last year, from production through reshoots to the ultimate release. It would have been nice to get his thoughts on things relating to the music business, but Freddy led to so many topics it dominated the discussion. Sitting in the Beverly Hills sun, a few beads of sweat and a mid-afternoon squint set the stage for an analysis of the new Freddy.

SuicideGirls: Was if your idea to accuse this Freddy of being a child molester or was that already in the new script?

Samuel Bayer: That was something in the script that was before I got in. That was Wesley. That was Wesley Strick that I think brought that in. It was kind of cool that that was Wes Craven's intention in the original movie to have a different element rather than just murder of children.

SG: So how did you deal with the language of talking about that, without flat out saying it?

SB: I think you have to be very careful. We're not doing social commentary. We're making an entertaining movie. I think this is a movie about monsters and it's a very interesting society. It's very interesting they call people serial killers and make them really charming and make them like Hannibal Lecter. They eat you and yet they're still really charming and they talk really eloquently. I think we try to make Freddy as a human being a much more flawed and much more of a real human being. Sometimes monsters don't always have to have burned skin to be monsters. The mythology of Freddy Krueger is still the same, but we try to make something I think a little bit more interesting, a little bit deeper and complex.

SG: You never use the P word but they talk like people would talk about abuse.

SB: It's the same thing. Again, we're not doing social commentary. I know that I don't have children but if someone hurt my child using the P word, I don't know what I'd do. I might hurt them really badly. I might actually kill them. So that again is trying to add some realism to our film. It's easy to say he was a murderer. It's much more complex to say he was something else.

SG: Did you design this Nightmare to fit in with the grittier aesthetic of recent horror movies like Saw and Hostel?

SB: I think the stuff from the '80s certainly feels like it was from a certain time period. There are certain elements of the cinematography that I recognize. It's like the hand that crafted The Terminator, James Cameron's original movie, looks very much like the same cinematography that was used in Nightmare on Elm Street. Backlit, blue tinted, smoke and certain elements that just made the movies look like they were made in the 1980s. Look, I have a very specific look for what my work looks like. I think my music videos and my commercials look very much like the film that I made. I certainly made this for modern audiences but I don't know about Saw and Hostel and stuff like that.

SG: Well, a boiler room is boiler room at a certain point.

SB: Right. I mean, I think there's an industrial sense, a grittiness. I look more at things like Dark Knight and the look and style and feeling of that movie, a comic book movie, a movie about a superhero that was rooted in as much reality as you can possibly make. That became the template for this film.

SG: So that is a more modern approach to the material.

SB: I completely agree. I think if you put it in that way I completely agree. It is very much a 21st century take on Freddy Krueger. If there's maybe two different ways movies can go these days, that either you have a gigantic budget and you're James Cameron and you can spend four years of your life devoting it to crafting something that is mind blowing, there's that. Then I think there's the other way to go which is I'm not going to rely on special effects. I'm going to make something that's based very much in the real world and the physical world. The characters and the way it's lit and everything is as real as I can make it.

SG: Is CGI really better than the practical effects of the original films?

SB: No, probably not. No, listen, I'm very proud of a lot of elements of the movie. I would not say that the CG element of what we did in this film is any better than what was done 25 years ago. Having said that, I can also say that everything else I did absolutely looks better, whether it's the girl being thrown against the ceiling or even something that almost may feel to some people that we're literally replicating the shot. The hand in the bathtub, it's a more elegantly photographed image.

SG: Well, it's not like it's shot for shot.

SB: No, I mean listen. I hope the reason why him coming through the wall or the hand in the bathtub or the girl skipping rope or the girl being bashed against the ceiling, and there are some little tiny nuggets of other things that we put into the movie, was paying homage to the original film and to Wes Craven and what he created and the power of the movie. We did it for the fans. I can't say that enough. If I wasn't making a movie that had such a legacy and so many die hard fans, I never would have done that stuff.

SG: Considering this is a reinvention of Freddy, why did you choose to quote some lines directly from not just the original film, but others in the series?

SB: I say it again and again. The original movie became our bible. I always said that from what I read and understand that Wes Craven created the original movie to be a standalone movie, to never have a sequel. I did a lot of research on things that he had said in the press about dreams and how he came up with the character of Freddy Krueger. I made this movie for new fans and old fans and maybe in a way Wes himself.

SG: How important are Freddy's taunts?

SB: You can't do the movie without Freddy's taunts. I just can't say enough that if Freddy isn't scary then we failed. I found certainly in some of the later films they were just about the jokes. Maybe they were about the kills but the jokes were more important than anything else. If it's more funny than it is scary, then it's not really a horror movie anymore.

SG: Don't you think the idea could have been that it be disarming or more evil that he cracks jokes while he kills?

SB: You know what? I leave that up to the fans. For me as a filmmaker, I find it very difficult to watch the later films and find too much that's scary about them.

SG: Or maybe by part six, they stopped trying to be scary and just went for pure entertainment.

SB: Then I think that people that expect to see this as part seven will be very disappointed.

SG: Actually, this would be part nine. I was just using six as an example.

SB: Or part nine. With the TV series then part 45, right?

SG: Obviously Freddy has to be burned. That's part of the story. Could you have chosen a differnet outfit than the traditional sweater and hat?

SB: Can't.

SG: You obviously wouldn't lose the glove, but you wouldn't think of trying a different look for a reboot?

SB: You know, if something works, don't try to fix it. It's cool, man. It's funny, I looked at the different movies. Sometimes the glove was made of bones or it's more metallic. I think in one movie he wore a jacket, a trenchcoat actually on top of the sweater. We looked with the wardrobe stylist. The sweaters actually changed a little bit from movie to movie. Sometimes the hat looked like it was perfectly press and there wasn't a burn in it. To me, it was Batman without the utility belt or without the cape. I had to keep the cape and the utility belt. It was the face that I could really change.

SG: Was there always going to be a tag at the end of the movie?

SB: Yeah, the coda. That was the term, the coda. Yeah, there was always going to be a coda at the end. There was talk of another coda earlier on in the process. How we were going to end the movie, there was a lot of discussion over that. Were we going to give it away that it was all a dream or was it going to end on a happier note, that was a big part of it.

SG: So did you find out that Wes Craven hated the coda on his original movie?

SB: Yes. I did but you know, I think that Wes hated it because, what I read is he wanted to end it on a happier note. He wanted good to triumph over evil. I leave it to people to see this movie but I'm not necessarily saying it one way or the other other than we left it in a certain place.

A Nightmare on Elm Street opens April 30.

Reality TV rarely represents anything viewers would recognize as actual reality. The Bachelor uses real people but puts them in a dating pageant that never seems to result in any actual marriages. Survivor drops them on an island where no one's life is actually at risk, and it's just a popularity... more

Reality TV rarely represents anything viewers would recognize as actual reality. The Bachelor uses real people but puts them in a dating pageant that never seems to result in any actual marriages. Survivor drops them on an island where no one's life is actually at risk, and it's just a popularity contest in the end.

The Apprentice has one thing going for it. It is a real job with Donald Trump. Trump is a character and there's the showmanship of the boardroom firings and the weekly challenges, but something about it is real. Celebrity Apprentice is more of the show version. Actors, athletes and rockers don't need a job, but they play for charity, and so viewers can see a gang of notable eccentrics compete.

Bret Michaels joins the third celebrity version of The Apprentice. Reality TV has brought Michaels a career renaissance. Rock of Love was just another dating show but it put Michaels' rock n' roll lifestyle on TV for a new generation to see. Adding to that, video games let kids jam to Poison tracks on their fake guitars. Michaels still records solo, and with artists like Miley Cyrus. Between reality shows, he tours playing international gigs.

Scheduling an interview with a rock star requires the participation of a whole entourage. First an assistant calls to make sure the reporter is there. Then a publicist calls to make sure the reporter is briefed on all of Michaels' projects. When Michaels himself calls, he is on, projecting an engaging performance even through a phone line.

SG: What is it about these reality shows that suits your personality?

BM: You know, for Apprentice, that's a pretty easy one for me. It was the fact that first of all, I'm a lifelong juvenile diabetic. The fact that I'm a lifelong diabetic is probably a big reason for it. I've watched the first two seasons and I love that challenge. I think that also, after coming out of Rock of Love and doing three seasons of Rock of Love, it was nice to show that there's another side besides just sucking face with girls and drinking beer. [Laughs] I've got some other talents. I'm not sure what they are but I was anxious to show that for me, luck doesn't fall in my lap. It's always been the harder I work, the luckier I got.

SG: When you're into the business world of The Apprentice does it draw out different aspects of your personality?

BM: I think for sure. One of the things that happens, when we're in there, all of us, especially this year, when I say I think it was the best cast they've had, here's why. Everyone came in there wanting to win. You know how sometimes you watch shows and you know immediately who's going to be the first one to get killed off? You kind of look and you're like, 'Oh, that one's going.' This one, everyone came firing. The first day, when you see this whole Apprentice open up, I flew in because the night before, I played a concert in Leone, Mexico at the arena that night before, and landed that morning. I'll just put it this way, let's just say the timing wasn't the best. I'll just leave it at that. I can't give you too much. So I had to quickly get into gear but everyone there was a competitor and it really brought out that really competitive spirit that I have in there. There's two really extreme sides to me. There's a side of me that really loves to play. I love to party, I love to rock and there's a side of me that really works hard too.

SG: Is it hard to invest in the competition like it's the real Apprentice? I know you want to do well for charity, but you don't need a job with Trump.

BM: I can't speak for anybody else but I can tell you this much. I lived in the moment. I took every task that he threw at us, and I just took those tasks and I worked really hard and did the best I could do. I didn't go, 'Oh, this is TV.' I think after doing Rock of Love for three years, and before that I had done Nashville Star, the funny side of me says my acting skills are limited which is why I lean towards reality. The other side of me says there's this part of me, I do really well in the real world. When the real me comes out and you're not forcing me to be something I'm not, I've been my own boss since I was literally 17 years old, for better or worse. I think this show really helped to bring out that side of me, that competitive side but also the street smarts.

SG: You must have a certain business savvy to survive the music industry, right?

BM: You know it and let me tell you. People always talk about the entertainment business in broad strokes. Let me tell you something. I've been in the movie side of it, I've been in the reality TV side. The music side is the most savage side, hands down. You've got good people and straight up evil people and they all seem to be able to get through the cracks on the music side because they run into musicians like myself. They're young, they want to make it and they don't always know exactly what they're reading or the contracts they're signing. I was just lucky that I was street savvy to read through that stuff and not sign away the publishing and all that kind of crazy stuff.

SG: Do you wear a suit to the boardroom?

BM: Let me put it this way. I'm pretty Bret Michaels in it. It would be a Bret Michaels suit. I don't know exactly what that means, but let's put it this way, it wasn't a typical business suit, no. It wasn't your typical suit although I will tell you this, I learned a few things, I can say this about Apprentice. When I went in there, I learned three things. My computer skills got much better. I'll just tell you that much. I learned how to text for the first time in my life. Everyone laughs because I'm the guy that would still have a pager if I wasn't kicked into the future. Then the best thing of all of it was that it really honestly, there is no slacking because they work you hard. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I literally went in there thinking this'll be kind of fun. You do some work, blah blah blah. When I got in there, I had no idea what I had walked into, like the hours that they push you. I'll tell you what, it can break you.

SG: It does sound different from Rock of Love.

BM: Yes, which is different hours.

SG: What do you think shows like Rock of Love have done for real world relationships, with their examples of outrageous behavior?

BM: I say this carefully, but when I went in to do the show, I just went in to have fun. I had become newly single. The first time it came up, I turned it down and I just said I wasn't ready for that. The second time, I thought, 'You know what? I'm going to go in and make this a party. I'm going to make it fun. I'm not going to allow them to tell me who I like or don't like.' I think it set [a tone of] fun for this reason. You look at all the stuff that's going on now. I did the lingerie mud football thing. Honestly, I made the show a party. I took the girls out, we raced motocross, we went camping, we did stuff. I think that in a relationship, this is the truth, I think a lot more of it would work if people had a lot more fun and mixed in the responsibility with it. In other words, what happens is one day a relationship becomes just responsibility and all of a sudden you forgot why you liked or loved that person in the first place. That's the truth. You have to still be excited to see them and have fun in a relationship and I think that also brings out, like on Rock of Love Bus, I think it really brought out the character of what people are. In other words, I always call it the three month period of dating. It's sort of an incubation period. You go in and everyone says bullsh*t stuff like they like to hike and take long walks, you know what I mean? All of a sudden, put them into a situation where they actually go camping and see how they react. Put them in situations and watch how people react. That's when you're going to see the real person come out. For me, it made it a lot of fun and it was a good time doing it.

SG: That is a really good message. Do you think that's what viewers got out of seeing the show?

BM: Remember it's a lot of editing. We didn't get in on the editing. It sometimes appears like it was cat fighting and 24/7 drunken debauchery. There were a couple good hours in there when we were sober and eating by the table and cooking and talking about life. In that time, you get the best of both worlds. When they would always ask me advice on these relationship shows, I said, 'Here's the bottom line. If you love somebody, you love them. You're having a great time with them and the responsibility comes and you want to be responsible.' What happens is sometimes you meet somebody and then you sort of suck out of them everything you liked them for. Then that's when people move on to other relationships. If you can still have fun with somebody and look at them as your peer, that's what makes it great.

SG: I just see even The Bachelor never ends up in marriage or long lasting relationship.

BM: No, but for me, I think what worked on my show is I was straightforward. You watch the beginning of every year. I said this to the girls right up front, 'Let's make it a party, let's have fun, let's date. If something comes from it, great. If it doesn't, I got to meet some really cool people.' You'll never see me on a show where the first day I walk out and I go, 'I love all of you and want it all to work.' Even the first season of Rock of Love, the very first one years ago, they would ask me, 'What are you going to do if one of the girls isn't into you?' I said, 'Let 'em tell me.' They said, 'Well, that's going to be embarrassing on TV.' Lo and behold, the first night I walked up to the one girl, Lauren, and she's like, 'Yeah, I'm not really that into you.' And I go, 'Oh, is there anything I can do?' She goes, 'Yeah, I'm just not that into you.' I'm like, 'Okay.' But that's real life and I think people caught on my show the reality that was going on, rather than everyone was scripted and told what to do. We just sort of cut loose and let it happen.

SG: So how's your love life now?

BM: I think my love life is great. Again, I've got two beautiful daughters and I think that anyone that steps into me in a relationship has to understand straight up that there is no doubt I also love playing music. I said this before 1000 times, I'll say it again. Rock n' roll has been the reason for and the ruin of all my relationships. In other words, it's exciting at first, the traveling and doing stuff, but the fact that I love it is almost like I've already got my daughters I love, I've got a music career that I love. I think that's one of the things of trying to find that balance. At first it's exciting because you're traveling, you're doing stuff, you're going from city to city. Then to some people it just gets old or tiresome.

SG: Good transition to music. Miley Cyrus might seem like an odd pairing. What sort of groove do you find together?

BM: Here's exactly what happened. Miley's first concert was seeing Poison in Nashville, TN at the Starwood Arena. That was her first concert ever and I remember her doing a couple interviews and reading that. Then I met the whole family. I knew Billy Ray and I knew Tish and they came out to a couple shows in L.A. Then Miley when we were in New York, it was great because they wanted to recut "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." She said, 'It's one of my all time favorite songs.' She just is one of the people I said that will make the jump. That's my feeling. She'll make that transition from a young pop star into having a long career, I'm going to say, as a rock star or as a musician. I really feel that, because she can sit down at the piano and play. We sat down with the guitars and started playing music and just had a real natural chemistry. The next thing you know, she went in and she sang some of the stuff. We bumped the key up because she sings, obviously, very high. So I bumped the key up from a G to a B. We just went from there and it was really a good experience in New York. We're finishing it in L.A. now.

SG: What about collaborating on an original song with her?

BM: Yeah, I have a new solo album called Custom Built and I have a song on there called 'Nothing to Lose.' When we were just sitting around in the studio hanging out, I played her a couple of the tracks and like, 'Holy crap, that's a really, really good song.' She fell in love with the lyrics and said she wanted to try something a little different. One of her idols is Stevie Nicks. I said, 'Well, I worked with Stevie and wrote songs for her and produced some of her stuff. She's very freestyle. Why don't you go in and just kind of listen to the song and sing some stuff around it?' She just really, really nailed it. It was sort of a freestyle unproduced session and we got out of it exactly what we wanted to.

SG: Have you found another new generation has discovered your music through Guitar Hero?

BM: The one thing I can say was Guitar Hero and Rock of Love just brought not only the solo music but that Poison music. We've been fortunate because Poison had already done one generation skip where you make it long enough to get to the next generation. Now all of a sudden with Rock of Love and Guitar Hero, not only solo but Poison, it's brought that music out and they get to hear it. It seems like there's a big resurgence of music from the '70s and '80s, that sort of '70s and '80s rock groove that's sort of coming back anyway which is nice.

SG: Was "Talk Dirty to Me" just an innocent love song?

BM: In some ways it's a really dirty innocent love song. Pretty direct though. You don't really beat around the bush. It kind of cuts right to the chase.

SG: Thinking about "Every Rose," were you doing sensitive metal back then?

BM: No, I would not say I thought of it as sensitive metal but I think 'Every Rose' really broke the door wide open because a lot of stuff back then, when I say pop power ballad, it was the first one of that genre that brought out the acoustic guitar and kind of broke it wide open again where you can start out with the acoustic. I was going through a situation where a girl broke my heart, an exotic dancer of all things. It was one of those moments where I just wrote the song and Capital Records really didn't like the song. They thought it was a career killer. It ended up becoming a number one song in pop rock and country which was nice.

SG: Isn't that the case with all the classics, that the ones the bosses don't want become the biggest hits?

BM: It's the weirdest thing because when I say this truthfully, I'll never forget walking into Capital. Even though we have our own label through Capital, right? We went in there and I said, 'We want to shoot this video.' I said 'Every Rose' and they fought me. It was an ugly argument in that conference room. They're like, 'This song sounds kind of Americana, it sounds kind of country.' I said, 'Look, we had 'I Won't Forget You' on the first record and it did really well.'' They're like, 'Yeah, but that wasn't like this.' I just really fought them on it and we finally went, we were at Brown County Arena in Green Bay and we just brought out the video cameras and shot the video pretty much ourselves. It was that simple. Let's just shoot live footage and open up this beginning and that was it.

SG: Are you working on more solo music or more collaborations?

BM: I write a lot with a lot of other top notch writers like Jeffrey Steele and people like that, but what I've been doing is mostly just focusing on just solo music. I hope one day Poison will make another record, another new studio album but right now it just is highly unlikely. I'm one of those guys, in my house if you were here you'd see I've got this beautiful studio. I go in there all the time and I still am excited and passionate about making music.

SG: Are you putting together a new album or touring with the current one?

BM: Here's everything that's going on. The new album is simply called Custom Built. It's a new solo record. Then the tour kicks off. Right now all the way through the end of the year, all the dates are coming in but it starts right now in Hidalgo, TX. It's called where it's a combination of the U.S. and Mexico and it's a great festival. Tim McGraw is playing on Saturday and I believe I'm playing Sunday. This is all solo this year. There's no Poison. It's all solo and I'm really excited. It kicks off and then we're out for the whole year in Canada, we go to Australia, Mexico and then we go to Japan, Europe, all that.

SG: What are we going to see in your upcoming book?

BM: Simon and Schuster's putting out a book that's their biggest preordered book so far to date and it's called Roses and Thorns: The Reality of my Rock n' Roll Fantasy. It will bring you to your knees not only laughing but crying. I'm not kidding you. Somewhere between what I'll call my comedy of errors that is my life and then fighting to get through it, the real reality behind the curtain of what goes on of trying to succeed.

SG: Was there a point in your life where you became comfortable sharing your personal trials?

BM: Here's the thing. The book is the hardest thing I've ever [done]. Honestly, if you were to call Lauren right now, the editor at Simon and Schuster, it's been the most difficult thing I've ever done. I told her straight up a couple times, 'Let's just not do it' because there's moments where I just don't feel like I want to throw anybody under the bus, but I also have to be able to tell you the story. It's exciting. I want you to read the raw reality, but in order to do it, I also don't want to hurt someone else's life that has nothing to do with the book. It's a Catch-22 so I think what I'm able to do is grab pictures. I want to be able to prove what I'm saying. So you have pictures and then the story that goes with them. It's really an interesting read.

SG: Do you get to discuss how you've handled having diabetes on the road and on tour?

BM: It's really difficult. I've had it for 40 years. I got it when I was six years old and there are times when it's a battle, but I find a way. I do four injections a day so I get up early in the morning. Regardless of when I go to sleep, sometimes I go to sleep at three or four in the morning but I'm back up at eight or nine. I get up, I do my workout and then I go back to bed if I have to. It's tough. When you're on the road, there are times that it definitely gets rough to handle but you've just got to find a way to do it.

SG: And we've seen from your shows, you don't do without, so you still enjoy the perks of the job.

BM: Well, you've got to enjoy what you're doing. I went back to the very beginning of our conversation. In the very end of it, what's it all worth if at the end of everything you've achieved or done, at some point along the way you didn't enjoy yourself. That's the whole premise is finding that balance.

SG: After the book, the shows and the music, will we know who the real Bret Michaels is?

BM: It may be a combination of all of the above. It's like at times, you look at all that and you go how do you categorize something? I'm not sure there's exactly one category. I think that's what has made my journey unique is there's different facets and different sides that I haven't quite put my finger on, let alone other people looking at it but I think they'll have a good understanding that deep down, I would like to believe I'm a good soul. I treat people right, I treat 'em with respect and I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

SG: We'll root for you on The Apprentice.

BM: Thanks for doing this and The Apprentice was awesome. It was a good learning experience and I didn't get to say this, but I just wanted to say this about Donald Trump. Besides the fact you watch him, you have respect for him, the one thing about Trump that I think is amazing, I think in his life he's been both the predator and the prey and he is able to be nice to people, but when he gets stuff done, man, he gets it done. It was interesting to watch how he delegates. It was a good learning experience for me. He has a great presence but he also is concise when he talks with names, with people. He was very 'on.' It was interesting just to watch him work and you realize why there's a reason people are successful at what they do.

SG: Obviously we can't give away who gets fired, but if you're in the boardroom, imagine What must it be like to hear those words?

BM: Let me tell you something, I'm just going to make it funny. If you want to catch me on The Apprentice show, don't miss the first few episodes. You might want to tune in early. I'll just leave it at that. No one wants to be fired or hear that. That's all I'm saying, but I came out trying. How's that sound?

The Celebrity Apprentice premieres March 14 on NBC.

Last month Scott Snyder ceased being an immensely talented short story writer and teacher with degrees from Brown and Columbia and instead became one of comic’s hottest writers and a new horror-fantasy icon. American Vampire #1 created by Snyder and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque has received a lot... more

Last month Scott Snyder ceased being an immensely talented short story writer and teacher with degrees from Brown and Columbia and instead became one of comic’s hottest writers and a new horror-fantasy icon. American Vampire #1 created by Snyder and illustrated by Rafael Albuquerque has received a lot more press than the typical comic series, largely because of Snyder’s friend and mentor who is writing the backup story in the first five issues, Stephen King.

Snyder’s first book, the short story collection "Voodoo Heart" was an amazing batch of stories, tales about chasing blimps across the nation, guarding Niagara Falls from would-be suicides, trust fund runaways and a pilot who crashes into a wedding and runs off with the bride. The stories were fantastic and unlikely, outlandish and improbable but never impossible. Instead, quiet tales of odd characters dealing with strange circumstances that were funny, bizarre and touching. His short story “The Thirteenth Egg” was one of the best parts of the superhero anthology “Who Will Save Us Now?” and was very much the kind of fantastic horror story that comics do so well.

Snyder is also writing the just-released “Iron Man: Noir” miniseries, a pulp take on Tony Stark set in the 1930’s. The second issue of “American Vampire” goes on sale Wednesday April 21 in which the new species, the “american vampire” of the title makes its debut, and we chatted with Snyder about the series, the evolution of monsters and his long-delayed first novel.


SCOTT SNYDER: It’s sound so creepy to be like, I love this site, but I really do.

ALEX DUEBEN: Well awesome. I’m a big fan of yours. I read your book Voodoo Heart a while back and really loved it and American Vampire is really great.

SS: Thanks. We worked really hard on that. It’s definitely been like, I feel like the luckiest guy on Long Island right now. It’s been a great ride so far.

AD: In other interviews, you’ve talked about how the idea behind the series was vampires evolving. How did you come up with this concept and what are they changing into exactly?

SS: It was several years ago when, I mean there’s always a vampire glut, but there was another glut of vampire works out there. I think it was when there a sequel to Blade and Underworld. It just seemed like all of the vampires were too cool to give you the time of day, looking like they were on their way to some neo-gothic club that happens to exists in the sewer with a chandelier overhead. The leather trenchcoats and sunglasses. That aesthetic was so boring by that point. It made me nostalgic for vampires that I grew up on. My favorite vampire movies and books are things like Salem’s Lot and Lost Boys and Near Dark and the works where vampires are not so much scary because they’re exotic and romanticized but scary because they’re your loved ones come back to kill you from the dead. They’re not scary because they’re so foreign and beautiful and so on. What’s scary about Salem’s Lot to me is that penultimate scene of Danny Glick, that little boy, scratching at his brother’s window to be let in in the middle of the night. What’s scary about Lost Boys is Michael changing into a vampire in front of his brother and his brother’s worried that his own brother is going is going to kill him. Similarly in Near Dark, the girl you fall for, who seems to be your dream girl, turns out to be a serial killing vampire.

I was in a model shops getting a Doctor Who model for a friend of mine and they had a series of busts. One of them was a zombie Confederate soldier. I had been thinking about vampires and it occurred to me, why not have a vampire that walks the kinds of landscapes you enjoy writing about? Why not make a new kind of vampire that’s indigenous to this place? From there it just took off. If I’m going to make a new kind of vampire, what’s he going to be and when’s he going to appear. Wouldn’t that mean then, as a logical extension, that there had been other species before that had branched out as well. I thought about doing it as a book for a while. I worked on it as a screenplay with my best friend for a bit. When I started working in comics, I was biding my time, thinking this was the perfect format for it.

AD: Both stories, Pearl, which is by you and Skinner Sweet, which is King’s, are set in the West. Is that the specific setting for the book?

SS: It’s not. The cycle we’re working on next also takes place in the West, but the one that I’m plotting now after that takes place on the East coast. There’s one we’re thinking about that’s going to take place in Middle America. There’s an overseas one we have in mind. The west just seemed like both a mythological place and [a place] of optimism and endless sunshine. That seemed like such an inhospitable place to the vampires we’ve seen. The perfect place to begin another species that can walk in the sun and has a kind of more muscular character to it than what came before. Plus there are certain desert qualities that really characterize the American vampire.

Our editor, Mark Doyle, who’s been amazing, we went back and forth thinking maybe we should include some teaser where it shows what the American vampire looks like. I’m really excited for people to see issue #2 where the actual new species makes it’s first appearance. It’s not some incredibly radical different thing where it doesn’t look like a vampire, but there are some notable differences. It has much more desert qualities to it. Rattlesnake fangs and an unhinging jaw and so on. We’re really trying to have it be something where we make something that’s new, not just as a gimmick, but something that’s new that’s in some way allows us to really get into inter-species relations and conflict later on in the series. Each vampire species has its own set of weaknesses and strengths and that means that the European vampires have sort of are eager to find some way to kill off this new bloodline.

AD: Why did you decide to open the book with Pearl and her story?

SS: That was an editorial decision. Originally I pitched the series as starting with Skinner in the West and Vertigo essentially rejected the pitch on the idea that if it was going to start in the West, it would be too narrow of a focus and too literal. In the pitch I had included other ideas for where it was going to go. The second cycle was going to be the 1920s it was going to be Pearl so I wrote that up as a lot more elaborate pitch for them saying, I agreed with what they said and what if we started here. They immediately jumped at that. We were actually going to save Skinner’s story for later in the series.

They knew that I knew Stephen King and could I contact him and anyone else I knew to just give a line of press for when the announcement was made. I had given him the pitch to see if he could make any suggestions and he’d been really helpful about giving me a couple tips. He was really excited for me. He said you know I really love that character Skinner and when you get to him I’ll write an issue if you want. I was like, if I tell them you’re going to write an issue or two they’re going to jump at that. I don’t want it to be something you do because you feel like it’s some favor or something and he was really adamant. He liked the character and thought it would be fun.

I went back to Vertigo and told them. It was a Friday afternoon when the office is closed and I got this Monday morning call, basically, did you say Stephen King said he would write an issue? Immediately it became, how do we do that. Steve wrote him with such exuberance and made up so many interesting things about the character. The character was developed and designed and had a history, but some of the nuances and his long standing grudges Steve elaborated on and made so much richer. He brought in this whole theme about legend versus fact and history versus folklore. Issue one was the closet thing to the outline that I had set up for him. He really takes off in issue two. You start to see the epic scope of what he wants to do.

AD: When you originally proposed this, were you thinking of having a rotating series of artists like in Brian Wood’s series Northlanders?

SS: That’s exactly what the proposed format was actually. Rafael [Albuquerque] was just the first person that auditioned for the series. Editor Will Dennis, who’s been terrific, he does Northlanders and does Scalped and he suggested Rafael. Rafael sent some sketches based on my descriptions of the characters and it was just immediate, this guy understands who they are. We actually wound up using his sketches in a couple of the promos. These are sketches before he ever saw the script.

He’s in Brazil and I contacted him on instant messenger and I talk to him literally every day. We’ve become really close friends. It was his idea to the two cycles in two different looks, one in washes to give Steve’s an antiquated feel and do the Pearl one in these real hard inks to give it an art deco 20s look. Rafael will always be our artist on the big forward moving cycles. In between what we’re going to try and do is explore a little bit of the history between different vampire species and human-vampire relations. Explore why the species we’re all so familiar with from folklore and Dracula has become the dominant species and where are all the other ones are. I just feel so lucky to get to work with him.

AD: Is the plan to jump around in time with these characters and some new ones? Do you have an endgame in mind for the series?

SS: I do have an endgame, but it’s far far in the future. I know in mind how I want the series to end, but we have so many ideas to go forward and backward and sideways with it. We’re hoping to get a good long run like some of my favorite Vertigo series. In terms of the format, we are going to explore different decades and we’ll return to different decades as well to show different perspectives on things. We are absolutely going to pick up on the characters decade to decade. It’s Skinner’s blood that we’re following, essentially. He’ll pop up in fun and surprising ways, sometimes featured centrally as an antagonist or protagonist and other times he’ll make cameos. Pearl the same. I can promise that we’re following both the bloodline and the characters that are established in this cycle so they won’t disappear after this at all.

AD: Has working at Vertigo and Marvel come about because of the short story “The Thirteenth Egg” that you wrote for the superhero anthology, Who Can Save Us Now?

SS: In terms of working in comics, all of it did. I think all the time, what if I hadn’t written that story? It’s crazy. It caught the eye of Mark [Doyle] and my editor at Marvel, Jeanine [Schaefer]. The chance to pitch for the Marvel Timely series two years ago. Then I got Iron Man: Noir, which they’re waiting to release so it coincides with the movie, and Nation X. That led to a chance to pitch a creator owned thing to Vertigo.

There’s nowhere I’d be more thrilled to be than Vertigo. I get intimidated all the time by the bar that’s set. It won’t be for lack of trying if it sucks. There’s no phoning it in. I understand how fortunate I am to be able to do this at Vertigo and to be able to have my own series as a relatively green writer. And I want to know what people think. People think I’m just saying that, but I really do want to know. Comics fans are so astute and so generous and so vicious. I want to know. I want it to be a series that people feel a part of and respond to. I’ve been on that side as a fanboy for a long time so I want people to feel like they have access to the story as well.

AD: Like I said at the beginning, I really loved your first book Voodoo Heart and I know you’re working on a novel, but I keep seeing the release date change. I don’t know how much you want to say about it or when we can expect it.

SS: I’m really not going to finish my next draft of it until at least the summer. I’m hoping 2011, but it’s a ways away. It’s actually about somebody who works in comics. It’s about a guy who’s struggling with his son who’s in an accident and he is caught in this place, psychologically, where he’s having a lot of trouble reconciling the limitations of medical science and the more fantastic possibilities that he writes about everyday. It’s called The Goodbye Suit. I want to let it sit until the summer and look it over and really rewrite it and tinker with it and then hopefully have it done before the end of the year. I love it to death and it’s very personal. I’ll definitely do it but I’m just having a lot of fun with comics right now and I like to step away from it for a while so I can be more objective when I look at it again.

My plan is to get a few cycles of Vampire done. I like to finish the whole cycle at once, so I write all the issues of a cycle together. I’m finishing cycle two and I’m going to finish cycle three hopefully and really get into four by the summer and be a good full year ahead and then take a few months over the summer to really work on the novel more and come back to Vampire in the fall. That’s the hope, that I can buy some some months to work on it without having to do both, but we’ll see.

AD: A lot of the interviews have been pretty overwhelmed by talking about Stephen King, and that’s understandable, but the heart of the comic and what makes it so awesome seems to get obscured a lot of the time.

SS: If you wanted to know what it’s like to work with Stephen King, he’s the most generous guy in the world. I’ve been wracking my brain, why is he writing so much. Is he doing this as a favor to me because we’re friendly. I loved it but I don’t want to be burdening him with this, doing it because its an obligation. What you realize quickly from talking to him, when you see the intensity of his scripts, is that he acts like a hungry exuberant young writer when he likes a story. The writing is just so fun. It’s inspiring to watch because he has no reason to be that enthusiastic about it from a pragmatic standpoint. He doesn’t need to go to the mat for five issues of this thing. He does it that way because he’s a story guy, and when he gets into something he likes he lives there entirely. For a young writer, someone like me, it was incredibly inspiring to watch. To see somebody who’s so established, it doesn’t get more established, act like somebody who’s right out of the gate and getting their first job. That was great.

He’s also the most gracious guy in the world. I keep thanking him and he’s like, I should be thanking you, this is so much fun. I’m like no no no. I’m thanking you. Mark and I got him a fun gift. We got him an Elvis Day of the Dead bust. He and I are both big Elvis fans. The funny thing is, yesterday I came home from dropping my son off and I had this big package. I opened it up and it’s this big bottle of Dom Perignon from Steve. I’ve never drank Dom Perignon. “Thanks for the wild ride. Congrats. TCB. Steve.” TCB is Elvis’ personal logo which we both use. That’s Steve King. That’s who he is and I just can’t say enough good things about him as a writer, as a person, as a mentor, as a genius storyteller. I can’t throw enough love his way.

Tattoo Snob recently sat down with LA based artist Jim Sylvia to talk about art school, travel, tattoos and his ’54 Chevy Bel Air. Tattoo Snob: For those readers out there that aren't already familiar with you, tell us a bit about yourself. Jim Sylvia: Oh man, I am terrible at writing about myself. more

Tattoo Snob recently sat down with LA based artist Jim Sylvia to talk about art school, travel, tattoos and his ’54 Chevy Bel Air.


Tattoo Snob: For those readers out there that aren't already familiar with you, tell us a bit about yourself.

Jim Sylvia: Oh man, I am terrible at writing about myself. OK, I’ll give it a try. I started my tattoo career as an apprentice in Boston in 2001, while also going to school at MassArt. I worked at Skin Art Studios until 2007, when I decided to make the cross-country road trip to Los Angeles. I’m now a tattoo artist at Union Electric Tattoo in Wilmington, CA, and call LA my home.



TS: Artists often refer to a time period when it all came together, could you tell us a bit about when that was for you?

JS: There wasn’t a specific time when it all came together. Tattooing just didn’t fall into my lap. I worked hard and was motivated from the start. I really didn’t want to have some boring office job or get stuck in the daily grind. It’s just not for me. I knew before I started college though, that tattooing was going to be what I would end up doing. Once I was done with school I was really able to focus on tattooing.

Another huge motivation was the death of a close friend. We grew up together and even went to college together. We took the same art classes all through High school and college. He was an amazing and successful artist and the most positive person I’ve ever known. His death has become a constant reminder to do the best I can.





TS: It's rare to find a tattoo artist that has a diploma from a well-known art school on the wall behind them. How has your education changed the way you approach tattooing?

JS: The whole college route just seemed natural after high school. I had been taking classes at MassArt for a few years before enrolling. I knew that I wanted to be a tattoo artist, but an education would really help my career and artwork. I don’t think it changed my tattooing approach too much, but it has helped me with my drawing skills and taught me to draw as much as I can. I have filled tons of sketchbooks with doodles and crap.

TS: You call yourself a traditional, American traditional, and neo-traditional tattoo artist. Have you always stuck to that? A couple years ago that market seemed pretty dry with all of the realistic portrait work everyone was doing...

JS: I hate all the labels. There are so many subcategories that just come and go like fashion. The best tattoos are the ones that stand the test of time. I like art that reads well in the skin. That happens to be traditional. I don’t always stick to just one style. I do all kinds of different stuff. I just take pictures of the tattoos that I enjoy doing. Most of my friends and artists around me do the realism and portraits real well. I take what I have learned from them and apply it into my own stuff. I am constantly learning and progressing to make my art better.



TS: What's the best way for a potential client to get in touch with you? How long can the average person expect to wait before being able to get an appointment with you?

JS: It’s easy for people to get a hold of me. Whether it be through my website JimSylvia.com or my current shop, Union Electric Tattoo. This is my job, but it’s also something I love to do. So if someone wants a tattoo, I’ll make the time. Contact me!

TS: Every time we've posted a tattoo of yours, we get a barrage of comments and e-mails about your work. Your fan base is extremely loyal, and vocal about it. What do you attribute that to?

JS: I don’t know what to say. I have awesome customers. I just try to give them cool tattoos.



TS: Is there one tattoo you've done that you'd consider a personal favorite?

JS: Come on, you know I can’t answer that. I don’t have favorites but here are a few that I am proud of. (see the various pictures)



TS: Let's talk about the last time you were tattooed - who did it, and what was it? Are there any artists out there you'd like to be tattooed by, space and time permitting of course?

JS: Hmmm, the last time I was tattooed… It was by Big5. He was finishing a couple of things on my arm and my leg.

I look forward to getting more work from many artists that inspire me. If I have to name a few, I would love to get tattooed by Russ Abbott, Lu’s Lips, Seth Wood, Jim Miner, and Adam Barton. I’m a collector; I have been lucky enough to get tattoos from rad artists from all over the world.





TS: You don't do a ton of conventions, why is that? I have no doubt you wouldn't have a problem booking open spots in just about any city.

JS: I have done a few conventions. I am not exactly sure why I don’t do more of them. When I travel, it’s usually for a guest spot. I feel it’s a better way to see the world as well as being able to tattoo more people. Working a few days in any city, you are able to get a better understanding of the area, the people and different cultures. You don’t get that at conventions.

TS: I know you're in a touring band - how do you feel about balancing your time between that and tattooing? Any other cool non-tattoo related stuff you're involved with?



JS: I am a musician, but currently I’m not playing in a band. I have tried balancing both in the past but felt like neither one was getting my full attention. I focus almost all my time on tattooing now. I am lucky to have many friends / clients who are in successful bands. Recently, I have been out on tour with a few bands while tattooing along the way. Last month I got to do guest vocals in the UK for huge sold-out venues. It was crazy.

There is some non-tattoo stuff that I am working on. I am collaborating with a couple rad clothing
companies. Later this year there will be a bunch of new shirts available. Also, sometimes a bunch of friends and fellow artists get together after work and have late night painting sessions. I don’t paint as much as I’d like to. I also need to find more time to wrench on my ’54 Chevy Bel Air. Hopefully I’ll be cruising around LA soon.

TS: Any last minute plugs?

JS: I don’t have anything to plug other than some websites.

JimSylvia.com

Twitter.com/JimSylviaTattoo

UnionElectricTattoo.com









JimSylvia.com

TattooSnob.com

Remember when H.R. hadn't lost his mind yet, Dischord's best releases weren't reissues, Cro-Mags didn’t hate each other and CBGB's wasn't fucking dead? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. I wasn't there, but if you were that must've been awesome. My generation has... more

Remember when H.R. hadn't lost his mind yet, Dischord's best releases weren't reissues, Cro-Mags didn’t hate each other and CBGB's wasn't fucking dead? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. I wasn't there, but if you were that must've been awesome. My generation has to settle for Gorilla Biscuits reunion shows, a documentary called American Hardcore, and Henry Rollins spoken word. Yeah, generation Y missed the boat, hardcore died in the '80s and things will never be the same again. Whatever. As long as we still hate the government, our parents and ourselves, and My War will never go out of print, hardcore is still fucking relevant.

Agree with me or not, but you’re reading my column and if I'm gonna be writing about anything, it might as well be something that's played a profound part of my life ever since my parents met at a B.G.K. show 25 years ago. Heavy riffs, stage dives, circle pits, all-ages shows, DIY labels, and a pissed off attitude is what I'm bringing to the SuicideGirls Newswire from now on. This is the first edition of What We Do Is Secret, and fuck you if you don’t like The Germs.

So now that Have Heart has kicked the bucket, 108 broke up again (or not) and Refused aren't reforming after all, what's left of the current underground hardcore scene? To make it a little bit easier weeding out the bullshit, here are 15 bands that I think are doing a pretty great job at playing what hardcore is circa 2010, be it dead or alive.

Alpha & Omega

If you've ever been to an Alpha & Omega show, it probably won't surprise you that the Los Angeles-based band has played with heavyweights such as Madball, H20 and Cro-Mags, despite having released just one demo and a 7". Drawing their influences from Leeway, Integrity and Crowbar, the four-piece has become one of the most promising new hardcore bands around over the past few years, and if The Devil's Bed is any indication of where this band his headed, expect a heavy as fuck LP coming out on 6131 Records later this year.



Backtrack

While many seem to miss the mark and end up sounding like a poor excuse for a Breakdown cover band, Backtrack plays New York hardcore the way it should be. After a successful first European tour and killing it at United Blood Fest this year, they are set to do full U.S. tour with Foundation, Harm's Way and Rotting Out next month. Their Deal With the Devil 7" came out not too long ago and I've had it on heavy rotation ever since picking it up in February. Get into it.



Black Breath

I didn't catch on to these dudes until earlier this year, but since then it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Black Breath is getting huge fast. The trash/metal/hardcore band from Seattle caught the attention of Southern Lord Records, who recently signed them and put out their first full-length. Embarking on a month-long tour with Converge and Coalesce in May, you'll definitely hear this name more often in the future. I'm dying to see them live but until that day I will have to bang my head to the recently released Heavy Breathing album. Seriously, don't sleep on this if you like the sound of Entombed meets Poison Idea.



Ceremony

It's been a little quiet (well, figuratively speaking) around Ceremony since the release of their ultra-violent 12" Still Nothing Moves You, but that will definitely change this year. With the highly-anticipated release of a third LP, Rhonert Park, raging through Asia alongside Bane, a full U.S. tour scheduled this Summer and playing the Unbroken reunion show in London this fall, Ceremony is louder and more aggressive than ever.



Cult Ritual

I’m not even sure how I heard about this band and whether they're ever putting out a last record or not, but either way their three spine-chilling, unnervingly distorted, fast as fuck 7"s shouldn't fade into obscurity. The fact that I can't seem to find out much more about Cult Ritual than their origins (Tampa, Florida) and that they're on Mark McCoy's (Charles Bronson, Das Oath) label Youth Attack only adds to their experimental enigma. On a side-note, those records (supposedly accompanied with human hair and teeth!) are sold the fuck out and probably won't ever be repressed so the MP3s are available to download for free on their blog. P.S. Front page graphic of Cult Ritual originally published on the cover of Maximum Rock'n'Roll #313.



Foundation

Watching them play one of the most impressive sets at The Great American Hardcore Fest last year, Atlanta's Foundation have since become one of my favorite new straight edge bands. Hang Your Head is heavy and straightforward, nothing more and nothing less than '90s-influenced hardcore at its best. They recently joined the Bridge Nine Records roster and are set to tour the U.S. with the aforementioned Backtrack this spring, so keep this band on your radar.



Iron Age

With a complete style and line-up overhaul, Iron Age is hardly the same band we were used to on Constant Struggle, but goddamn I like it. Growing out their hair and trading hardcore roots for metal to create a more complex, haunting and sometimes foreboding sound, this Austin, Texas five-piece doesn't need much else to hold their audience's attention. It's been out for a little while, but get your hands on a copy of The Sleeping Eye for one of the hardest records you'll hear this year.



Mother Of Mercy

Also just signed to Bridge Nine Records, Mother Of Mercy is young, loud, fast and pissed off; essentially everything I love about hardcore. Founded by members of Let Down (R.I.P.) in 2007, the Pennsylvania band's 2nd full-length will drop sometime later in 2010, and if III didn't make you want to pit in your room and break shit, this next LP should fix that.



Pressvre

It's a bummer that Pressvre (not to be confused with Pressure from Belgium) just announced to be calling it quits after 5 years, but you can still catch them at Rain Fest in Tacoma, WA before they officially split. Until the release of their final endeavor, a split cassette tape with friends Rotting Out, the L.A. hardcore band's split 7" with Colin Of Arabia is raw as fuck and worth taking for a spin.



Rise And Fall

Although Rise And Fall have been around for a minute, I still wanted to mention this band because they fucking shred and deserve credit for being the (in my opinion) most crucial European hardcore band around. Hailing from Ghent, Deathwish Inc. darlings Rise And Fall have toured extensively with the likes of Converge, Blacklisted and The Hope Conspiracy. Four years after the release of their first LP, the Belgians relentlessly delivered Our Circle Is Vicious to much critical acclaim.



Rotting Out

I have a weak spot for '80s thrashy hardcore, so why look any further than SoCal for it? L.A.'s Rotting Out have been making a name for themselves by touring the country incessantly over the past year (getting into trouble with Foundation and Backtrack next month, I’m sure) and putting out a solid new album on 6131 Records. I'm stoked to hear more from them in the future. Oh, and Suicidal Tendencies covers are always a plus!



Touché Amoré

Another L.A.-based and undeniably one of the most talked about bands in hardcore today, Touché Amoré has gained a substantial following since the release of their first full-length, ...To The Beat Of A Dead Horse. In the vein of bands like Modern Life Is War and American Nightmare, I've rarely heard so much honest misery on a single album. Europe has to wait a little longer to witness this with their own eyes, ears and hearts, but U.S. fans can catch them on tour with Strike Anywhere and Bane in June.



Trapped Under Ice

Rarely a new band emerges that can compete with household names in hardcore like Terror and Madball, but that doesn't mean shit when you're Trapped Under Ice and already have the whole world on its knees upon releasing your first 7". Never have I experienced such an overnight hype (albeit deserved) around a seemingly unknown band than with this Baltimore five-piece. So what's the big fucking deal? Get into the mosh pit and ask me again. Secrets Of The World is out now on Reaper Records.



Trap Them

Ranging from crust punk to death metal and back to hardcore, Trap Them have a way with perfecting their craft by effortlessly combining said genres. Raw vocals, thundering percussion and crushing riffs all blend together forming a signature sound that won't be ignored. After a couple of releases on Deathwish Inc., Trap Them has recorded Filth Rations, a one-sided etched 12" for Southern Lord Records, which will be available soon. Catch them at this year's Maryland Deathfest in May.



Trash Talk

In addition to fast as fuck 30-second songs and near-death experience stage diving, a Trash Talk show isn't complete without broken furniture, perpetual red eyes, suffering livers and bloody faces. If you haven't seen them yet you're really fucking up as the Bay Area's most loved/hated thrashers are constantly touring Europe, the U.S. and beyond. Having witnessed Trash Talk crush and destroy anything that comes in their way 30+ times, I am the least bit surprised that they've acquired such a steady cult following since they formed in 2005. Eyes & Nines will be released on the band's own label, Trash Talk Collective, on May 18 and they're on tour forever.



P.S. More free music! Deathwish/Malfunction and Six Feet Under Records have teamed up to create a digital sampler featuring tracks from Converge, Narrows, Integrity, Blacklisted, Doomriders, Bitter End, Lewd Acts, Killing The Dream, New Lows, Trap Them, Mother Of Mercy, United Nations, Ressurection, True Colors, Foundation, Ceremony, and a shitload of other bands you should probably know about. Download it.

Clio studies international music management in The Netherlands, used to work at Reflections Records, likes colored vinyl, and has toured with a bunch of bands. Feel free to hit her up with any recommendations you think she'd be into.

It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and the Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin' Groovies at the Roxy. Across the pond, the Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a "fucking rotter" while live on British TV. In a Kentucky... more

It was the summer of 1976 in Los Angeles and the Ramones were playing second bill to the Flamin' Groovies at the Roxy. Across the pond, the Sex Pistols were still months away from achieving everlasting infamy by calling their host a "fucking rotter" while live on British TV. In a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot off Third Street in L.A.’s Fairfax District, an 11-year-old Marc Canter caught his fellow classmate, Saul Hudson (aka, an 11-year-old Slash of Guns N’ Roses), suspiciously eyeballing Canter's mini-bike parked outside. “In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. I was one of the thieves, I know.” Slash laughs. “It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how [Marc and I] met and we’ve been friends ever since.”

By high school, Slash was into guitars and Marc was taking pictures of local rock bands. With a few candid photographs of his best friend, Marc Canter unknowingly began to document the rise of the greatest rock band of its time: Guns N’ Roses. Over twenty years in the making, Marc’s new book, Reckless Road: Guns N' Roses and the Making of Appetite for Destruction, is a collection of exclusive interviews, rare photographs and original memorabilia including show flyers, magazine articles, ticket stubs, set lists, and hand-scrawled song lyrics. From the band’s first gig at the Troubadour in 1985, to signing with Geffen Records, to being dubbed “The Most Dangerous Band in the World,” Marc Canter was there, up close and personal, camera and tape recorder in hand. The result is a comprehensive account of the band’s early days, as well as a portrait of Marc and Slash’s friendship, still strong to this day.

“My goal here,” Marc says, “is to let everybody that likes this band – or even if you don’t like the band – see the making of one of the greatest records ever made.”

SuicideGirls met up with both Slash and Marc Canter at legendary rock and roll hangout Canter’s Deli, in the heart of Hollywood, to chat about Reckless Road and the stories behind the photographs. Even more, we got them both in front of the camera for their first-ever, joint video exclusive.

Reckless Road is in stores and available online now.

Watch Part One and Part Two of the video interviews.


Erin Broadley: So, Reckless Road is a fascinating book.

Slash: It’s great. It’s probably the best rock and roll coffee table book I’ve ever seen.

EB: Slash, the story goes that in 1976 you and Marc became friends when you tried to steal his bike?

Slash: [Laughs] Was it 1976? I guess, yeah [laughs]. I didn’t actually steal it; I was checking it out. It was a mini-bike, and it was outside of Kentucky Fried Chicken on Third Street… he was inside and saw this kid suspiciously checking out his bike and decided to intervene before something happened.

EB: [Laughs] Little kids protect their bikes, man. It’s their livelihood. It’s all they’ve got.

Marc Canter: They call it a mini-bike but really it’s a motorbike. We went to Third Street School but I didn’t know his name; I just knew his face. So I had this motorbike and was parked at KFC and I’m in there, buying whatever, he was walking home, saw it and was thinking about stealing it. He looked inside to see who it might belong to or if anyone was looking and then he saw me and thought, “Oh, I know him from school.” So he went in and instead of stealing it, asked if he could ride it. We became friends from that point on and pretty much never looked back.

Slash: In those days there was a lot of bike stealing. I was one of the thieves, I know. It’s quite possible I was thinking about taking off with it because I used to be like that back then. Anyhow, that’s how we met and we’ve been friends ever since. After Marc and I hooked up in fifth grade, we were friends for a while though junior high school. Then somewhere in junior high school I took off and moved into deeper East Hollywood and I didn’t see him for a while. At some point in high school we reconnected and he’d turned into this mega rock fan, which I had too, but he was really serious. He had his cameras and shit and he would sneak them into concerts… his favorite band was Aerosmith. He used to buy all kind of photos. Aerosmith was one of the major bands that I was a fan of when I started playing guitar and they definitely influenced what direction I went. So we had that new thing in common. I had started playing guitar at that point, and he just started taking pictures of everything because that was his way, you know [laughs]. It’s funny because I look at the book now and all those pictures that he was taking all the time, as far as I was concerned he was just casually taking pictures of everything. I didn’t expect it to be something later on. I never would have imagined that him being around all the time just taking 35 mm pictures would amount to this documentation later.

EB: Right. There’s a part in the book where, Slash, you say that the first thing you did as soon as you could put three chords together was start a band. And Adam Greenberg said it was almost like going to a rock and roll school. What was the creative climate like in L.A. as teens, learning how to play music?

Slash: I was pretty much an outcast in school and as a musician I was an outcast… When I first picked guitar up it was during the summer time so I spent that summer learning how to play and I think by the next semester I started looking for musicians. At that time, Van Halen had come out so there were a lot of musicians in junior high. That’s where it all started. I met Ron Schneider and Adam Greenberg and that was probably the third throw-together band I had, but it was the first one that started playing keg parties and, you know, terrorizing people’s houses...

EB: Playing the senior citizens’ center.

Slash: Yeah, [laughs] all these bar mitzvahs. It was a cover band that could never find a singer. Which is, like, the story of my life. Still is, to this day.

EB: [Laughs]

Slash: It wasn’t a big, heavy-duty, rock and roll scene in high school. There were a few musicians I was friends with. I went to four high schools, so every one I went to had its little clique of Eddie Van Halen wannabes [laughs]. Marc was hanging out, keeping tabs on the whole thing. Marc was also the first guy, when Guns N’ Roses first started, before Guns N’ Roses was even a nightmare, Marc was probably the only person interested in what I was really doing, [laughs] for the most part.

EB: Duff said that Marc was a pillar of stability for the band. How so?

Slash: When Duff and I first met, we met at Canter’s Deli. I used to work there and Marc would always help me out. I always had a job but if I was in between jobs, I would work at Canter’s. He was financially stable and I wasn’t [laughs]… he was just a really good, loyal friend. I still, to this day, don’t have many loyal friends. So when Guns first started, he instantly took the job of marketing and doing all the promotion. We all did it but I was real fanatic about it, I never slept. [Laughs]

EBidn’t you get fired from the Fairfax newsstand for conducting band business on their hours?

Slash: [Laughs] Yeah, that’s where I used to sell tickets… to customers at work. People would come in and I’d sell Troubadour tickets.

MC: I used to feed the band. Not three meals a day, not every day, but when they were hungry they knew they could come to me and I could get them a pastrami sandwich or whatever was needed. And why not? They’re my friends. I would drive them places, I had a car, I had gas -- they didn’t. I’d buy them guitar strings, whatever they needed, little things… I was paying for some of the band magazine ads that were coming out. First we started with quarter page ads and they were like $288. It wasn’t a big deal. Then after two of those, we went to full page and it got to be a little bit more expensive. But, at that time, I knew that would work for the record company people, like, “What’s going on here? This band keeps selling out these Troubadour gigs and they’ve got full-page ads. It’s not just some flunky, fly by night band.”

Then they found someone to help them with the demo tape but that person gave out in the middle and didn’t put any more money in, so they needed a couple hundred bucks to get it out of hock. I did what I could. I didn’t do everything but I helped because they’d do the same for me if they were in my situation. I lived at home, I had a good job, I didn’t have any expenses and pretty much, if they did work, they had to support themselves. I always knew Slash would make it as a guitar player, even if he was just a guitar teacher, because there was such a talent there. His playing was very seductive; you’d feel goose bumps when he’d play because he just hit those certain notes.

EB: Slash, when you first hooked up with Axl, Marc wrote that you guys had an amazing chemistry and I think that this really comes through in a lot of these early photographs. What were those early days like when you and Axl first entered into each other’s lives?

Slash: When we first hooked up, it was pretty uneventful, the first time we met actually I answered an ad that Izzy and Axl had in the paper looking for a guitar player. I went down there to where they were staying, which were some little guest room off of a house above Sunset. It was real dark, it was one room, they had like a bed that took up 75 percent of it, a TV that took up another 10 percent, and there was like 15 percent walking space.

EB: [Laughs] Just a path.

Slash: [Laughs] Right. Axl was on the phone and Izzy was the one I did all the talking with. I’d already met Izzy because he had come into my music store looking for copies of this picture of Aerosmith that I drew for Marc. He showed up at my work one day… this little, scraggy Johnny Thunders comes walking in and he’s looking for Saul Hudson, right? That’s how we met and he played me a tape of his band later that night. It was really ratty, with a tiny voice in the background screaming at the top of its lungs. But it was in key so I was interested. He told me the name of the band was Hollywood Rose… so later on I answer this ad and it turns out to be Izzy and this guy Axl. The whole time I was there, Axl never got off the phone. Axl was in Mark Twain mode, Twain wreck, which was when he starts talking, ‘cause he won’t stop.

EB: [Laughs]

Slash: That was our first meeting. Nothing came of out of that. Nothing happened. Then I was another time when I was actually seeing my dad. I didn’t see my dad that often but one time we hung out and we went down to Harry’s Barbeque and I looked over and there was Axl and he was talking to this chick and, again, he was doing all the talking and she was just sitting there. That went on for the whole time I was there [laughs] so I didn’t approach him and that was that. At some point we all hooked up when Axl approached me about playing with Hollywood Rose, which I thought was a pretty good idea at the time. Axl picked me but never talked to Izzy about it so I came along one day not knowing that there was any of this drama going on. I walk into this rehearsal studio called the Fortress in Hollywood… this grungy little room and Izzy was there and, because Axl had made this decision without Izzy’s input, Izzy quit. So Steve Darrow and Steve Adler came in and we put a band together with the four of us. That was the beginning of me and Axl’s real relationship… it started with the Hollywood Rose band.

EB: So it was chemistry but was it a volatile chemistry?

Slash: Well, yeah, that’s what I’m getting at [laughs].

EB:Some people think volatile chemistry fuels creativity.

Slash: I don’t think volatility fuels anything. I don’t agree with people who think you need that controversy to make music. It’s not really conducive to writing songs. If you have chemistry, you don’t need all that other shit [laughs]. Anyhow, but it started off cool and I liked Axl… he came and stayed at my house but then the yin and yang of Axl’s personality started to present itself. One minute he was really, really cool and somebody that I liked a lot. You could spend almost two days with him like that. Then the smallest little thing would turn around and change his personality completely. I’m pretty even keeled; nothing really phases me. I’m probably like that to the extent that some people don’t understand how I can be so fuckin’ blasé about things [laughs]. So we had a real contrast going on, but the music was cool. When we had a good time, we had a great fucking time. But when it was bad, I couldn’t understand the origins of some of these issues and why they would be blown out of proportion to the extent that they were. To him, it meant everything. But to me, I could just never understand it.

So this band lasted for a little while. We did a bunch of gigs. Marc documented those gigs. They’re in the book. Finally, we had this one gig where Axl got into a fight with somebody in the front row at the Troubadour and at that point I’d already been through another thing with him jumping out of my car one night. It was just tedious. The good times were good but the tedious times were really trying. So at this particular gig, when he got into this fight with this guy, and the gig wasn’t going as well, I thought it was pointless. After that show I was like, “You know what? I don’t have time for this.” [Laughs] So I was in a couple bands during that period. I was very ambitious but, at the same time, there was a limit to what I would and wouldn’t do to get by in this business. I wouldn’t do a lot of conformist sell out kind of stuff.

When Duff came into town, we met at Canter’s. Steven, my girlfriend, Steven’s girlfriend, a bottle of vodka… Duff comes in and we went up to the men’s room and hung out up there and drank the bottle of vodka and formed a little unity. We wanted to start a band with the three of us but, once again, we couldn’t find a singer. That went on for like a month and finally that split up and Duff had, ironically enough, just moved into this cheap little apartment right across the street from Izzy’s apartment. So those guys met and the next thing you know, Duff ended up joining their band, which I think had become Guns N’ Roses at that point. They had Duff, Izzy, Axl, Tracii Guns and Rob Gardner who was the other drummer from L.A. Guns. I was working at Tower Video at the time and Axl and I sort of had a certain amount of animosity going on which was slowly but surely fading. Axl came into my work one day and goes, “Do you want to play with me and Izzy?” As much as I was really unsure about dealing with Axl again, I really liked Izzy and I liked Duff, obviously, so it seemed like maybe it’d be a cool idea. I went and jammed with Izzy one night and he had the song called “Don’t Cry” and we put the guitars together and that’s really what started it.

At that point Duff came in with this idea of doing a Pacific Coast tour and going up to Seattle. He put all the gigs together from his experiences with a punk rock band up there in the Pacific North West and so I said, “Sure, let’s do this.” Rob Gardner chickened out; he didn’t want to take this perilous, fucking road trip with no real exact future in it. So we called Steve Adler and he came down and we rehearsed one night and that was basically it. We set off on that tour and our car broke down, fuckin’ 100 miles out of L.A. so we ended up hitchhiking all the way to Seattle. That’s really what cemented the band. The chemistry just on a human level between the five of us… just as guys who stick to their guns with what it is they want to do. That trip really had a lot to do with it.

EB: There’s something special to these Guns N’ Roses photographs. Band photos today are so heavily retouched and photoshopped together. There’s something about how raw these photos are that really captures the band’s gritty nature. Like the Reckless Road cover…

MC: The cover is them, the day they came back from their “Hell Tour” in Seattle. They had a gig booked at the Troubadour on June 6, 1985… it was on a Thursday night, and there was something really special there. But it wasn’t enough to solidify the band. Then a day or two after that, they went on that Seattle tour. The car broke down, they ate onions in the field, they hitchhiked…

EB:That’s where the real camaraderie formed.

MC: They had each other’s backs after that. When they came back to Los Angeles they wanted to do a photo shoot to make flyers for the next gigs that they had. They booked a bunch of gigs and said, “Let’s go fuck up L.A. We can do it now. If we lived through this we can do anything.” So if you look at the look on their face, they’re a gang. This is a gang now.

EB: They had their road warrior experience and now they’re ready to take it to the streets.

MC: Yeah. If you fucked with one of them, the other one would jump on your back and kill you. It was like they were a gang. And they started writing songs; each gig they came up with a new song, pretty much. And it was a great song. Just boom, after boom... There were no what they’d call “dead songs”... No fillers or throw always; every song they wrote was perfect. In fact the leads for the songs, the first time they ever played them are the same leads that you hear on the record. It was pretty much self-produced in that way because it worked. There was something special there. But anyway, back to the photos, yeah, my friend Jack Lue started taking pictures before I did and he would sneak his camera into concerts. Jack always did that and what happened was, to be honest with you, Eddie Van Halen was going to play at the Roxy and Jack Lue couldn’t make that gig so he gave me his camera, showed me how to use it and said, “Take pictures.” So I took pictures and I had fun and when I got them back, I was freaked like, “Whoa, these are really cool.”

From that point on I started taking pictures at every concert we went to. That was in 1982. Right around that same time was when Slash was playing gigs everywhere. And now that I knew how to shoot, and I saw that it works, of course I was going to shoot him. I was already tape-recording his shows. Now I had a tape, and photos and the flyer. So I just kind of kept everything because I saw something that was special. If you don’t tape-record it then it’s just gone. After awhile we met Axl and then it was like, wait a minute, now there’s not only Axl, there’s Izzy, Steven and Duff… there’s like five Jedis working together. It wasn’t just Slash anymore. Now it was just like all of them together made a chemistry. Now, I was not only documenting Slash, but I was documenting...

EB: All these other big personalities as well.

MC: Right. And it just became so much fun. I used to get butterflies in my stomach before the gigs. I wasn’t going to be surprised; I knew what I was going to see. But it was just so exciting. So here I am taking pictures and I'm hearing “Rocket Queen” for the first time. It’s one thing when you do some covers and a couple of originals but all of a sudden you start writing these new ones that are just really, really, good songs. You’re taking pictures going, “What am I hearing?” Then you get home and you listen to the tape and you go to that song and you hear it two or three times and you’re like, “Wow, we have a Led Zeppelin here.” They could do no wrong. It all worked! The vocals, the melodies, the lead guitar, the drums – it was the first attempt and it didn’t even need tweaking, it was there. Every now and then you’d hear a song for the first time and Axl, the next time they’d play it, would change a couple lyrics, or some of the lyrics weren’t completed. The first time they played “My Michele” there were some verses simply missing. They went without vocals. But, other than that, pretty much, they knew what they wanted.

EB: In Reckless Road, Marc, you write, “My goal here is to let everybody that likes this band – or even if you don’t like the band – see the making of one of the greatest records ever made.”

MC: It’s interesting, I’ve met some people that when I told them that I did this book they take a look at it and they’re the least likely Guns N’ Roses fans just because they’re into different kinds of music like jazz or whatever, but they respect what’s there. They’re glad it’s there to be documented and to watch history in the making. It’s the making of one of the greatest records ever made. I’ve met a couple people that really, not that they hate the band, they just don’t like that kind of music at all. But they can appreciate that it’s been documented. Like at Canter’s, a lot of the employees got books and they have never even heard of Guns N’ Roses. Some of the older waitresses, they’re 65-years-old and how could they possibly know what this is? But because I'm involved in it, they’re interested in it. I have a book all of a sudden and they want to read it. So they take it home to read it and they’re sucked into it and can’t stop.

EB: The band is as seductive in this book as the band was on stage. The book also states, “Launching a successful rock band in the ‘80s required three ingredients: a dream, some talent, and die hard ambition.” Were those really the three most important things back then?

Slash: Well, because of the climate of what was going on in Hollywood at the time, which was really excessive, commercial glam-metal kind of deal, everybody was getting signed. Motley Crue had already gotten big and famous and Ratt was coming out and then there were all these fuckin’ offshoots of that, cruising up and down Sunset Boulevard. We were sort of like the ugly ducklings of that whole thing. We didn’t fit in with any of it. We were the black sheep and we enjoyed that; we loved the fact that we were the scary band out of the bunch. We hated the rest of them and we provided a kind of entertainment that was very seedy. If you asked us if we were extremely talented, [laughs] I don’t think we would have looked at it that way. Really, when it comes down to it, I’d say blind ambition, desire, and the integrity and the passion for the music was probably the most important thing. There was a lot of integrity in the band and there was a lot of really focused passion for what every individual did… everything about the songs was really driven from the heart.

Looking back, there was definitely something unique going on which turned out to be a lot bigger than what most of our peers were doing. We were a gang of five that was a force to contend with. We were a 24/7 experience. We lived with each other and were together all that time. Everything we went through, which was a lot, we did together and that’s what strengthened that bond. It was really important as to what the band sounded like… it was a collaborative effort, every single song. Then we became very successful at that time but we were this vagabond bunch of drunken gypsies that sort of stuck together. But we were still pretty naïve really in a lot of ways.

MC: You want to hear the funny part to that? Jason Porath actually wrote that part in the book. And, in the manuscript I have, the third thing was “Slash” [laughs]. He actually wrote the word “Slash” but he changed it on his own before the book came out because he though it was a little bit too much Slash serving. Plus, the rest of the band had plenty of talent so he changed the word to "talent". The truth is, Izzy would be the backbone of a lot of those songs but Slash tweaked those songs… if Slash weren’t there, who knows? Slash would put the funky punch into it. Like “My Michele,” he added those four little jerky parts to change the song. Plus, you already know what he could do in the studio with his leads. Even if he had nothing to do with writing the song -- like “November Rain,” that was Axl’s song -- Slash comes in and puts the leads in that just rip you to pieces. So, he wasn’t far off when he put “and Slash.” It’s a good ingredient to have in the mix [laughs]. Slash will always call me after a gig and I’ll always tell him what I thought of it, good or bad, and he always gets exactly the truth out of me. He’s always very modest about it. Whenever I say, “That was great, that was great,” he’s very modest about what his talent is. He never wants to reveal how good he really is. After doing the Use Your Illusion tour for two years and playing big stadiums, there’s a certain amount that goes to your head that puts you in a rock star mode and on a pedestal. But as far as the actual talent, they were always modest about it.

EB: Another part in Reckless Road states, “The eventual merging of the Appetite lineup of Guns N’ Roses can be more easily attributed to chaos theory than a straight forward chronology.”

MC: Yeah, that’s pretty much the way it went down. There was no loyalty. Like Vicky Hamilton says in the book, they were trying on band members like clothes. You hung around people that were into the same music you liked and you jammed together. You found a garage and you jammed in that garage and if it worked, great. If it didn’t work then you moved on. Eventually, these five musicians found each other and, on top of finding each other, they went on that little road trip to Seattle which made them a little bit closer. At the same time, they knew they were the best at what they did. And the music industry sucked; there was nothing going on. Motley Crue was really the only band left and that wasn’t enough to make a whole scene. There was really nothing going on and Guns N’ Roses just came by and changed everything, putting the f-word on the record… it was really ballsy [at the time] and a lot of it has to be credited to Tom Zutaut for allowing them to do that because Axl was at the point where he was going to change the lyrics. Tom said, “No, leave it alone.”

MTV had a lot to do with it. The band had sold like 200,000 records underground and it was kinda dying out and MTV wouldn’t play the video. David Geffen pulled a favor and called in an executive at MTV and they said, “No, we can’t do it because we don’t want to lose our commercials because they’re known as drug addicts and they look like they’re going to rape my daughter” … that kind of thing. They didn’t want bad press out of it. So, they played the video on a Sunday night at like six in the morning Eastern Time and the switchboard blew up. Then, that next week, they got put right into Top 10 rotation for “Welcome to the Jungle” and from that point on they started selling records, like 200,000 a week. So, they went a whole year before the record even went to number one. Appetite For Destruction wasn’t just one song; the whole record is good. That’s why it’s going to stand the test of time. And another reason why is because its so raw and natural. And another reason why is because they were living on the streets. It’s the fact that you’re getting the raw energy and it wasn’t tampered with. What they wrote was ready to go.

EB: On a personal note about your friendship, it says in the book that in 1985 Axl asked Marc to talk to you, Slash, about not getting drunk before a show. Was it unfair of him to put Marc in that kind of position as a mediator?

Slash: Yeah…

EB: Or was he just the only one you would listen to?

Slash: Well, no I think there’s been many times that Axl has reached out to different people like my mom or my dad or girlfriend or Marc or something like that. But nobody wants to try and tell me what to do so it is very uncomfortable.

EB: No one wants to be the middleman between you and Axl!

Slash: Yeah, it’s never worked. If somebody like Marc or my dad actually does approach me just to sort of follow through with carrying the message, it’s done very delicately [laughs]. It’s not really effective [laughs]. That’s funny though.

EB: What do you think has enabled you and Marc to stay friends after so many years of chaos?

Slash: Well, because the chaos never had anything to do with Marc so our relationship has always been intact. He never really had to deal with the out of control me… he never put himself in that place. He never was judgmental; he was real objective. That always made me feel like he never crossed that line with me and so I’ve always had a respect for him and I would never rub him the wrong way because of that mutual respect. I never did anything to take advantage of him or make him overly uncomfortable or expose him to the darker stuff that was going on behind the scenes. He was never forced to be around that. So we’ve always had that mutual thing for each other.

EB: That’s once in a lifetime, man.

Slash: Yeah. And to this day, if he calls me, he can ask me for anything. He called me this morning all freaking out trying to get all this stuff done. I said, “Marc, don’t worry about it.” [Laughs]

MC: The thing about me, any friends that I’ve made over the years, I still have. If they need something, I’m there. And if I need something, they’re there. I’m a good person to be friends with because I'm an easygoing guy. Slash has always kept in touch. The friendship has always been there.

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