Peter Steele
by Daniel Robert Epstein for SuicideGirls (http://suicidegirls.com/)

I didn’t realize that Peter Steele would be so damn funny. When I first called him for our interview, he answers the phone in that scratchy baritone of his “New York City Department of Corruption” I hung up the phone in disgust because I thought I had the wrong number. Luckily when I called back Steele and I got a good laugh out of it. But he is probably one of the funniest and most honest guys I’ve ever interviewed. Besides talking about Type O Negative’s new album Dead Again, we touched on the recent death of his beloved mother, the girls who come by his place at 4am and the upcoming tour with Celtic Frost.

Buy Dead Again

Daniel Robert Epstein: Hey Peter, how are you?

Peter Steele: Good man, where you calling from?

DRE: Astoria Queens.

PS: My god. That’s where aborted babies go, I think.

DRE: It feels like that sometimes.

PS: I think like around Queens Boulevard around Sam’s Ash over there, that’s where all the fucking aborted fetuses hang out.

DRE: Are you in Brooklyn or Manhattan?

PS: I’m in Brooklyn, the garden spot of humanity. Adam and Eve grew up here. I’ve got the Tree of Knowledge in my backyard. All it gives is crabapples with worms in them. Every time I go to Queens I get lost. What’s up with the road avenue street shit?

DRE: I hate that. I really don’t know my way around here at all.

PS: I used to meet girls in Brooklyn who were from Queens. I used to think “Is it really worth fucking this girl to wind up in the fucking Bronx?”

DRE: Luckily, I’m married so I don’t have to worry about who I’m going home with at night.

PS: Well the next time I go down the aisle, it’s going to be in a box, so I’m right there with you.

DRE: What are you up to today?

PS: Doing interviews. Free association.

DRE: You don’t really do many interviews.

PS: I hate being interviewed. It’s always the standard questions “When did you start playing bass?” Well, I’ve been working on one string every eight fucking years. Or “What’s your favorite color?” I’m like “Clear.”

DRE: That’s a good one

PS: “What’s your favorite band?” Rubber. C’mon man.

DRE: Yeah, most interviews aren’t too much fun.

PS: Ask me like off the cuff, idiotic, superficial crazy fucking questions. Then it becomes fun. Have you received the album and the lyrics?

DRE: Yeah, they sent me both.

PS: Okay, because a couple of the other interviews they didn’t get that and I became hostile. I was chewing on the top of water pipes because my teeth keep growing so I have to grind them down. I was really pissed off and my hemorrhoids were acting up so I had to do something to disassociate the pain from the mental anguish of the record company not doing their job. What a fucking surprise.

DRE: They were very adamant about getting me the lyrics and the album.

PS: See I wanted them to send out the first Bee Gees’ album and tell them it was the new Type O Negative. They were like, “What?” I was like, “Yeah, man, like Andy Gibb, the Gibbs, the brothers Gibb, the Bee Gees, that’s where I come from. Half of them are dead, and so are we.”

DRE: Are you a big Bee Gees fan?

PS: I like the early Bee Gees. I would really love to redo the entire Saturday Night Fever album and call it Saturday Night Seizure. They’re really fucking good songs. I want to make them real slow and heavy. Like one beat per century.

DRE: Was there an idea behind the new album that you’re trying to get across?

PS: The idea was to alleviate poverty.

DRE: [laughs] How’s that working out for you?

PS: I’m a hundredaire.

DRE: But I’m sure you’re doing ok, you guys mostly make your money off the concerts?

PS: Actually I like to let people in for free but charge them to get out. Readmission. I’ll have some mustard gas go off and say “Give me all your money, your cute girlfriends and you may leave.”

DRE: I bet you get some really cute girls at your shows.

PS: There are always cute girls at our shows. But I’m getting old and disgusting so it doesn’t matter.

DRE: Oh come on, you know you have girls obsessed with you.

PS: Sure, they find out where I live and they come to my house at 4 o’clock in the morning.

DRE: That’s not good.

PS: I swear to god, they come. Not all the time, like every once in a while. I’ll be watching Law & Order at 5 o’clock in the morning and the doorbell will ring. I’m like “What the fuck is it now? Is it another fucking cavity search by the cops?” It will be a girl at the door saying, “I drove all the way from Idaho…” and I’m like “Where the fuck are the potatoes?” I’m like, “What’s the fucking matter with you? I’m 250 pounds of low quality meat with the ability to irritate people and you drove all that way. You know what, here’s gas money.” I had to go to an ATM and give her $400 to get back to Idaho. All right, toots, good night, see ya. I’ll come home from going food shopping with bags of ground meat and toilet paper and tampons and TV dinners sticking out of the bags and there’s a naked girl sitting there on my fucking stoop. I’m like “Hey, how you doing?” [imitating girl] “Peter, I’ve been in love with you all my life.” I’m like, “What are you four years old? Really, it can’t be that long.”

One time I was on tour and this girl, wearing this Santa Claus outfit but she was mostly naked, rang the doorbell upstairs where my mother was living in fucking December. My mother comes to the door and this girl’s like, “Hi, is Peter there?” My mother said, “Well, no. But you come in, you’re going to catch pneumonia.” My mother brings this really fucking hot girl into the house. This girl was blue form being outside so fucking long. My mother’s giving her soup and having a conversation. I spoke to her on the phone and I was like, “Mom, what are you letting these fucking people into the house for?” “Oh, she was cold.” I was like, “Well yeah, but I don’t know where the fuck she came from.”

DRE: So it has just become too easy with these girls?

PS: It actually has played out. I pretty much got it out of my system. I’m actually looking for a wife. I go online for Russian brides. They come in a box like “Caution: Live Bride” with the holes in the fucking box. You give them a plate of food, some water, then they marry you and divorce you but they have citizenship.

DRE: You must have had long-time girlfriends at some point.

PS: Yeah, I had a girlfriend for actually ten years. The Decade of Death as I call it.

DRE: Was it your fault you broke up?

PS: It was mutual.

DRE: Are you tough to live with?

PS: Well, I like things my fucking way. I’ve been alone for the last seven years so the light is fucking off because I want it to be. But I really can’t fight with a girl who can bench press more than me. I would be like “Okay, I’ll sleep upstairs.”

DRE: A woman bigger than you would have to be pretty darn big.

PS: I’d say, “Okay bitch, you carry the groceries.”

DRE: At what point did you get it out of your system?

PS: To stop being a dick for a second, I’m just going to say that after the breakup with this girl, I found that I would want to be with women pretty much for the companionship more than the sex. It’s like “Oh, poor Pete, he just wants to be loved.” Yes, I want to be breastfed. This is the ramifications of modern science. In 1960, they figured out that we shouldn’t be breastfed. For 25,000 years they’re been sucking on tits and now you’re going to stop it when I was born? I’m thinking this must have something to do with me because I was born with a full set of shark teeth.

DRE: I know some people who are probably as well known as you and they say it’s tough to find someone because you never know if someone’s a liar or a freak.

PS: Listen you meet a girl on the fucking road and you think, what makes me any different from any other fucking rock and roll asshole with a pound of coke up his fucking face. If you fuck me, I’m sure you’ll fuck anybody. People think, “Oh, Pete’s sexist because he takes advantage of women.” No, we take advantage of each other. But I am sexist because I hate men. I don’t like competition. I want to be the only fucking man in this world. I want an army of my sons and then find a planet to attack.

DRE: Do you want kids?

PS: I’m not sure if my chromosomes are qualified. I really don’t think I should replicate. God forbid, if I had a daughter. When she was 13, I’d be like, “Oh my god, she’s going to find a guy just like me.” Holy shit, it comes like a boomerang.

DRE: I don’t know if you’ve ever watched The Osbournes but are you worried that your kids would end up like them?

PS: I’m just worried about the values of today. It’s like the media dictates values. MTV banned one of our videos because of two girls smoking. But I’ve never seen Slash [formerly of Guns N'Roses] without a cigarette in his fucking face. MTV says, “Oh, you should buy these sneakers for $300 so you can get stabbed to death under a train station” or so some fucking idiot can rip them off your feet. It’s all about the fucking money. They will sell anything and try to convince you that you need it. Like the new Hummer 4 with like the bicycle fucking tires on it. There are all these fucking kids with Mohawks and they look so cool with their rectums pierced. With the price of gas the way it is I have a unicycle.

DRE: Why is Rasputin on cover of Dead Again?

PS: Because he could be the best-looking Type O Negative band member, with his greasy hair and his piercing blue eyes. If he was groomed, he'd fit right in with us. He was a fucking womanizer, a drug addict, an alcoholic, and an Orthodox Christian with a big fucking dick. Also the Communists couldn't kill him. That sounds a lot like me. There's just no disputin' Rasputin.

DRE: Are there Communists after you?

PS: Everyone's after me. The Fascists, the Communists, fascism, botulism, they're all after me. The FBI, the KGB, the ASPCA.

DRE: I read that this new album may be you rediscovering your religious roots. Any truth to that?

PS: Yes, there is absolute truth to that and I’m not kidding. Quite a few profound things have happened during the last couple years. I lost my mother; I had a really big problem with cocaine and alcohol and I was in a psychiatric institution and Rikers Island. So it was pretty entertaining. They say there are no atheists in foxholes. My mother’s death made me realize my mortality. I thought, “Oh shit, maybe there is a God and I better start praying.”

DRE: Were you raised religious?

PS: My mother was Roman Catholic and my father was Orthodox Russian so I got it from both sides. It’s like everything is a sin. You pick up the wrong fork, it’s a sin.

DRE: You said your mom lived above you at one point?

PS: I have lived in the same house for the last 43 years and my mother lived upstairs. She passed away about a year and a half ago and it was horrifying to go upstairs everyday and watch her rot cell by fucking cell. It was agonizing. Also in 1995 on Valentine’s Day, my father passed away. I did not get any closure with him, which I’m still hung up on. I do have to say that there are a lot of questions I would love to ask him about this and that. But when it came to my mother knowing that she was going to die, I wanted to make sure that I could spend time with her and say everything I wanted to say.

DRE: So you got that done.

PS: Yeah, I feel that they are both in a better fucking place. Of course, I miss her to fucking death and I live in the same house so it’s a constant reminder. But that which does not destroy me, just makes me more irritable.

DRE: Since she was religious, what did she think about your music?

PS: Well, it was really strange. When I did that stupid Playgirl thing, my sisters came home and showed her the fucking spread. She was like, “That’s why I named him Peter.”

DRE: [laughs] She sounds great.

PS: She had a sense of humor about it. I’m just a kid from Brooklyn. We do all the things that go along with being a neighborhood guy. I love going food shopping. I go to what I call Psycho Pathmark because I go at like 4 o’clock in the morning when all of my people are there. Like the Dawn of the Dead, people will just wander in and walk around. We just look at each other and think “Yes, we are one.” But they don’t buy anything. I like to put my feet up on the shopping cart and go down the aisle as fast as I can and smash into things. But every time I’m buying toilet paper, that’s when fans come over to me. I’m like, “Yes, I shit too.” Sometimes I like to experiment with human nature because everybody has to look into everyone else’s cart. I’m like “What the fuck you looking at? You can’t have that, that’s mine.” But they have to look in your cart especially if you look like me, 6’8”, long black hair, fangs, green eyes. I’m going to buy 100 fucking Swanson TV dinners and vaginal pads just to see people’s reactions.
”You can go ahead of me in line” and “I’ll be waiting outside for you.”

DRE: So was recording this album different because you are different?

PS: All my songwriting comes from exaggerated life experiences because my life is actually really boring. I was talking about TV dinners, I really want to marry Mrs. Swanson because if she fucks like she cooks, I know what I’m going to get every night. It would be fucking great. Do you want to hear about what I had for fucking cooking dinner or dusting fucking bookshelves and all this other stuff? Nah, so I have to exaggerate to make a fucking point. I have been with some women who I have unfortunately chosen to love. But I don’t hate women; I don’t hate men; I hate the entire human fucking race. I hate myself most because I’m part of it. I’m the worst part of it. I know I’m a fucking piece of shit I know I’m just a pile of protoplasm. My function in life is to turn food into shit.

DRE: I saw you guys will be touring with Celtic Frost. You must have been a huge fan of theirs.

PS: Oh my God, that’s almost like a dream come true.

DRE: How did it happen?

PS: I really don’t know how that happened because I’m paying a lot of people too much money to make these decisions. It just came to be. I feel bad that they are opening for us. I really think we should open for them. I think this tour is going to be way too fun and I think that there’s going to be a suicide, an overdose, or a murder. I just hope it’s not me.

DRE: Did you know any of the guys from Celtic before?

PS: No. I saw them live in New York a couple of months ago and they sounded fucking great. But I never really met them. I’m sure we’ll be like drunken bosom buddies within five fucking minutes. We’ll be fucking with each other, no doubt.

I cancelled this show one time because I threw back my back out because I slipped on fucking cat vomit at my house. When we were on tour with Cradle of Filth and their singer [Dani Filth] says to the audience, “Type O cancelled tonight because Peter is the only guy who could suck his dick and throw his fucking back out.” I’m like, “Okay, you want to start this?” So when I came back, I put a big piece of fucking gum on stage and I stepped in it and was like, “Oh shit, I stepped on Dani.”

DRE: I saw on your IMDB page that you did some work on the show Oz, what did you do exactly?

PS: I have a friend, named Douglas Crosby, who was the stunt coordinator for that show. He was like “You can say anything you fucking want and you can get your fucking SAG card.” So I said “Okay” and surprisingly I played a white supremacist, what a surprise, so I just had to rough some guy up and I said “Merry Christmas, motherfucker.” But we had to do the scene like ten times in a row and I’m not a very good actor so when I tackled him, I was hurting him each fucking time. So he’s like “Wow, man, that fucking hurts” and I said, “I’m sorry.”

DRE: Were you a fan of the show?

PS: I have not seen the entire show. I haven’t even seen my part in it.

DRE: [laughs] It’s a good show if you ever need DVDs to rent.

PS: I’ve heard it is really good blah, blah, blah. But my friend offered me this opportunity and I’m like “Okay, $700 an hour to make an asshole out of myself” normally I make an asshole out of myself for free.

DRE: I’m sure you know what SuicideGirls is.

PS: I have heard of these women but I don’t know exactly what it is. I’m afraid to go the computer because every time I look at my schedule, I get fucking horrified as to what my future will be like with touring and what I have to do. I like the title SuicideGirls. If you’re going to kill yourself, you might as well take someone you hate with you. It’s like when you’re driving drunk, run over someone you hate.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/interviews/Peter+Steele/