Episode 685 - Scott Ian
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:All right, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck stirs?
Marc:How are you?
Marc:It's me, Mark Marin.
Marc:This is WTF, my podcast.
Marc:My guest is Scott Ian of Anthrax today.
Marc:Anthrax new record for all kings is available now.
Marc:Scott's book.
Marc:I'm the man.
Marc:The story of that guy from Anthrax recently came out in paperback.
Marc:Great guy.
Marc:You know, and I admittedly am not a guy that knows a lot about metal, but God, I learned and I love this guy.
Marc:I love Scott Ian.
Marc:I met him.
Marc:Well, I'll talk about this when I'm bringing him up.
Marc:Bringing him up.
Marc:Where am I?
Marc:The comedy club?
Marc:Holy shit.
Marc:I'm taping a little later than usual tonight on Sunday night because I watched the Oscars.
Marc:Because as some of you know, as people who have been listening to this show perhaps for years, I do enjoy to suspend any knowledge I have of show business and the personalities involved with show business and the actual business of show business and a lot of other things.
Marc:I want to believe in the magic of movie stars.
Marc:And I do, I try to, I try to, but I just, something is fading.
Marc:I never thought I'd want less transparency when it comes to the truth of a particular business.
Marc:But in a business that manufactures fantasies and powerful illusions that reveal important truths and elevate the human spirit and heart, I want to know less about it.
Marc:I don't really want to hear all the jokes about the millions of dollars people make.
Marc:And I wouldn't have minded a couple more dance numbers.
Marc:And I do like to not know a lot about my movie stars.
Marc:I have this reverence for old Hollywood.
Marc:Even though those people were probably just as rich and just as horrible as some of the people that exist there now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Somehow or another, I just feel like I know too much now.
Marc:I feel like I can't be charmed anymore until I actually get a nice laugh out of my friend Louie or I get a nice laugh out of my recent guest, Sacha Baron Cohen and Chris Rock and Tina Fey and Gosling and Crow were good.
Marc:I never thought I'd miss song and dance numbers, but it's interesting the experience you have.
Marc:There was something.
Marc:Let me try to get around to this.
Marc:So I was at the Comedy Store Saturday night.
Marc:I'll just roll you through it.
Marc:And Chris Rock had been running his set there for about a week or so.
Marc:I'd run into him a couple of times.
Marc:I'd watch bits and pieces of it.
Marc:But I usually just go in, do my work, and get out.
Marc:Now, on Saturday night, this was an exciting night.
Marc:Louis was in town Saturday night.
Marc:He was doing two shows, running a new material at the Comedy Store in the main room.
Marc:He does that on the...
Marc:He'll just announce a couple of days before and sell out the main room for a couple of shows and do what he's going to do.
Marc:I had a 1030 spot in the original room down the hall from the main room.
Marc:I got there about 930 with Sarah, Sarah Kane, the painter, the girl.
Marc:And yeah, we just eaten dinner.
Marc:I went in and it was between shows for Louie.
Marc:So I went and said hi.
Marc:Sarah and I went backstage and he was just there lying there on his back alone thinking and
Marc:We chit chatted for a while and then Sarah and I left and then I was going to go down the hall to do my spot.
Marc:And then the manager, Adam, ran up to me and said, Louie wants to talk to you.
Marc:So I went back and he said, well, Chris was coming down to run his stuff for the Oscars, but it doesn't seem like he's coming.
Marc:So do you want to do it?
Marc:Do you want to do like 1520 in front of me and bring me up?
Marc:And it's weird because I, you know, I don't I don't usually open for people, but it's my friend Louie.
Marc:It's my home club.
Marc:I've been feeling good in that room.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, of course, that'd be a blast.
Marc:And it was a packed house.
Marc:And what ultimately happened was Chris Rock did come and Louie.
Marc:And I said, look, you know, Chris got to do this work.
Marc:Let him do the work.
Marc:And, you know, I don't need to go on.
Marc:You know, it's nice of you to ask me.
Marc:But he's like, no, both of you go on.
Marc:Both of you do 10.
Marc:So I went on and I brought Chris on and then Chris brought Louie on.
Marc:It was a hell of a night at the comedy store, which is a hell of a club.
Marc:I can't say this enough.
Marc:That place is the last real shit in this town.
Marc:It's the last real place to see comedy in Los Angeles.
Marc:It's you can feel the history.
Marc:You can feel the place is electric when it's electric.
Marc:I cannot.
Marc:Tell you enough and to tell, you know, I just go, go take it in.
Marc:It's sort of mind blowing, man.
Marc:It's you can feel all of it going all the way back to the 40s.
Marc:So, you know, I watched Chris do this stuff and it was killing.
Marc:It was great getting applause breaks and he presented it.
Marc:as um you know this is the stuff i'm doing tomorrow and he'd been doing all week and it is a testament to i don't know what but to people's decency or perhaps their excitement about being part of the process that you know no one leaked the jokes and you know they still had some weight to them so after watching him do that and knowing that they were both going to be at the oscars and i was going to be on my couch it was exciting to watch for me and to see how those jokes did and to see the process you know
Marc:Chris had a few writers with him.
Marc:Louie was helping him out a little bit, and he was trying to make this thing really resonate and to really ride the line that Chris Rock can ride when he's on the mark.
Marc:And it was interesting, too, that there was this balance to be made between a celebration of talent and the industry and making movies, making pictures on all levels, and this sort of stark reality of a certain type of...
Marc:You know, prejudice and even if it's just through negligence, whatever, wherever it comes from, it obviously exists.
Marc:And Chris had to ride that line.
Marc:And I think he did it.
Marc:He did it beautifully.
Marc:But then it becomes here was the interesting thing to me.
Marc:Is that it was the theme of the night, you know, that, you know, that it had a lot to do with Chris.
Marc:That, you know, this was going to be the theme of the night.
Marc:The lack of diversity, the lack of black nominations, the lack of black actors, you know, roles being available in Hollywood.
Marc:And it's been around for a long time.
Marc:And Chris drew attention to that.
Marc:But there is this moment where.
Marc:You know, you think like, well, you know, are they are they are they are they hitting it too much?
Marc:You know, is this bit is this theme?
Marc:Are they are they hitting it over the head too much?
Marc:You know, there's this here's another bit about that.
Marc:And, you know, there is that instinct to sort of feel that I imagine some people will say that.
Marc:But there was an interesting thing I learned, you know, from doing a week with Paul Mooney in Sacramento.
Marc:You know, I was middling for Paul Mooney in Sacramento.
Marc:I got it has to be 15 years ago, maybe a little less than that.
Marc:And he would do two hours, two and a half hours.
Marc:And I don't know if you know the amazing Paul Mooney, but Paul Mooney is all about, you know, telling white people how racist they are and celebrating it.
Marc:So there was an interesting thing that I learned about that because no one's going to argue that racism exists institutionally and also, you know, socially.
Marc:And that, you know, certainly there's been progress, but, you know, clearly from the news and from reality and from this sole lack of conversation about class in this country, you know, that there's no denying that.
Marc:So when
Marc:When you watch the Oscars and you're like, oh, really?
Marc:They're doing another bit on this, huh?
Marc:Aren't they hitting it too hard?
Marc:Aren't they overdoing it?
Marc:You know, this bit.
Marc:We get it.
Marc:There's that notion of we get it.
Marc:Okay, okay, yeah.
Marc:But do you get it?
Marc:Here's the thing I learned with Mooney is that
Marc:you know how he would sit up there i didn't understand it at first like he would do two and a half hours these were primarily white audiences and i just don't know why he stayed up there i don't know why he stayed up there you know uh and then you know you start to realize it now you know i talked to him a little bit about it is that if you think you're not racist
Marc:you know and you think you're progressive and you think you're you know or you don't uh you just you don't have that in you sit in an audience and watch a black man call you out on it you know for two and a half hours and he's gonna find it in you he's gonna find it in you so there is this thing well you know we get it you know and that's just you know it's like all right we get it and that's just shy of when's this black guy gonna shut the fuck up about this
Marc:So I don't think that there was too much, and I think that it was important, and it did occupy a tremendous amount of the proceedings.
Marc:The venue had become politicized, and it had to be addressed, and it was addressed.
Marc:But again, I think there might have been a balance to be made with some fun dance numbers.
Marc:I don't think necessarily Chris is the host to be involved in that, but they could have done a little more celebrating of show business.
Marc:you know, in the old timey way for this getting old guy, for my tastes.
Marc:You dig?
Marc:All right.
Marc:Oh, Spotlight.
Marc:I called that.
Marc:If you ask my producer, Brendan McDonald, I called it.
Marc:I said, that's the one to win.
Marc:And because, you know, it is it's an amazing movie and it's about a horrendous thing.
Marc:It's a very graphic and engaged and well-researched and compelling description of what journalism used to look like.
Marc:It's an important fucking movie.
Marc:for the fact that what passes as journalism now is ill-referenced, spontaneous, irresponsible garbage mostly, mostly clickbait, mostly unconfirmed, unsubstantiated.
Marc:So when you see what it looks like to take the time necessary to construct a narrative that will reveal a truth,
Marc:That will speak that truth to power and and and and at least shake it at its foundation, if not topple it.
Marc:It's an amazing thing to watch.
Marc:And I have not seen anything like that since all the president's men.
Marc:And quickly, I'd like to say that my friend friend of the show, Douglas Rushkoff, has a new book out.
Marc:If you have a HAL Premium subscription, you can go listen to him on episode 404 of this show where he talks about the book Present Shock.
Marc:His new book is called Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity.
Marc:That comes out tomorrow, March 1st.
Marc:I like Douglas Rushkoff.
Marc:He's an exciting thinker and he's an exciting writer.
Marc:So I wanted to throw him a little love.
Marc:But Scott Ian.
Marc:Now, here's the thing about Scott is that, you know, I've been you know, he's been around the comedy scene for a long time.
Marc:He's friends with Brendan Small, with Posehn, with A.G.
Marc:You know, like he's around.
Marc:I see him at these shows.
Marc:We do the music shows and always liked him.
Marc:Always a nice guy.
Marc:And people, you know, I always said, like, well, come on.
Marc:But like, I'm always nervous because a lot of times I have musicians on.
Marc:I'm not a metal guy, really.
Marc:I mean, I just got into Black Sabbath five fucking years ago.
Marc:My ex-wife Mishnah was a huge metalhead, and I just was not on board because I didn't grow up with it.
Marc:But now over time, as a man in his 40s and 50s, I'm getting into metal finally.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:And I was just nervous to have Scott on because I didn't listen to a lot of Anthrax, but I certainly did before he came on.
Marc:I got to say, what a great fucking band.
Marc:And I had no idea how important they were in metal until I started listening and I started doing a little research and I read a little of Scott's book.
Marc:And now this guy, he was just this nice guy with a funny beard who was hanging around.
Marc:You know, I realized that he's a very important fucking figure in the history of modern music and in the fucking definition of what metal is for in its current state.
Marc:But what I found is that, you know, I was talking to another nice Jewish kid and
Marc:who chose to live a creative life and uh you know we had a lot in common and some not in common but he's he's a sweetheart of a guy straight shooter decent dude and uh and the guitar player for anthrax so this is my conversation with uh with scotty in
Marc:Scott, I've seen you around for a long time.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:You've been planning on doing this for a while.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And you're probably at, there were points where you were probably like, why is Marin blowing me off?
Guest:No, I never thought you were blowing me off.
Guest:I know how busy you are.
Guest:I follow you on social media.
Guest:So I always see who's going to be on.
Guest:And I'm like, all right, that guy's bigger than me.
Marc:Well, here's the thing.
Marc:I'll be honest with you.
Marc:Because I feel like I owe it to you to be honest with you.
Marc:is that as much as I want to be a full-on metal guy, I missed it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I missed, like, when you guys were huge, I think I had to be about maybe 10 years young.
Marc:We're the same age.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So I have to imagine when Anthrax got huge, it was primarily teenage dudes, right?
Guest:Yeah, it was people our age and younger, obviously.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I just somehow, like, I missed it, so I feel insecure.
Marc:Like, you know, I like you.
Marc:I've known you.
Marc:The book is great.
Marc:You wrote a real book.
Marc:You know, I went and got all the anthrax records.
Marc:Cool.
Marc:You know, I did my homework.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:But not unlike when I had, who was it, Maynard in here.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:I'm a little old to start getting into Tool.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know?
Marc:But what I want you to do as we move through it, if you could, I need you to walk me through not only anthrax, but, you know, what is the basic...
Marc:I like all the sources of metal, but you guys sort of invented thrash metal, right?
Marc:One of the bands that they give credit to, yes.
Guest:So what are the other ones?
Guest:Metallica, Slayer, and Megadeth.
Guest:Exodus should be in there too.
Guest:Exodus?
Guest:Yeah, they're also from the Bay Area.
Marc:What was the shift?
Marc:Was thrash metal the first shift out of Black Sabbath into a new thing?
Guest:Well, no, because after Sabbath, you had Priest, and then you had Iron Maiden and Motorhead.
Guest:Motorhead, right.
Guest:Yeah, and so for us, we liked all that stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I would say our generation, certainly for me in New York and the other members of Anthrax, for us, Maiden and Motorhead were the two...
Guest:Those were the two that I think we felt the most akin to.
Guest:Because, you know, Sabbath, that was, I loved Sabbath since I was a kid, but they were even before my time and since.
Guest:Like Zeppelin.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sabbath started putting out records in 1970 or something.
Guest:I wasn't buying Sabbath records when I was six.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it came later.
Guest:I went back and got, you know, I think my first Sabbath record might have been like Never Say Die, and then I went back and got all the catalog.
Guest:But for us, for me, Maiden and Motorhead, they were like, that was my thing.
Guest:I felt like they were mine.
Guest:Like the older kids, they had Zeppelin and Sabbath.
Guest:We had Priest and Maiden and Motorhead.
Marc:But like when you were a kid, like when you started getting into that stuff, what, at 13 or 14?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, right around there, like seventh grade, whatever that is.
Marc:They were actually, you know, they were new and it was a small audience, wasn't it?
Marc:I mean, at that time, like it was sort of like punk rock or like right alongside of it in a way, or maybe that was a little later.
Marc:But it seems to me that Sabbath and Zeppelin and all those fucking bands...
Marc:They were huge.
Marc:But Iron Maiden and Motorhead, you had to go find those records.
Guest:It was 1980.
Guest:1980 really was the year, because in that year, the first Maiden record came out, and that was the year Motorhead put out Ace of Spades.
Guest:And I bought both those records that year, knowing nothing about the bands, just because I would go through the racks of the store near my house.
Guest:and the album covers looked cool, so I would buy them.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And usually the cool album cover meant the band was great at the time.
Guest:And, you know, in 1980, Sabbath, they put out Heaven and Hell, so they put out their first record with Dio, which was amazing.
Guest:Ozzy was already out.
Guest:Zeppelin was done, I guess, for all intents and purposes.
Guest:Pretty much.
Marc:I don't know, wended in through the outdoor.
Guest:Yeah, right around then.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And they were sort of neutered by that point in a way.
Guest:Yeah, so...
Guest:For us, Maiden and Motorhead, oh, and they were small.
Guest:I mean, Maiden supported Priest their first time in New York, opened for Priest at the Palladium.
Guest:But we all knew who they were.
Guest:We were all happy to see both bands.
Guest:And I saw Motorhead open for Ozzy my first time in New York as well.
Marc:Ozzy solo for a solo tour?
Guest:Yeah, on Blizzard of Oz.
Marc:And we just watched Lemmy.
Guest:You know, he says it best every time he would start a show.
Guest:We're Motorhead and we play rock and roll.
Guest:And that was his life.
Guest:He lived it and breathed it for 70 years or however many years he was in Motorhead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was the epitome.
Guest:I look at him and Ozzy as the two biggest icons in the world of, let's say, Lemmy always said, we're a rock and roll band.
Guest:All us metalheads and all the punk rockers and the hardcore kids and hard rock people, it was the one band everyone agreed on.
Guest:We'd argue all day long about everything else, but Motorhead was the one band everyone liked.
Marc:And you used to hang out with them a lot?
Guest:yeah yeah i met him in 85 in london as a kid going there to do interviews for my second album and and uh interviews what do you mean well i go over to do promo for oh right right right so you're on press tour right yeah and uh and you know and then my band started to happen and we would cross paths quite a bit and motorhead were kind enough to take us on tour many times oh yeah yeah so um yeah we get to know each other yeah sure
Marc:Now when, uh, so you're going to go speak tomorrow, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What is that going to be a, uh, it's going to be a pretty, uh, interesting, uh, attended funeral.
Guest:I think so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think it should be pretty heavy.
Guest:I mean, you know what?
Guest:I was really bummed the night I found, I don't know if I'm divulging too much information here, but, um, I was actually, we have the same management we have for a while.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:Out of the blue, I get an email from my manager, Todd Singerman, and he's been with Lemmy probably 30 years or something like that.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he said, I wanted you guys to hear it first before it goes public tomorrow, but Lemmy's got terminal cancer.
Guest:He's got two to six months.
Guest:We were in Woodstock, Pearl and I, and our son on vacation over the holidays, and I get this email, and my heart just sinks, and I...
Guest:Pearl was just coming out of the shower.
Guest:I was like, oh, my God.
Guest:I couldn't even read it.
Guest:I just showed her my phone.
Guest:She started crying.
Guest:I was just super bummed out.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:I write him back.
Guest:It's kind of this email.
Guest:It's back and forth, back and forth for about 15 minutes.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:Blah, blah, blah.
Guest:He's filling me in on all these details.
Guest:And, uh, and I just find myself getting more and more aggravated by the whole thing.
Guest:And I wrote him back and I said, you know what?
Guest:Fuck this.
Guest:If anyone could defy this, if anyone can defeat this bullshit, it would be him.
Guest:I mean, look at the life he's, he's lived, you know, there's no way he's only got six months.
Guest:And then I wrote the bottom of the email.
Guest:I said, long live, let me fuck cancer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:30 seconds later, the reply is they just called me.
Guest:He passed two minutes ago.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:I dropped my phone.
Guest:I was in shock.
Marc:Well, by the time they found it, wasn't it like way?
Marc:I mean, my impression was that he was so used to feeling shitty that I don't think he even knew he had cancer.
Marc:I mean, it seemed like it was pretty far along, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From what I was told, they didn't know he was terminal until just a couple of days before what I'm talking to you about, which was only like a week ago.
Guest:Well, maybe they told him he had cancer.
Guest:He was like, I'm not going to fucking deal with this shit.
Guest:Yeah, you know, look, I didn't get to see him or talk to him from... I could only surmise that he made the decision to truly go out on top because they had just finished a European run that were some of the biggest headline gigs they've played in the history of their band.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Lemmy certainly wasn't the kind of guy that wanted to waste away in a bed for two to six months.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:That's not the way he would ever... I can't tell you how many times he would say to me over the years, I'm going to die on stage, Scott.
Guest:And I'm like...
Guest:i believe you you know he almost did yeah he almost did a couple times from in this last tour i mean i know this sounds crazy and morbid and everything but truly if he would have dropped dead like playing ace of spades uh at their last show in germany then what could have been better than that would have been great yeah it would have been that truly would have been like all right end of story so let's go back uh scott let's go back to when you were just uh you know a jewish kid
Guest:I kind of still am that.
Guest:We can't get rid of it.
Guest:I'm still talking about Lemmy the same way I did when I was 15.
Marc:It's so funny, man.
Marc:Well, there's part of a... I don't know.
Marc:I guess that's just...
Marc:Respect.
Marc:I feel the same way about people.
Marc:When I interviewed Keith Richards, I almost shit myself.
Marc:I can imagine.
Marc:It was fucking nuts.
Marc:But you've been able, because I never followed through the music dream, you've been able to play with almost all of your fucking heroes at some point or another.
Marc:Who haven't you?
Marc:ACDC.
Marc:They're my biggest ones.
Marc:Tell me he's not the best fucking guitar player in the world.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:Both of them.
Guest:They're my favorite band ever.
Guest:Most influential on me as a guitar player.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Malcolm's rhythm playing, just his pocket, his feel.
Guest:Somehow I do my best to just transpose that into what I do in Anthrax.
Guest:I know we don't sound anything alike, but...
Guest:It's the feeling.
Guest:It's where he's putting the chords and the way his right hand is moving and his economical playing.
Guest:That's kind of how I always look at it.
Guest:It's very economical.
Marc:I don't know how it is that they can be so fucking simple, yet no one can fucking do what they do.
Guest:That's the thing.
Marc:It's a fucking magic trick.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Guest:It's a magic trick because it's the most difficult thing.
Marc:To really get it right, right?
Guest:It's easier to cover Rush than it is to cover ACDC.
Guest:And we've done both, and that's why I know.
Guest:we've done both and acdc is much harder what is it just the groove or like well he's sort of a uh he's a tricky guitar player because he's all licks and they're you know they got nice space in them yeah it's he can't cheat it's all of it it's i think it truly is how simple it truly is and you'll i'll be playing like covering their stuff and i'll be thinking no there's got to be more he's right
Guest:You're playing the chords more, but then you re-listen and you're like, no, he's not.
Guest:He's literally just hitting it one time or something.
Marc:Which covers do you usually do?
Guest:Well, we've recorded.
Guest:We've recorded TNT.
Guest:We've recorded a whole lot of Rosie.
Guest:I feel like I'm missing one.
Guest:I've done so many of them.
Guest:In Anthrax with friends.
Guest:Let There Be Rock?
Guest:Yeah, a million times.
Guest:Down Payment Blues.
Guest:Oh, Down Payment Blues is the best.
Marc:So many.
Marc:We used to use that as a theme song.
Guest:That's my favorite ACDC song.
Guest:Mine, too.
Guest:That's so fucked up.
Guest:That's so weird.
Marc:Because that's not one that everybody has.
Guest:Yeah, it's a deep track, but it's something about that one.
Guest:I love the way it starts.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The opening chords, and then the second guitar comes in.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:His lyrics to that song, too, are just, you know, he's just telling the story.
Guest:And it's, I don't know.
Guest:It's just, for me, it epitomizes that band for some reason.
Marc:So where'd you grow up as a Jewish kid?
Marc:Bayside, Queens.
Marc:Wow, Bayside.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like you were bar mitzvah and everything?
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Only because my grandfather was orthodox, and it was really important to him.
Guest:My parents in the 70s, we had a Christmas tree.
Guest:We had one or two.
Guest:You didn't go to Hebrew school?
Guest:No.
Guest:My mom asked me.
Guest:My parents divorced.
Guest:When was that?
Guest:75, so I was 11.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:We lived in Queens, moved out to my parents bought a house on Long Island for three years.
Guest:That turned into a complete nightmare.
Guest:And parents divorced.
Guest:And then me and my brother moved back to Queens a few blocks from where we had lived before in Bayside.
Guest:With your mother?
Guest:Yeah, with my mom and right into seventh grade.
Guest:So it was like prime time.
Guest:Perfect.
Guest:1975, I was just going to turn 12.
Guest:Were you pissed?
Guest:I was back in the city.
Guest:No, I wasn't pissed.
Guest:I couldn't have been happier, actually.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Because they were miserable together?
Guest:Well, they were screaming at each other.
Guest:Screaming at each other and throwing mine and my brother's G.I.
Guest:Joe toys at each other.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Or my mom would throw the G.I.
Guest:Joe toys at the wall.
Guest:My dad wasn't a thrower.
Marc:Your mom was the passionate one?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I actually couldn't have been happier.
Guest:I was back in Queens where all my friends were, who I went to first, second, and third grade with.
Guest:Now I'm back, and I'm starting junior high, and first day to school, some kid hands me a joint.
Guest:I'm like, wow, things are different in the city than Long Island.
Yeah.
Marc:What town in Long Island were you in?
Marc:We were like in Seaford.
Marc:I don't even know where the fuck that is.
Guest:It's like by Wantaw, same area.
Guest:So you're out there.
Guest:It was, yeah.
Marc:It's so funny that the picture of you and your dad when you were born, I had the same fucking picture with my dad, the same Jewish profile, the same confused look, holding the kid the same fucking way.
Marc:Like, what am I going to do with this thing?
Marc:What did your dad do?
Guest:Jewelry business.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, in the jewelry business.
Guest:In the city or out there?
Guest:In the city, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, in the city.
Marc:So you're 12 years old, you're smoking weed, before your bar mitzvah.
Marc:Did you see Serious Man?
Marc:Did you see that movie, the Coen Brothers movie?
Guest:No, you know, I haven't seen that.
Guest:You gotta watch it, dude.
Guest:Yeah, I have to see that.
Marc:Kid gets high in the bathroom before he goes to bar mitzvah.
Guest:Well, I didn't do that.
Guest:It's hilarious.
Guest:I got pretty drunk that night, though.
Guest:We had a party in our apartment, my mom's apartment, after...
Marc:Oh, yeah, the bar mitzvah party.
Marc:All the kids come.
Guest:Yeah, all the kids came.
Guest:I never went to Hebrew school.
Guest:My parents gave me the choice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Do you want to go to Hebrew school?
Guest:I was like, hell no.
Guest:Like all my friends who went to Hebrew school were miserable in Hebrew school.
Guest:And I'd go to these bar mitzvahs and they'd be singing for three hours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is insane.
Guest:My mother, do you want to go?
Guest:I was like, nope, I'm going to stay home and play guitar and ride my skateboard.
Guest:Like, that's what I'm going to do.
Guest:So when I did it, it was transliterated for me.
Guest:It took about four minutes.
Guest:It was literally, you know, couldn't have been easier.
Guest:Well, my grandfather was happy.
Guest:That's all I meant.
Marc:And he was up there with you for a minute?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I remember it was some weird place in Forest Hills.
Guest:They had a hard time finding a place that would bar mitzvah me because I really didn't know it.
Guest:But also, I don't know, it had something to do with the docks or not.
Guest:And all the ladies had to sit in the back.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:One of those places?
Guest:It was like an intense room.
Marc:Oh, yeah, tough room.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All the ladies are in back.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:A lot of judgment on the faces of the bearded men.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Oh, so your grandfather set it up somewhere.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:He probably slipped him a few bucks.
Marc:Kid doesn't know what he's doing, but help me.
Marc:We got to get him in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I passed.
Guest:Oh, good, good.
Guest:So when did you first start playing, though?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Before that, when we were in Long Island, like I was probably, it was probably like 73.
Guest:So I was nine years old.
Guest:I saw The Who on TV on something.
Guest:I saw Pete Townsend doing the windmill.
Guest:Breaking guitars?
Guest:He was doing his windmill.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I just thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.
Guest:And I said to my dad, I want to play guitar.
Guest:I would love to play guitar.
Guest:And there was an acoustic guitar in the house.
Guest:Not quite sure why, because like my dad knew like two chords, but he never played guitar.
Marc:Well, that's the way he probably did what my dad did.
Marc:They bought it once.
Marc:They learned three folk songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then it sat there.
Marc:There was a harmony guitar in my house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There was some acoustic guitar always sitting around the house.
Marc:Steel?
Marc:Nylon?
Guest:Nylon strings.
Guest:And so I remember picking it up and trying to do a windmill and all that.
Guest:And then I started guitar lessons.
Guest:And I loved it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Until my teacher was like...
Guest:It became homework, like writing out charts and theory, and I was like, fuck this.
Marc:Yeah, I couldn't do it.
Guest:This sucks.
Guest:I don't want to, I would say, I want to learn, teach me communication breakdown.
Guest:Give me the chords.
Guest:Yeah, I just want to learn how to play songs.
Guest:He's like, oh, you have to learn this.
Guest:And he was like a cool dude.
Guest:He was like 17 or 18 with long hair, and he had a strat, and he played in a band.
Marc:Was he a wizard?
Marc:Could he really play?
Guest:Did he show off to you all the time?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, he could totally play.
Guest:I remember his name, Russell Alexander.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I thought he was the coolest guy in the world.
Guest:They always are.
Guest:Until he wanted me to do homework.
Guest:I was like, I'm not doing homework.
Guest:I just want to learn how to play songs by bands.
Guest:And everyone had to.
Guest:I was like, I don't believe that.
Guest:I don't think Jimmy Page ever sat around.
Guest:He probably did.
Guest:He probably did.
Guest:Out of all of them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You probably did.
Guest:But so then I got sick of it.
Guest:And after six months, I said to my parents, basically, I don't want to take lessons anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just want to do it on my own.
Guest:And I'm sure they probably thought, oh, that's it.
Guest:The guitar is going to go and collect dust.
Guest:But no, I worked twice as hard because I would just sit with records and learn songs.
Guest:And then would you have chord books?
Guest:No, just ear.
Guest:My ear.
Guest:I was able to just listen and figure out what they were doing.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You're at that point when you're just a total beginner and going from a G to a C chord seems like, I'll never be able to do this.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:I can remember that.
Guest:How do you actually go from chord to chord without stopping?
Guest:I can remember feeling that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, one day, you're going from chord to chord.
Guest:You're like,
Guest:Oh, my God, it's the coolest thing in the world.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What was the first song you learned all the way through?
Marc:Wipeout.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, like the safaris.
Guest:Well, that was because you could do that by ear, right?
Guest:I learned that.
Guest:I learned Bad Bad Leroy Brown, and I learned Blowing in the Wind.
Guest:I used to play Bad Bad Leroy Brown, too.
Guest:I played those at a talent show in the fourth grade.
Marc:So when did you start playing with people?
Marc:I mean, what was it that compelled you to start playing with people?
Guest:To me, sitting in the house just playing guitar was literally jerking off.
Marc:I still do it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:That's all I do.
Guest:For me, as a kid even, they were both parallel for me.
Guest:I wanted to play guitar with other people or I wanted to have sex with girls.
Guest:I didn't want to just stay at home and go like this.
Yeah.
Guest:I was always looking for other kids to play with.
Guest:And when we moved back to Queens, there was no other kids playing guitar on Long Island.
Guest:I was totally- Come on.
Guest:No, like where I was, nobody cared.
Guest:All these kids, all they cared about was street hockey.
Guest:That's all anyone did in my neighborhood was like play street hockey.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then at night, they would go to the overpass and drink tango, which was like some crappy vodka, orange juice, mick pre-mix thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And these are like 12-year-olds.
Guest:Like-
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I wasn't ready for that.
Guest:So I would sit in the basement and play with my Hot Wheels and play guitar, like listen to records.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had my cousin Eddie, who's my dad's cousin, I guess my second cousin.
Guest:He was like a biker dude.
Guest:And they lived not far from us.
Guest:And once in a while, we'd go over there.
Guest:And down in their basement, they had all amps and drums.
Marc:Those places, the first time you walk into that kind of place, you're like, what the fuck?
Guest:Black light posters and all these biking dudes in vests, long hair, smoking weed.
Guest:And they'd all be down there just jamming.
Guest:I'd be like, this is the coolest thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But they wouldn't.
Guest:I couldn't jam with them.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because I was a kid.
Guest:I'd just sit on the side with my jaw on the floor.
Guest:But were they playing like old hippie rock?
Guest:Who even knows?
Guest:Yeah, I don't even know.
Guest:I just remember like wah-wah pedals.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:But once I got back to Queens, I immediately started meeting kids in seventh grade, like in the neighborhood who played guitar, played drums.
Marc:So out on the island, they didn't do nothing.
Marc:That's where the hockey was out on the island.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Once I was back in Queens.
Marc:That's where they all were, right?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Everybody was playing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And who would you meet?
Marc:Did any of them make it into anthrax?
Guest:Not the initial, initial kid.
Marc:What's your real last name?
Guest:Rosenfeld.
Guest:Scott Ian Rosenfeld.
Marc:I got Rosenfeld.
Marc:Are we fucking related?
Marc:I got Rosenfeld.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I do.
Marc:So no, no one made it into anthrax from the original crew.
Guest:No, because that didn't... Anthrax really didn't start to take shape until probably... It was probably in 1980 when Danny Lilker, who was the original bass player in Anthrax, we became friends in school probably around...
Guest:i don't know 79 or something like that and uh and then we would walk to school together every day and talk about metal and music and blah blah blah and uh he was in a band called white heat at the time yeah yeah we're actually already playing gigs in the city and they were like we were all the same age you know 15 16 what were they playing what kind of music
Guest:Like, they had their own songs.
Guest:They had originals, and it was like metal, hard rock slash metal.
Guest:And they would play gigs in Manhattan, which was like the coolest thing in the world to me.
Guest:Like, wow, you guys actually play in the city, and there's singer...
Guest:This guy, Marco, he, I think, lived in Manhattan, which was unfathomable to me.
Guest:But he didn't grow up there?
Guest:He just lived there?
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:I don't remember.
Guest:And I would always say to Danny, because he learned about anthrax in high school.
Guest:He learned about it in, I think it was biology class or something one day.
Guest:And he said, I learned about this thing called anthrax today.
Guest:And I was like,
Guest:That sounds really cool.
Guest:That sounds like a metal band name.
Guest:One of these days.
Guest:So I would say it all the time.
Guest:When White Heat breaks up, you and I are going to start a band called Anthrax because we would jam all the time.
Guest:Every day we were at one of the other's house jamming.
Marc:What would you play?
Guest:Sabbath.
Marc:Tons of Sabbath.
Marc:What was the first band that blew your mind, though, outside of The Who, where you were like, fuck, this is it?
Guest:I mean, it was a nonstop.
Guest:Just nonstop.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:From early on, Elton John was probably the first thing I really, really, really fell in love with.
Guest:My dad took me to see Elton John in like 74, and I saw Coliseum.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What album was he touring?
Marc:Was that Goodbye Yellow Brick Road or something?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:yeah or don't shoot me on the piano player right around yeah elton john for me kind of really kind of opened the door i think for me and then after that it just not long after that uh was kiss like that and that for me was because my parents liked elton john too my parents listened to pretty cool music like i remember the woodstock album being on all the time and
Guest:And they love the band, you know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a lot of good music in the house.
Guest:But Kiss was my thing.
Guest:They didn't want anything to do with that.
Marc:Well, that was special for just you and, you know, kids of that decade and that age.
Marc:The Kiss Army, that was.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They were designed for fucking, you know, kids who didn't know what to do with their dicks yet, but were sort of.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:They mainline like that was heroin for me and my friends for real.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I was in the three things when I was 12 years old.
Guest:I was in the comic books.
Guest:I was in the horror and I was in the rock music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they put it all in one fiery bloody package.
Guest:And when I heard rock and roll, I heard rock and roll all night on the radio in the car with my mom, our like 72 yellow Ford Torino station wagon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I heard that on the radio, and I was like, all right, that's the best song I've ever heard.
Guest:But the DJ never back announced it.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:So I didn't know who it was.
Guest:And then like a week later, I'm watching something in the afternoon on TV.
Guest:It's just on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I see these four dudes in makeup, and I'm kind of like,
Guest:Who the hell are those guys?
Guest:And my, you know, my initial instinct was that they look really, this looks stupid.
Guest:I don't like this.
Guest:Like, I don't like it.
Guest:And then they're like, here they are, kissed with their new hit, Rock and Roll All Night.
Guest:I was like, whoa, that's them?
Guest:And then instantly just fucking needle into the vein, like...
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Your full-on kiss?
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Done.
Guest:From 75 through 78.
Guest:Kiss Alive.
Guest:I bought Kiss Alive that year for my dad for his birthday because I had like $6 to buy my dad a birthday present.
Guest:So I bought Kiss Alive knowing he was just going to say thank you and hand it back to me.
Yeah.
Guest:And that was it.
Guest:And I went out and bought the first three records.
Guest:And then, of course, every six months they were releasing, as bands did in the 70s.
Guest:Every six months there was a new album.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I only lasted until 78, until Love Gun, Alive 2, and then they put out the four solo records, of which I only really liked Aces.
Guest:And then that was it.
Guest:As hard as I was into them,
Guest:By, like, 79, I went to Nassau Coliseum to see Kiss Judas Priest and left after Judas Priest.
Guest:Like, I didn't even care about Kiss anymore.
Guest:And were they open for them?
Guest:Judas Priest opened.
Guest:And you were like, that's the new thing.
Guest:Yeah, me and my friends, we went to see – we were only going to see Priest.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't get me wrong.
Guest:Those three years of Kiss and all those old records, I still love them now like I did in 1977.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:But by 79, just musically, I had moved –
Guest:true musically and emotionally yeah you know like it's it's sort of funny so you know like the the anger or whatever was in you that compelled you towards metal was sort of like yeah i needed heavier harder faster like just everything yeah you know and judas priest was like oh my god i didn't know and they were like like like how could anything be heavier than sabbath you know right right like you know well because there's two guitars
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And they brought speed to it too, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And there was like double bass drumming in it and just like you'd never heard it.
Guest:And it was creepy and even darker and doomier and Rob Halford singing those high notes just like, holy shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of course, I was into tons of shit.
Guest:I mean, everything great in the 70s.
Guest:From every rock band, hard rock, and even disco.
Guest:I love disco.
Guest:I never told anybody I love disco because I had my Disco Sucks t-shirt.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:But I fucking loved it.
Guest:Great players, great grooves.
Guest:You got to keep up appearances, Scott.
Guest:Great pop songs.
Guest:No doubt.
Guest:And if you put on, you know, you could put on a chic record at a party and maybe a girl will dance with you and then possibly kiss you.
Guest:They're not doing that to fucking Judas Priest.
Guest:No, no girls in the room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And if they are, they're drunk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're throwing up on themselves.
Guest:Like when you're sitting in a room arguing over, well, who's a better lead guitar player, Richie Blackmore or Joe Perry?
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Fucking.
Guest:That's a pussy dryer.
Marc:There might be one sleeping girl with a feathered haircut who might burn herself with her cigarettes on the couch.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So, you know, disco had it.
Guest:It definitely had its purpose, too.
Marc:Oh, that discussion.
Marc:Richie Blackmore, Joe Perry.
Guest:But yeah, I was in everything.
Guest:I mean, I couldn't get punk rock yet.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:For sure, the Ramones.
Guest:The Ramones lived in Forest Hills, so I remember seeing them on the Sha Na Na TV show.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Because we used to watch that with my parents.
Guest:They loved that show, so I used to watch Sha Na Na every week, that weird variety show they had.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, with Bowser.
Guest:Yeah, and the Ramones were on one time, and I was like, whoa, who are these dudes?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:playing super fast and they looked like me they were wearing levi's in a leather jacket and they had long hair yeah and uh and then i remember like picking up a copy of cream or roxine magazine or something and finding out that the ramones were from queens like from forest hills specifically like circus or crawdaddy yeah yeah like all those magazines that aren't around anymore
Guest:So I'm like, that's just a few miles from here.
Guest:And look, those guys are on TV.
Guest:If they can do it, I can do it.
Guest:Like, I never said that about Kiss.
Guest:That was unreachable.
Guest:But the Ramones, I was like, I can do that.
Guest:I can play guitar just like Johnny Ramone.
Guest:So I was way, I saw him at Queens College in 79.
Guest:Like, I was way in it.
Marc:Well, it's funny if you really think about it, and I'm sure you have.
Marc:I mean, it's just funny graduating from, you know, Kiss, which, you know, after a certain age, they are sort of clowns.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then to Judas Priest, which they were more menacing in their stage.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:There was a lot of stage, you know, show.
Marc:Yeah, theatrics, everything.
Marc:Theatrics, but it was different.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And now we know it was, like, you know, a little gay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A little bit.
Marc:But then, like...
Marc:The Ramones, because I think that if I listen to Anthrax correctly, I mean, it seems like he probably influenced you more than most people.
Marc:Johnny.
Marc:Johnny Ramone.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:His downpicking style, you know, just that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Just constantly.
Guest:Of course, in the type of music we play, we added in the palm mute when we're downpicking.
Guest:Sure, right, right, right.
Guest:So it gives you that chunking edge instead of just open strings.
Marc:A little more distortion too, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Much more distorted tone than Ramon's.
Guest:But yeah, his aggressive right hand was a big influence on me.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So when did you put the original lineup together?
Guest:It was in 81.
Guest:I had a band called- We graduated college in 81, didn't we?
Marc:Or high school in 81.
Guest:Graduated high school in 81, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had a band called 4X named after the condom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I have no idea why.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so we – not that we didn't do anything.
Guest:We would rehearse and we'd play like at the high school Battle of the Bands and things like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:we put together one night we had a jam session at some rehearsal studio not far from where we lived in Bayside and it went it was me and Danny Loker and some of the guys from 4X and this kid John Connelly who we knew from high school he was singing and just you know jamming on cover songs yeah
Guest:but uh it just went so well something sparked in the room like it really like we played maiden covers better than we had ever played maiden covers with anyone else before yeah and uh and danny looker's band had broken up white heat and and we looked at each other and i said this is it man this is anthrax this is the band he's like okay yeah and like you guys want to be in a band yeah let's be in a band and
Guest:And that was the official start of July 18, 1981, because I put it on a calendar.
Guest:The summer after high school graduation.
Guest:Yeah, the night Anthrax was formed.
Guest:And we just started rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing.
Guest:Danny already had some songs and some riffs that we kind of hijacked from his old band, White Heat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then we just kind of rewrote stuff.
Guest:So we just dove in and just did our best to write our own material right from the start.
Marc:And how long did it take to put together the first record?
Marc:When did that happen?
Guest:Started in 81, you know, numerous lineup changes going through singers.
Marc:I look at like not being a full anthrax nerd, the lineup changes are ridiculous, dude.
Guest:But especially, dude, I mean, no one even knows the lineup changes from 81 till...
Guest:Till end of 82 or early 83.
Guest:Those two years trying to put the lineup together that was actually going to record our first album.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because, you know, you'd get a dude in the band who's like a great guitar player or something, but wouldn't chip in for the rehearsal spot.
Guest:It's like, all right, you're out.
Guest:You know, fuck you.
Guest:Like, everyone's got to chip in.
Guest:Ten bucks.
Guest:You're in the band.
Guest:Chip in.
Guest:No, I'm paying no money, money.
Guest:All right, you're fired.
Guest:So there was a lot of that going on.
Guest:You know, dudes who'd be in the band for a week.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But who were the... Like, the core...
Guest:was it was you and danny right it was me and danny looker and then uh and then neil turban who sings on the first album right he went to high school with us so we we got him and then and then the the key the real key was when we had this drummer greg d'angelo who uh it was a great drummer but really couldn't play the double kick right didn't play that fast double bass drumming that we wanted in our sound and
Guest:he ended up quitting the band after anthrax and metallica played this you know shithole of a club in in jersey and after the show he tells us i'm leaving i'm leaving the band i'm joining this band cities which at the time they were kind of this hot band they could like pack lemores in brooklyn and and uh it was like really and i got all i'm like really like those guys that that shit ain't gonna last you know that's like there already is a van halen you know that shit ain't gonna last because it's kind of what it sounded like right right and uh
Guest:And he's like, well, whatever.
Guest:Anyway, you know, I'm joining cities of my art, you know, and I was kind of a dick and about it.
Guest:And we weren't friends for a long time after that.
Guest:But it was the best thing that ever happened because through a mutual friend, this guy, Tom Brown, he said, you guys need a drummer.
Guest:My friend, Charlie, you know, he's like the best drummer in the world.
Guest:And that was Charlie Benante, who then Danny Loker and I soon after that went to his little
Guest:uh, his house, his mom's house.
Guest:And he had a drum set up stairs.
Guest:This is in Throg's neck in the Bronx.
Guest:Throg's neck.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, he had a drum set up in a small, half the size of this room.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had like this 12 piece giant drum kit with toms and cymbals everywhere.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're like squeezed in there with two little amps and we just start jamming on Maiden and Motorhead and, and,
Guest:There was a song by a band called Accept at the time called Fast as a Shark, which was the standard of like they had set the bar for double kick.
Guest:It was like the fastest double kick anyone had ever heard.
Guest:And he's like, please don't ask me to play Fast as a Shark.
Guest:And I'm like, you can play Fast as a Shark?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's like, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we're like, all right, we don't know the whole song, but we know how to get into it.
Guest:And we start jamming it.
Guest:And he plays... He's playing it faster than Accept.
Guest:And me and Danny are just boner.
Guest:You want to be in the band?
Guest:You want to be in the band?
Guest:And it took a few months of convincing and this and that.
Guest:But Charlie joined the band, and then that was it.
Guest:Then we basically... Yeah, the whole sound.
Guest:Yeah, that was it.
Guest:He completed us.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:But he stayed with you for...
Guest:Like Danny didn't stay.
Guest:No, Danny got fired by our then singer, Neil, because Neil didn't like the fact that there was somebody taller than him.
Marc:Get the fuck out of here.
Marc:Why'd you let that happen?
Marc:You had to respect the singer.
Guest:Singers are crazy, right?
Guest:It's the worst still to this day.
Guest:The one decision that was made that I wish I would have just... But at the time, we had finished a record.
Guest:We had a record literally done.
Guest:It's going to come out.
Guest:And he gave us the ultimatum.
Guest:It's either him or me.
Guest:And how could we have lost our singer with a record about to come out?
Guest:Everyone was like, we can't.
Guest:We can't lose our singer.
Guest:What are we going to do?
Guest:And I was sick to my stomach because Danny was my best friend.
Guest:That was the worst thing that I ever had to deal with in the context of being in a band was like literally making that call to Danny.
Guest:Because he called me up and said, dude, what's going on?
Guest:Neil just called me and said, I'm out of the band.
Guest:And I was like, what?
Guest:And I'll call you back.
Guest:And then we're all on the phone and we're talking to our manager, Johnny Z, and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And what are we going to do?
Guest:We can't lose our singer.
Guest:And it sucked.
Marc:And Johnny Z said, you got to-
Guest:He didn't tell us you have to.
Guest:It was our decision.
Marc:Did you and Danny become friends again?
Guest:Yeah, we did.
Guest:Obviously, we kind of lost touch.
Guest:He started his band called Nuclear Assault.
Guest:But then a couple of years later, I did this side thing called SOD, the Stormtroopers of Death.
Guest:And it's just this ridiculous...
Guest:inside joke of a record of kind of hardcore metal crossover sound which which one that speaking english and uh i had written like 10 of these songs already and then i called danny i said hey i i'm writing these crazy like 30 second songs and 60 second songs and um you want to come up to ithaca that's we were anthrax was recording our second album
Guest:and you want to come up and just fuck around with this and he did and you know we finished that record and that's you know that's a different thing but yeah we reconnected on that and and uh you know you're okay now yeah totally okay okay yeah yeah yeah you got over the 18 year old horrible moment yes i was able to get over that
Marc:But that band, that record sold good, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Which, like I said, it's just a thing that made us laugh, but was brutally heavy at the same time.
Guest:And yeah, it did really well.
Guest:After Anthrax blew up, when Anthrax started to blow up in 87...
Guest:Because S.O.D.
Guest:came out in 85, and no one was paying that much attention to it.
Guest:We had a core group of kids in New York, but nobody really knew about it.
Guest:But then when Anthrax started to blow up, people found out about S.O.D., and then that blew up as well.
Guest:How'd the first record do?
Guest:Fistful did okay.
Guest:Whatever that was back then, it sold in the tens of thousands.
Marc:And it got you on the road opening for Big Axe?
Guest:Um, no, we went out with a band called Raven who were also just, they were from Newcastle, England and they were from that kind of scene.
Guest:If you've seen the Anvil movie, Raven, same exact story, but from Newcastle and, but same exact story on the cusp of making it massive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, but, uh,
Guest:But at the time, we're bigger than us.
Guest:Metallica's first tour of the U.S.
Guest:in 83, they supported Raven.
Guest:And then in 84, we supported Raven summer of 84.
Guest:But the last show of that tour was at the Roseland Ballroom in New York.
Guest:Sold out 3,500 tickets instantly.
Guest:Raven, Metallica, Anthrax.
Guest:And of course, that's when record labels were like, huh?
Guest:Who are these bands selling 3,500 tickets with just an indie record deal?
Guest:We were all on Megaforce Records, Johnny Z's label and
Guest:you and metallica yeah so you know you've had a relationship with metallica for like 30 40 years showed up in new york in a u-haul yeah yeah yeah since literally the day they pulled in from san francisco so that's almost 40 years dude oh yeah 82 it's crazy right yeah wow 30 yeah um so at that night at roseland all the labels were there scouting and right after that basically metallica signed to electro we signed the island and raven signed to atlantic
Marc:Yeah, and then the story goes.
Guest:Yeah, that was it.
Guest:Right, but Raven was gone.
Guest:Raven made it like one or two records on Atlantic, and then that was it, done.
Marc:So how did you guys... You guys just got offered.
Marc:Did Elektra offer you a deal as well, or was there a bidding war?
Guest:No, at the time...
Guest:I think it was kind of cut and dry.
Guest:They were all under the same Time Warner.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Atlantic, Elektra, and Island.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I wasn't behind the scenes with Johnny, obviously, in on any of those dealings, but that's how it all played out.
Guest:Johnny D?
Guest:Yeah, and Island was very, very excited for us, and we liked the fact that we were going to a label that had no other hard rock or metal bands.
Guest:Elektra and Atlantic had tons of hard rock and metal.
Marc:Well, this is sort of the birth of the new generation of metal, right?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:And Mustaine was in Metallica at the time?
Guest:He was already out of Metallica.
Guest:Already gone?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he was out of Metallica.
Guest:He had Megadeth already, who also had their first record out at the time.
Marc:So all you guys were getting the deals.
Marc:And then you did your second album.
Marc:You stayed with Johnny Z?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Johnny was with us all the way through to 1993 or 94 or something like that.
Marc:But you went through a few labels?
Guest:No, we were on island that whole time.
Guest:Yeah?
Marc:When did you hook up with Joey?
Yeah.
Guest:Joey, that happened.
Guest:We fired that guy, Neil, right after that tour, right after that Roseland show.
Marc:He had to become a bigger dick?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:He became impossible.
Guest:It literally became we never could have moved forward as a band.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:if he was going to stay in the band and we made the decision to make a change and so he was gone we had already written most of Spreading the Disease we went in the studio that album was like basically done recorded and we didn't have a singer and the guy who was producing that record Carl Kennedy he had seen Joey playing in this band called Bible Black and somehow got his phone number and asked if he wanted to come down and just check out what was going on with this band Anthrax nobody knew who the fuck we were we weren't anything yet and
Marc:And this is before the second album.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he came down to the other guy and walked in and he went out on the mic and we're all in the control room and he's like, what do you want me to do?
Guest:He didn't know our songs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I don't know, sing whatever.
Guest:And he started just singing like, oh, Sherry from Steve Perry and Farner and whatever.
Guest:Oh, that shit, yeah.
Guest:And his voice was incredible.
Guest:We were like, holy crap, what a voice on this guy.
Guest:Real singer.
Guest:Everyone was looking at each other like,
Guest:Because all the other bands of our ilk just had guys who, they just, you have the least offensive bark.
Guest:You could at least bark all night.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, and now we had a singer, singer, like, and, like, I remember, like, Johnny Z, and, like, everyone was like, this is the guy that's going to set you apart.
Guest:And it was true, you know, because we had, like, we always looked at anthrax.
Guest:Even though we loved Motorhead, we always looked at Anthrax as more Judas Priest or Iron Maiden who had real singers.
Guest:As much as we loved Motorhead, we wanted a guy like that.
Guest:We wanted a Bruce Dickinson or Rob Halford, and we found it with Joey.
Marc:And he did the second record and the third record.
Marc:How many records total?
Guest:Yeah, he did Spreading and Among and State of Euphoria, Persist the Time, Attack of the Killer Bees.
Guest:And then that got us into like 92.
Guest:And then that's when we made the change.
Guest:Joey was out and John Bush was in.
Marc:So those records, Among the Living was the big one, right?
Marc:That's the one that broke us, yeah.
Marc:And when you say, what was the build like?
Marc:So Among the Living, when you're touring Among the Living...
Guest:who are you touring with we no one we were headlining okay that that tour started at like the penny arcade in rochester new york i think in like may of 87 we sold out but whatever it held 500 people or something yeah but by december of 87 we were playing to five six seven eight thousand people a night holy shit happened it was like that fast
Marc:But that was among the living then.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then it just spread because things just spread then to metalheads.
Marc:They were like, these are the ones.
Guest:The wave we were a part of literally broke with us and Metallica and Slayer and Megadeth.
Guest:Metallica definitely opened the door.
Guest:um for because they they were like six months ahead of everybody else or a year ahead because their first album came out like that about that long before the rest of our debut records right so metallica had already like went out and opened for ozzy yeah and had spread this new sound around the country in a very big mainstream way and right people so people were looking for more of it and you know so for us right album right place right time but the entire culture of metal changed in your part of the shift
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And then there's all these new fucking 15-year-old guys who are like, holy shit.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Like you were when you were with Kiss.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:Through the 90s, you were playing arenas.
Marc:Or through the late 80s.
Guest:No, the 80s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pretty much through the late 80s into the early 90s, we'd become like, yeah, that type of band.
Guest:Anywhere from...
Guest:You know, 5,000 to 15,000, depending on the market.
Guest:And, you know, started playing festivals.
Guest:In 87, we played the Castle Donington Monsters of Rock thing in England to 80,000 people.
Guest:Not headlining.
Guest:Bon Jovi headlined.
Marc:But that day when Cinderella was... Isn't it weird, though, that Bon Jovi headlined, and even with the prominence of the music you were playing, those hard rock guys, they still fucking held on.
Guest:Oh, well, this is also Europe where you'd have bills, more eclectic bills like that.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So you could have anthrax and Metallica on that same bill that day with Bon Jovi, and everybody was kind of there to see everybody.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I guess that's the way a big festival works generally.
Guest:40,000, 50,000 people were losing their shit for anthrax and metallica right crazier that even though bon jovi went over just fine there was a certain intensity level and of course then that opened the door floodgates for us in the uk and europe right but here like that's like different armies yeah of course yeah like you could never i mean bon jovi showed up on a build with megadeth or metallica right you would be like what
Guest:Yeah, no, it wouldn't have worked.
Guest:No, no way.
Guest:Case in point, we're out with Ozzy.
Guest:We're opening for Ozzy in 88 for like two months at the end of 88.
Guest:And our last show on the tour was New Year's Eve at Long Beach Arena.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then he was going on in January, but we were done.
Guest:And...
Guest:Apparently what happened was there was never an announcement that Anthrax wasn't still going to be out with Ozzy, and he shows up at the next show.
Guest:I think it was Reno after LA a couple of days later, and you have an arena full of kids expecting Anthrax, and he had Winger.
Guest:If you remember them.
Guest:The band that the kid from Beavis and Butthead, you know.
Marc:Yeah, the W. Yeah.
Guest:And Winger comes out on stage and did not go over well.
Guest:So that's, you know, basically, yeah, what you were saying.
Guest:Did you get to know Ozzy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Guest:He was a sweetheart, man.
Guest:The guy would come in our dressing room all the time and just couldn't have been nicer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nicest guy ever.
Marc:Now, you guys, you got pretty, the sort of crossover with Public Enemy was sort of a big deal.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, it was like, because people were like, what?
Marc:Like it was, how did that all transpire that you guys, you covered a public entity?
Guest:Yeah, the short story is three of us, Charlie, Frankie, and I, being from Queens and the Bronx, we were kind of in the epicenter of rap music in the early 80s.
Guest:And as many of my friends who hated it, well, I loved it.
Guest:I loved rap and Run DMC moved me the same way Maiden did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when Public Enemy, we had already did this song, I'm the Man.
Guest:Anthrax did this thing called I'm the Man, which was our first platinum record, which was literally a joke.
Guest:I played the riff to Hava Nagia, and we wrote stupid lyrics making fun of ourselves over it.
Guest:It was like the rap we were listening to at the time.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And it blew up.
Guest:It became this massive thing.
Guest:But we opened the door for ourselves to do something better.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And more serious.
Guest:And as soon as I heard Public Enemy, I just knew I had to work with Chuck D at some point.
Guest:To me, his voice was like the heaviest thing I had ever heard.
Guest:And his voice and my guitar together would just be the ultimate thing.
Guest:So we just made that happen.
Guest:We became friends, and then at some point, we were just able to make that happen by force of will.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like, we recorded a track, and we sent it to him, and we said, we want to do Bring the Noise, and the whole world was against us.
Guest:Chuck was like, that's kind of redundant.
Guest:Why don't we write something new?
Guest:And Rick Rubin was like, it's kind of redundant.
Guest:Why don't you do something new?
Guest:And our label's like, we don't want to work with Def Jam, and Def Jams, we don't want to work with them, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And then Chuck...
Guest:We mailed the tape from L.A.
Guest:where we were in the studio.
Guest:It takes a week to get there to him in Long Island.
Guest:He finally hears it.
Guest:He calls me up.
Guest:He says, Scotty, this is slamming.
Guest:It's on.
Guest:Let's do it.
Guest:And that's all it took was him to finally hear it and then say, yes, I understand now.
Guest:Let's go do it.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And are you guys still friends?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:We just...
Guest:They were on tour, Public Enemy and The Prodigy were just on tour while we were on tour in Europe just October, November, December.
Guest:We had a night off in Munich, so Frankie, our bass player, and I went.
Guest:We did Bring the Noise with PE at their show.
Guest:And then I just saw Chuck because we did some interview together for Metal Hammer Magazine in the UK, so we did a photo session together in Sheffield, of all places, in December.
Guest:So, yeah, I was still in touch with Chuck, still talk and hang out.
Guest:I love to hear that.
Marc:I love it because, like, I...
Marc:I'm naive when I have actors or musicians or anybody.
Marc:I just assume everybody's buddies.
Marc:So I like when people still have relationships with people.
Guest:Most of the time, it's the other way.
Guest:Most of the time, it's not.
Marc:And a lot of times, it's just like, I never see that guy.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But you know what I mean?
Marc:It seems like you've kept some relationships throughout the years.
Marc:I have, yeah.
Marc:Especially with Chuck.
Marc:He's like, he's the man.
Guest:I gotta get him in here.
Guest:He's the man.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:He changed the world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Marc:He did.
Marc:And you seem like a pretty pleasant guy.
Marc:You don't seem like an asshole.
Marc:Who, me or Chuck?
Marc:You, you.
Marc:I mean, I think that I am.
Guest:I think I think I could be pretty antisocial.
Guest:My wife sometimes has to give me the, you know, like be nicer or like talk or, you know, but that's because sometimes I just I get bored when I'm somewhere and I'm just kind of in my head, like listening to Iron Maiden in my brain or something while everyone else is doing whatever they're doing.
Marc:Now, you've been married twice.
Guest:Three times.
Marc:Three times?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:When did you get married the first time?
Guest:87.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:That lasted two years almost to the day.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nightmare?
Guest:I just should have never been married.
Guest:I was 22 years old and just like the band was just starting to happen.
Guest:So it was like bad...
Guest:I was basically too much of a pussy, I would have to say at the time.
Guest:To break up?
Guest:To break up.
Guest:Yeah, I was just being a nice Jewish boy and doing what I was supposed to do.
Guest:Fuck, I did that, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It lasted longer than two years.
Marc:It went on for a while.
Guest:Yeah, two years.
Marc:Isn't that weird where you have that decision where it's sort of like, I know I need to get out, but-
Guest:you want to get married yeah it was it was terrible i was you know i was cheating on her you know where i was on tour i wasn't being faithful it was and she was from the neighborhood or what yes well not same neighborhood but yeah queens and yeah and uh you know it was everyone had the plan for us to be married you can have kids you can buy a house in forest hills blah blah blah you know she had a really good job and um yeah but i was like no way there's no way so it ended badly yeah no money though
Guest:i had money yeah from the first record well no this is 89 is when like and then into 90 and so yeah i was already making money and yeah and so i literally that i was tapped after that every i bought an apartment in in queens and i had a car and had money some money in the bank and yeah and i had nothing i literally like moved to california at the end of 89 after the divorce you had nothing
Guest:yeah nothing i whatever like whatever i had i put in the truck that was driving anthrax's gear to la to record an album and i was like oh free move i'm getting out of new york yeah and uh i put whatever i had on the truck and and came to los angeles to record which persistence of time the time yeah wow
Marc:and how did that woman turn out all right yeah i'm sure she's fine yeah i mean i'm not in touch with her no of course but uh yeah you heard things are you didn't hear things yeah no i i do hear things yeah but uh yeah she's fine she's got kids oh yeah it's better it's nicer when it works out yeah when you're the asshole it's better what you know it's nice to hear like oh she's better off way better off
Guest:Trust me.
Guest:I didn't look until I met Pearl.
Guest:Anything I did previous to that was, you know, I apologize to everyone and anything.
Guest:Who's the second one?
Guest:Second one was I moved.
Guest:That's one of the main reasons I came out to California.
Guest:She's one of the women I was cheating on my first wife.
Guest:But I put that more on her than on me.
Guest:I was in for the long haul on that one, and I'd have to say she definitely wasn't.
Guest:How long did that last?
Guest:Let's say 90 to 97.
Guest:We weren't married that whole time.
Guest:We got married in that window.
Guest:But then, yeah, that was done.
Guest:For me, 97 to 2000 were like my...
Guest:That's my crazy years.
Guest:I was pretty much back in New York City, back and forth, but in New York a lot of the time going out and just really raging.
Guest:And we were touring too.
Guest:The band was still touring.
Guest:But you were like, no, not going to be tied down.
Guest:Let's just go.
Guest:No, and that's when I started drinking.
Guest:I started drinking really in 1997.
Marc:And that was your primary thing?
Guest:No, before that, I never.
Guest:You didn't do nothing?
Guest:I would pick my spots once in a while.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:I would drink beer or wine.
Marc:Oh, but you started hitting it, huh?
Guest:Oh, hardcore, 97, yeah.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, big time.
Guest:Bottles of whiskey.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, Daryl from Pantera taught me how to do that.
Guest:That's a long story, but yeah, he literally, he was my Yoda.
Guest:I was his Padawan.
Marc:After the second divorce, Daryl was like, I'm going to teach you how to really.
Guest:Well, I asked him.
Guest:I said to him, I said, hey, man, because Pantera asked us to come out on tour with them for a few months.
Guest:This is at the end of 97.
Guest:And I said to him, hey, I made an adult decision at the age of 33.
Guest:I'm going to learn how to drink.
Guest:I'm going to drink whatever you drink.
Guest:He's like, are you drunk now?
Guest:I was like, no, dude.
Guest:I'm being totally serious.
Guest:I want to learn it.
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:You didn't have the compulsion, but you were like, it's time to live hard.
Guest:I needed to make a change in my life.
Guest:I felt like I had failed twice in relationships.
Guest:The band was not doing well at that time in the late 90s.
Guest:We weren't doing so well.
Guest:It was really, really hard for most metal at that point in time.
Marc:The draw was drifting.
Marc:Everything, yeah.
Marc:And when did John Bush come on?
Guest:93.
Guest:92 he joined, and his first record with him, Sound of White Noise, came out in 93.
Marc:What happened with Joey?
Guest:Which did great.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But then by 95, the next album, like, everybody disappeared.
Guest:I don't know where everybody went.
Marc:You like the Sound of White Noise?
Marc:I love that record.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And what happened with Joey?
Guest:You know, again, like I said, I apologize.
Guest:You know, I just truly didn't have the patience anymore.
Guest:Lead singers are hard for you, huh?
Guest:They were.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, they were, but not anymore.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think my biggest problem was I was writing the words.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I couldn't deal with the fact anymore that someone else was singing my lyrics, but I couldn't sing.
Guest:There's no way I could be the singer of Anthrax.
Guest:That's what it was about?
Guest:I think it really, really did come down to that, that I just couldn't stand it anymore.
Guest:you felt it was your your emotions or you you didn't like the way they were phrasing it i mean what what was both like people that that i you know that it's just these are my words these are my feelings it's my emotions and you're not you're not me yeah you know and and yes and then even like learning the songs and like
Guest:Hearing them back, like, that's not how I hear it in my head.
Guest:No, no, like this, like this, like this, like this.
Guest:But you had no solution.
Guest:No, my solution at the time was turning around to the rest of the band and saying, it's either him or me.
Guest:I pulled the same shit Neil Turbin pulled years before that.
Guest:I said, I can't do this again.
Guest:We need to make a change.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it wasn't just me holding a gun.
Guest:Everyone was on the same page.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Everyone felt like what we had done as Anthrax in the 80s into the early 90s, we had already moved past that.
Guest:We were ready to kind of... The sound was changing.
Guest:If you listen to Persistence of Time, musically, that record has more to do with Sound of White Noise, the first John Bush record, than it has to do with State of Euphoria, the previous Anthrax album.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Musically, we were already going somewhere else.
Guest:But Joey, for us, I guess at the time felt like he's not representing us anymore.
Guest:He was the 80s.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Of course, I spent a year of my life writing a book and looking back on that time and really kind of getting back into those shoes.
Yeah.
Guest:we should have given the guy a shot.
Guest:Why we didn't give him the shot, I really don't know why we weren't able to.
Guest:Because I even remember.
Guest:I remember Johnny Z, our manager, he was, are you sure?
Guest:Are you sure this is the decision you want to make?
Guest:Yes, yes, yes.
Marc:Did you feel pressure because of even the nature of a front man, stylistically, was changing?
Guest:I wanted it to be harder.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I couldn't do it, but I wanted someone who could almost...
Guest:You know, someone just, I wanted it to be harder.
Guest:I didn't want Lemmy.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know, I didn't want it to sound like that.
Guest:I just wanted it to be harder.
Marc:And John brought it?
Guest:Yeah, John brought it.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:For sure.
Marc:And so that was a change.
Marc:You went deeper and harder, and it sort of, you know, it was metal itself, I guess because of what?
Marc:Because of grunge and everything else that, you know, there was a more alternative hard rock thing happening that it swung the pendulum back?
Guest:Trust me, I've thought a lot about this.
Guest:Because like I said, Sound of White Noise did great.
Guest:Out of the box, gold record, and then went on to sell platinum record, and we were playing big shows.
Guest:And then in 95, when the next record, Stomp 442, is coming out...
Guest:electra went through a shift we had signed to electra as well so it's a crazy big deal for sound and white noise he ended up at electra anyway yeah and uh stop is coming out electra had gone through a huge upheaval everyone we worked with was gone bob krasnow who was the head he was a true record man he was gone and they bring in this woman sylvia roan who she signed in vogue she was really successful with that yeah yeah and uh and uh
Marc:It's weird how the record business works.
Marc:It's just product, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the first thing she said to our manager when he walked in to have a meeting about starting to set up the new Anthrax album, she drops the contract on the desk and basically says, I never would have signed this band.
Guest:I never would have done this deal.
Guest:What are we doing?
Guest:What's going to happen?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh, great way to start a meeting.
Yeah.
Guest:And, uh, I could only think like, I, I learned over the, I used to not be able to point the finger at myself for sure.
Guest:I would, I blamed everyone for everything for a long time in my life, but for a long time in my life, I've been able to point the finger at myself.
Guest:And I will not say that we made a record that was terrible.
Guest:It's not because of the record we made.
Guest:Stomp 442.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We did not make a record that... It's not like we made a jazz record and we alienated our audience or something.
Guest:You know, I just think it was a number of factors.
Guest:One of which...
Guest:It's so cliche to blame your label, but look, they just pulled the rug out from under us.
Guest:They did zero.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, Sound of White Noise, the first week it came out in 93, we sold like a hundred and something thousand copies in a week of that record.
Guest:Stomp comes out two years later and in the first week does like 29,000.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And goes on to sell about 150.
Guest:Sound of White Noise plays a platinum record.
Guest:How did you go from like a million to 150,000 in two years?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, those fans couldn't have all disappeared.
Guest:Yeah, like what?
Guest:I still to this day don't have the answer to that question.
Marc:And what was the fans' reaction to Stomp?
Guest:The people who got it loved it.
Guest:Was the production different?
Guest:No, no, not so different than Sound and White Noise.
Guest:A harder record than Sound and White Noise, like some harder material.
Guest:We had Dimebag Daryl playing solos on the album.
Guest:It seemed to have everything going for it.
Marc:Were you drinking then?
Yeah.
Guest:No, not yet.
Guest:Not yet?
Guest:Holy shit.
Guest:But it was soon after – well, it was after that.
Guest:That did.
Guest:Because that album went in the toilet, basically.
Guest:Our career started – the money started to dry up.
Guest:Career's going in the toilet.
Guest:Second marriage.
Guest:Yeah, second marriage is done.
Guest:We start working on another record that's going to come out in 1998 called Volume 8.
Guest:We don't even have a record deal.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So, end of 97, that's when I was like, I need to make a change in my life.
Guest:For the worst.
Guest:I'm going to stop being responsible for –
Guest:Really?
Guest:I decided I don't want to be this guy anymore.
Guest:I don't want to be the captain of the ship.
Guest:I'm going to go fucking crazy for the first time in my life.
Guest:And I did for years.
Marc:And what do you think of those records you made like that?
Marc:Did you not do any records?
Guest:I didn't make a record like that.
Guest:We didn't really make a record like that.
Guest:Volume 8 was just the beginning of it.
Guest:So I wasn't in the depths yet.
Guest:And did you lose friends?
Guest:Did you lose any members of your band?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, I wasn't an asshole.
Guest:I'm a fun drunk.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:So I wasn't an asshole in that way.
Guest:We just were raging.
Guest:It wasn't just me.
Guest:Doing shows, though.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:John Bush.
Guest:John was my drinking partner in those years.
Guest:In the early 90s, John and I got way into Bukowski.
Guest:Oh, sure, yeah.
Guest:Right, and like everybody does at some point.
Guest:We got way into Bukowski, and we tried our hardest.
Guest:I mean, great.
Guest:We weren't fucking whores.
Marc:yeah uh and you know i wasn't living in east hollywood but right but when it came to booze we were trying our hardest oh yeah and and what what how did it what did it get bad i mean did it get tragic did some shit go down what stopped it no no i just i met pearl in 2000 who is a fucking angel
Guest:Yeah, but she wasn't then.
Guest:Well, she was, but she wasn't.
Guest:She could out-drink me even now still.
Marc:I only know her from meeting her a few times, and she's sort of a transcendent type of person.
Guest:She is, absolutely.
Guest:And I saw that in 2000 when she was in a blue latex rubber cop dress singing backup for Motley Crue, who Anthrax was opening for.
Guest:And I was like love at first sight, but I have no game or nothing.
Guest:I don't know how to pick up chicks.
Guest:You know, I did pretty well in my drunken years because you'd just be out at bars and you're a drunk idiot and you'd... And you're Scott Ian from Anthrax.
Guest:You'd end up the next day being like, ugh, you know, like... Who the fuck are you?
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I gotta go.
Marc:Well, I gotta say, your beard doesn't imply game right away.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:My beard basically says, stay the fuck away from me.
Guest:So how did you charm Pearl?
Guest:We became drinking buddies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because Motley was... It was a sober tour at the time for Motley.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And so Pearl and the other backup singer, Marty, this other girl, they were hanging out with Anthrax on the Anthrax bus because me and John and Frankie, our bass player, we hit it pretty hard every night.
Guest:And so they started hanging out with us.
Guest:We were drinking buddies for like a month.
Guest:And then...
Guest:Motley's management calls up and says, we need to take a cut in our pay on the tour because tickets weren't selling so well, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Like, we can't.
Guest:We're just scraping by as it is on this run.
Guest:Like, all right, well, we can't keep paying you.
Guest:You'll just have to go home.
Guest:Bummer.
Guest:I had nothing against Nicki or the dudes in the band.
Guest:I get it.
Guest:It's business.
Guest:I was bummed because I wasn't going to see Pearl for six more weeks until she got home to Los Angeles.
Guest:I was losing my mind.
Guest:So I would go to this bar, Daddy's, every night on Vine where my neighbor worked.
Guest:i would like get a ride with him and i would start drinking at five and then drink until the bartenders were done drinking at like four no other drugs no no never so you're just drinking and uh and then i would walk home like back to i live right by canner's at the time i would walk back home four miles i mean because i think if i didn't walk i would literally die oh my god i would be so drunk so you were sort of a beaten man i mean you were sort of washed up
Guest:i was but i had this light named pearl yeah that i had this focus and i knew she was coming home the beginning of september and she she gets home from tour and i like call her hey there's this these bands playing at the troubadour tonight high on fire and nebula like really cool bands you want to go it's like sure you know yeah i had written i'm sorry i had written her a letter yeah because i had never told her yeah on paper wrote her a letter and fedexed it oh
Guest:to her on tour.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I told her how I felt about her.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And then she never answered that.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:We would talk all the time, but she never- Did you write it drunk?
Guest:She never- No, no.
Guest:This was like a really heartfelt four page.
Guest:You're like, you're it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I'm in love with you.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Like-
Guest:And then we would still talk, but she never brought up the letter, and I didn't have the balls to ask her about the letter.
Guest:And I just figured out we're friends.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:We'll be friends.
Guest:I'm crushed, you know, but we'll be friends.
Guest:At least I can be friends with this rad lady.
Guest:And we went out to High on Fire that night at the Troubadour.
Guest:I brought my friend Kenny with me because I was, like, nervous.
Guest:And – but –
Guest:We just fell right back into the same thing.
Guest:We ordered some drinks and hung out and watched some bands and hung out that night.
Guest:And they wanted to say, what are you doing tomorrow night?
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:You want to hang out?
Guest:And that was September 9, 2000.
Guest:We've been together ever since.
Marc:You never brought up the letter?
Guest:Oh, no, of course I did.
Guest:Yeah, eventually, what about the letter?
Guest:And she told me, she said, it was so amazing.
Guest:Every time I would try and respond or write, I was trying to respond and write a letter back.
Guest:She goes, I would just tear it up.
Guest:I couldn't.
Guest:I was so blown away by your letter.
Guest:And of course, then me, the idiot, waiting around to make a move on her.
Guest:Meanwhile, she felt the same way about me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Obviously everything worked out because it's 16 years later.
Guest:You got a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I finally met the woman I was supposed to meet.
Guest:But we raged hard.
Guest:Those first few years up until about probably sometime in 2003, we were still hitting it hard.
Guest:And then it's like we kind of like –
Guest:We probably don't need to go to the car five nights a week anymore.
Guest:We're really happy.
Guest:And then we started to taper off after that.
Marc:Yeah, and you just slowed it down?
Guest:Yeah, just kind of started to slow it down.
Guest:I think we were both fulfilled in our lives.
Guest:Lo and behold, Anthrax's career...
Guest:The new millennium came, and then things started to turn around again, how those parallels in your personal life and professional life.
Marc:What was the resurgence?
Marc:We've come for you all?
Guest:Yeah, we've come for you all.
Guest:That kind of reopened the door for us for whatever reason, whether it was because we wrote better songs or just people.
Guest:All of a sudden, there was a new...
Marc:new blood out there looking for heritage bands you know whatever it was but yeah yeah everything just started to click again what a great fucking story and you were able to play Yankee Stadium
Guest:Yeah, 2011.
Guest:I mean, the worship music thing is the real, you know, that's the real comeback.
Guest:But yeah, yeah, playing Yankee Stadium in 2011.
Guest:Who was on that tour?
Guest:That was the big four.
Marc:Right, it was Megadeth.
Marc:Who was it?
Marc:Swayr, Megadeth?
Guest:Us and Metallica, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, Metallica calls up and says...
Guest:You want to do some big four shows with the four bands, the four thrash bands.
Guest:Yes, of course.
Marc:Wait, was it the big three before you?
Guest:No, that phrase was coined at some point in the late 80s by a writer where we were known as the big four of thrash metal, the bands that basically brought thrash to the world.
Guest:I always thought it should have been the big five because there was a band called Exodus out of San Francisco.
Guest:who were just as important.
Guest:Kirk Hammett from Metallica was actually in Exodus.
Guest:He replaced Dave in Metallica.
Guest:I always thought Exodus should have been a part of that.
Guest:And now Gary Holt from Exodus is in Slayer too.
Guest:So it kind of all worked out in a weird way.
Marc:So the big four thing, you were part of that idea from the beginning.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, always, yeah.
Marc:And how was that tour?
Marc:How'd you all get along?
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:Amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Metallica, uh, the first big four show was in Poland in 2010 and, uh, in Warsaw.
Guest:And, uh, you know, we know there's gonna be like 120,000 people there in this airfield and, and, uh,
Guest:So we find out for management, the night before the show, Metallica's booked out some restaurant, and it's bands only.
Guest:No wives, no girlfriends, no managers, no entourage, nothing.
Guest:Just the 17 dudes in the four bands in the room.
Guest:And my initial reaction was kind of like, well, that's weird.
Guest:We all know each other's wives and girlfriends, and Pearl was with me.
Guest:And, like, you know, it was kind of weird.
Guest:And I remember even calling Kirk going, you know, you're not bringing Lonnie?
Guest:You know, like, what's up?
Guest:And he's like, yeah, we just wanted to be the dudes.
Guest:Okay, fine, fine.
Guest:Just to make sure that everything was clear?
Guest:Well, they just had a really good idea that this is going to be the first time all of us are just going to be in a room together.
Guest:We've all seen each other.
Guest:But is Mustaine and Megadeth- Right, but they've seen each other, but not all together at once.
Guest:We've toured with Slayer, and we've toured with Megadeth, and Slayer's toured with Metallica, and we've toured with Metallica, and we've
Guest:It's never just been all of us together in a room at one time in the history.
Guest:It never happened.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it was a historical event.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I may be mistaken, but I think it was James.
Guest:I think it was Hetfield's idea to do this.
Guest:And instantly I understood why, because we're all standing in this room, in this restaurant, and
Guest:Just the dudes.
Guest:Just the dudes.
Guest:And, man, the vibe was just – it was amazing.
Guest:It was electric to be in that room.
Guest:And everybody just hugging and shaking hands and talking and, like, just smiling and laughing.
Guest:And it's like, oh, there's Mustaine and, like, Hetfield.
Guest:And there's Mustaine – like, I was, like, standing there, like, with someone, maybe from Slayer, just looking at, like, Dave and Kirk, like, hugging.
Guest:I'm like, never thought I'd see that.
Guest:You know, just like –
Guest:It was an incredible night.
Guest:And it went on for about four hours.
Guest:And then they said, now if anyone else wants to come down, come to the bar or whatever.
Guest:And then girlfriends came and some crew dudes came.
Guest:And then it turned into a big party.
Guest:But for those four hours, it really made a connection.
Guest:You can't see me, but I got my fingers interlaced.
Guest:Were you all in your 50s?
Guest:Yeah, we were all in our 40s at that point, late 40s.
Marc:Yeah, and it's like, let it go, right?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And then just to be able to say, can you fucking believe this?
Guest:Guys have known for fucking 35 years.
Guest:We were a bunch of asshole kids in 1985 when it all really first started to roll and just doing whatever we could to survive and get people to know our bands.
Guest:And we're going to play to 120,000 people tomorrow because they love this music that we created.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was an amazing moment to own that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't think I ever sat around and thought about that before that night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To own that and to really feel it and to be in the room with your peers who were there with you from the beginning.
Marc:And egos were sort of put aside a little bit.
Guest:No egos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Gone.
Guest:Unbelievable.
Guest:And Metallica really set the tone for all the shows we did on the Big Four Tour.
Guest:They really set the tone, and it felt like that from that first show in Poland to Yankee Stadium a year or so later.
Guest:It really felt like that all the way through.
Guest:They really did it right.
Guest:And then you did a record with Joey.
Guest:Yes, well...
Guest:talk about parallels in your life like go back to spreading the disease in 19 end of 84 we have a record that's recorded without a singer and we find joey right joey joins the band elevates anthrax to a whole new thing we go out on tour for a year and a half and we become the band that writes among the living we just have nothing to worry about we're just anthrax and we write among the living yeah
Guest:Cut to 2010.
Guest:We have a record called Worship Music, which is basically done.
Guest:We don't have a singer.
Guest:Joey joins the band again.
Guest:We go out on tour with Megadeth and Slayer in the fall of 2010.
Guest:What happened with John?
Guest:John had already been out.
Guest:Since 05, there's a lot of jumping around in these years.
Guest:But in 05 and 06, we went out and did a reunion tour with Joey and the original lead player, Dan Spitz.
Guest:Basically, to get us to clear our slate, got us out of a lot of bad deals.
Guest:We did a record and a DVD and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:And that cleared the slate for us.
Marc:Financially?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just, yeah.
Marc:With contracts?
Guest:Yeah, because we couldn't move forward and make another studio record in the deals we were in.
Guest:It was something we were going to break up the band.
Guest:That was the choice.
Guest:And our manager said, if you go do the reunion tour- Still Johnny Z?
Guest:No, no, different manager.
Guest:We could deliver a DVD and a live record, and this will clear the slate for you guys.
Guest:And it was a business decision that probably could have been made-
Guest:better but at that point you know john said look i understand you guys got to go do this but i don't want anything to do with it we were hoping we could go do a tour in 05 with john and joey yeah together right make that happen but john was like no way i i don't want it that's stupid go do your thing with joey that makes the most sense for you guys yeah and go do it and he was very much a man about the whole thing and yeah um
Guest:But after that, in 06, when the reunion tour thing ended, and in my hubris thinking, we'll just go now back to work with John, he's like, no, I've got a kid now.
Guest:I don't want to do that anymore.
Guest:I'm done.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He's all right, though?
Guest:He's great.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're still friends.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:And in 2010, so we've got worship music finished.
Guest:We don't have a singer.
Guest:We call Joey Belladonna.
Guest:We go out on tour, Anthrax Slayer Megadeth.
Guest:We do this big tour around the States.
Guest:With Joey.
Guest:Yeah, with Joey.
Guest:We start playing him the new music.
Guest:We re-record a bunch of it.
Guest:We re-write stuff.
Guest:He goes in the studio, records the vocals, and we listen back and we're like, unbelievable.
Guest:You know, like this is...
Guest:It's the missing piece.
Guest:It's the missing piece of the puzzle.
Guest:And then Worship Music blew up, put us back on the map in a really big way.
Guest:And now here we are, beginning of 2016, with a record about to come out.
Guest:It's the best thing we've ever done because...
Guest:Joey rejoined, and then we were able to go out for three years and just be Anthrax again and become the band that could write For All Kings, the new record.
Guest:It's such a parallel to how it was on Spreading and Among.
Marc:But it's so sweet that this stuff, that these changes with you and with the band and with everything else, that this full circle thing and this sort of amazing respect...
Marc:from the other bands, from the fans, and then to be rejoined by the singer that made you guys.
Marc:It's a beautiful story.
Marc:It really is.
Marc:You're still in a functioning, relevant band.
Marc:Right, exactly.
Marc:You didn't become a fucking monster.
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:Or a joke.
Guest:Well, that's why I didn't realize I had a story to tell until I started going out and doing my talking shows.
Guest:Because I've always, in a sense, I'm a frustrated standup.
Guest:I can't write jokes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I could tell a fucking story.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And in 2012, I got this offer in London to come tell stories.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i was like oh fuck it i'm doing that because i i would see henry rollins do it for years and i'd be like hours i would love to try that someday but never never was out there actively pursuing it and then it fell in my lap so it was the night before we were starting a tour with motorhead at the end of 2012 and i i got up at this this venue in uh in london it was billed as rock stars say the stupidest things or something like that and uh
Guest:And I, you know, I had no idea what I was doing, but I knew I had great stories and I got on stage and I opened my show with this, uh, it was like four in the morning and I woke up in a sweat, like in a panic thinking like, I don't know what I'm doing.
Guest:I can't, how am I going to go on stage and just talk to people?
Guest:Where's my guitar?
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:How do I open?
Guest:What do I just walk on stage?
Guest:I have jokes.
Guest:What am I going to do?
Guest:Hi.
Guest:How are you guys?
Guest:How do you even start the show?
Guest:And then I got this idea immediately.
Guest:Somehow, what if I acted like I was reading from a book and people thought it was my book, but it wasn't.
Guest:And it would be something like that would be so not my story.
Guest:And I called my buddy.
Guest:John Wiederhorn, who's a rock writer, and worked on this book with me, my book.
Guest:And I was like, hey, what's a book like Motley Crue, like The Dirt, you know, like super sex, drugs, like heroin, all that kind of shit, something like that's so far away from what I do.
Guest:And he goes, well, you can't read something from The Dirt to an audience because most people have read that book.
Guest:But check out Anthony Kiedis' book from The Chili Brothers because your audience definitely hasn't read his book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They don't care.
Guest:And I go online.
Guest:I find it.
Guest:I get the book.
Guest:First chapter, he's writing about sitting in my house in the Hollywood Hills and my reverie is interrupted by a fine lady who comes in and starts setting up her works and injects me and blah, blah, blah.
Guest:I'm like, this is fucking genius.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I walk on stage.
Guest:I don't say a word.
Guest:I sit down on a stool.
Guest:There's just a little pin spot on me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I've got it.
Guest:I type the whole thing out into my phone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I sit there and just start reading this thing.
Guest:Super boring, just deadpan reading this.
Guest:And she injects me and I start feeling the familiar warmth.
Guest:And I could see people who've known me for years out in the audience.
Guest:I could see them like, what the fuck?
Guest:Like, I had no idea.
Guest:When was he a junkie?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Right?
Guest:So I finished this little short tale.
Guest:It's like three minutes.
Guest:And I finish it.
Guest:You know, I lay back on the couch and I pass out, whatever, however it ends.
Guest:And I just kind of get really quiet.
Guest:And I take the mic off the stand.
Guest:And I stand up.
Guest:I'm like, you fucking people thought that was about me?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fucking assholes.
Guest:That's Anthony Kiedis.
Guest:And I get this giant sigh of relief and laugh from the crowd.
Guest:And then I own them for two and a half hours.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And it was the best.
Guest:I don't know that I had ever felt that high on stage, ever even in the band.
Guest:I walked off stage after two and a half hours of talking.
Guest:And I was standing in the dressing room like with the smile, the Joker smile on my face.
Guest:And I said to my agent, I got to do more.
Guest:I got to do more.
Guest:So we booked a UK tour like six months later.
Guest:I toured the UK with it.
Guest:And I've done like four tours and I fucking love doing that.
Guest:But in the midst of all that,
Guest:I started writing out my stories because I was doing these talking shows.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I got about 100 pages of shit written.
Guest:And I'm like, I actually have a story to tell here.
Guest:I've got a book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then that's kind of how the book came together.
Guest:That's great.
Marc:And you had a baby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How old's that kid now?
Guest:Best thing ever.
Guest:He's four and a half.
Guest:That's amazing.
Guest:And Pearl is a rocker too, right?
Guest:She sure is.
Guest:Sings.
Guest:Sings her ass off.
Guest:She's finishing a record right now.
Guest:I get to like...
Guest:When I can, I get to play in her band.
Guest:And then we also have this other thing, Motor Sister, that we do, which is a rock thing with another singer, Jim Wilson.
Guest:And it's just all music all the time.
Marc:And your father-in-law's meatloaf.
Marc:My father-in-law's meatloaf.
Marc:Well, look, man, I'm glad we did this because we see each other all the time.
Marc:We never got to talk.
Marc:It was fucking great.
Marc:I got moved.
Marc:It was very touching.
Marc:You know where I got choked up?
Marc:Where?
Marc:The FedEx letter.
Marc:That got me.
Guest:I still have it, too.
Guest:I've got the letter, dude.
Guest:I feel like that letter saved my life in a weird way.
Guest:I could actually say that completely saved my life.
Marc:It's beautiful, man.
Marc:Thanks for talking, Scott.
Guest:Cheers.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That is our show.
Marc:I love that.
Marc:I loved learning.
Marc:I love talking to Scott.
Marc:Again, Anthrax's new album for all Kings is available now.
Marc:Scott's book, I'm the Man.
Marc:The story of the guy from Anthrax is just out in paperback.
Marc:And the new record is great, by the way.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:I was told I need to push my Kansas City dates.
Marc:When are they?
Marc:They're in April.
Marc:I've got three dates coming up, and then I'm going to have to take the summer to write a new hour so I can tour in the fall.
Marc:But I do have some dates, and I'm not saying it's not going to be new material.
Marc:I always sort of do something.
Marc:But Friday, April 8th, I'll be at the Mission Creek Festival at the Englert Theater in Iowa City, Iowa.
Marc:April 9th, I'll be at the Rococo Theater in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Marc:And April 10th, Harvest Bank Theater at the Midland in Kansas City, Missouri.
Marc:Look, I've never played the Midwest.
Marc:Let's not make me think I knew better.
Marc:So if you're a Kansas City fan, Kansas City, Missouri fan, April 10th I'll be there.
Marc:And I'm not going to play guitar today because it's late.
Marc:I have to get up early.
Marc:I'm going to be working with some exciting actors tomorrow.
Marc:I'll tell you about it Thursday.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Boomer lives!
you