Greetings all! I strike again with (yet) another Pete Steele interview.
Hope someone reads this!

Taken from current issue of Live Wire magazine

Pete Steele: Gothic Sex God
Type O Negative Frontman Poses for Playgirl and Pumps Iron while Touring
the Country with Pantera

     After successfully completing their first arena tour, opening up for
Pantera, Type O Negative did a string of headline dates before beginning
their tour with Seattle's falsetto forefathers, Queensryche. "Immediately
after this phone call I will be heading over to the venue," explains
frontman Pete Steele, on the debut date of their tour with Queensryche.
Keeping a tight schedule these days, Pete still likes to find time to pump
iron every day. Did he enjoy pumping iron on the Pantera tour? He says, "I
really didn't know what to expect [playing in an arena], so it was loaded
with surprises for me. It really didn't make that much of a difference
playing in an arena, as opposed to a club, simply because with so many
lights in my face I can't see past the first two or three rows anyway. I
think the main difference between playing in a small place as opposed to a
large one, is that in a large place you just get hit with more projectiles.
Pantera are great guys, we have been treated no better by anyone else so
far. They are like the brothers I never had. They're just really down to
earth, great people. But I think at some of the gigs, their fans were a bit
confused with us. I don't know what they expected, but I don't think they
expected dinosaur music. I don't think we lost any fans along they way,
but maybe their people would have preferred more of a hardcore oriented
band than a dirge rock type thing."

    On the NY date of the tour (at the Nassau Coliseum), a nonviolent,
semi-riot broke out as ALL the kids seated in the arena ran down to the
floor halfway through Type O's performance. "I think playing back in NY,
which is where we came from, has to be the exception to the rule," Pete
says. "This is where our fan base is, and where all the people who have
stuck with us since the beginning are. So I think that is why we has such a
rally food reaction, and I'm very grateful for it."

     Ironically, Pete who always made it clear that he hated to tour, has
been touring constantly. Not wasting time however, he has been working on
new material. He explained, "I have a really cheap Casio keyboard on the
back of my tour bus, along with my weights, and my chemistry books, so when
I have some free time I work out some harmonies. I think it's fair to say
that I have the whole next album written, however the band knows very
little of it. So as soon as we get off the Queensryche tour, which will be
in late July, we're going to take time off and go into the studio to start
rehearsing. We're hoping for a February 14th 1996 release, which is of
course Valentine's Day. [The new material will be] a continuation of dark
sensuality. Topics for the next album will include paganism, lycanthropy,
nature worship, Promethium gifts, social Darwinism, totalitarianism, and
global acquisition. (we'll be) attempting to make the material more
commercially accessible (as far as song length goes.) I'm sure there will
be some opuses, like "Bloody Kisses," But I'm going to try to keep the
majority of the tunes short, going for the airplay type thing. On Bloody
Kisses some songs had to be edited down (for the radio) and I felt that
they were mutilated when they were cut down, and I don't want that to
happen. So I'm formulating these new pieces toward radio play, keeping them
to a minimal time so they don't have to be lacerated. There is going to be
a trade off, trying to make the band more accessible, while still
maintaining the dignity and the essence of what Type O is about. It's going
to be a challenge, but it's something I'm looking forward to."

     However fans at shows seemingly do appreciate and sing along with the
longer songs like "Too Late: Frozen," as well as the singles. So isn't is a
fault of what radio believes is airable today as opposed to in the 60s and
70s? Pete explains, "I believe it was my buddy Karl Marx who said, 'who
controls the media, controls the masses.' And unfortunately we have a large
group of morons that are in of certain media, and they dictate right and
wrong. Most fans are young and they follow what they perceive as authority
and are mislead usually. I think it is the fault of the radio people. It is
always good to see kids singing along and getting into the songs that don't
receive airplay. But it's also good to hear some of the other songs on the
radio. It;s baiting the hook with the correct worm." The band was also
faced recently with a similar dilemma, when confronted by MTV censors, who
are seemingly trying to appease both the Christian right and more
significantly, promote the PC left. "It's very difficult to please
everybody, primarily we try to please ourselves first, but sometimes we
have to compromise. I don't think that a compromise is selling out. It's
just that we're trying to make  ourselves accessible in a format that we
can get to the public. If I had not changed the lyrics,  this thing would
never have gotten on MTV. They had brought up 11 issues in the song
(Christian Woman) that were unacceptable. That was a lot to change. I did
not feel good about changing it,  but like I said about baiting the hook,
hopefully people will get curious and buy the product, which is precisely
what happened." MTV also apparently had an aversion to the video since it
was done by visual mastermind John Reiss, who is very outspoken against
MTV. "Yes there was some  politics involved, but now that Type O has become
a commodity, the pressure to play the video could be resisted no longer due
to public outcry. So anything they had against John went out the window.
Now it's time to make money, financial gain always comes before dignity."

     Type O seemingly have shed the err...negative press of years ago. Pete
explained, "Sadly we are getting very little negative press lately. So I'm
going to have to say some inflammatory statements very soon and get myself
back in trouble, so album sales will skyrocket again. You know why I like
negative press? It's because it just shows me how stupid people are. That
if you say something different, to what people believe, it makes their head
spin. What people don't understand, they fear. And if people fear me that
is a huge compliment. I would rather be feared and respected that loved and
thought of as an idiot."

     Stay tuned for next issue's on the road story with Type O on their
Queensryche trek. "I have a really good feeling about this tour, simply
because they seem to be quite receptive. They seem to cater to a more
mature audience than we're used to, and I understand they enjoy a large
female following, which is something Type O also enjoys. You know, as
filthy heterosexual scum, we are attracted to the opposite sex." That's an
inherent flaw in natural law, I commented. Pete answered, "Social
Darwinism, what does that mean these days?"

     Heterosexual women will be able to enjoy an upcoming issue of
Playgirl, in which Pete has posed nude for. "I really don't know how it all
came about, I suspect it has something to do with the rocker issue, that
I'll be featured in. Maybe I'm  the only one, out of everyone featured in
this issue, that was crazy enough to take all his clothes off, for a not so
large sum of money. I really don't know what to expect from this. I just
hope I live up to everyone's expectations in certain areas. At first, it
was uncomfortable when I'm surrounded by camera people and technicians and
make-up personnel. And I'm sitting there completely naked, while everyone
is working around me and stepping on my feet, and stepping on everything
else that hangs off me."

by Tomas Pascual



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email sharon@panix.com

"Jesus died for somebody's sins... but not mine."--Patti Smith