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A Discussion With Anthrax's Scott Ian By Zack Segur
04.30.03
The band Anthrax has been at the forefront of the heavy metal movement for almost two decades. They are currently on tour promoting the May 6 release of their latest album, "We've Come for You All."
Slushfactory.com spoke to guitarist, songwriter, and comic book fan Scott Ian about the new CD, kicking off MTV's newly-established Headbanger's Ball, comics, superhero powers, and a painter they worked with named Alex Ross.
Zack: Your new CD “We’ve Come For You All” is absolutely great. What kind of potential do you think that this album has compared to your previous releases?
Scott: Well, I think that the time overall now is more right for this type of music than it has been for our last two records, which came out in ’98 and ’95. So now in 2003, there’s just so much more of a possibility to actually have success with this kind of type of music. Things have really turned around and so much more is happening with hard rock and heavy metal these days. With the fact that MTV is bringing back Headbanger’s Ball and that they called us to be a part of the big kick off thing. Even that alone shows you just how different that things are compared to back in ’98 or ’95, because back then, MTV wouldn’t even touch this music. They didn’t have shows like Uranium on Much Music and Extreme Rock on MTV2 and radio even playing this type of stuff, so when you use the word…
Zack: Potential?
Scott: That’s a really good word because the potential is there. It’s just a case of, once again hopefully, a label realizing what the potential is and making it happen.
Zack: Concerning the writing on the album, I know that Charlie usually has done most of the music, while John did most of the lyrics. I heard that you did more of the lyric writing on this one. What songs did you work on?
Scott: Well, I wrote all of the lyrics except for one song. That’s pretty much how it’s always been done. Where did it say that I….
Zack: I had just read from other articles in the past that John had done quite a bit of writing on…
Scott: Well, yeah, but still, it’s kinda my domain.
Zack: What was the song that John wrote on this album?
Scott: “Any Place But Here.” You know, don’t get me wrong, John contributes to everything, but it’s still pretty much my area.
Zack: For the “Safe Home” single, what convinced you guys to pick that song as the album’s first single?
Scott: It just connects so strongly I think, and I think that it’s an obvious choice. It sounds like Anthrax, but doesn’t sound like anything that we’ve done before. I think that people are surprised when they hear it and they don’t know who it is. Then they find out that it’s us and there is a happy/surprised look that they get. People seem to really connect with it. Anyone that hears it for the first time, I think they can really feel the power and emotion of the music in the lyrics to that song. “Safe Home” can be a metaphor for so many different things. Specifically, with the world being in the state that it’s in, in 2003, I think that it’s an idea that many people can really connect with.
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Zack: I watched the E-card for “Safe Home” many times on anthrax.com. Who came up with the idea to make the card?
Scott: Sanctuary came up with the idea, but I have no idea who did the actual work.
Zack: The cover work on your album is awesome. How did you get Alex Ross to do the art?
Scott: We just contacted him. It was actually our webmaster who had the idea to try to contact him. Surprisingly enough, Alex came back and said, “Yeah, I would love to work with them. He started doing sketches and then we saw the sketch of what was to become the album cover. We were all blown away and we were like, that’s it. It’s pretty amazing for me because I’m a big comic book fan and I’ve been a fan of Alex’s forever so it was unbelievable to me to have him do our album cover. Now I get to be depicted as a superhero.
Zack: Are you still really into comic books? Do you still read them?
Scott: Yes sir, anything by Frank Miller or like Alan Moore. Only certain writers I’ll actually still read. That’s it.
Zack: When you talked about Headbanger’s Ball earlier, are you guys hosting it and how did this all come about?
Scott: We’re actually not sure what we’re doing. We know we’re playing a show with us and Godsmack. We’ll probably be hosting some D.J. stuff, but outside of that, I’m really not sure. We haven’t gotten that many details about it.
Zack: Now, as for the tour, how did you get hooked up to play with Motorhead?
Scott: We had already done a run with them in Europe last October for a month and it really went so well, that we figured that since we had a record coming out May 6th, Motorhead ended up contacting us to do something together in the states. It just seemed like the logical thing to do except to make it a co-headlining act instead of us opening for them like we did in Europe.
Zack: Are you going to be playing first or being the last act?
Scott: There’s an opening band, but we play a full headlining set. Actually, in Chicago, we close the two nights there, so we’re actually the closing band.
Zack: What are your plans for touring after you’re done here in the U.S., and do you comment on the rumors that you’re playing with Iron Maiden in the fall?
Scott: We don’t know. We go right back to Europe as soon as we’re done with Motorhead until the middle of July, playing festivals and more headlining shows in Europe. I believe we then go straight to Japan and Australia to play some festivals in Japan. That’s about as far as we got. I’m just sure what we’re doing in August. Then in September and October, we’re hoping to do the states again. That’s kinda what we’re looking at right now.
Zack: I went to your concert with Judas Priest back in Detroit last year.
Scott: Oh really? At the Palace [of Auburn Hills]?
Zack: Yeah, at the Palace. I know you guys were supposed to end up doing a live show recording in Chicago, but that didn’t end up happening, correct?
Scott: No, we couldn’t just because there’s no way to do a live show as an opening band. Technically, things just couldn’t happen because we didn’t have a long enough set to play either so it just made no sense to us.
Zack: Would there be a live show recording this time around since you’ll be a co-headlining act?
Scott: I don’t know about on this tour. Put it this way, we’re not going to do a live record. To me, a live record is pointless. At some point, we’ll do a lone form DVD thing, but when and where, we still don’t know that yet.
Zack: On somewhat of a different note, with the events of 2001, I know that I received criticism for running a website (http://anthrax.fateback.com) dedicated to you guys. Have you felt any of the negative publicity and how do you feel about this new attention?
Scott: Well, we never had any negative publicity strangely enough. As far as I’m concerned, people left us alone. The only stuff that we were hearing was to not change our name really. The amount of traffic that was coming through the site and the stuff that people were saying was pretty overwhelmingly positive. If you really look at it, it would be kind of ridicules for someone to come after us because:
A. That would mean that they were completely clueless thinking that we just took our name last week after this shit happens. If that was the case, then yeah, we should get a lot of negative publicity. But you know, having the name since 1981, no one really got on us for that.
B. On the other side of it, people should have better things to worry about or bigger, more important things to write about than whether or not some heavy metal band is gonna change their name because of the anthrax attack. It’s kinda how we looked at it from the start. If anyone was gonna come after us, it’s like, well you’re the idiot because you’re wasting your time talking to us about something that’s probably, you know. There’s much bigger fish to fry at that time you know, let’s put it that way.
Zack: Totally right on that one. Back to comic books for a moment. What have you thought of the comic book movies so far like X-Men, Spider-Man, and Daredevil, and are you looking forward to the X-Men sequel and The Hulk?
Scott: I liked X-Men a lot. I thought Spider-Man was entertaining. The only parts that I really liked about Spider-Man was the first hour when he gets bit and he’s up and first discovering his powers and all that stuff. I think that it was done really well. Once he got into it with the Green Goblin and all, I really hated the Green Goblin. With the mask in that movie, it almost ruined the whole movie for me just because it was so terrible looking. It made him look like a transformer or something. Spider-Man had his mask, why couldn’t they have the real Green Goblin mask? I just didn’t get that. So it was entertaining, but I can’t say that I was thrilled by it. Daredevil, I just didn’t bother with because, truthfully, I’m not a Ben Affleck fan and I’d already read a script of it, and I wasn’t interested in the story at all. If they would have done, specifically, one of the great Frank Miller storylines or something, then I probably would have seen if fucking Fred Durst was playing Daredevil, but that wasn’t the case.
Zack: If you could have one superpower, what would it be and why?
Scott: Uhh…If there’s one superpower?
Zack: Yeah, just one superpower.
Scott: Um… Wow, good question. Well, I suppose that… The first thing that comes to mind would be the ability to fly. I think it would be fun, and I would be able to get around in traffic so much easier. So yeah, for the simplicity of that, I guess that would be the one.
Zack: That’s cool.
Scott: That would just be my fun power. If I could have an evil power, it would just be the ability to kill people with my mind, by just looking at them and making their hearts explode. Something like that. (laughs)
Zack: That would be cool. Alright, thanks very much.
Scott: Well, I think that the time overall now is more right for this type of music than it has been for our last two records, which came out in ’98 and ’95. So now in 2003, there’s just so much more of a possibility to actually have success with this kind of type of music. Things have really turned around and so much more is happening with hard rock and heavy metal these days. With the fact that MTV is bringing back Headbanger’s Ball and that they called us to be a part of the big kick off thing. Even that alone shows you just how different that things are compared to back in ’98 or ’95, because back then, MTV wouldn’t even touch this music. They didn’t have shows like Uranium on Much Music and Extreme Rock on MTV2 and radio even playing this type of stuff, so when you use the word…
Scott: We’re actually not sure what we’re doing. We know we’re playing a show with us and Godsmack. We’ll probably be hosting some D.J. stuff, but outside of that, I’m really not sure. We haven’t gotten that many details about it.
Zack: Yeah, at the Palace. I know you guys were supposed to end up doing a live show recording in Chicago, but that didn’t end up happening, correct?
