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Last month our hard working interviewer Drew Ailes had an extensive phone conversation with Lou Koller, frontman of legendary NYC hardcore band, Sick Of It All. If that name means nothing to you, we feel sorry for you. |
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What are you up to today, how are you doing?
Good, good. We leave tomorrow for part of an America tour. We're doing the midwest to the west coast.
I was actually going to ask you about that - is there any chance that the rest of the country might get to share in your music?
Yeah, we're looking at stuff for September to do the whole rest of the US. We're also talking to the Dropkick Murphys, they want us to go on tour with them again, and some other bands we're seeing whats going on.
So nothing confirmed yet?
No, nothing confirmed yet. We're just trying to pick a...we're going to choose a certain date in September when we're going to have a 20th anniversary show in New York.
How does it feel to have a 20th anniversary show? Some of your fans aren't even that old.
Yeah, I know. That's weird. You know, we're kind of like, really pleased with it right now. Two years ago was when we realized...we were in Europe and we were looking at these basketball jerseys we had made, and I said, "why did you put the number 18 on it," and the guy goes, "because it's your 18th year." We all looked at each other and go, "wow, in 2 years, it'll be 20." Things started rolling then. We got the idea to put out the record on our 20th anniversary and talk about other ideas we've had.
What are some of these other ideas that you've been tossing around?
The only other solid one that came through was that...hopefully by the end of the year or early next year, there's going to be kind of a - I hate calling it a tribute compilation, but I guess that's what it is. We just started calling up our friends and saying, "it's going to be our 20th anniversary, would you guys want to cover a song?" So far everyone has said 'yes'. It's been good. We got Sepultura, Hatebreed, The Bouncing Souls, it's like a real diverse line-up. Dropkick Murphys were in there too.
How was that? Calling people up and asking them if they'd cover one of your songs. Was that kind of awkward?
No, no. It was actually cool. I mean, everybody we asked was really into it. Like, we went and talked to the guys in the band Thursday, who are like, a bigger band who are more commercial or whatever, and they were so psyched. It was funny, because I had asked them at CBGB's when they had played one of the Keep CBGB's Open Benefits, and as I was talking to them we were surrounded, me and the guitar player, by all their fans. And when I asked him, he said, "yes," and everyone was like, "of course he'd say yes!" And I was like, [laughing] "I didn't know Thursday fans like Sick Of It All."
That's really cool, I'm glad to hear that. I'm wondering if you have anything else really on the horizon for 2007 or does that basically cover most of it?
Just, like I said, we're going to have the 20th anniversary show and hopefully we're going to videotape it and see what we're going to do with it. We want to put out a commemorative DVD about it. Other than that, we just want to tour, because we're all really psyched on this new record.
Well, you've got a lot of people backing you on it. So far every mention I've heard on it is very positive.
Yeah, we've gotten a lot of positive feedback. I think it's really because...it's not that we didn't care about the other record, but with this one we really took our time. We're like a lot of bands; we don't make a living selling records. We make records for our core fans to entice them to come out to our shows, and we make a living live. We do live shows. So the way we used to work was, we'd come home from a tour, take a month or two off or whatever, and then start writing. Then, as soon as we finished writing, we'd go into the studio to record the album and go. And that was always good enough, but this time we sat down, we wrote, we wrote, we wrote, we went and demoed, and then we came home, wrote again, checked the songs out again, then went into the studio and went in with a really good producer this time.
Yeah, Mr. Tue Madsen.
Ohhhh yeah.
How did you get worked into that? If someone had told me that Sick Of It All would be produced by Tue Madsen, that would've blown my mind.
It's weird, it's weird. I went and I sang on The Haunted record that he had mixed. He wasn't at the studio when I was there laying down my vocals, but I guess he was a fan of Sick Of It All's, and when he heard my vocals on there, he got in touch with us. He said, "yeah, I want to do your next record," and we all laughed because a lot of people say that in the industry. "Oh, I want to take you on tour, I want to produce your next record." But even before we had seriously sat down and talked to him about it, he started showing up to a lot of our shows at New York. He'd just hang out with us and get a feel of the band, watching us live and all that.
Everywhere you looked, he'd just appear out of a cloud of mist. "Hello, Lou."
[laughing] Yeah, it got annoying after a while. No, not at all. It was cool, we just started to click. He got our stupid sense of humor and he was right there with us. It boiled down to timing. We told him we actually wanted somebody else and they couldn't do it, and he called up and goes, "I'll drop whatever I'm doing to come do your record." So we were like, "wow, he really wants to do it." Instead of having us fly to Denmark, he even said he'd fly to New York and do it there so it'd be easier for us. So that's what we did.
It's obvious he had a lot of personal interest in you guys, then. He's probably living a dream himself, getting to work on that.
Yeah. That's another good thing about being around so long. We've made friends like that. We've had friends who are in some of the biggest booking agencies in Europe and we worked for them for a while, just for the fact that like, when the guy was sixteen he put on our first show in Sweden, and now he's the agent for Turbonegro and The Hives and all these big bands, and he took Sick Of It All for a year and showed us what he could do for us. Not just for Sweden, all over Europe. He booked us all over Europe for a year and it was great.
Wow. Let me go back to how you say you make a living, getting people to come out to shows and everything. Now, when you say "make a living," do you actually make a living now at the point where Sick Of It All is at? Are you able to just play shows, sell merch, and just live without having to pick up odd jobs here and there?
Yeah, but it's not like a living like...uh...
You're not going to be on MTV Cribs or anything.
Yeah, exactly. MTV Cribs would take two seconds. They'd walk into my apartment and the camera could barely fit into it. It's just a matter of your lifestyle.
But who cares. You're living on your own, making music.
Yeah, and it's like, we do jobs once and a while. I haven't worked in a while, but when I was bored or I needed extra money, my two older brothers had their own garage door installation business and I'd go work for them; stuff like that. Craig, the bass player, he actually works now. He's really into boxing and he's trained his whole life, and he just got hired seven or eight months ago by a guy named Derek Panza. He's this world champion kickboxer and he runs a bunch of gyms out here and needed an extra guy to train just straight boxing. So Craig does that when he's in town and then Derek gives him like, "hey, go away for two months, that's cool."
That's awesome to have a job with that kind of flexibility.
I know, I know. I wish I could find one like that. It's hard. I think a lot of bands don't last because...if they don't have that financial success right away. I mean, us, we've never wanted to do anything else so we bit the bullet. I think it took a good seven or eight years before we actually started to make money where we could not come home and have to go work at some shitty job for a while. I mean, we used to do everything. We all had really good jobs and then we started touring. Then you'd come home and work in a mailroom for two months, or you come home and go work landscaping for six months and you sweat to death.
What was the worst would you say?
For me, nothing was really that bad. We just had different suffering, like, the mailroom stuff was very monotonous but I was lucky I worked with a lot of cool people. We used to just have fun and play loud music. I had a lot of cool friends there. But landscaping was just brutal. When you're out there in the sun and you've gotta be walking around with a giant lawnmower, lifting it over hedges and stuff...
Yeah, I suppose the novelty of working with huge machines would probably wear off pretty fast. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen a landscaper really with a smile on their face. They're always just squinting. Or cringing.
[Laughing] Yeah.
So I wanted to ask you about how your general mentality has changed since the band has formed as opposed to twenty years ago. How have you seen yourself mature in regards to your attitude towards music?
For myself, it's just...when we started we were just angry teenagers. We weren't even angry, we were just energetic, and we wanted to have an outlet and that was the band. I think just because we were really into punk and hardcore, that's where the whole political thing came in. That's what sparked us to be involved in politics and stuff like that. Now I'd say it's more maturity and you're not angry for no reason, you know better. You know what your targets are. You know what pisses you off. The tricky thing now is to write songs that can relate to everybody no matter what age group, because I don't think a 15 year old kid would give a damn if I was going to get ripped off by the plumber that comes over...
[Laughing] Man, I'd listen to that daily.
But I was surprised when The Dropkick Murphys started getting big, it was funny to me going to the shows and seeing 14 year old kids sing about being a union man. But that's cool. I think the whole thing would be...uh...one of the things that kinda still bugs me is...like we were just talking about having friends that have grown up and they became working in the industry, how some of them totally forget like, the whole...they grew up in the indie world and how it's not to be mainstream, try not to scumbag your fans, try not to rip people off, and then these guys get into positions in these companies and they're all of a sudden just like the people who were there before them. And I guess that's how they survive, you know? It's funny.
I think what happens is that you lose sight of your ideals. At least, this is how it is for me. I'm 23 years old, so really, everything I say translates into, "I don't know shit," because I really don't at this age. But for me, I grew up bussing tables, working in restaurants, and getting shit on by rich old men. And then I got the job I have now, as an insurance agent, which I have kind of a moral conflict with sometimes. What happens is that you get caught up in doing it and you begin rationalizing behavior that you would've thought was fucked a few years ago, so instead of changing things, you conform to what it is, and then you start getting paychecks.
I understand...yeah.
Sorry to take your train of thought and take it to where ever I'm going with this. But yeah, I understand what you mean about people turning around from where they came from.
To me, I've seen it more in my friends who run their own indie labels. It's like, I have nothing against being successful and signing bands of different styles and whatever, but I find it funny when they come to our shows and say, "god, it's so good to see you guys, blah blah blah," and I'm like, "it's cool, how's your label doing," and he goes, "yeah, I just sold Band X to Sony for $200,000." So I go, "wow, that's cool," and he goes, "yeah, I'm kind of glad to get rid of them. I fucking hate their music." But they sign these bands because they know they're going to make money. There's nothing wrong with that, but I just find it funny how they hate their own fans.
Yeah, I get to do an interview with Carl from Ferret Records. I'm going to try to press him on that question. I don't take him as necessarily the kind of guy who would pick up shit just to sell it, but you've gotta hear something from time to time and just be like, "man, I could really sell the shit out of this."
Yeah, even though you don't like it.
Yeah. Hilarious.
We've always talked about how we should become A&R guys for some label, because every band that would give us a demo, and we'd be like, "wow, these guys just fucking make me sick," and then they've become huge. We talked about how we should go to shows and every band that we hate, we should try to get signed to a label. We'd be great.
You'd surely go places. But going back to how things have changed, when you look ahead to the future, assuming you do that sort of thing, do you fully intend to stay active within this musical scene throughout your entire life or do you feel like there might be a time where you may settle down and buy a mini-van or something?
[Laughing] That's the thing, with us, we all have pretty steady relationships. Armand has two kids now and a wife, and everybody's married in the band. I mean, it's all good...the people who married into the band, so to say, have to understand that this is what we do for a living. Sure, they get upset when like, like this year for the new record we're touring a lot. We go out for like, three weeks in the US, and then from there we fly straight into twelve days in Europe, and then we come home for a week and then we're down in South America. It's just non-stop. I don't know about ending because of family stuff. Maybe for another things, but, you know.
What do you think it would take to get you guys to just completely hang it up and stop playing music?
Uh...wow. Well, there's a lot of physical stuff, like if I blew out my knees or hips or something.
Yeah, lose an arm or something.
Yeah, we're very physical on stage and it's a very energetic show. I don't know man, it's like, it's weird. Sometimes you get really, and it's been over the last five years maybe, sometimes I get really down on the music industry and how they don't - not just us but the other bands too - they don't respect bands who have been around for a while. It's kind of like the way they treat old folks. They're just like, "yeah, yeah, that's good," and kind of write you off. Sometimes that really depresses me and makes me say, "why am I even fucking trying for," and then other times it just makes me feel like, "yeah, alright, I'm gonna stick around just to show you."
Just to say, "fuck you," at 70 years old, gimping around the stage touring on your 30th record.
Then again, I don't see myself being like The Rolling Stones. I don't know, man, I don't think Mick Jagger should be wearing that kind of clothing anymore.
No, that's just kind of strange.
He looks like a grandmother transvestite or something.
It's like taking the skeleton from your high school science class and dressing it up in vinyl pants.
And look at Keith Richards, what's he doing climbing trees?
Oh yeah, didn't he just have major surgery or something?
I didn't know what it was at first. They say he fell out of a tree. I guess he was in Fiji or something, climbing up a coconut tree and then he...[loud laugher]...landed on his head.
That's fucking brilliant. I don't know if this is nationally syndicated or what, but there's this radio show where every year they try to predict who's going to die, and Keith Richards has been on this one guy's list for like, 15 years. He just says, "I gotta go with Keith Richards. This is going to be the year. He's going to die." And it's seriously been 15 years and he's still around, pissing everyone off, climbing up coconut trees. It's like my friend always says, if you're going to get a terrible blood clot in your brain, better it be from a coconut tree rather than from somewhere else.
[Laughing]
It's an old saying. It hasn't been around that long. Which directly contradicts what I just said about it being an old saying, but you know. You'd better stop me or I'm just going to keep mumbling about this.
Alright.
Kind of what you said about old bands just kind of being shoo'd away and having people try to hide them under the rug, do you feel that with Sick Of It All that you're still important and embraced within the hardcore scene, even though it's taken such a different turn over the last couple of years?
The strange thing is, and we know this for a fact, is that we get a lot of respect and a lot of admiration from the bands. Even bands who have blown past us, young bands that have sold ten thousand times more records than we could ever sell, they love us. The people that don't know us are the younger fans and I don't know what the reason that is. If I knew that, I would remedy it right now. I mean, we see that evident a lot on tours. It's not like every young fan doesn't know us, but it's really strange to us when bands come up to us and they say, "oh my god, you've been such an influence on me," and we'll play shows with them and their fans are like, "who the hell is this," and stare at us.
Yeah, yeah. Except for Thursday fans, who apparently love you guys.
Well, yeah, I guess now they do.
Yeah, now they do, after they saw you talking to one of them. Do you feel that the band has kind of benefitted from this shift over the last few years? Do you notice more kids coming out to shows and paying a little more attention to you?
You know what's weird for us, our biggest success was when grunge was big for some reason. When Pearl Jam and Nirvana were really big, Sick Of It All had the hugest following in the states.
That was when I first bought a Sick Of It All CD. I bought Scratch The Surface, and that was right after I got out of Nine Inch Nails and Soundgarden. Let me think. I bought a Motorhead CD, a Morbid Angel CD, a Sick Of It All CD, and a Melvins CD.
That's some good company there, heh.
I guess. I was in 7th grade and I had no damn idea what I was listening to. It was right as grunge was dying down, I just read about them in a magazine and decided to go to Media Play and get them the next week. But you have no idea why that could be?
No, no. For some reason...like, we've gone on tour with Hatebreed several times and a lot of their fans, I don't know if it's just more metal fans...I don't like to say it's the metal fans, because we've been accepted by Slayer audiences...
Yep, and that's the only time I ever saw you guys was with Slayer.
Hah. The thing that I find weird is that hardcore was a scene that was supposed to be so open-minded is now probably the most close-minded scene around. If we go out with Hatebreed and we don't sound exactly like Hatebreed, some of their fans won't move for us or give us the time of day. And we've played with Christian hardcore bands, and just because we're not on a Christian label they won't even listen to us. They'll walk out of the building before we play. It's been rough, you know? But you know, we have the attitude of, "well, fuck them, we'll just keep going."
I'm sure there's been worse. I don't mean to bring up negative things of the past, but does the band still catch shit for that rampage shooter that shot up a school wearing a Sick Of It All shirt?
Yeah, like, 1993 I think.
Is that ever brought up by like, fan's parents or something like that?
Not a lot, not by the parents. Just once and a while one of the fans. Actually, mostly in interviews people bring it up.
Oh, shit. Sorry.
[Laughs] No, we've never gotten any flak for it. A lot of people bring it up just because of how we handled it, like when the New York Times was calling us a "violent, facist, band," which is totally the opposite of everything we stood for. They just ask us about that and when we wrote the rebuttle letter and how we got it printed and all of that, which was with the help of a paper like the Village Voice in New York City. We had sent a letter to the New York Times, a rebuttle on what they said, but they didn't print it after a few days. A friend of ours was working with the Village Voice and he told them the whole story and showed them our letter and they printed an article saying it's irresponsible journalism on the New York Times' behalf of saying that this band is facist without even going into their backgrounds and blah, blah, blah. So they kind of helped this guy get our letter printed.
That's insane that a publication the size of the New York Times...well, I guess it's not insane, it happens every day I'm sure.
Yeah, it was just kind of a reactionary thing. I don't know if they listened to any of the music, but if they did they obviously didn't listen to any of the lyrics because at that time the album that they were talking to was Just Look Around, and that whole record, a lot of the songs were written as anti-violence songs because of all the gang violence that had started up in the hardcore scene.
Hah, well, on a completely different course...[laughing] how do you have a proper segue from that? From a completely serious life-altering event to um...how many countries have you played in at this point? Which is what my next question is. And which is your favorite place to play?
Oh god. I'm trying to think. We've played all over, man. It's really insane. We just came back from doing eastern Europe, where we went to Croatia. That's actually out second time in Croatia, but then from the first time we went to Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Macedonia...all the "i-a" countries. It was amazing because these kids, these people, they're starved for any kind of underground music. Some of them would joke around and say they'd seen, like, I'd ask them "what bands have you seen," and they'd say, "yeah, we saw Bon Jovi in the early 90's," and they would laugh.
But that's seriously how it is. No bands ever get out there.
We've been lucky. We've gone...we've been like, the first; we actually used to call ourselves "The Ambassadors of Hardcore", and it's pretty much what we still are. We were the first hardcore band to go to Japan, the first ones to go to South America, the first ones to go to Iceland and places like that. In Iceland, I remember going there, and we went there even before and I asked them, "what was the heaviest show you had here?" They said that in the mid-nineties, it was a reunion show of Uriah Heep and Deep Purple.
Oh man, Uriah Heep and Deep Purple? I'm a pretty big Uriah Heep fan, I'll be honest with you. But um, I will also admit that Sick Of It All is considerably more heavy. Just by a little, though.
By a little bit, yeah.
That's strange. I've heard Iceland is a very interesting place.
Yeah, I liked it. It was cool. It was really cool.
Have you ever been somewhere that you just completely felt like you were out of your element? Not even geographically speaking, but just gone outside and looked around and been like, "what the hell?"
Sometimes it's a lot of different places, but I try to be oblivious to that. Try to walk through and pretend I know where I'm going. It's weird, when you go to new countries you're excited and then when you get there, you get the looks from the people. I mean, we don't look that outrageous. I mean, my brother is covered in tattoos and he's got the blonde spikey-hair, but still, they just know you're not from that country and they just stare at you like the devil.
Yeah, yeah. I'm a very fair-skinned kinda brown haired, blue-eyed guy, and that doesn't fly in Italy. I had long hair and big sideburns. I probably looked like a 70's coke dealer or something. I had people who would seriously look at my shoes, then look at me, and just kind of shake their heads and walk away. It's fucked up. I had one guy pull my hair on the tram to try and stop the tram as like a joke or something. It's not like I could do anything about it or I would've gotten jumped on by some big Italian dudes.
It's weird. Even here, to me, I guess growing up around in the punk and metal scene where there are all these tattoos and weird haircuts and piercings, to me, it's nothing. It's totally normal. The other day I was going to the deli right across the street from my house and there was this old Italian woman sitting outside the deli, and she saw the tattoo sleeve I started on my arm, and she looks at me and stops me and goes, [Italian accent] "you are a good looking man! Why do you do this to yourself?" She was like, disgusted with me. Never met this woman before in my life.
Did you feel more complimented than insulted?
Well, I don't know. I was glad she said I was good-looking, but it was like getting yelled at by your grandmother. That's pretty weird.
Have you ever been yelled at by your grandmother for getting tattoos or anything?
Nah, they would say stuff to my parents when we weren't around. She was more disappointed that we stopped going to church when we were 16.
[laughing] She did it diplomatically. I guess it's better that she didn't directly confront you. So kind of being in a band that, for a lot of people, kind of epitomizes what hardcore music should be, I'm always curious as to what other kinds of music you might have an interest in? I was reading Armand's Myspace and he had a Woven Hand song up, which to me was just like, "what?" It completely blew my mind. I know on some of the blogs on the Sick Of It All Myspace, which I don't know if it's maintained by you guys, but there was Eric B. and Rakim, just stuff like that. What are some of the stranger things you're into?
See, Eric B. and Rakim, that was like, us growing up together. Armand, and me, and Pete, and Craig, we all grew up in Queens together, and that was a big part of it. It was weird because back then we had an alley where we hung out in that lead into a schoolyard. We hung out in the alley and then at the basketball courts there were all the hip-hop kids, and then in the courtyard is where all the metalhead kids hung. But we'd all talk and hang out together, you know? And that's how we grew up listening to all that stuff. But as far as like, now, I'd say Armand has the weirdest taste. I don't even know half the shit he listens to. He'll put stuff on in the van when we do van tours and he's driving, he'll put a CD on and I swear to god, the whole van will fall asleep except for him. We're all into a lot of stuff that we just grew up in. I'm still into a lot of metal, and hardcore, and punk, and to me there's just so many different styles of it.
As far as just hardcore, metal, and punk?
Oh yeah. I'm still trying to get through all of it.
Yeah, yeah. It's cool. When I was younger, I'd try to educate people who didn't know anything. Because to regular people, someone would put on a Slipknot CD and then someone would put on a Sick Of It All CD, and people look at it like, "dude, it's just yelling, what the hell?" I would try and try these Venn diagrams for people with different genres of metal, leading into punk, leading into hardcore, and it always got too complicated for me and I'd throw my pen across the room and fold my arms and sit down. It's definitely interesting. For the last five years I've been saying, "I wonder what the hell they're going to do next, I wonder what the hell they're going to do next," and you know, whether they're making it more jazzy or whatever, the styles will keep progressing somehow.
I think it's cool when people mix stuff up. It gives it more life. Sometimes it fails, sometimes it succeeds...sometimes it becomes really commercial fast and then disappears.
I wonder what that could be today.
[laughing]
But uh...anyhow. Talking about Armand a little more, did he win PETA's world sexiest vegan award or what?
Oh, I don't know yet. I haven't found out yet. I don't know if it's still running or not, but I think it's funny.
Is there any sort of jealousy or animosity? I mean, I know you have old Italian ladies crawling up your legs, but c'mon, world's sexiest vegetarian?
If I was a vegetarian, yeah, it'd be cool. [laughing] I don't know, I don't know who his competition was except for a couple of the guys from Most Precious Blood. I don't know who else was in there.
Yeah, I don't know who else is either. I remember looking at the site and just saw Armand and that was it. So no real defining comments on that?
I guess he's pretty sexy, I don't know. [laughing]
Alright, we'll leave it at that.
Craig finds him incredibly sexy.
Really? Hmm.
It's a little inside joke.
I'll have to put that in. Should I put it in without the inside joke part?
You'd better put that in or otherwise Craig will beat me up.
Okay, okay, fair enough. I remember I was trying to interview you guys when you guys were going to play Hellfest quite a long time ago, so some of these questions are pretty old. But a lot of people wanted me to ask you guys about a band like Chimaira doing the wall of death frequently at their shows.
Yeah...
How do you feel about that?
Those guys like Chimaira, and I know Lamb of God, and I know bands like Pennywise who do it, they always usually, the times I've heard about, they've always said, "now this is something we got from bands like Sick Of It All," and so and so, and that's cool. I don't like bands that like, there's this band from Germany and they come here to the States, and it's ironic because they're on Abacus also. They're called Heaven Shall Burn. They do really good on stage I hear, but what pisses me off is the guy word for word steals what I say before I do the Braveheart wall of death thing. He even calls it "the Braveheart" like I call it "the Braveheart" and I just found that really rude.
Have you contacted some of the higher-ups at Abacus to put a stop to it?
The funny thing is we played a festival together in Spain, and on our stage it was Mastodon, us, and Heaven Shall Burn went on two bands before us. I watched him do everything I said, word for word, and then when it was our turn to play, as we were walking to the stage I went by there to their trailer and said, "hey, I'm going on stage, you wanna steal some more stuff from me?"
You oughta just start doing it in a German accent or something.
Yeah, I should. Yeah but whatever, I don't care. I really used to get pissed off but it's like, what am I going to do, you know?
It's the kind of thing that like, it's kind of something that's personalized so you have a bit of an attachment to it, however, I feel like it's the kind of thing that if you really raised shit about it, everyone would think you were a total fucking retard for it.
[laughing] Yeah, exactly.
"I used to say that at shows! Darn it!" But it still matters to you.
Yeah, it still kind of pisses me off. It's like the guys in Fall Out Boy, I've never seen them play but everyone says the two guitar players do everything that my brother does on stage and almost exactly. The different spins and jumps that he does. And it's like, what is he going to do, patent the move? You can't do that.
Well, I know with those guys I guess all their friends are in metal bands and hardcore bands...
Yeah, they all came from some weird...I remember one of our roadies knows them and he was saying that they were all in the worst metalcore bands in Chicago and then they all got together and started playing this music and started making money. And to their credit, they did, when they ran into my brother in the city right before they got really big, they gave him a CD and said, "oh, you guys have been such an influence on us and blah, blah, blah." Yet again, somebody else who we've influenced. My brother's answer to that is every time someone says that, he just says, "why can't they just hand me twenty bucks? I'd be so well off if they just handed me twenty bucks."
Damn it! Wow.
It's like, you know, when we played Reading Festival, we were headlining the second stage and all these bands like Saves The Day and Dashboard Confessional, and all these bands were going on before us. The guy from Dashboard Confessional came up to us and said the same thing, that we helped him through his teenage years and this and that. And it's like, thanks for telling me, but why don't you tell your fans that?
So is it safe to say we'll never see Sick Of It All kind of uh...I don't know, put out a heartfelt acoustic album of anything? Because that's what seems like most of your fans have done, gotten into heavy bands, then...
Yeah, but see, the problem is if we did it, it would suck.
You could try an Unplugged thing.
Yeah, we've always joked about doing an unplugged set at some bar, but just playing like we always do - really fast and screaming.
Aw damn it, I had that idea.
I don't know if anyone would get it.
It would probably sound like Today Is The Day.
[Laughing]
Are you familiar with them?
Yeah, we actually did a tour with them and Helmet way back.
Oh, no shit!
It was Today Is The Day, Sick Of It All, and Helmet. Fucking great tour.
Was Steve Austin seriously like, fucking twisted and weird and strange? Did he wake up in the bus or at shows with him with a knife raised in the air, screaming?
Nah, I just remember they were all really cool. That's all I remember.
I mean, I've never had a bad encounter with him, but something about him just makes me fear for my life. I don't know what to say. I'm an incredibly huge Today Is The Day fan I should note. So okay, this is a personal question for you. This is a question that pretty much only you, Lou, could answer. I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there are a lot of people out there that when I said, "hey, I'm doing an interview with Sick Of It All, what is the most important thing you want me to ask Lou?" And they all said, "ask him about his rat-tail, ask him why he had it, ask him what the events that lead up to the cultivation of the rat tail, and ultimately, why did it go?" Do you ever just sit around and say, "hey, I kinda wanna grow it back,"?
[Laughing] No, you know, I've never decided to grow it back. It had it's moment in time. I don't know why I grew it. It was part of me being in the hardcore scene and when I first got in it, I had really long hair. And then when I cut my hair, I actually cut it all off. To me, the whole thing about hardcore is trying to be yourself and be different, so I said, "I'm just going to grow a tail and see what happens." So I kept growing it and growing it, and then one day I just decided not to have it anymore.
Fair enough. Okay. I can understand that. But, there's no other symbolism behind the rat-tail?
White trash from Queens, I guess? I don't know.
I had a high school art teacher that had feathered hair, but then he had this really long braid that was down to the middle of his back. It was obvious that he was some sort of degenerate hippie bastard in the past who just couldn't let it go.
Yeah, yeah. How pathetic would it be if me, now, still had a rat-tail? It would be pretty pathetic.
Your fanbase might shoot up considering all the ridiculous mullets that bands these days have. I meant shoot up in popularity, not heroin or anything, but that could happen too. I also wanted to ask a vague question that a girl named Caitlin, from Milwaukee, wanted me to ask. She wanted to know if you guys had any secret parties on the bus that might require you guys to pull down all the shades.
No, we pull down the shades so people can't see us falling asleep watching TV.
Is that what it is? I guess she was under the impression that it was something real wild and crazy.
Ah, you know, sometimes we have fun but it's nothing that...parties that you pull down the shades? I don't know...[laughing]
She made it sound like it was an inside joke or something, so I jotted it down, but judging by your response...
Maybe it does mean something to somebody that isn't me. Pete pulls down the shades because he doesn't like people, like I said, we'll be sitting there watching TV and he'll go "I need to pull down the shades so people think we're doing something cool." Yeah, we joke around sometimes.
Put signs on the shades. "Super busy, come back later."
Yeah, every once and a while we'll get up and rock the bus back and forth, "okay, good, they think something's going on."
Have any of you guys ever gone to college or received any sort of formal education or anything like that?
I went to graphic arts school and got a degree in that, so did Pete. I actually took studio engineering for a year and it was fun and it was cool and all that, but, I don't know. I just couldn't get into it.
Have you been able to put any of your graphic art or studio abilities into practice?
Yeah, before we started touring a lot back in the late 80's/early 90's, I was working as a graphic artist. Me, Pete, and even Armand, we'd always come up with ideas for t-shirts and just, logos, band logos...
So is that the really good job you were talking about before?
Yeah. It was a good job as in it paid good, I had benefits and all that, but it wasn't good because I got as far as I could go in this company that I was working in because everyone in front of me had like, 18 to 20 years experience and I wasn't going to get any higher in the company unless someone died, and I wasn't going to wait around for that.
Yeah, I'd hope not. Kind of wrapping up here, has anyone ever come up to you guys or referred to you guys as "that band that did that song with House of Pain"?
[Laughing] No, nobody, because it's so hard to get that song until we put it out on the Outtakes For Outcasts record. Shit, just a bootleg.
I was hoping there'd be someone who was just...the diehard House of Pain fan. "Sick Of It All? What the hell is that?" And then maybe one day found out who you guys were and sought you out or saw pictures of you or something.
It was funny because at the time when they had done that song, our label didn't want to put it out because they said there was no future in mixing rap in hardcore, or rap in metal, or whatever. Which is really funny. And at that time when House Of Pain was touring, they would open up with their intro tape which had the song "Just Look Around", just the music without my vocals on it. We had a bunch of friends in Florida, all these hardcore guys who went to the show, and they said, "oh, we thought you guys were coming out - we heard the bass intro and we all started going crazy.
That must've been a sore, sore, moment. Do you ever talk to Everlast? Have you ever, you know, found out what it's like to sing the blues or anything like that? What is that all about?
I actually haven't seen him since his House Of Pain days. I think I saw him after we had done the mixes together, about two years after that I saw him once on the streets of Manhattan and talked to him, and that was it.
So you really have no idea what it's like?
Nah. Nah. I think it all had to do with his heart attack or whatever he had.
Oh.
Didn't he have a heart attack or something like that?
I don't know. But um..
[Laughing]
...you made me feel like a really big asshole there. Maybe I should kind of ease up. Alright, I have two more questions. Sticking out in your head, what is the meanest thing you've probably ever done to someone?
Hah, you mean, as in the band?
No, just anyone.
Wow, there's a couple that...
You don't have to answer.
Well, I don't know if it was mean or if it was justified. We were in Australia for the first time, playing a show, and this guy kept jumping up on the barricade where I was singing, and he'd jump and punch me really hard right in the chest or in the stomach. And you know, when you're singing and you get hit, you fuck up your words. So I said to him, "dude, don't hit me anymore, man. I'll hit you back." So the next song we're playing and he jumps up and he hits me, so I jump up and I kicked him in the face and he fell to the ground. Then in between songs he comes up like, "you kicked me," and I said, "I told you I was going to kick you," and then the bouncer goes, "you're not messing with the little guys, you're playing with the big boys now," and he took the guy and threw him out. I felt bad though.
[Laughing] Wow, you're a pretty nice guy. Someone runs up and punches you five or six times, and then you still feel bad about retaliating.
Ah, I felt bad because he was just drunk and stupid. I did tell him to stop and he didn't, so...
You gave him plenty of forewarning I'd say to not feel too bad about it.
Yeah, I don't feel bad.
Yeah, exactly. Come right out and say it, you're glad you kicked him in the face.
He probably doesn't remember.
No, probably not. Or maybe it's the highlight of his life. Maybe you guys are his favorite band and he'll tell this story to his children. "Aw man, one time I was punching Lou for no reason, and he kicked me right in the head! It was great!"
Broke my nose!
It was a good time. Um, kind of a last wrap-up question here, what are some bands that you currently feel bring hope to heavy music?
Oh, uh...I'll tell you what, the new Sepultura, I love that record.
Dante...? It's cool.
It's a good record.
I really like it.
You know my only problem with it, I think it's track 12 and 13, like that cello intro into the 13th song? That should've been the opening of the record. It would've blown me away even more if that was the opening of the record. That's just personal opinion. That...uh...what else have I gotten? Madball's last record was amazing, Most Precious Blood...most bands that have been around forever and are still going strong. There's so much good stuff out there though. To me, I think the key, and it's hard because bands that get big at a certain level, they get all these managers and labels, and they only want you to take out bands that are new and fresh and sell X amount of tickets, or they sold 10,000 records on their first week of release...those bands in those positions, I hope they can get past that and take out either new young bands that you love that don't sell a lot of records. That's what everybody needs. That's like, one of the beefs that Jason Newstead had with Metallica when they were taking out Linkin Park. He was like, "why the fuck do I want to take out Linkin Park? They sell a million records."
Yeah! Jason Newstead, I've always said this, it came to the point where he was the only cool guy in that band. He was the only person who actually kept up with metal and gave a shit about it.
Yeah, he wanted to take out all the young bands that he loved. What the hell is the band that he wanted to take out...they're kind of big now. Fuck, I can't think of their name now.
Hmm...
In Flames.
Really?
Yeah, he said when they were doing that tour with Linkin Park, Deftones, and Limp Bizkit, he goes, "let's fucking take In Flames! Let's fucking take them out!" The rest of the guys just...
James, "it's not popularrrrr enough-raah!"
Yeah, [laughing], luckily there are bands that do that, like bands like The Dropkick Murphys. Even though they're not as punk or hardcore as their early records, they still take bands like us on the road and sometimes their fans are more accepting to us than going out with Hatebreed sometimes.
Yeah, that's mind-boggling.
Yeah. I don't know what it is.
I don't know what to tell you there. I am but one man.
I think it's the thing of like, you know when you're 15 and you get into some band and you just want to hear everything that sounds like that, I think that's what it is.
I'm still doing that, musically, in this day and age. I'll get hooked on one band and go, "shit, I want to hear every single band that has ever toured with this band, had the same producer," or something like that. Well, that's about it. You have any other bands or albums you feel like mentioning?
Ah, nah. I think that's it.
Alright. Well, Lou, I appreciate you taking all this time to talk to me and field all my stupid questions and listen to me mumble weird things into the phone.
Hey, no problem. It was fun, it was fun.
