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Rob Zombie's Not-So-Private Hell
09/03/1998 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Don Kaye
You wouldn't exactly expect a solo album from Rob Zombie, co-founder and lead singer of White Zombie, to sound like a Harry Connick Jr. record. It's not as if Zombie (real name: Rob Straker) has a secret desire to be a big-band crooner. No, what you see is what you get from Zombie, and his first solo excursion, Hellbilly Deluxe, is along the same groove-heavy, distortion-drenched, snarling horror-rock lines as all his previous output.
"I guarantee that, if we wanted to just play a big joke on the world, I could have put out this record with 'White Zombie' on it and no one would've questioned it," laughs Rob on the line from his L.A. dungeon. "The goal was never to make it sound different from White Zombie, because there's nothing about that band that I feel isn't me, or that I'm trying to get away from."
So why, after 13 years, five albums, and untold thousands of miles on the road, did Rob feel the urge to break away from White Zombie, if not to veer in a drastically different direction?
"We kinda just said, 'We've been doing this for 13 years, and really doing it hardcore, nonstop, for the last five years--we need a break,'" admits Rob. "You really can take something that you like, and that you're really proud of, and beat it into the ground by working too hard. I hate when something that you love to do starts seeming like a chore. That's why this record was a big kick in the ass. It made it almost seem like I just started. It sounds stupid, but it made everything really fresh and new again."
White Zombie was "fresh and new" in the late '80s, when the band, led by Massachusetts native Rob, burst onto the New York underground with a brutal sound, ferocious live show and ghoulish visuals that soon put them on the map and led to a deal with Geffen Records in 1991. It took nearly two years of nonstop touring for the band's first major-label release, La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Volume 1, to crack the public consciousness, with a single, "Thunderkiss '65," becoming a smash at radio and MTV. Two million copies of La Sexorcisto later, White Zombie were stars, the '90s' answer to Alice Cooper.
But after another two-year grind to promote 1994's Astro Creep 2000, the individual band members were ready to drop. According to Rob, however, the band probably hasn't reached the end of the line. "We've talked about making another record--no one's just said, 'F--k you, that's it, goodbye, over.' I want to keep working hard, but I want to stop and enjoy it, too, and get some perspective on it while it's happening."
Rob Zombie is nothing if not hard-working. In addition to recording Hellbilly Deluxe, he's directed the video for the album's first single, "Dragula," planned a fall tour with Monster Magnet and Fear Factory, and somehow found the time to launch his own record label, Zombie-A-Go-Go, with releases by the Bomboras and the Ghastly Ones. Last year, he took a long hoped-for stab at filmmaking with a chance to write and direct the second sequel to The Crow, although he ultimately parted ways with the production.
"That was a fiasco," Rob grumbles. "I want to make smaller movies for no money, because once the budget escalates, your control goes away. That's what happened with The Crow 3--the budget just got high enough that it stopped being some weird little project and became very mainstream. It slowed to a snail's pace and became a joke."
Any more film projects are on hold for the immediate future, while Zombie concentrates on promoting his album and launching his tour on October 6. But both record and tour have been dogged by controversy. Originally slated to appear on Korn's highly-publicized "Family Values" package, Rob parted ways with the tour over what he says were legitimate disagreements about the size of the production he could mount. "When I left the tour, I didn't think there was any hard feelings. I just thought, 'Okay, logistically this doesn't work, thanks but no thanks, I'm outta here.' And then I didn't even think about it again until all this other stuff came out."
"This other stuff" was a surprisingly nasty press release from Korn and their management that went further than production concerns. Korn claimed they were led to believe that White Zombie was appearing, a statement that holds little water, since previous press releases listed "Rob Zombie" as part of the bill. But in a more serious accusation, the Korn camp said that Zombie, through his manager, had objected to a hip-hop act on the tour, raising a subtle charge of racism.
"It's such a harsh statement to make, with no facts behind it," says Rob, clearly stung. "It's one thing if they said, 'We don't want him on the tour because he's an a--hole.' That's pretty general. But to say what they said--since day one, we've always tried to be a musical combination of everything from Slayer to Public Enemy. We've always had the rap influence in there.
"I relate it to being in high school. A guy breaks up with a girl, and they're both like, 'That's cool, I understand, let's just be friends,' and then he writes 'Cindy is a f--king whore!' in every bathroom in school. That's what it seems like."
Rob and his management recovered quickly enough to assemble the tour with Monster Magnet and Fear Factory. Then they had to deal with the news that the Wal-Mart and K-Mart retail chains refused to carry Hellbilly Deluxe unless Rob removed several Satanic symbols, along with illustrations of scantily-clad women, from his CD booklet.
"We [had alternate artwork] on the last couple of White Zombie records," says Rob, considerably calmer about this issue. "I kind of changed my position on it once I went on tour and saw the rest of the country, where kids just can't buy records if they can't get them at Wal-Mart. I remember when I was a kid, the only place I could buy records was K-Mart. And if I couldn't get 'em there, I couldn't get 'em!"
Rob Zombie says he's "doing it for the kids," a classic rock 'n' roll entertainer's credo that has sort of gotten lost over the last few years, during the height of the self-absorbed, self-hating, alternative revolution. "It's my job to entertain the kids--it's not about my personal, private journey. You're supposed to keep that stuff inside and let it eat away at you, instead of bringing it onstage." He laughs at the thought. "I hate whining. I hope, if anything, that the decade of whining is over!"
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