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As a director, Rob Zombie has made plenty of movie sequels, but 2010’s Hellbilly Deluxe 2 was the first time he’d made a sequel to one of his own records. As he told Metal Hammer at the time, rock’n’roll was in dire need of entertainers – and he was here to show everyone how it’s done.
When you’re young and endeavouring to discover your true place in the world, identity is everything and the decisions you make about who you are will have a huge impact on the way your life turns out. Born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, in 1966, Robert Bartleh Cummings knew early on that he wanted a bigger, bolder and more exciting role than American society was likely to provide. And so he became a monster of his own creation…
“The person I am now, that’s the real me. That’s me without being told what to do by anybody. Before I had any kind of success and I had to have a real job, that’s when I felt like I was playing a character. That’s when you’re being polite and you’re showing up on time and you’re not saying what you really think because if you do you’ll get fired in two seconds. So although it seems like I’m playing a character, this character is really my true self.”
He’s a one-man monster movie. He’s a larger-than-life distillation of every twisted cartoon, horror film villain and extravagant rock star you’ve ever seen or heard. He’s a 3D multitasking mutant superhero motherfucker who has spent more than two decades trying to inject some life, colour and excitement into every aspect of his creative pursuits and, in turn, into the lives of those who dig his music with White Zombie and now as a solo artist, and thrill to his exploits as a film director. His name is Rob Zombie (it really is… he changed it legally) and he’s back again to make rock’n’roll big, dumb, dangerous and fun all over again.
“I remember in the early days of White Zombie, we would go out with the big stage show and all the pyro,” Rob tells Hammer. “Nobody was doing that at the time and people would say to us, ‘Nobody wants to see this shit anymore!’ That’s a stupid thing to say anyway, because we were selling out arenas, but I’d just say, ‘Oh really? Well watch… as soon as that fireball goes off, the whole crowd’s gonna cheer!’ Of course they wanna fucking see it.
“It’s the same today. We go on stage and we don’t give a shit. We’re gonna have so much fun that people are not going to be able to restrain themselves, and we see it happen during the shows. A lot of times people are pumping their fists and it seems like they wanna be really angry and then you see the vibe change and it’s like the guy at the party who’s decided that he’s going to stand in the corner all night long, and by the end of the night he’s the guy who’s naked, dancing with a lampshade on his head. That’s what we’re trying to do. Those are our shows. Naked guys with lampshades on their heads!”
Music is a cyclical thing, with one trend or preference inevitably replacing another as time passes, and the battle between showmanship, flamboyancy and balls-out entertainment and the faux-humble, we’re-just-like-our-fans shtick that so many bands use as an excuse for not making any real effort to be extraordinary is an ongoing one that, thankfully, the former camp seems perennially destined to win.
From the crazy, kitsch and endlessly inventive artwork that adorns his albums to the genre-mashing madness of albums like his latest, Hellbilly Deluxe 2, Rob Zombie continues to prove and support the notion that those who surrender their souls to rock’n’roll simply want to be transported to a world where fun is king and the party never ends. The strange thing is that anyone would dare to refute Rob’s philosophy…
“I blame it on grunge rock, man!” he spits. “It came and ruined the fucking party, because it was all, ‘Let’s just stare at our feet and look like fuckin’ slobs!’ What happened then was that rap music took over and those guys became the rock stars. You looked at the rock bands and they were all boring, but look at Snoop Dogg and those guys and they’re rollin’ like they’re Led Zeppelin now! I just think bands should be rock stars or at least they should seem like they want to be! I don’t know, it just seems weird, man. Isn’t that why you want to be in a band? Do you want to be in a band to be boring? I don’t fucking get it.”
The follow-up to 2006’s Educated Horses, an album that was widely considered something of a disappointment, Hellbilly Deluxe 2 is the official sequel to Rob Zombie’s 1998 solo debut. Released shortly before the disbandment of White Zombie, the band Rob formed in New York City in 1985 and led to multi-platinum glory by the mid- 90s, the first Hellbilly Deluxe deftly encapsulated the essence of this bearded wonder’s music; a wild but proudly accessible blend of crunching post-Ministry riffing, trashy rock’n’roll and deranged B-movie atmospherics that seems to belong simultaneously – mischievously, even – to both the past and the future.
Twelve years later, Hellbilly Deluxe 2 more than lives up to the standards set by its illustrious forebear. An indecently entertaining record that leaves no rock’n’roll stone unturned in its flagrant, foamy-lipped quest for loud and raucous thrills, spills and cornball singalong glory, Rob Zombie’s latest creation is that unlikeliest of triumphs: a sequel that doesn’t suck.
“What started me on the whole thought process was that when I was doing Halloween 2 I was thinking that sequels to movies are very commonplace, but people don’t really make sequels to albums,” he explains. “I thought, ‘Why not? That’s kind of a cool idea!’, you know? Hellbilly Deluxe, the first one, clearly seems to me to be the record that I’ve made that people love the most. It was exactly 10 years later when we made the record, so why don’t we try to make a sequel?
“It wasn’t until the record was 100 per cent done that I decided to call it that, because I didn’t want to just call it that if it didn’t make sense. But at the end of the day, when I listen back to the record it kind of has the same spirit and the vibe but not in a retro way. It’s the perfect companion piece.”
Instantly identifiable as a Rob Zombie record but one of the most subtly diverse albums of his career, Hellbilly Deluxe 2 veers from the ominous, pulsing thump of Jesus Frankenstein to the sleazy surf-o-billy of What? and from the sick sci-fi blues of Werewolf Baby to the cinematic bad trip of the closing The Man Who Laughs, without ever losing that all-important thread of identity.
Perhaps most importantly, it’s clearly an album that has been made by a living, breathing and fully-functioning band, rather than something assembled by a bunch of anonymous studio musicians operating at Rob’s behest, as was predominantly the case on his earlier solo records. With guitarist John 5, bassist Piggy D and drummer Tommy Clufetos permanently installed as his official henchmen, Rob Zombie is finally back where he belongs.
“I always wanted to do it this way because I never wanted to be a solo artist,” he says. “I always wanted to be in a band. I love bands. I think most people go solo out of necessity and for no other reason, but I grew up with bands. Even Alice Cooper was a band at first. But I could never find the right combination of people that were visually interesting enough or dynamic enough to be on the stage as performers but who were also skilful enough to play on the records, if you know what I mean. It would be fun to watch live but not so great to record with. These guys are so talented that it’s like working with studio musicians, but they’re also visually dynamic on stage so it works as a live band. It’s a great situation for me.”
The last few years have been very intense and productive ones for Rob Zombie, not least due to the fact that he has stumbled upon a whole new level of infamy and renown thanks to the huge success of his work as a film director. With brutal, blistering films like House Of 1,000 Corpses, The Devil’s Rejects and his brilliant remake of genre classic Halloween, Rob single-handedly rescued the horror movie genre from the witless, gutless mediocrity of post-modern tripe like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer and introduced a whole new audience to his uniquely vivid and warped vision of the world. Now that Hellbilly Deluxe 2 is straining at the leash, it seems inevitable that many fans of his films will now be discovering Rob Zombie’s music for the first time. And, understandably, that’s something that he is more than happy to encourage.
“With the movies, you definitely reach a way different cross section of people, but at the same time it’s started to bring other people to the shows too,” he says. “Fans of the movies maybe only listen to classical music or country music and they fuckin’ hate rock music, but that’s not always the case. The audiences overlap too. The fans of the music are definitely fans of the movies, and I swear I sign more copies of the DVDs than I do CDs at the shows now. But I still feel that they’re kind of separate. That’s why, with the next film project, whatever that might be, I would like to make the two worlds collide a little more and get the band involved in making the soundtrack. I feel like the two worlds have lived separately for long enough.”
Talking to Rob Zombie, it’s almost impossible not to be swept along by the man’s endless enthusiasm and belief in what he does. Whether speculating excitedly about “a whole evening of Zombie”, the multi-media extravaganza he hopes to take out on the road later this year, or enthusing about Tyrannosaurus Rex, a project that may or may not be the next Rob Zombie film to hit screens in the next year or two (“It’s about a washed-up heavyweight boxer who crosses paths with this whole underworld motorcycle gang cult,” he froths. “It’s this really violent, fight-slash-biker movie! It’ll be amazing!”), he’s such a force of nature and a whirlwind of ideas and positivity, that it defies belief that anyone could resist an invitation into his wonderful and terrifying world. Ultimately, Rob Zombie is an entertainer, and one with an absolute dedication to delivering the goods and providing his fans with experiences, both musical and visual, that they will never forget. Long may his mission continue.
“I used to work in a bank and my job was taking all the bank documents and putting them onto microfilm,” he drawls, audibly pained by the memory. “It doesn’t get more boring than that, and the only reason I didn’t just put a gun in my mouth was that I had headphones on and I was listening to music all day long! That’s the only thing that made life worth living. So yeah, the only reason to live is for art. Movies, music, books, paintings, that’s the meaning of life. Art is the only thing that makes you happy, and so when people come to our shows I feel a huge responsibility. When I go to a show, I always feel the same, you know? Those people came, they paid their money and you’d better fuckin’ entertain them, or you should give them their fucking money back!”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 202, February 2010
