Most people should be familiar with the name Rob Zombie — whether as the front man for the rock band White Zombie, through his solo music career, through his directorial forays via movies such as House of 1,000 Corpses, Devil’s Rejects or the Halloween remakes, his recent stint as director of an episode of CSI: Miami or through his skills as an artist. They say there’s no rest for the wicked and Zombie rarely finds time to relax. This spring, he’s heading out on the road for the Gruesome Twosome Tour with Alice Cooper in support of his latest CD, Hellbilly Deluxe 2. I recently spoke with Zombie by phone from his California home to discuss the tour, his band and how his music compares to the old White Zombie days.
Creative Loafing: A tour with you and Alice seems pretty logical — you’ve known each other for years. How did this come about, or why did it take so long to come together?
Rob Zombie: I’m not sure why it took so long, truthfully. We’re both kind of scratching our heads at that one. We’ve been talking about it for so long that it really did feel like it was never going to happen — ‘if we haven’t done it by now, when are we gonna?’ I guess it was just one of those things… the timing was never right. You know, I’m glad we never did it until now because this is going to be so great. It’s going to be the most spectacular show ever and maybe it wouldn’t have been as good back then. I feel like now is the time. Our schedules didn’t match up. I don’t know what it was. But the timing is right, it’s all good and it’s gonna kick ass.
Is it a co-headlining situation or are you rotating?
He’ll do his full show first and then I’ll do my show. It’s two full shows. We won’t switch the order ’cause it’s way too confusing. (laughs)
What kind of influence was he on you?
I think Alice’s influence on me and on everyone is beyond calculable — you can’t even calculate it because he did everything first. He was amazing. Besides the incredible music — I mean, the music and the songs he has are just amazing and stand the test of time and are so intricate and strange — the stage theatrics and the persona and the vibe that he brought is just amazing. He’s so smart that the stuff he was doing back then — it wasn’t just a spooky, horror rock thing, it was so much more. It was so ahead of the curve of what everyone else was doing. It just blew me away as a kid. He was just a classic show business entertainer on all levels. It wasn’t just that he was one thing and that’s what I loved about him.
While I was doing research for this article, I read an article about Devil’s Rejects and how there was no way you were going to call it House of a 1,000 Corpses 2 because sequels in titles are such a bad idea because people will expect Part III and Part IV. Now you’ve released Hellbilly Deluxe 2 … so, care to explain yourself?
I don’t know, I’ve done like 100,000 interviews, so I don’t know what I was saying or why. I think probably what I was referring to at that point was, I didn’t want to call it House of 1,000 Corpses 2 for many reasons and I still wouldn’t want to. I wanted to make a completely different movie in tone in every sense and I thought that House of 1,000 Corpses 2 for me, at that moment in time — it felt weird. It wasn’t right. If the movie was exactly the same in tone — ’cause Corpses was kinda wacky and campy and more like Rocky Horror Picture Show than anything else — I would have. But I knew with Devil’s Rejects I wanted to make something that was a post-modern, bleak Western and I wanted it to be perceived differently. If it was exactly the same type of film as Corpses, then I would have called it House of 1,000 Corpses II and been fine, but I wanted it to be seen as something totally different. That’s why I did it. Sometimes, it’s hard. Even with Halloween, I didn’t want to call Halloween 2, Halloween 2. I wanted to call it something else, but that wasn’t my decision to be made. I tried my best, but it didn’t work.
With the music, you had Hellbilly, then released two other albums. Is there a reason you went back to the Hellbilly name when you were naming this album? Was there something that tied it back into that?
Basically, when we were recording the record, it was exactly the 10th anniversary of the first record. I thought it would be kinda cool, 10 years later, to make… but as time goes on, sequels are so commonplace now. It’s such a part of our culture. Who gives a crap? It’s not like ‘Oh my god, they’re making sequels!’ That’s all they do. Things change over time. I’m sure at one point someone said, ‘I will never make a movie with talking sound!’ Things just change. You can’t say, 10 years ago, you said this. Whatever … It just seemed like kind of a fun idea. I thought the new record had the spirit of what we were doing back then. It seemed like a cool thing to do, especially with this tour that we’re doing now. We’ve really gone back to the horror thing that we were doing 10 years ago. It was a good way to get back to it.
On this album, you were working with a band again instead of doing it on your own with a rotating cast of musicians. Is there a reason you were doing things on your own instead of with a band — did you not have the right people in place?
It just wasn’t the right situation. Here’s the thing with bands that is tricky sometimes — all bands do this, but sometimes they keep it secret, but I don’t. Somebody who might be kick-ass to watch live on stage and looks cool and everything can be terrible in the recording process. To me, making records and doing a live show are two different things. I need to do whatever is going to work best for the record, and then I need to do whatever is going to work best for the show. That’s how it went as the years went on. Also, when I started my solo career, I didn’t have a band. So, when I started the first solo record, it wasn’t that I wasn’t using my band, I didn’t even have them yet to use. The guys that became the touring band came into the process toward the end of the record being finished anyway. So, that was part of the reason. Now, the guys I have, especially John 5 — we’re just in sync. We function great on stage and in the studio. That’s a great thing if you can get it, but it’s easier said than done sometimes.
What kind of dynamic has Joey Jordison brought? And did it make a difference with Tommy [Clufetos] leaving [to play with Ozzy Osbourne]?
Truthfully, Tommy leaving was the best thing that ever happened to the band. Joey coming in … sometimes unexpected changes really fire you up. I can’t put my finger on why, it’s not something specific to Joey’s doing. Someone unexpectedly just leaving and throwing your whole organization into chaos without warning — there’s two things you can do. You can be broken by it or you can be like, ‘Fuck that! We’re gonna build this thing even bigger and stronger.’ That’s the direction we took and Joey coming in just added to that.
Is there any concern, with Joey being the drummer for Slipknot, to what’s going to happen down the road or are you not looking that far?
There’s no sense looking that far. As soon as you think, ‘This is a great, solid unit,’ something happens. I know that he’s gonna hang with us for the rest of our whole touring cycle … That’s all that matters right now. I’ll worry about later when later gets here. [laughs]
With all of the movies you’re involved in, is it tough to balance that with the music? That and everything else you do …
They’re all creative outlets and it’s not tough to balance in that respect. It’s only tough to balance literally in having enough time. Time is the hard part. I can work all the time and crank out the ideas — that’s fun and I do that anyway. It’s just physically having enough time to do the things. I get offered so many great projects that I would love to do — movies and TV shows and things — but there just isn’t enough time. A couple things came up this week, but I had to say no because I’m leaving to tour. It’s not possible to do it. It’s really a drag because I hate saying no. For me, it’s everything you’ve worked for, to have these opportunities. They’ll always come back, but my personality makes me want to do everything.
Is it just a matter of what gets scheduled first?
You have to prioritize. Which one do I really want to do, and which one do I kinda want to do? [laughs] You just have to pick and choose.
You recently directed an episode of CSI: Miami. Is that something you’d like to do again?
Not really. Maybe if something else came up that was interesting. CSI for me was sort of … I really wanted to do that one because I’d never done it before. It really was bothering me that I hadn’t done TV. If something in TV came up, but I didn’t have the experience … it was a way for me to break through and get into that world and understand it because it’s very different from feature films. It was a good learning experience.
Does anyone ever ask you — you have the underlying horror theme in your music, you direct horror movies, you have props and memorabilia in your house — how you get an escape from that? Or is that where you’re most comfortable and love it and it’s just part of you?
I’m in a weird position that a lot of people don’t get to be in where everything that I do for a living is based around something that I love, so I don’t need to get an escape from it. That’s just a fortunate position. I don’t know if you talk to a baseball player and ask what he does when he’s not playing a game that he’ll say, ‘I wait for the next game. I want to play baseball.’ Unfortunately, a lot of people have jobs that they’re not passionate about and they’re looking for their escape and they go to Disneyland or go fishing. When you do what you love for a living, you’re not looking to escape it.
How would you say your music career has changed when you look back at the start? Or even the start of your solo career if you want to look at it that way…
How has it changed?
You’ve kept a pretty consistent sound, but you’re not doing what White Zombie was doing…
I mean, it’s kind of… music’s tricky. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that people really perceive music differently. You can show a group of people a movie, and they’re all going to more or less perceive it in a similar fashion. Some might like it and some might not like it, but music is weird. People really bring a lot of their own baggage to music. For me, I think the music has kept the same vibe over the years, but changed a lot and evolved a lot, twisted, turned around… But everyone hears it differently. I’ll play a new song and someone will say, ‘Oh man, that sounds like classic White Zombie.’ Another person will go, ‘It’s so different. I don’t like it.’ People will say polar opposite things about the same song. A lot of people will always want to bring up an album we made a couple records ago called Educated Horses and say, ‘Why is it so different?’ I tell them it’s not different at all. They looked at the album cover, I looked a little different and that made them hear it completely differently because they got a thought process of what it was. I know that if the album cover looked different, people would hear it differently because the songs are the same style. Some of the songs are the heaviest that we play. People think it’s not as heavy, but they somehow perceive that it isn’t. It’s funny. That’s why I think an image is so important with a band. I remember having the discussion years ago when grunge was big and people were so anti-image. No one would have been interested in Jimi Hendrix if he were fat, bald and standing on stage in a Hawaiian shirt. Trust me, no one would give a fuck. They’d think he was a great guitar player, but he’d be a footnote in rock history. The fact he was dressed cool and a sexy, rock god maniac — that’s Jimi Hendrix. It’s all bullshit. People can’t get past an image. I’m so used to it now that it doesn’t bother me, but no matter what you do, movie, music — people will always say it’s not as good as the last thing. They still compare it to the first White Zombie record even though it’s been 25 years. How can it be? You’ve been listening to the last album for three years and every little thing on it and know every pop and crack and you’re comparing it to something you’ve perused for five minutes. Of course it’s not special to you. (laughs) It takes time. I think more than ever, it’s become a snap decision society. When I was a kid, if I went out and bought a record — I plunked down my hard-earned money and brought it home — I’d listen to that fucking thing until I loved it. Now, people just audition five seconds of a song on iTunes and say they don’t like it. How could they? Buy it, put it in your car and cruise around with it. There are records that I bought and didn’t like and years later I revisit it and go, ‘What was I thinking? This is the most brillian record ever fucking made!’ It’s art. Art is different. Music and movies are all perceived differently by people in different times. People will say, ‘That sucks’ and I’ll say, ‘No it doesn’t. You just don’t understand it.’
You have this tour with Alice coming up — what’s next?
2010 is all touring. I’ll start a movie sometime in 2011. I’m not sure what it will be — I have several projects floating around. Whichever one lands first, but I don’t know what that is. After the Alice Cooper tour, we’ll be on the Mayhem Tour with Korn and that takes us through the summer. In the fall, we’ll probably go back out and do something else. Before you know it, we’ll be putting up Christmas trees.
Rob Zombie and Alice Cooper will perform at the Uptown Amphitheatre on May 19 at 7:45 p.m. Tickets are $29.50, $42.50 and $55. $89 lawn four-packs are also available.
This article appears in May 11-17, 2010.
