Phil Anselmo sounds off on extreme hard rock, his autobiography and his love of The Cure
August 16, 2013
At 45, Phil Anselmo may require reading glasses, openly discuss his love for his girlfriend, and drop words like “portentously” into conversations. But his guttural howl, and accompanying racket, are as punishing and brutal as ever.Anselmo is south Louisiana’s most successful hard rock export. He sold millions of records and filled arenas around the globe as the scowling singer of groove-metal quartet Pantera. Since Pantera’s dissolution in the early 2000s, he’s fronted various bands, mostly notably the New Orleans all-star ensemble Down. He’s also been to hell and back a couple times, enduring major back surgery and kicking a related drug dependency.
From his rural spread north of Lake Pontchartrain, he oversees a bustling hard rock cottage industry. His Housecore Records, which he runs with longtime girlfriend Kate Richardson, promotes up-and-coming metal bands and his own myriad side projects. The label is also presenting the Housecore Horror Film Festival in Austin, Texas, in October.
On July 16, Housecore released “Walk Through Exits Only,” the debut album by Philip H. Anselmo & the Illegals. Suffice to say, it is not for the faint of heart. The current Illegals tour concludes with a homecoming show at Tipitina’s on Thursday, Aug. 22. Warbeast, a metal band signed to Housecore, and Author & Punisher, a one-man industrial metal band, open the show.
Before we can discuss any of that during a recent phone interview, Anselmo must first pick a bone with me. “Let’s get one thing straight,” he growled. “I’m not born in Metairie! I was born in Touro hospital and raised in the French Quarter. I am a full-blown New Orleanian.”
As far as I can recall, in 20 years of chronicling his career I’ve never written otherwise. But once and for all, let the record reflect: Phil Anselmo entered the world — screaming, no doubt — in Orleans Parish.
You’ve got a book deal to write your autobiography in collaboration with true crime author Corey Mitchell.
Anselmo: It’s a book about my life. It’s not just strictly a Pantera book, although Pantera was obviously a giant part of my life. It took a whole lot in the New Orleans area and throughout Louisiana, gigging and gigging … a whole lot happened, and had to happen, before I was even able to be in the same room with the great musicians that were in Pantera.
Obviously, after the break-up of the band and the death of Dimebag (Darrell Abbott, the former Pantera guitarist who was shot to death in December 2004), a whole lot has happened. There’s a tremendous story to tell there. I’m going to try to pick out the most humorous things, and the most crushing things. Touch on all of them.PHILIP H. ANSELMO & THE ILLEGALS
•What: A homecoming show for the hard rock singer and his new band.
•With: Opening acts Warbeast and Author & Punisher.
•When: Thursday, Aug. 22, 2013, 8:30 p.m.
•Where: Tipitina’s, 501 Napoleon Ave., 504.895.8477.
•Tickets: $27.50 in advance, $30 day of show.So you’ll talk about all your back problems and …
Anselmo: Absolutely. And drugs, and everything. Hopefully it’s educational for people that are going through the same thing.
I’m also going to discuss how doctors are only doing half their jobs these days. They don’t explain to the patient the repercussions of certain medicines that they dole out so portentously. I’m going to slam some doctors, but I’m going to be brutally honest about myself.
There’s an upside to everything. It’s 2013. I’m 10 years clean from anything that resembles hard drugs. I haven’t even tasted a sip of whiskey since 2001. Things change in a life. So there’s plenty to tell.
You sat on a stage at Loyola University last year for nearly an hour and talked about your travails. You’ve gotten more comfortable with telling your story publicly.
Anselmo: I have a lot of clarity. I’m a very honest person. I consider myself a wide-open book. I’m as human as anybody, and made many, many mistakes to prove it.
That’s where I can relate with the reader who might be going through some similar things, whether it be chronic pain, or quack-prescribed opiates, or drugs in general. Not every recovery is the same. Maybe someone out there will gain something from my experience.Your longtime girlfriend, Kate, kind of helped save your life.
Anselmo: She did. And she will get tons of credit in my book. We’ve been together 11 years now. Without her strength, it wouldn’t have gone the way it did. Her steadiness, her rock-solid belief in me helped me pull through and do things correctly. She’s gold, or platinum, or titanium, or tungsten. I’m more in love with her now than I ever have been.
Since you’re being so clear and honest these days, review your current band, the Illegals.
Anselmo: It’s sounding very good. It’s still a work in progress as far as people wrapping their heads around it. Some shows are packed, some shows are not so packed. That is the way of the beast, up and down the musical ladder. I honestly don’t mind that. It’s the people that come out to the shows that really matter.
The record has been out three weeks now. It’s still very early in the game. Every night, there’s more people singing the words, more people familiar with the songs.
It’s an ambitious thing, because I know the record is a very agitating, hysterical type of listen — “hysterical” in two different senses (laughs). It’s a tough listen, and I do realize that. It’s not for everybody.
I wanted to make a record that was just as extreme as anything out there, but stick out like a sore thumb. I didn’t want to belong to anybody’s little club. I didn’t want to belong to any genre. To call it “heavy metal” is fair enough. But I wanted it to slide into any genre or sub-genre.
Why, at this stage in your life, did you make a record that was so extreme? Most people, when they get a little older, tend to become more mellow.
Anselmo: In Down, we’ve got everything from heavy metal songs to smooth rock songs to straight-up acoustic pieces. So right there, that covers a whole lot of ground.
I keep up with the extreme heavy metal underground because I adore it. It’s part of me. The extreme underground is the lifeblood of heavy metal and the future of heavy metal. There are a lot of cornerstone bands out there right now that are changing the game up, and they’re really writing some awesome, innovative stuff.
With extreme music, the leading genres would be black metal and death metal. But I didn’t want to really belong to either one of those genres, because I think I’ve touched on both genres in the past with several of my side projects. I wanted to make an extreme record that was absolutely non-traditional.
There is no wrong way to do music. Music is a vast, wide-open world of possibilities. I’m an explorer, and I’m going to keep on exploring.
You’re nurturing the extreme scene with your Housecore label. You’re a godfather, a granddaddy, to baby bands.
Anslemo: Any way I can help the underground, whether it’s me sporting a T-shirt and being a walking billboard…. There are some fantastic bands out there that deserve some recognition.
As far as Housecore goes, I’ve been very prudent about my signings lately. But I do have my eyeball on three or four bands right now that I’ll probably be signing and doing some business with early next year. They’re very innovative, playing non-traditional stuff. They’re creating a different sound for a different type of listener.
Once again, there are many expressions of underground music that are not for everybody. That’s what makes the underground special. There’s a limited, and exclusive, clientele. To cater to them is a natural thing for me.
Heavy metal has been so good to me. My knee-jerk reaction is to give back. And that’s exactly what I intend to do.
At your current tour’s opening show in Tulsa, Okla., you worked with the Make-a-Wish Foundation to invite a boy named Peyton Arens, who has a rare form of cancer, to play guitar on the Pantera song “Walk.” The YouTube video already has nearly 300,000 hits.
Anselmo: Honestly, the experience was amazing. It was the Illegals’ first true gig. Everybody had some pre-gig jitters. Peyton came in and was just this ball of energy, funny and excitable, just a fantastic ray of positive light.
I invited him up during sound check; he had a friend with him who played bass. We went over a small section of “Walk.” Little did I know, but this kid was a shredder. He could play the hell out of the guitar. So I said, “Let’s do this during the show. It would be a bigger platform for you.”
At the time, all they had planned on was the sound check. Somebody said that if he was going to do (the show), he had to go and rest first, because his immune system was so low. I said, “You could have fooled me — he’s got more energy than any of us up here.” He went back, got a second wind, came back, and shredded. It made the night. It was fantastic.
(New Orleans Saints General Manager) Mickey Loomis, of all people, shot me an email. He said that he had seen the footage (on YouTube), and gave me a big thumbs-up on that. Then he gave me the Saints report. And I was very happy to hear about that.
Are you doing Pantera songs in the set, or was that a special occasion in Tulsa?
Anselmo: We do do some blasts from the past. Every night it’s a little bit different. It’s not only Pantera; there’s a couple other bands that we touch on.
On this first tour, where really we only have 10 songs to work with that are ours, adding in some extras, and some of my favorite cover songs that I grew up with, is part of the fun and the spontaneity. I like every show to have its own identity.
Did you hear that the Voodoo Music + Arts Experience has added The Cure to the line-up?
Anselmo: I saw that. I’m a big fan, man. I love The Cure.
Do you really? I didn’t think you’d be as excited as everyone else seems to be.
Anselmo: I’m an older Cure fan. “Seventeen Seconds” (from 1980) and “Faith” (from 1981) are my two favorite Cure albums. Robert Smith is just a greater songwriter, period. It’s a beautiful addition to the Voodoo Fest. Big, big thumbs-up right there.
So if you’re in town the first weekend of November, you’ll be there?
Anselmo: I might be in town, I might not. I have a gig in South America. I wish I could tell you more about it. It’s kind of like the thing I do with the Metal Masters; it’s an all-star cast.
But hopefully I’m home. Because I’d love to see The Cure.
