staynegative@oocities.com.
When it comes to Valentine's Day, Peter Steele of Type O Negative has mixed emotions. But, as Nick Terry discovers, the man who wrote the 1996 Terrorizer Album of the Year and Official Least Shaggable Artist has his romantic streak, too...
For Peter Steele, this year's Valentine's Day will mark more than another year in the passage of his lovelife. Because last time round, love and death became inextricably entwined.
"I will just tell you my worst Valentine's Day," he says with a deep sigh, "and that was of 1995, when my father passed away on that day. So that has completely changed that day for me now, and caused mixed emotions, so that I would probably be spending it with someone I care about is now gone. So, ah... that last one was strange, and I'm sure the forthcoming one will be strange.
"Funnily enough, my favourite Valentine's Day by far was when I was five years old and my father came home from work and took me to the candy store to buy my mother a box of chocolates for Valentine's Day. He bought one for her and bought one for me also to give to her, and I thought that was really nice of him."
This hasn't ruined the occasion for you?
"I don't think so," he replies. "Just given me mixed emotions of some sort. But if you want my worst Valentine's date, as opposed to day, I would say, probably my adolescent years, thirteen to eighteen, when everyone had a girlfriend buy me, and I would feel like a complete loser on that day, because everyone was out buying cards and flowers and all sorts of sh*t, and I'm sitting at home jerking off."
The more cruel among us might say, so no change there then. Indeed, as anyone familiar with Pete Steele's self-deprecating sense of humour will know, Peter would probably say it for them. But a great deal has changed since the man behind Type O Negative's songs of love and hate first picked up a musical instrument and caressed it. For one, his songwriting has taken on a decidedly romantic streak, whether it's the intensely personal 'Red Water', all about the aforementioned death of his father, the sex-and-religion tales on 'Bloody Kisses', or the morbid lovesongs on "October Rust", "Love you to Death", "Haunted", "Die with me". At thirty-four, Steele is not the barbarian rocker of yore. Just as the tape recorded is flicked on, at the start of the interview, and he's paging through the December issue of Terrorizer, looking at the overwhelming vote in the Writers' Poll for 'October Rust', he notices the equally high placing for the final Swans album, 'Soundtracks for the Blind', and we chat a while about the band - one of Peter's former favourites. Interestingly, both Michael Gira and Steele have, in the latter part of their careers within extreme music, now composed tracks or songs about their fathers. The men who wrote the likes of 'Filth' ("the most disturbing album I have ever heard in my entire life." Peter says. "The most anxiety provoking album I have ever heard") or 'Slow, Deep and Hard' seem to have both worked through some of their demons, exorcised their teenage ghosts.
Because of course, both music and romance are the two easiest ways for the angry young man to escape and break out of the family circle. And usually closely intertwined. So which would Peter choose, were he forced to, music or love?
"Music is very much a part of me," he replies, "and it's not just music, it's sonic self expression. Whereas when you love someone, usually they are just augmenting your happiness. I think it would be very difficult to like take a part of myself and get rid of it over someone I quote unquote 'love', because I would miss the music and I am afraid I would begin to resent the person that I loved because of the hole that is now within myself, whether or not she was responsible. I really don't think matters, because when you get pissed off or depressed, usually and unfortunately, you take it out to those closest to you, and that is something I would not want to see happen. So I would have to choose music over love, it's like choosing yourself over someone else. I should just say that music is my first and last love."
Was it a substitute, way back in your teenage years?
"Music? Oh, definitely. I spent all of my teenage life sublimating, meaning that I was crazed. I felt like I was the ugliest person on earth, I couldn't get a girlfriend, I had no male friends, I felt ostracized by my family, and instead of going out and taking drugs or hurting somebody or hurting myself or doing damage to property like this giant having a tantrum, I simply stayed down my basement, played a couple of different instruments four or five hours a day. I kept myself off the streets, it was kind of like auto-incarceration."
Did your attitude to music change as you grew up and out of your teenage years?
"Music has always been a very personal thing to me, and whereas now, it's become my life and everyone wants to know everything about me, it's like someone examining your genitals whenever they feel like it. They can poke and prod it whenever they f***ing want to, but unfortunately this is how I make my living, but I feel that it's a means to an end, because I really don't like to perform, I don't like crowds, or bright lights, or loud music, or doing interviews or photo-sessions, I do however like to be isolated. So I think if I do this for x amount of time I can either (a) if I still want to I can still choose to do it or (b) I give the whole human race the big middle finger and disappear into the woods somewhere never to be found again."
As the saying goes, music is the food of love. And if that's so, what food do you think Type O Negative is?
"Is music the food of love... Hmm." He ponders the question awhile.
"It would be like eating vomit."
Even now, with all these lush lovesongs?
"Oh yeah. I think so. Looking back on everything I've done, I've never thought it was good or worthy to be bought, so it is just in essence sonic regurgitation."
Has anyone ever told you if they've used Type O Negative records as a backdrop to seduction?
"Yes, they have, and I'm thinking, what kind of sex are you having? Or are you having sex at all?"
What about Carnivore, then?
"No," he laughs. "They're not that way out."
So presumably Peter isn't enough of a narcissist to use his own records to set the mood. (Though anyone who's heard 'The Origin of the Feces' semi-'live' album will remember the possibly hilarious moment when he croons "I'm in the mood for luuuve" in the middle of the violence of 'I know you're f***ing someone else'.) In which case, what sort of records would he use?
"I think when you're with someone you care about," he says, "the sense of touch should not be the only one that is utilized. Like a really nice time for me is that passion of course, the touching and this and that, but there should be nice sounds, nice things to look at, nice things to smell, in essence every sense should be masturbated.
"There are of course certain CDs which I like to play when I'm with someone in a romantic sense, but there are times that I work out and I put different music on.
Cocteau Twins is great, early Xymox, Lush, Swallow, Lycia from the States, any kind of dreary trance-dance, like neither here nor there, nothing hard or heavy. Before our relationship winds up in the bedroom, I like to get to know people personally, and it's important to me that we have similar tastes in music, politics and outlook on life, that we can laugh together. Way before we even jump into bed I know that she's not going to be blasting Wagner or Souse or something like that."
Are there any records which have been ruined for you because they're too closely associated with a particular romance?
"There are, yes, certain songs that I wouldn't say are ruined, but definitely invoke extreme emotion when I listen to them simply because they were the soundtrack for the moment. There was this girl that I really, really liked a lot, and she was a big Cure fan. So virtually everything off the 'Kiss me...' album, and that one single they had about seven years ago, 'Lovesong', the little creepy organ tune, that always brings up very strange feelings in me. Talk Talk's 'Spirit of Eden' is also an album I have a hard time listening to, because it's like associated with a not too good memory, y'know kinda like at the same time I was with this girl, I was also listening to that, too, so there's a few CDs I have to think twice about putting on."
When you were with The Cure girl?
"Yes, the Cure girl," he deadpans back. "This was actually the woman that 'Black No. 1' was written about. She was the boo-b*tch, and that is not a term I've come up with, she referred to herself as boo-b*tch because she was like this bitchy Goth girl, and she knew it, and she was really hot. So I did use it, that word, in the song, and I hope people don't think it's like sexist, I didn't even come up with it, but I think it was so perfect for her."
What's the weirdest thing you've heard of that someone has used for a backdrop?
"For sex? I know people that like to f*** to techno, but I just can't move that fast."
Now that we've found out what musical preparations Peter would make, it's probably time to ask what else he'd do to set the atmosphere for his perfect Valentine's date. And whether, on all those February 14ths between 18 and 34, he's received any Valentines.
"Card, candy, flowers, yes, I have in the past."
Sent any?
"Many, more than I've received."
The cliche is that you send a card 'from an admirer' and hey presto, suddenly this person you've been fancying from afar comes to you in a great outburst of mutual passion. Has that ever happened to you?
"I've never done anything like that," Peter replies. "Usually, how I like to spend the day is to plan the whole thing out and make the day very, very special. There was one day when I was with a woman and I had rented out a cabin in upstate New York with a fireplace, and I had the whole thing decorated with flowers and stuff, and there was wine, so I took her there, and I had food delivered at a certain time, just y'know, trying to make it very nice."
What would you say the most romantic thing you've ever done has been?
"I don't want to sound conceited and say that there have been so many, but from time to time, I thought I was being romantic... hmm...
"I think one time," he continues, "there was this girl who'd been in a car accident and she wrote to me and she was in a hospital in Brooklyn, and I went to visit her, and brought her flowers without even saying I was coming. I had no intentions of having sex with her while she was in a full body cast, but I mean, it was a touching moment for me to see her happiness."
Has there been anything you've done which you thought was romantic, but which ended up being the opposite?
"I think every man from time to time goes a little too far and a little too fast. Once a man gets to touch a woman in a certain way that maybe he feels it's okay to expand his boundaries. From time to time, I have been put in my place, and rightly so, because I don't think women are gonna like lay down and just y'know let me do whatever I want to them, of course not. There's like trust involved."
Speaking of trust, maybe now's the time to ask the gross-out question, which we came up with while sitting round shooting the breeze. If you were a woman, would you spit or swallow?
"Would I spit or swallow?"
At this point, Peter is anything but non-plussed. He replies as deadpan as ever.
"Well, when I'm with a woman and she is menstruating, I swallow her bloody. I would assume if I was a woman and I felt the same love for the man that I felt for the woman, that I would probably want every part of him inside of me. Just because my only rule in bed is not to say no. So yes, I would swallow."
Finally, we have yet to report on our interviewee's reaction to the recent accolade awarded him by an overwhelming proportion of the Terrorizer readership, of 1996's Least Shaggable Artist.
Needless to say, Peter is incredibly honoured.
"I applaud their intelligence. I would have to agree with that. But if I'm the least shaggable, then why am I doing this Valentine's Day thing?"
Oh, you know, because it's appropriate in its own twisted way, I deadpan back.
And because after all, Type O Negative was founded on blood and irony.
E-mail me:
staynegative@oocities.com.
