Johnny Kelly of Type O Negative
Interviewed by Patrick Rennick on 8/7/2007
Transcribed by Patrick Rennick
Peter Steele looks like he’s seen better days. The intimidating frontman speaks hoarsely to a packed crowd at the Worcester Palladium in Massachusetts about how long it has been since Type O Negative has played the venue. After the cheers have died down he proceeds to inform everyone that following tonight’s performance, the wait will probably be even longer. Despite his recent setback in the form of a short stay at Riker’s Island for substance abuse it is hard to take Steele’s claim seriously given his track record of dark and oftentimes hilarious sarcasm. Regardless, the crowd screams back with disapproval. A large flashing prompter on stage labeled, “BOO” encourages the discontent of the audience. Other signs also decorate the stage including “APPLAUSE,” “LAUGHTER,” and of course, “YOU SUCK.” Three long banners decorated with Type O’s familiar negative symbol hang from the backstage. Green lights bathe guitarist, Kenny Hickey as he begins to play the opening riff of “Halloween in Heaven” from the band’s latest offering, Dead Again, one of the most energetic albums they have released to date. The song showcases Type O’s rejuvenated drive perfectly with its catchy rhythm and intense vocals. Playing madly in the shadows, Josh Silver’s peppered hair flies through the air as he slams around his keyboard. Beneath the trio of ominous green banners, sticksman Johnny Kelly holds the band together.
“For years Peter [Steele] has been saying, I want to make a hardcore record,” says Kelly. “He’s been saying that ever since we put out October Rust and then we went and did World Coming Down which was the furthest thing from a hardcore record. But yeah, with this new record a lot of it was just done on the spot. Peter would come up with some kind of riff and everyone would just jump on it. It just wound up being like that. There wasn’t any set agenda like saying that we’re going to have a hardcore record again.”
Lyrically the album is also different from its predecessors. While Steele’s signature satirical humor is still present, Dead Again finds him confronting religion and taking what he can from it. This can be seen most prominently on the 14-minute plus, “These Three Things” in which Steele writes powerfully about abortion.
“Since Peter’s mother died two years ago he kind of reconnected with his faith and stuff,” says Kelly. “The lyrics are always a reflection of what he’s experiencing at that moment. Each record is kind of a photograph of who he is at that point. That’s why I think that a lot of it has those biblical references and things like that. It’s just him sharing his beliefs. It’s not like Pat Robertson or anything.”
Kelly joined Type O Negative in 1994, following their outrageous, thrashy debut, Slow, Deep, and Hard. The band’s following album, 1996’s October Rust was the first to feature Kelly and quickly established their sound. Fusing the intensity of metal, the despair of gothic rock, and a knack for memorable songwriting, the sound of Type O Negative has garnered a large and dedicated underground fan base. The strength of these devoted fans was made undeniably evident by Dead Again’s shocking position of #27 on the Billboard 200, the highest chart rating in Type O’s discography.
“I’m shocked,” says Kelly. “My manager forwarded me some paragraph from some trade magazine saying that we got mentioned in there and we were supposed to have a strong week. And I was like you know, whatever. I wanted to get a copy of the billboard so I could save it but… I missed it. At the end of the day we have carved out a little spot for ourselves. You know, whether it has a major impact since we started 20 years or so ago it’s hard to speculate. I’m just grateful that we survived. The band has been around since 1989 and to see our fans go to the store and buy our records in this day and age when the record industry is becoming extinct, I’m grateful, I’m flattered, and I’m surprised.” Pausing for a moment to think Kelly continues, “It was cool to tell my mom about it but now that we’re on the road we’re seeing if we can maintain that momentum.”
Dead Again’s undeniable pop sensibility is certainly a factor in its mainstream success. However, underneath the catchy exterior of this album are expertly crafted and memorable songs that no metalhead should be ashamed to bash his or her head to. It seems that Steele and Co. are also satisfied with what they have achieved on the new album.
“There are always things that you hear and you want to change or hear differently when you hear the stuff played back,” says Kelly. “I think overall, especially for a band, not that I’m making excuses for ourselves, we’ve been around a long time. But, we didn’t just put out a record to fulfill the contract and get the rent paid or to have an excuse to go out on the road. We really worked hard on this record. Overall I’m pretty happy… It was inspiring to me to see that we still have the capability to make a really, really good record. That’s what I was really impressed with.”
Dead Again may bring some fresh intensity for Type O but certain aspects will always remain the same. One of these familiar themes is the band’s love for Black Sabbath, which has pervaded their sound from day one.
“Well, we kind of wear that on our sleeve,” says Kelly. “You can hear that in a lot of the drum fills too. Bill Ward was one of my favorites growing up and I’ve just ripped so much stuff from him over the years. I heard a bunch of drum fills and I just flat out took ‘em.”
Indeed the spirit of 70s Black Sabbath is alive and well as Type O unleashes the doom-laden “World Coming Down” upon an entranced Worcester crowd. The set tonight is rife with old classics including: “Christian Woman,” “Too Late: Frozen,” “Love You to Death,” and the touching, “We Hate Everyone.” However, only three songs are played off of Dead Again, and surprisingly the catchy title track is not one of them.
“It’s not customary for us to play a lot of new material off the latest record on tour,” says Kelly. “Peter’s got this hang-up about not playing new songs until people have heard which, depending on how you look at it, you’re out there to promote the fact that you have a new record and you’re supposed to play songs off of it to introduce it to people to get them to go buy it and he’s all like, well they have to hear it first.”
Believe it or not everyone, Peter Steele cares about Type O Negative fans. And what better way to show it then jamming enough material for two albums onto one?
“Everytime we do a CD he always wants to fill it up to its maximum, which is like 74 minutes,” says Kelly. “He’s always talking about how we’re working up to filling records and we’re up to 74 minutes. This record actually when we recorded it was over 80 minutes. We had to trim some stuff down. We did a cover of CCR’s [Creedence Clearwater Revival], “Bad Moon Rising” but it wasn’t coming out that well so it got scrapped and that saved a couple of minutes. I think there are a couple of trims here and there as well but it was recorded so long ago that I can’t remember what got cut anymore.”
Underlying Type O’s image of darkness and depression is a tongue-in-cheek ethic that transforms even the bleakest subject matter into a rocking good joke. “Tripping a Blind Man” from Dead Again offers a prime example in the lyric,
Patience is divine but the virtue is not mine
Turn your cheek gets ripped off
That's why God gave you four
This subtle humor is present in all of Type O’s work including their life on the road. Those willing were given a glimpse into this lifestyle on the first Type O Negative DVD, Symphony for the Devil. In true Type O style the DVD features an eight-year-old concert interspersed with hilarious and sometimes simply sickening footage of the band. Perhaps the most memorable sequence (despite repeated attempts to forget) is, “The Grapes of Ass” a nauseating foray of backstage shenanigans perpetrated by the memorable roadie, “Slitzy.” Are events of this magnitude the norm on Type O’s tour bus?
“Well, not so much stuff like the Grapes of Ass,” laughs Kelly. “But the other stuff that you see with Jerry [aka Slitzy] running around torturing people, that’s pretty much how it is on the road. We released a DVD like 10 years ago with a little tiny bit of live stuff on it. This one was more about releasing a live performance with extras. The fans have been asking us for a live recording for a very long time and that performance was the only one that we could get. It was filmed in Cologne and they aired it on television so it was like multiple cameras and it was recorded well. It was done very professionally. So we were able to obtain the masters and mix it and stuff like that. Other than that the only things that were available were bootlegs. The band has never been filmed. So some people are complaining about the video quality and the fact that it was recorded after the World Coming Down came out but, it’s all we got! It’s all we could get. And we threw some extra stuff in there to make it cool in a way even though this bootleg has been available for years too. I had it on bootleg. So we tried to make it our own.”
When you play with a frontman as notorious as Peter Steele it’s not surprising that the rest of the band will inevitably exist in some kind of shadow. Type O had some fun with this concept in their new video for “Profits of Doom” which features Steele playing out the role of his personal hero, Rasputin while the rest of the band portray the group of Russian nobles responsible for his murder. Drunk on wine and clearly belligerent, Steele stumbles down a staircase where he is shot by his band mates, his body rolled into a rug. Kelly, keeps himself quite busy outside the green shadow of Type O Negative. When the band isn’t touring or writing material he lends his sticks to alternative rockers, Seventh Void in addition to the metal Elvis himself, Danzig.
“Well, right now it’s all about Type O,” says Kelly, “But, with Type O there’s a lot of downtime. Sometimes there are years in between with no playing and you gotta do something. We’ve [Seventh Void] tried to build it up so that when Type O isn’t doing something we have something to do. It’s very like you know Sabbath, Soundgarden, Led Zeppelin just straight-ahead rock with guitar, bass, and drums. Kenny’s [Hickey] singing, fronting the band and it’s very rock-based, no industrial stuff. It’s been tough to get it off the ground with some of the other stuff going on. I also play with Danzig and now Kenny is there too (laughter). It’s been kind of quiet since we played a show in NJ after Christmas. Before that we did a short run along the West Coast for Thanksgiving and it’s a blast. You know Doyle comes out during the shows and we do a half hour of Misfits songs. His manager wanted a festival schedule to find out when we were going to be there. Glenn doesn’t like to tour. He hates it, he’s over it. The last thing we did he just wanted to see how it worked because he hates being on a tour bus. He’s just been doing it for so long. He’s over it. But we talk about the possibility of making a record I just think it’s something that he’ll never get away from. He says he doesn’t want to do it anymore but as long as he’s still walking on this earth. He’s a legend, a total legend. His body of work speaks for itself.”
Backstage at the Worcester Palladium the Type O Negative show has yet to begin. Johnny Kelly sits overlooking a street that is slowly becoming flooded with fans. He shares a laugh with Hickey as they both notice a particular woman who has been following Steele around on the recent tour (perhaps much longer).
“There have been so many times where I would look at us and be like this has to be it,” says Kelly, pausing to laugh. “It has to be! It’s run its course I have to figure something else out for myself you know, what am I going to do for a living but something always happens. You get the jolt. That’s what it feels like it’s been doing for years now. When we first started working on the record [Dead Again] we weren’t sure how it was going to turn out, we weren’t sure. It got to the point where we were just taking a really long time and I was thinking, the record isn’t going to get done! It’s not going to happen! And then something would happen and we would go and get a bunch of work done and I’m like ok, stuff is happening and then finally we finished the record and then we were wondering how long it was going to take to get out. And the same thing was going on with touring you know, who knows? But I go from day to day. I try to stay optimistic about it and now it seems like the band isn’t going anywhere for a while.”
Offering an instant validation of this statement a loud spoken, ridiculous man explodes through the door decked out in clothes that liken him to Hunter S. Thompson out of Fear and Loathing. Kelly stares in disbelief for a few moments before bursting into laughter.
“You see, this is what happens,” says Kelly. And everyday I’m more impressed. But we all still want to do it. We’re all still into this. We still feel we have something to offer. We’re still setting goals for ourselves and working towards something. When that mentality changes then it might be time to move on to the next part of my life I don’t know. But I hope it takes a long time! It’s been quite a journey. There’s just no middle ground with this band it’s either the highest of highs or the lowest. You know one day we’re out on the road playing festivals and then the next day I’m digging in the couch for change. And that’s how it is. Best job I’ve ever had.”