Takin' A Ride

Anthrax came through town opening for KISS on the “Crazy Nights” tour at the San Diego Sports Arena on April 1st, 1988. I was able to get an interview with Frank Bello from Anthrax before they took the stage.

This was more like a “conversation”, I guess. I was a little green interviewing people back then. But you get a good insight into where Anthrax was at the time and how personable of a guy Frank is. This was the “Spreading The Disease” tour right before they went into the studio to record “State Of Euphoria”.

My memories of the show:

• Frank, Scott, and Joey were all around the parking lot, saying “hi” and being pretty approachable to fans. I mean, they didn’t hang out or anything and were behind the barriers to go to the backstage door, but they’d come up and say “hi” for a quick chat.
  
• Scott Ian broke into KISS’ dressing room or something and took handfuls of Gene’s picks and was flicking and tossing them out to fans outside this barrier. I got one somewhere.
• The interview was set up via Anthrax’s management and Frank and I did the interview (with my friend Jim) in the parking lot of the Sports Arena.
• Jim hated KISS and didn’t want to see them. He was my ride. I was a little pissed he made me leave without even seeing one song of them. Still am (lol). It would’ve been my first time seeing them. But then again, as we mention in the interview, this concert wasn’t really publicized and seemed like a last minute thing. Plus it wasn’t really cool to like KISS at this time.

Here’s the interview (transcript of it is below):

Ted: Hella Ted here with Frank Bello from Anthrax. How you doing?

Frank: Hella Ted, what’s up? Alright, hanging out. Did you get orange juice? I think it’s fine.

Ted: Alright, just orange juice? Why?

Frank: Just orange juice. I’m sick, I’ve got a fucking cold. It won’t go away.

Ted: You guys are on tour with KISS right now. How’s that been going?

Frank: Amazing. It’s been a great time.

Ted: They’ve been treating you well?

Frank: Yeah, they’ve been treating us. They give us a lot of room on stage. They give us 50 minutes, which is a lot for an open-slot. And they’re really nice people too.

Ted: Alright, haven’t ticket sales been kind of poor or something?

Frank: Yeah, that’s the only problem. See, um, they have problems with their publicity and um, promoting was… for the shows and kids just don’t know about the shows.

Ted: Yeah, a lot of people didn’t even know about it, like this show today.

Frank: Yeah, I talked to some people about it today. Tell the same thing, just the promotion’s been shit.

Ted: So when’s it end?

Frank: Tomorrow in Vegas. Tomorrow’s the last show. Yeah.

Ted:  So now you’re playing big arenas and stuff. You ever consider about going back to small places every once in a while?

Frank: Yeah, we’re always going to play… like every year we have a thing in December. We do Christmas shows, either we’ll do L’Mours, we do some small shows in New York. Next year, I don’t know if we’re going to move for an opening slot again.

Ted: Well, so you would be headlining?

Frank: We don’t know yet. It depends.

Ted: Okay, and let’s talk about the Among the Living album. How many copies has it sold already?

Frank: It’s approaching gold.

Ted: There’s a lot of references to Stephen King on there. Have you had any legal problems with that?

Frank: No, Stephen King’s a big Anthrax fan.

Ted: Really? How’d you find that out?

Frank: Somebody had talked to my manager, had gotten in touch with his people, and it just so happened that he was into Anthrax. He’s into a lot of rock and roll. Yeah, so when he heard it, he said he took it as a great compliment. 

Ted: On this album, I and a lot of other people find it kind of more punkish in attitude and music than your other albums.

Frank: You’re right.

Ted: And was that a result from the S.O.D. project?

Frank: No, I think we just wanted to go heavier. With Spreading The Disease, we were finding a way to go. And uh, just like, we all knew what we were gonna do on the third album. We knew we were gonna go heavier. So that’s what just came out of us.

Ted: Let’s talk about the new album now. You already have a title for it.

Frank: It’s the State of Euphoria, that’s the name of it.

Ted: And why is that the title?

Frank: It’s like the state of being we’re in now. It’s all happy about what’s going on. Thank God we’re doing well and stuff. So it’s like, State of Euphoria means we’re in a cool situation, a happy situation.

Ted: So you’re going into the studio right after this tour?

Frank: Yeah, we finished writing this month, going to April, today’s the first? Yeah, today’s the first we finish writing in April. May 12th we’re going to the studio.

Ted: May 12th? And when do you think this album will be out?

Frank: We’re hoping August 28^th. That’s the release date.

Ted: All right, good luck getting it out (that soon).

Frank: We’ll try it. We want to get it on an arena tour.

Ted: So do you have songs written already?

Frank: Six songs.

Ted: Six songs? Can you give us song titles?

Frank: Uh, I’ll give you a couple. “Now It’s Dark”. “Schism”. That’s enough. There’s a couple more, but I’m not sure there are going to be songs. There’s different ones.

Ted: What’s this album going to sound like? Is it going to sound more like Among the Living or are you just going to keep progressing or…?

Frank: The way the music is going, we say we’re going to try for it, and it’s a cross between “Among the Living” and “Spreading”. It’s really just a lot of chunky fucking parts. A lot of heavy parts.

Ted: So do you think you’re going to be able to top Among the Living?

Frank: Definitely. I can hear it in my ear. I ain’t worried about it. I just really feel good about it.

Ted: Okay, so you had Stephen King and Judge Dredd influence “Among the Living”. Are you going to have any influences on this LP like that?

Frank: I don’t even know yet because we haven’t started lyrics yet.

Ted: So you just got most music written already?

Frank: Yeah, music is written. Six songs and music is written. That’s what I meant to say before.

Ted: Who writes the lyrics then?

Frank: Scott. He writes the words usually and me and Joey come in with the melody lines. We help with the melody lines and see where the songs are going with the stuff.

Ted: I like to talk about your image and what do you have to say about your image?

Frank: What image?

Ted: Yeah, exactly. Don K in Mega Metal Karranng… I don’t really want to start shit or anything…

Frank: Nah, there’s nothing to start. He did, so…

Ted: So yeah, he was saying that it was too…

Frank: He just takes us apart every chance he gets and it’s a shame because you know, we meet face to face with the guys and it’s like, “Hi, how you doing?” We don’t understand it, to tell you the truth. He’s just like that. We don’t really care. We still have Kerrang.

Ted: Metallica is using their popularity to give exposure to bands like the Misfits and Holocaust, you know, the bands that they like, you pay to make them more popular. Are you guys using your popularity to expose bands of cool stuff like, you know, Stephen King stories and Sam Kinison and Judge Dredd?

Frank: Oh, we like that. That’d be great. I mean, fine. We just personally like that. If people want to start reading Stephen King and you know, Judge Dredd (because of us), it’s great.

Ted: I do.

Frank: Exactly. See, I mean, it’s great. I mean, they’re not bad things. They’re fucking cool things. So that’s cool, you know. We don’t want to go out for it, but if they’re going to do it great, you know.

Ted: Do you guys have any Sam Kinison bootlegs tapes of shows?

Frank: No, no, no, no. We’re going to go to the Comedy Store yesterday, in LA.

Ted: He’s here next week.

Frank: Is he?

Ted: Yeah, you might want to come by.

Frank: I want to come by. We’re going to be writing, man.

Ted: He’s here for 4 shows. And he was here for the past month. The whole month doing two, four shows a weekend. He was here for a whole month. He’s testing out new material and he’s writing, recording a new album.

Frank: How’s the new stuff? Good?

Ted: I was kind of too drunk.

Frank: Oh, man.

Ted: Who’s idea was it to do the rap song?. And how did that come about?

Frank: That was, we were all, you know, we’re all into rap. So we were afraid at first, like, we don’t know how people are going to take it. And we just said, ah, fuck it, let’s just do it. I don’t know if I’m supposed to curse in this, so I’m sorry.

Ted: No, we can beep it out.

Frank: Anyway, so we just said, let’s just do it. Because we were dying to do something like it. I mean, we just wanted to do a rap because we all, we all love rap. We just decided to do it.

Ted: Was it just something that came about from goofing off in practice? Or did you really set out to do a real good rap song?

Frank: Well, we were going to just do a rap. But we didn’t know where it came from. So I had this annoying way of saying, “I’m the man”. I just kept saying, “I’m the man”. I kept bothering everybody. You know, I’m a ballbuster, so I bother everybody. And I just.. we just got to saying… let’s just do it. Let’s just write about this. I’m the man, you know, this stuff. So we just got them together and we did it.

Ted: So you guys going to do another rap song?

Frank: Yeah. This one’s been such a success.

Jim: Were you surprised at the success when you started playing it live?

Frank: It’s amazing. Wait until you see it tonight. Wait until tonight.

Jim: I saw it last week. And last July when I saw you guys were like, half the crowd knew the song, half didn’t.

Frank: That’s the whole thing. Now it’s expected. People know and they want to hear it.

Jim: You guys just seemed to be kind of surprised that people knew the lyrics.

Frank: They know the lyrics. That’s the great part about it. It’s a lot of fun. It’s like our favorite part of the show now. It’s a release. It’s definitely a release.

Ted: Did you have to get Sam’s permission to use his screams on that song?

Frank: I don’t know if our manager actually did or not. I’m not sure. It’s cool. We only use a little bit of it.

Ted: Okay, so now we’re talking about “I Am The Man”. You’ve got a video for this. Have you seen it?

Frank: Have I seen the video? Yeah, I’ve seen it. We okayed it.

Ted: Okay. Yeah, why’d you okay it? You censored it yourself and then you know by saying “male sexual organ”. Then you put out your own uncensored version of that and now the crowd is so miked up in the mix. I’m sorry, but…

Frank: You like the uncensored.

Ted: Yeah, but I mean I don’t like… They didn’t have to do that for the video and completely fuck it up. They turned up the crowd and you can’t even say “male sexual organ”…

Frank: That’s the whole thing. In order for it to be played anywhere, on TV, even on Saturday nights or whatever, just to let people see you doing a rap, they didn’t want anything. “Male sexual organ”, they don’t want anything to do with that.

Ted: So what the hell are you supposed to do?

Frank: Don’t ask me, man.

Jim: Why would the crowd sing aloud during the whole song? It wasn’t live version, but we still hear the crowd.

Frank: Well, it was just a feeling of live. They just wanted the feeling of live.

Ted: So you guys have control in the editing and stuff?

Frank: Yeah, yeah, but there’s some parts that we changed actually live and we couldn’t… You see in the video, Scott singing my parts, I’m singing his parts, so we actually just had to put them in. It’s just to let people see it, see the rap, what we do on stage with the rap.

Ted: It kind of bothered me because I was…

Frank: I understand, believe me, because the dirty parts are great. Yeah, I mean, you go off on it, you know? Yeah. But what are you going to do?

Ted: Okay, so now you have this other video coming out, right? Tell me about that.

Frank: It’s a live video. We’re still debating what parts we’re going to put in and what parts we’re going to leave out. Even tonight we’re going to tape some backstage footage because we don’t have enough backstage footage. It’s just a live video really of us at the Hammersmith Odeon and we just want to mix it up and make it really interesting. Not to just make it a live show. We want to put a lot of different things that make it worth the people’s time.

Ted: So you guys are having some say in this, right?

Frank: Well, we have a say in everything we do.

Ted: Was this a good show or something? I heard like Charlie wasn’t too happy with it or something about the video.

Frank: Charlie wasn’t happy with some parts of the video because they didn’t get some of his drum parts. Like “Indians”, they start it, but they didn’t get him starting it. They showed like a picture of this darkness. So what we’re going to do, we’re going to sync some parts in.

Ted: Okay, not too much though, right?

Frank: No, no, no. I’m not going to sync like music or anything like that. We’re going to do a goof like Charlie playing backstage on the table or something like that. Just for a goof thing.

Ted: That’d be cool. You guys played many, many shows. Do you have any favorite show you’ve done in the past or anything?

Frank: Definitely. This year in Chicago. I think it’s all our favorite show this year because the crowd was just way too loud. Amazing. It’s just like they blew us away.

Ted: Do you guys tape any of your shows and stuff?

Frank: Yeah, we have. We tape the rap. We tape the rap a lot in this stuff.

Ted: You guys tape one song or something? I mean, don’t you tape our whole concerts?

Frank: No, no, no, because they probably usually wind up bootlegged.

Ted: What do you think about the bootleg scene?

Frank: I mean… I think it’s.. I don’t mind the bootleg scene because I think it’s great. People are willing to like see you somewhere else, you know, like in the background, fine. You know, but if it’s not done professionally, I don’t know… I’d rather see it done professionally than done (from the audience).

Ted: So when’s this video supposed to come out?

Frank: Uh, that’s hard to say because we’re still going at it with this thing because we want to spice it up. We don’t want to make it boring. We want to make it like worth the people’s money. So we’re going to take a while to do it. We’re going to have it out this year.

Ted: Okay, that’s good enough. This year? Okay, so we’ll go talk about some trivia stuff right now. “A-I-R”, what’s that stand for?

Frank: Adolescence In Red.

Ted: And where’d you get that from?

Frank: You know when you grow up and you’re rebelling, you know, you’re rebelling and you’re a teenager and you can’t do this, that, and the other thing.

Ted: You guys just make up that term? Or is it a known term?

Frank: That is, that is a term that, you know, we just use it.

Ted: Okay, what about “S-S-C” from “Spreading The Disease”?

Frank: That was last year. That was, um, every time like the crew would go with a girl, and he used to say to the crew that the girl that’s going with the crew,  “suck some cock!”, you know, so that’s what we mean.

Ted: What about A-D-I?

Frank: I got tired of Danny’s Arabian scale. He was doing an Arabian scale one day and I just said, that’s “Arabian Douche Intro”, you know. It was just something I had to do.

Ted: Have you’ve been with the band since the beginning?

Frank: No, I was not on the first album. I toured the first album. I didn’t play on it. As soon as the first album came out, I got in the band.

Ted: So were you here opening up for Raven in San Diego a few years ago (’84)?

Frank: Oh, yeah. That was a great show. Yeah, we played in San Diego. That was a great show. Except it was fucking Neil Turbin singing.

Ted: Yeah, what happened with that? And if you guys are all such good friends with Dan Lilker from Nuclear Assault, why did he leave Anthrax?

Frank: He’s cool.

Ted: You’re the bassist now…

Frank: I don’t know. I’m friends with Dan, he’s a cool guy. He’s a good bass player, a good writer. I think they were going in one way and he was going in another way. I just heard they were trying out people and I said, I’m gonna call Charlie, get me a tryout.

Ted: So do you know the reason why he left Anthrax?

Frank: He didn’t really get along with the old singer, Neil. I know that.

Ted: And how come Neil left?

Frank: Neil didn’t leave. Neil was asked to leave. because Neil was definitely a different attitude than the band. He doesn’t have a hangout attitude.

Ted: I saw it four years ago and I…

Frank: A lot of people hated us back then.

Ted: …that’s when the punkers were getting into you guys and the metal. I thought it was pretty cool and it was cool to see all these people together.

Frank: He was just going in a different way. A different attitude.

Ted: I noticed one thing about that night. You guys were on the stage. He walked on and he hit somebody’s guitar and shoved it out of their way. And that’s when I kind of saw something happening.

Frank: That’s Neil.

Ted: And that was right on stage. He was just like “Wham! Get out of my way!”

Frank: That’s Neil. I just wish him good luck with his new band.

Ted: What’s he doing now?

Frank: I heard he’s in LA with another band called Turbans. Something like that. Good luck to him.

Ted: Okay, what’s your favorite AC-DC album?

Frank: “Let There Be Rock”

Ted: Don’t you guys play that song?

Frank: Yeah, we did that a couple of times. My favorite album, I thought you said song. Probably “Highway to Hell”. I thought you said song.

Ted: Anything else you’d like to say?

Frank: Yeah, just wait for the new album.