BE: So, this is for an Internet mag?
MB: Yeah.
BE: Cool. It’s the wave of the future. I just did one
with a buddy. I did an interview, and he said couldn’t believe the hits he
got just on the first issue. It’s just so accessible to people when they put
it on the browser and all the related information comes up. People hit all
over it, and have been doing so for a month now.
MB: Oh, yeah.
It’s nice to… well, take this interview, for example. I was able to get
input from the actual people that are going to be reading the interview. So,
it will cater right to them. I know you guys have a web site up, too.
BE: Yeah, there’s an official one, and I think one or
two unofficial. I don’t really know what the difference is by putting an official
moniker on it, except that we told somebody they can do it. It really, really
helps because we can post tour dates there, we can make new material available
for download, we can let people know when we’re even going out on tour, and
when we’re ready to release another album, etc. So it keeps the interest in
the band at a high level, especially in this day and age when the mass media
isn’t really interested in this music. They never really were anyway, but…
MB: I got a kick, on the official site, they have short
interviews with you guys in RealAudio. That’s real nice because people actually
get to hear you say it.
BE: Yeah, yeah. Right.
MB: So, I hear your first love was baseball.
BE: Yeah, I think I’m one of those American bred kids.
You know, the baseball and apple pie kind of a kid. I think my real fantasy
to live my adult life was to be the center fielder or the second baseman for
the New York Mets.
MB: Cool.
BE: But we can’t have everything we want. But this… this
is one hell of a consolation prize, being able to be in this band for twelve
years. It’s lasted longer than most baseball careers.
MB: A couple of people mentioned that you’re really into
motorcycles, too.
BE: Oh yeah. I’ve been riding now for about eleven years.
I picked it up in my twenties. I don’t know. I’ve given up a lot of other
things to kind of continue doing this. I suppose the largest detractor for
me, in a nutshell, was booze. When that went, I kind of needed other things.
I mean, I’ve only really given it up for three years, now. But I kind of saw
it coming back ten years ago, that I was going to have to or it was going
to be the reason for my own personal downfall, eventually. So I kind of replaced
that with bikes. So there’s a huge replacement value for me, as far as bikes
go. It’s like the only high I have left, so I really dig cruisin’. There’s
nothing like it. I don’t know, do you ride?
MB: I used to. Don’t get much chance anymore.
BE: Yeah, I kind of make time for it. One of the things
with being in the band is that, even when we’re not on the road, we’re traveling
locally. Whether it’s rehearsals, or whether it’s interviews in the city.
Or, you know, interviews at radio stations and on and on. And all sorts of
other stuff. We manage the band, also. So anytime I have to go to the post
office to do mailings, or whatever, the bike is my transportation as long
as it’s between April and November.
MB: What kind of bike do you have?
BE: I have a couple of them. My first one was a Honda
Shadow, but the one I ride mostly now is a Converted Harley Sportster. It’s
originally an 883 hugger. But I put the conversion kit in it and bored out
the cylinders to a 1200. So it’s like a Sportster with a big ass kick to it.
It’s a really, really nice bike. The huggers are styled just a little bit
differently than the regular sportster. They’re a little bit lower and they
come off the assembly line looking, I don’t know… more customized. So, it’s
a cool bike. It’s a really cool bike.
MB: Cool.
BE: Actually, I‘m even going to lower it more, once all
the touring is over, our first leg, anyway. Which starts around Halloween.
I have like a month off before I go to
MB: Cool.
BE: Yeah. So this is my, I don’t know… my new love. My
new hobby kind of a thing. It keeps me out of the bars.
MB: Cool. So, what made you decide, in the beginning,
that you wanted to be a musician? What got you first interested?
BE: My first interest came when I joined the Columbia
Record House, when I was a paperboy. I grabbed everything that was heavy,
you know. They would classify it. They would say heavy or classical or rock.
So I grabbed everything that said heavy at that time. I got the whole Black
Sabbath collection up to that date, and I think it was like Alice Cooper and
Led Zeppelin and some Priest. And, you know, I think I started playing air
guitar, and then my father ended up buying me a bass guitar. Which, when I
was fourteen, I just played that with a driving enthusiasm. But it kind of
petered out as time went on. I didn’t pay that much attention to it after
awhile. I mean, I played with a couple of bands as a bass player doing some
vocals. And then when I got into college, right when I started college, I
started doing it again. Just to kind of be able to get some beer money, you
know. And the band also gets their beer for free. So it was a hell of a motivation.
And then I went to an audition where they said they needed a bass player,
but this wasn’t true. They actually needed a singer. It was a cover band,
and I just took the job. It wasn’t like this thing I was really pursuing actively
at the time. About two years later, that band broke up, and myself and the
guitar player met D.D. Verni and Rat Skates, our original drummer, through
a musician classified ad. From there came the beginnings of Overkill.
MB: So it’s kind of just something that happened?
BE: Yeah, it happened. I’m not going to say that I never
aspired to be such, because, I mean, I was really, really into music the whole
time. And I did do it as a hobby, but it wasn’t this, "I’m going to make
it or my life is over." I was doing lots of other things, and this was
my outlet at that particular time. But I never thought of it in terms of doing
it professionally, or doing it for the amount of time that we have done it.
But I tell you, I adapted really quickly. It became a great love of mine almost
immediately, based on the fact that I had the opportunity to do so many things
that you wouldn’t normally be able to do outside a band, for a young guy.
I mean, I was traveling
MB: I know, like you were saying, after all these years
of being together, a lot of the bands that were around when you first started
have come and gone. What do you think has allowed you guys to stay around
and keep going?
BE: I think we are very selfish, first of all. I think that’s one of the
things that keeps this thing going. We really pay no attention to the things
out of our own world. We really couldn't care what happens around us. I think
when you’re paying attention to your own house, you can always pretty much
keep it in order. As compared to worrying about what goes on around you, or
where the scene is, you now. I never really bought into that Heavy Metal is
dead, you know. I mean, it’s ridiculous for me to buy into it because I’m
doing a hundred shows a year in the
MB: Yeah.
BE: So, I think what’s kept us alive is the fact that
we were seriously committed to what we were doing. And I think that if we
are selfish in it, that becomes a very contagious attitude. I think that the
people that listen to this stuff, look at it as there’s. And that’s a very
selfish attitude too, but not necessarily with negative conations. It becomes
positive. When you consider something yours, it becomes more special to you.
So now buying into the Heavy Metal dead rap, and the fact that I think that
we’ve remained very, very committed to what we’re doing, it has the same values
that we had in 1985 when we released Feel The Fire. It’s still Metal.
It’s what we like to do. We put everything we can possibly put into it, and
we keep our own house in order. Or we keep our own porch clean and not worry
about what other people are doing. This kind of gives it it’s originality,
or it’s contemporary feel now, still rooted historically, of course. But I
think it gives people that real honest feeling, that we’re doing what we like
to, and they’re the ones who help keep us alive.
MB: Oh, yeah. I notice that with a lot of bands, they
start heading in the right direction, but after awhile they try to start following
the trends. They go for a more commercial sound, but you guys have always
stayed true to what you do.
BE: You know, there’s one thing about trends you know,
by the time you catch up to it, it’s gone. I’ve seen Metal bands that were
our contemporaries back in ‘85, ‘87, ’90, who released great records, and
were real promising acts that you could tell were eventually going to develop
into this fantastic Metal act, but they started chasing the Alternative trend,
and the grunge trend, and this or that, or whatever would happen at that particular
time. And they kind of lost focus on who they were. And, you know, eventually
if you are worried about being cool, and chasing a trend, by the time you
catch up to it you realize that you’re not as cool as you ever thought you
were, anyway. And you wasted a lot of time, and a hell of a lot of energy
just trying to be cool, as compared to just trying to put everything you have
into your own tunes.
MB: Do you feel that when bands do that they sell out
their fans?
BE: Yeah, because why do you support a band originally?
You support a band for what they stand for. What they sound like. What they
mean to you. If the band changes their personality, or changes their face,
my feeling is that they’re really abandoning their original support. I don’t
think change is necessarily a rotten thing. As far as change goes, I mean,
even this band has changed. You have to change even minutely to stay alive.
But the point is when you go from a band that has been, for instance, accepted
as a Metal band, and then say that you’re not a Metal band, but what you are
is this type of a band. And that’s the most popular phrase of the day, whether
it be, in the early 90’s, grunge or something, that you are really turning
your back, you know. One of the great things about this genre of music is
that there is a community that supports it, and that community depends upon
the bands that they support to release stuff that they like. Not that you
can like only one kind of music, but that people who do support this type
of music specifically are looking for Metal. They are not looking to say,
"You know, you were cool when your first Metal record came out. It was
a great record. And now that you’re an Alternative band, I’m going to support
you based on that first album." It’s community, slash, commitment to
that community. And I think Overkill has always been able to do that. Not
even by design, but more so because this is what we like to do. So we are
committed, and even certifiable in some cases. I think it’s obvious we’re
not chasing any trends. Not after this many years.
MB: You mentioned that even your music has changed a
little bit. How do you feel it has changed over the years?
BE: I think we have evolved. I think we have evolved
into better songwriters. I think we’ve incorporated better things within our
songs as time has gone on. Feel The Fire was our first record, and
it was released in ‘85. I think if you spun that disc, and then you spun the
new one, From The Underground And Below, you’d hear marketable changes,
huge changes, between what we originally sounded like and what we sound like
now. But each change, or the change between ‘85 and ’97, were small steps
between each record, and we never forgot where those changes were, or what
those new things that interested us were. I look at this new record and I
can hear it as a historically rooted record. You can tell that we haven’t
forgotten our past. But at the same time, we have incorporated new fields
as we have gone along. There’s not a groove anywhere on that first record.
There’s a groove all over this record. It’s a collection, and an evolution,
through time that has changed this band. But not so far as to abandon our
original ideas or standards.
MB: And still Metal.
BE: Absolutely. I don’t
think there’s a question about it. I mean, the title itself is like stating
the obvious. This has always been a band rooted in the underground, or the
underground Metal community, and we’ve always been very proud of that. When
Metal was a dirty word, there were only a few bands who would still say, "Hey,
I’m in a Metal band." Everybody else was saying, "I’m in a heavy
band. I’m in an industrial band, Ska, guitar-rooted…" If there’s double
bass and screaming guitars, and some distorted type vocals, or screaming vocals,
it’s most likely a Metal band. And I think you have to know who you are before
you actually can present it to people from the perspective of being proud
about it. And Overkill has always been able to do that. We know who we are,
and we’ve never had any problems with it. And we never die, you know. If we
weren’t committed to this when Heavy Metal became a dirt word, we would have
abandoned it. But, I mean, it wasn’t all about abandoning a sinking ship.
It was about plugging the holes in that sinking ship and going on. That’s
really all that mattered to us. It was to do what we wanted to do, and that
was Metal.
MB: Cool. What do you feel is the most important thing
for good music?
BE: Honesty. You need to be as honest as you can with
your approach. Especially for this type of music. It’s an emotional outpouring,
musically and vocally, and you have to be very, very honest about that. As
soon as you start writing from your head, as compared to your heart in this
kind of stuff, it loses something in the translation. Not to appear narrow,
but I probably have a certain degree of narrowness in myself, even. This isn’t
thinking type of music. When it’s good, or when it’s perfect, is when it’s
guttural. When it’s coming from the guts, and coming from the heart, this
is what makes good music to me. I can listen to anything that’s honest, and
appreciate it. Whether that be Folk music, or Classical music, or Rock, or
whether it’s Metal. But it’s got to have that honest feel to me. If it loses
that honesty, or if it’s just done where it’s over thought, and it’s just
music that someone is trying to think how they are going to make it popular,
it loses something to me. No matter what the genre is.
MB: How would you describe the Overkill philosophy on
writing music? How do you guys bring it all together?
BE: We have a fairly unique writing system, compared
to other people. D.D. and I have been involved in writing all the songs, all
these years, and I think that kind of is what makes up Overkill’s sound. We’re
really just one songwriter split into two different people. So much so that
we know what each one is thinking, and it becomes easy for us to write songs.
The only time we ever deviated from that was the record called I Hear Black,
where Rob Cannavino and Merrit Gant, our guitar players at that time, were
incorporated into the writing team. And it became a harder record for us to
write. But I think our philosophy in writing is to evoke as much emotion with
the music as possible, and then spread the lyrics over the top of that. Almost
like building a house, if the music is the majority of the house, the lyrics
are the roof. The way we do it is, D.D. hatches ideas and brings those ideas
to the band. He writes the skeletons of songs, and then begins polishing them
up. Meaning, that we do all the thinking about the music, and incorporate
that guttural feeling, prior to going into the studio. When we know that it’s
coming from the gut, that’s when we go into the studio. They give it to me
prior to that, and I just finish it off by marrying the music to the lyrics
and the melody lines. So that’s pretty much the process. As far as philosophy
goes, I suppose it comes down to three simple words, and that’s, "Go
for it."
MB: For the last couple of albums you’ve had some new
guys in the band, talking about the two guitar players, how would you compare
them to the members of the past, and what effect have they had on the band?
BE: You know, to compare members, every member in this
band has been very different, and has added something very different to this
band. I think one of the things that these guys add to this band, that we
were possibly losing around the record W.F.O or I Hear Black,
is a new hunger. What they brought into this band was desire. Even more desire
to kind of turn the flame up. And that’s an indispensable quality. It’s something
that is very, very infectious. It affects the rest of the band, and it becomes
contagious, and the rest of the band feels that hunger. And you get out of
us more aggressive songwriting in this case. This is the area that we do excel
in, which is the aggression. I think that it is probably one of the more outstanding
elements that they brought to Overkill. They have been on two records with
us, now. They did The Killing Kind with us, Joe Comeau and Sebastian
Marino, and now again on From The Underground And Below, and I noticed
that on this record we’ve jelled more. I like The Killing Kind. I think
it’s very straightforward, more like a two dimensional record, where this
is more of a multi-dimensional record. This contains more elements of Overkill,
or the elements that make Overkill up, and I think this is primarily due to
their hunger, and their desire to be here. It’s very important to have a band
that wants to do this, not a band that’s complaining about touring, and not
a band that’s complaining about songwriting. Otherwise the band itself is
a pain in the ass. You have to have guys that want to do this stuff, not guys
who are just doing it because it’s cool.
MB: So this is a pretty solid line up then?
BE: I would think so, but I’ve come to think that you
can’t really depend on any one thing forever, you know. Changes are always
imminent. They happen for reasons. I would hope, naturally, that this line
up stays. I mean, we just released a record that we are very proud of. I can’t
honestly tell you that it’s the best record we’ve ever done, because it’s
so new to me. It’s so new to me that I can’t give you an objective opinion
on it, but I can tell that we played our balls off putting this record together,
and writing this record. We wouldn’t have released it if we didn’t think in
those terms. So I would hope that this line up stays together, but I’ve learned
enough about change since the beginning of this band to know that nothing
lasts forever. This is by no means a hint that we’re getting rid of anyone.
This is just me being straightforward as I can.
MB: One song on the album, "Promises", is a
real change up for you guys. It’s very introspective sounding, very personal.
What was the inspiration behind that song?
BE: I lost a buddy on October 10th last year.
This guy was probably one of the closest human beings to me in my entire life.
I mean, he’s my son’s uncle, and he’s my wife’s brother, and probably the
person I’ve spent the most time with, besides the guys in the band. This was
a deep loss. We paralleled each other in many different ways. We were really
the same person, or acted the same way. We thought the same way about many
different things, right down to the fact that we had the same problems. We
were talking earlier about motorcycles, and I’ve left a lot of my personal
problems in the past. My own personal demons have… I kind of released them.
And they are no longer kept inside. My buddy, Bob, couldn’t do that. It was
right at a real critical point in his life where he was really trying to do
that, you know. We were both constant substance abuse users for the whole
period of time that we hung out together. Even when I was married and had
a kid, I was still involved with this stuff, and I kind of crawled out of
that hole because I knew that eventually it was going to kill me. My buddy,
Bob, realized that it was going to kill him, too, but the difference between
the two of us is that it did kill him. It didn’t kill me. And I think that
as he would talk to me, it was kind of… I kind of compare it to a drowning
man type of a thing. We did all we could to try to make it happen for him,
to try to get him through the whole thing, but it just sort of consumed him,
you know. It kind of ate him alive. As we used to speak on the phone, and
he was actually in the process of moving into my house the day that he died,
all I used to tell him was, "All I can tell you, Bob, is that if you
can get it together inside your head, and stop what you are doing, I promise
you that things will get better." So it was a whole bunch of promises
that really never came true for him. They didn’t hold as much weight as what
consumed him did. So it was a good way for me to get it out. I actually walked
around with a real dark cloud over my head until I had finally gotten that
song out. I said, "Well, it’s done now. I can move on." At least
I had a chance to say one last thing to him, you know. I’m a believer in the
afterlife, so I believe he has this record, and he probably has a much better
stereo than he had here on earth so… So it was more of a closure of everything,
for me. It was necessary for me to write the song, based on the fact that
if I didn’t write it, it was going to start eating me alive, and I was probably
going to be second-guessing my own decisions on the way that I run my life,
now. So that’s really… yeah, that’s for Bob.
MB: Wow. So, "Promises", that’s where the title
comes from?
BE: Oh, yeah. I was just, I mean, it was like verbatim
I used to tell him that. "I can tell you if you stop doing this, and
you can get comfortable with yourself, I can promise you things will get better.
And I promise they’ll get better immediately." So there were all these
promises that were involved in our conversations. And I was… you know, it
was really tough, because it was not like I didn’t believe that he was listening
to me. But I did believe that what he was going through was a lot more powerful
struggle than what I was saying. It’s a shame. It’s always a shame when you
lose someone. Especially someone who’s not… you know, someone who’s got a
problem. It always lets you know just how fragile life is. And it’s just a
confirmation that things can end in a moment.
MB: Yeah.
BE: Where there are whole life changes. It’s not just
the person going, but the people left behind. Their lives change based on
the events in their lives. I read something really cool a few months after
he died, because I had real trouble dealing with this. I mean, I didn’t know
what the hell I was going to do. This guy roadied for me. I mean, me and this
guy, we were like, forget about it. Whenever you’d see him, I was usually
within twenty-five feet, or vice versa. I don’t know. It just meant a lot
to me to get it out, that’s the only way I can put it. I don’t want to get
all emotional here. I didn’t mean to start doing this, start talking about
Bob. But he’s really taught me how fragile life is. That was the lesson I
learned by writing that song, and by preserving this event. It’s not the events
in your life that make you the person that you are, it’s how you react to
those events. This is what I read a few months after he died.
MB: The emotion of that song really comes across.
BE: Yeah, I think so. I think it would have been wrong
to write a very aggressive song, based on the relationship I had with him.
I think that this was, this really kind of says it a little bit more. Because,
this was a saddened time in my life, more reflective than it was aggressive.
I mean, I was really pissed that he was gone, but it was like a whole cluster
of feelings. I could sort through any of them. I was pissed. I was angry.
I was going to tear somebody’s head off. And at the same time, I kind of felt
abandoned, and I felt saddened by that abandonment. You’re sitting there asking
yourself questions, and having a conversation with a guy that’s not here anymore,
and it doesn’t make sense. It makes sense to close it, and not to remember
the death as much as remember the times that I had with him. The guy gave
me probably fifteen years of great memories, not one moment of death. So,
it’s more putting it in perspective for me, as compared to living that one
moment, or thinking of that one moment when he left.
MB: Yeah. Did you guys do anything differently for this
album, that you hadn’t done in the past?
BE: Well, we went in and did it pretty much with the same approach we’ve
always had, and that’s, like I said earlier, that non-thinking approach. You
know, we leave our brains outside the studio and just go in there and go for
it. I think that it’s really important that we perform when the tape machine
is running, and not have to think about what we are performing. We do all
the thinking about the music prior to going into the studio. And then after
we’re done producing the tracks, which were… we produced the record. We brought
in Colin Richardson to mix it, and I think he was a really good choice. One
of the things that I do feel about this record, honestly, is that it is the
best produced Overkill record to date. And this is due specifically to Colin’s
input. Colin has done stuff like Fear Factory, and Machine Head, and Napalm
Death, and he gives it that contemporary edge. A common thread from song to
song is the production. And it’s a very big, big guitar sounding record for
us. We never usually have had a big guitar sounding record as much as having
every instrument be specifically equal.
MB: Yeah.
Be: So this is a huge sounding record for us. I remember
on the first day, you know, handing all this material over to him. And I’m
wondering, "What is this guy going to do with all this stuff that we’ve
put this year of our lives into? Is he going to screw it up? Is he going to
ruin it?" I’m looking in through the studio glass in the control room,
and he has been working in there for about three hours, and he’s playing air
guitar to the song "Long Time Dyin’". I call D.D. over, and I go,
"Do you think we’ve made the right choice?" He shakes his head,
and he goes, "Definitely!" So, Colin was instrumental in making
this record sound like it did. I think that’s probably one of the major differences,
bringing him in because of what he could do. And he proved our decision right,
because he’s given us something that we are very proud of, as far as this
production.
MB: You were talking about your starting a tour around
Halloween right?
BE: Yeah. We’re going to have the dates posted on the
Internet, and all sorts of stuff. But I think we are playing the Water Street
music hall. And this is somewhere around fifth, sixth, seven through the tenth,
somewhere in there.
MB: Cool. I’ve had people from Chili, England, Australia
and all over the place begging me to ask you to hit them, hit their countries.
Do you guys know how many countries you are going to be hitting?
BE: Yeah, we finally got some offers from South America.
MB: Cool.
BE: It’s possible that we’ll put it together and get
down there.
MB: Wow.
BE: And actually the offer originated in Chile. So, it’s
most certainly possible. Australia is always kind of hard to do unless you
are doing the Far East, also, doing Japan and Korea. We have a new record
company in Japan, so… They seem really hip on having us come over and tour.
So, if we do Japan, there is a more certainly the opportunity to do Australia.
If the promoters want it, then we will certainly play it.
MB: Are you guys going to be headlining your own shows?
BE: Yeah, that’s pretty much our game for many years,
now. We’ve never really had the opportunity to do arenas, or be taken out
by a band that sells more units than us, as far as being the opener to do
the larger venues, but this is what we know. It’s not like it’s bothersome
to do clubs and small theaters. It’s our world, you know. It’s our visibility.
We’re not an MTV-friendly band. Never have been. We had some hits on the Headbanger’s
Ball here and there, but, I mean, big deal. This is a band that’s stood in
front of people, and you know, got the sweat glands active. So I think it’s
more important for us to tour as much as possible, because this is our visibility.
MB: Do you feel that the live show does a better job
of capturing what you are all about, as opposed to an album?
BE: Well, you know, songs are born in a live situation.
For us anyway. It’s standing around in a rehearsal room, or it’s playing a
riff on a guitar. This is them in their natural form. So it’s definitely much
more exciting for us to be able to stand on a stage. I’ve always felt that
this band has never written the perfect studio record, and that’s a great
motivation for us to continue writing songs, and putting records out. But
we’ve come really close to doing the perfect show, I think. On the confines
of the stage, we can extend those confines and make them almost infinite,
in our minds. This is what we were more born to do, to be on a stage performing
the songs that we have written. First and foremost, as a live piece.
MB: Is there one show that really stands out in your
mind as the best one you’ve ever done?
BE: As the best one? There are outstanding shows. I’m
not going to say best, but I mean, I remember shows for certain reasons. We
did do some festivals in Europe. We did one that we played to like sixty five
thousand people.
MB: Wow.
BE: It’s so over whelming to stand in front of that many people. I’m like
forgetting the words, you know. The shows still excite me. It’s one of those
things where, you know, I’m going on twelve years after the first time I stood
on stage with this band, and I’m still getting butterflies in my stomach.
But this means, to me, that it must still be worth it. That it still has value
to me if it excites me to that point. So, yeah, that sixty five thousand people
stands out to me. There was also a show that we did in California where we
played to like twenty-seven people. This was real early in our career, and
I can remember instead of going with a set list, we walked around in the audience
with the microphone, and whoever was there could pick what they wanted to
hear. So… both ends of the spectrum.
MB: With all the material you guys have, how do you narrow
it all down to a set list for a show?
BE: I put the CD covers up and I throw darts. It’s really
wherever they land is what we play. I think we lean heavier towards the newer
records, because these are the most recent releases. W.F.O, The
Killing Kind, and the new one, these are the ones that we probably pick
the majority of our songs from. But we still flavor it with some of the old
stuff from Years Of Decay like "Elimination", "Powersurge"
from Taking Over, and this time around, we’re actually going to go
in a little bit deeper and do some stuff off the first record, Feel The
Fire.
MB: Cool. Someone had suggested that you play some of
the older stuff in a medley, combining pieces of the different songs together?
BE: The thing is, if we can play for an hour and a half
or an hour and forty five minutes in front of people, and we do seven or eight
old songs, it becomes almost half the set.
MB: Yeah.
BE: And it’s really, really hard to be able to do that
and keep the band always interested, you know. The band wants to play the
newer stuff because it’s what interests us a little bit more. Not that we
forget the history, because we have to go back into that and play something
like "Wrecking Crew", or play something like "Feel The Fire"
"Rotten To The Core". We do throw those in. But to lay heavy on
that stuff is really just kind of hailing our own past, as compared to showing
people what we can do and what we can still do.
MB: Cool. With all that equipment you have, how do you
get from city to city when you’re on the road?
BE: We do a bus and a trailer, and tow the equipment
behind us kind of thing. And just live on the tour bus.
MB: Cool.
BE: Yeah, pretty simple.
MB: Same over in Europe as in the States, or a little
bit different?
BE: It’s a little bit different. The crowds are different.
You know, the European crowd has stayed with us through thick and thin as
the American crowd has. But I think in Europe it always gives you this feeling
like you’re meeting old friends, where in the U.S., I always have this feeling
that it’s always a little bit more volatile. That it’s a little bit more explosive.
Which leads to exciting shows in the U.S. There’s always a big proving ground
in the U.S. Every time that you get the stick count before a song, I think
a big part of the audience is looking at you like, "Okay, prove yourself
again." In Europe, the feeling for us is a little bit more comfortable.
As you know, these people don’t have as much of an opportunity to see the
bands. So, they come into the shows with different attitudes. I mean, I’m
just saying this from my perspective of standing on stage. In the U.S., it’s
definitely a more moving crowd. It’s definitely a more pit orient crowd, and
this is what’s exciting for us. But there’s two separate types of feels between
the U.S. and Europe, and I like them both. It’s always very exciting for me
to tour the U.S., based on the fact that it always feels like it’s an explosive
situation to me.
MB: Cool. What’s the one thing that you would most like
to accomplish before you’re done with Overkill?
BE: Before I’m done with Overkill?
MB: Yeah.
BE: I think probably one of my defects of character,
as far as being a person, is I’m not visionary into the long run. And I think
that’s okay when you’re looking at a band like this, because we put as much
as we can into today, as compared to worrying about timing, or worrying about
what's down the road for us, or around the corner. If I put as much as I can
into this on Friday, then Saturday will probably take care of itself. As long
as I take Friday’s attitude into Saturday.
MB: Yeah.
BE: I’d like to continue doing this, you know, but naturally
as long as I enjoy it and as long as people want to hear this. These are the
two factors, and they are obvious factors. But that is about as long sighted
as I can get, or as far sighted. I’m really more of a short sighted person
when it comes to what this band is about. I like working it from day to day,
not really thinking about what’s going to happen in, you know, ‘98, ’99, etc.
Naturally, we’re going to play on tours, you know. I’m going to be going to
Europe in early ‘98. We’re going to Europe to do another tour to support this
record, and this is a very natural thing for me, but we haven’t started working
it. I mean, I’ll start working that tour after this one is finished.
MB: What person would you say has probably had the biggest
influence on your life?
BE: Biggest influence on my life? Probably my old man.
He’s… I don’t know, he showed me that I could do anything I wanted as long
as I put my mind to it, and he always supported me with that type of a feeling.
All that he wanted to see me do was to be happy and I owe him a lot for that,
because he didn’t force me in any directions or tell me I couldn’t do something.
He told me I could do it. That if I put my mind to it, I could accomplish
it. So it’s probably my father.
MB: Well that’s pretty much all the questions I have.
Do you have anything else that you’d like to add on?
BE: No, this is you know this is another year for us. I think we’ve covered
a lot of good stuff. You got a lot of opinions instead of just strict information.
I like the conversational interviews. We’ll be out on the road. We start around
Halloween. We go through the Northeast, the Midwest, and the South. So keep
your eyes open for us and enjoy the new record. Play it loud, wreck your room.