JOEY BELLADONNA: I Would Hate To Tackle JOHN BUSH-Era ANTHRAX Songs

Dr. Mality of Wormwood Chronicles recently conducted an interview with ANTHRAX frontman Joey Belladonna. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Wormwood Chronicles: One of the last things John Bush did with ANTHRAX was an album where he sang some of the songs from your era of the band. Will you be returning the favor at some point?

Joey Belladonna: "Personally, I'd rather not, because I don't want to sit there and try to battle people's perceptions of that music. I think at some time the other guys would have tried it, but you have to remember, I think those songs from my era were that strong that they had to do it. I'd hate to have to tackle John's songs because it was almost be like cover songs instead of the real thing. He came in after me, so it wasn't as difficult for him to do my stuff as it would be for me to do his. I can't say that the other guys wouldn't try to throw a few tracks from those albums at me live but I'm not sure how it would turn out."

Wormwood Chronicles: I'm reminded a bit of KISS. When they got back to their original formation with the make-up, they passed over a huge chunk of their history without the make-up that actually contained some pretty good music. Your situation is not the same, but ANTHRAX does have a really deep history to it.

Joey Belladonna: "Yeah, that's the thing. If we ever do continue, it's always going to be in the background. Will the other guys be cool with it and let it roll or will they feel like they have to revisit those songs? It puts you in a bind. I knew John had a great attitude and he had no choice but to do the old shit live when he started. He probably wanted to avoid it but had no choice but to keep going and doing the old stuff."

Wormwood Chronicles: In your long history of live performance, what would you say is ANTHRAX's "Spinal Tap" moment?

Joey Belladonna: "We were going to Slovenia. We got on the plane and three of the crew guys couldn't make it. We had only a ten minute change-over and we had forty pieces of gear for the tour. Usually you get off the plane and you go from gate to gate. At one gate, there is a full security check...passport, border, you name it. Our three crew guys didn't get through.We get on the plane ourselves and we just barely made it. We looked and said, 'Man, they didn't even get all our stuff on!' The personnel there just took the rest of our gear and wheeled it away. We were like 'Wait, wait, wait, we gotta have that stuff!' We manage to get it back, but when we load it on the plane, we actually didn't have enough room so we bought some pieces into the passenger area and buckled them into the seats! I couldn't believe it. They actually held the plane a half hour for us."

Wormwood Chronicles: A lot of answers to the "Spinal Tap" question seem to involve Eastern Europe (laughter).

Joey Belladonna: "You wouldn't get that sort of thing in the States. We got out of Hungary pretty easily when we were over there, but some of the stuff we saw was ugly. All along the road, there were these girls just living in shacks, throwing themselves around like something out of 'Deliverance'. My God! Or we'd see a donkey go by in the back of a truck. (laughter) Our whole gig over there...it rained like hell. We pulled our truck up 20 feet from the stage and it just sunk to the axle in mud. We had to get a bulldozer to pull us out. Shit like that, that's definitely 'Spinal Tap'!"

Read the entire interview at WormwoodChronicles.com.