MAX CAVALERA Says His Autobiography Will Answer All Remaining Questions About SEPULTURA Split

Brendan Crabb of Australia's Loud magazine recently conducted an interview with Max Cavalera (SOULFLY, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, SEPULTURA). A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Loud: I know you have an autobiography in the works. What can you tell us about that?

Max: Yeah, it's gonna be released around Christmas. I'm finishing up all the interviews; I did like a thousand interviews, man. It was crazy; going through all my life and it has really cool details of things that happened in my life. Like how I got SEPULTURA signed for example, which was, I had to travel to America on a free ticket from Pan Am. I had to go as a Pan Am employee, so I had to wear a tie (laughs) and my hair pulled back, which was hilarious. I have the picture (of) arriving in New York with that, and everybody laughing at me. All the guys that picked me up, like Don Kaye [then-Kerrang! writer] and Monte Conner [Roadrunner A&R representative], and they're all laughing. They're like, this is their metal hero, showing up in a tie, you know? So that's gonna be in the book and there will be all the funny stuff like (being) on tour with MINISTRY when I puked on Eddie Vedder [PEARL JAM]; that became a famous story.

Loud: Has he spoken to you since?

Max: No, I never talked to him after that (laughs). I actually puked on him, then he cleaned himself up, didn't get mad, and right after that I asked for an autograph for my sister. (laughs) Which was like the absurd thing to do. I just got done puking on the guy and asked him for an autograph. But he was pretty cool; he was hanging out with the MINISTRY guys. Stuff like that is going to be in the book. Dave Grohl [FOO FIGHTERS, NIRVANA] is doing the intro of the book, I thought he would be cool because he's a fan and I did the PROBOT thing with him, and he was really cool. He's a huge name in music and it would be awesome to have him writing the intro of the book.

Loud: What was the hardest topic you had to delve into for the autobiography — Dana's [Wells, Max's stepson] death, the split with SEPULTURA?

Max: Those together, as they're both connected. Very much the hardest chapter I think is going to be the death of Dana, leading into the break-up of SEPULTURA, which in my life is a low point. There have been two low points in my life; there's been the death of my father when I was nine, which led me to get into music, and then the death of Dana and the break-up from SEPULTURA. Those are the crucial points. But from all of them, something good has come out of it. Like from the death of my father, SEPULTURA came, and from the death of Dana and break-up from SEPULTURA, SOULFLY came. So there's good things that came out of both things, so a lot of tragedy, unfortunately, but good stuff comes out of it.

Loud: How no-holds-barred where you about it — did you hold back on certain topics at the risk of upsetting someone?

Max: No, I tried to be as honest as possible. It was really kinda hard to go through that period and bring that back, of what happened. But I tried to be as clear as (to) why I left, and why I couldn't play with them anymore and how the feelings were towards Dana's death and everything. So it's going to be very explained in the book; a lot of people, once they read, they're going to understand why I left SEPULTURA once and for all and maybe stop asking me questions, you know?

Loud: Do you feel like your side of the story with regard to the split with SEPULTURA has never been fully told? It seems like during the past 15 years a lot of hearsay and rumours have been more or less accepted as fact.

Max: Yeah, a lot of people take rumors and just listen to rumors or stuff that's been created over the years that are not really true. So I hope this will put an end to that. Some of the things, especially from the break-up point, a lot of what I heard in the press and that, I don't agree with it. So I think it's good to have this book as a vehicle of expression that I can tell the story of how I feel and what I think happened. So these people can read and understand my side of the story.

Read the entire interview from Loud magazine.