ROB ZOMBIE: 'I'm Perfectly Happy To Play Songs That People Want To Hear'

Robert Collins of CTV British Columbia recently conducted an interview with rocker-turned-filmmaker Rob Zombie. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On recently getting behind the camera for a commercial for laundry detergent Woolite:

Rob: "I was in Australia when I got a call from an ad agency that was working with Woolite. They said they were interested in me directing their commercial. It wasn't something I ever went after or thought about doing. But they liked my movies and thought my style would fit with what they wanted to do with the commercial. It's pretty fun. They wanted to make something that looked like a horror movie trailer. You're watching someone who looks like a serial killer dragging a dead body. It turns out it's a bag of clothes. He starts torturing the clothes with various devices. You know, don't let detergent torture your clothes. I was in Vancouver for a week, which was good."

On where the music business is going:

Rob: "A lot's changed in the last five years. Back then we were thinking, I wonder where all the record stores are going to be? Then we realized, nowhere. People were still buying CDs then. They're not doing that any more. Young bands come up to me all the time and ask me for advice. I don't even know how they're going to do it. So many of the tools that were so prominent, like MTV, aren't there anymore. At the same time, when we were breaking, there was no Internet. There was no Facebook. You were at the mercy of your record company to give a shit. Now, if you're industrious, you can be in charge of your own career. I don't know if they'll be selling out arenas, but they can keep themselves from going bankrupt. My goal was to be able to survive off making music. Anything after that was gravy."

On his current setlist:

Rob: "I'm perfectly happy to play songs that people want to hear. But you don't want your set to consist of the same ten songs for the next 40 years. A lot of bands do that."

On sharing the stage with SLAYER on the current tour:

Rob: "We do what we do. SLAYER do what they do. SLAYER is like a machine. It doesn't ever change, so it doesn't ever seem fresh and new. Yet it doesn't seem old and tired either. It's frozen in time. And I mean that in a good way."

Read the entire interview from CTV British Columbia.