ROB ZOMBIE: 'The Biggest Thrill For Me Was Playing With ACE FREHLEY'

Ellen Gager of Revue magazine recently conducted an interview with Rob Zombie. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Revue: What can fans expect from your upcoming "American Witch" tour with ANTHRAX? Is it gonna be classic, full-blown ROB ZOMBIE chaos with the intricate staging, or more scaled down, like some of your more recent tours have been?

Zombie: "No, the scaled-down days are over. That was sort of an experiment that actually worked quite well. But, it's over. The scaled-down thing was just to sort of get myself back in the groove. 'Cuz I'd been away from touring and playing music for so long, and I had a new band and everything. I'm like, 'Let's just go out there and be a band before it becomes this giant, crazy show.' And that's basically what we did. But now we're back to the giant, crazy show."

Revue: Who's playing bass now?

Zombie: "He calls himself Piggy D. He was in a band called AMEN for a while, and then he was in a band called WEDNESDAY 13. He made his debut with us on 'David Letterman' last week. And, he will be the new guy."

Revue: Is he fitting in well with the dynamic then?

Zombie: "I hate changing members, just sometimes it happens, this time it happened amicably. Blasko got offered to go play with Ozzy, and wanted to go play with Ozzy. We worked together for eight years, and there's no hard feelings — thank goodness — with it. But I hate auditioning people. I won't audition people because it's just a cattle call of nonsense, usually. I did that one time only, back in the days of WHITE ZOMBIE, and it was ridiculous. People would just show up, they'd fly in from all over the country and then they're terrible. And you're like, 'Why would you fly 3,000 miles when you know you're terrible? What do you think, we're stupid?' You just feel bad after a while. I refuse to audition anybody, so I kinda just do research, and his name kept coming up. Our drummer Tommy had known him because he had tried out for Alice Cooper at one point, and he had hung out with him and said, 'Oh, he's a really good guy, he's really good. For whatever reason he didn't get that gig, but he was a great guy and I always remembered him, and other people knew him.' And I had met him through friends, it was just one of those things where all arrows were pointing to him as being the right guy. Same with John 5. Someone said, 'Oh, John 5,' and I knew John 5 was a great guitar player, obviously, and then I met him. I was like, 'What a great guy. Done. The search is over.' I looked at one person and that's where it ended."

Revue: With the "VH1 Rock Honors" show, what was it like, actually, jammin' with Slash, Tommy Lee, Scott Ian, Gilby Clarke and Ace Frehley?

Zombie: "It was f****n' awesome. It was great. I mean, I had kind of jammed with some of those people before, like Tommy Lee, obviously — he's played on a bunch of my records, so I knew Tommy, and I had played with Slash one other time, when we both played with Alice Cooper, for a live record in Cabo. But, it was great, there was a moment when we were soundchecking and…all those guys are fantastic, and it was awesome to play with them. But the biggest thrill for me was playing with Ace Frehley. Because, thinking back to being a fourth-grader, buying 'Destroyer' and looking at the pictures, and it's just mind-blowing that I'm standing onstage and he's like (in a voice that sounds like he just sucked helium),'Hey, Rob that sounds pretty good, all right let's play!' And I'm thinkin', 'Holy sh*t. Ace Frehley.' And just hangin' out, like we got off stage and Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons were there, and they're like, 'Hey, good job. Sounds good.' It's like, 'This is f*****g surreal.' Oh it's bizarre. Not even you get to meet them, you get to meet them as you're walking onstage to perform with them. That's the trippy part. Just like, I mean, I've known Alice Cooper for a while, but when we went through Arizona this time he came down to the show, and he stood on the side of the stage while we played. I never get over being thrilled by that."

Read the entire interview at www.revuemag.net.