Written by David Booth Photos by Full Access Detroit
On the mend from back surgery, Phil Anselmo discusses his early days in New Orleans before joining Pantera, lessons learned along the way, his relationship with his fans and music, and his new album, Choosing Mental Illness as a Virtue.
New Orleans. A place where funerals have parades and you buy daiquiris at a drive thru.
It’s history is one of poverty and grandeur, turmoil and harmony, faith and vice. Despite it’s troubled history and imperfections, New Orleans endures the mistakes built into its design and when all but it’s foundations are washed away, it rebuilds. It is impossible to imagine New Orleans without music, and it is impossible to imagine modern music without New Orleans. It is a city that people love or hate, but are never lukewarm about. Where the hell else would Phil Anselmo come from?
Phil Anselmo started his music career with New Orleans Bands Samhain (not the Glenn Danzig one, the Samhain you haven’t heard about) and Razor White. He joined Pantera in 1987, and moved from the Big Easy to Dallas. At the time Anselmo joined Pantera, they were doing regional tours supporting hair metal acts like Dokken, Quiet Riot, and Stryper. Pantera was already stocked with amazing musicians, most notably their guitarist, Dimebag Darrell Abbott, who is recognized as one of the most influential and talented guitarists of his generation. Heavier musical influences like Metallica and Slayer were creeping in, but the sound was still closer to Ride the Lycra than Ride the Lightning. Pantera released Power Metal shortly after Anselmo’s arrival, whose sound was still thick with hair product and Judas Priest leather. Between Power Metal and Cowboys from Hell, Pantera shed the spandex look for regular clothes and evolved their sound to a style more consistent with the groove metal sound they became known for. Everything clicked with their next release, Cowboys from Hell. The album was important enough to the band that their preceding four albums are pretty much ignored and Cowboys From Hell is now considered the first album of what is recognized today as Pantera. It was the break for the band that quickly made them one of metal’s biggest bands and changed the direction of heavy metal music going forward. That evolution would not have happened without the change in musical direction that the band took with Phil.
For most of Phil Anselmo’s life, he has been in the spotlight. There are hours of video and dozens of articles of his victories and setbacks. Phil as frontman for two of the most influential bands of the last three decades, Pantera and DOWN, and video of him sitting alone in front of a camera with his head in his hands. Feuds with former band mates, and his battles with addiction and degenerative back disease. Footage of him with his audience in the palm of his hands, and with moments and statements that he can’t take back. In a world where most celebrities can be summed up in a word or sentence, Anselmo defies simple description. The sensational and controversial have been covered countless times. Phil Anselmo the person tends to get lost in the conversation. On the mend from back surgery, I had a chance to speak with Phil from his home outside New Orleans about his history, his fans, his courting of controversy, his record label and his music, namely his most recent release from Phil Anselmo and the Illegals, Choosing mental illness as a virtue.
David Booth: You’ve traveled all over the world. What makes New Orleans different from everywhere else?
Phil Anselmo: I think it’s a pretty damn well integrated culture man, really. If you look at everything from the cuisine to the architecture, we remain antiquated but integrated as far as food and music and all these things that make the pulse of New Orleans what it is. It’s very unique, having traveled around the United States multiple times throughout my life, and various parts of the world, New Orleans is particularly unique unto itself. I guess I’m a little biased by being born and raised here but it’s true, it’s a very, very different city. People like to say we’re the big easy, you know. Everything is at its own pace and in its own little time capsule so to speak. To a large degree it’s true, but also, it’s a good look at success in a lot of ways as far as everyone and every type of persons contribution to the culture. It’s unique.
DB: I know my music collection is disproportionately New Orleans heavy. I love the town. You grew up with Pepper and Jimmy and Kirk and all the DOWN guys, right?
PA: Hell yeah. We’ve known each other since my teenage years, so yes.
DB: Were you all in music at the time? Did you run together or was it more that you knew each other from the music scene?
PA: Those group of guys for sure, music. I was from a particular neighborhood and had my circle of friends and that branched out so I was playing music in my circle of friends. I’d run into Kirk (Windstein) here and there. Back then in the early 80’s when you’d run into a fellow heavy metal fan it was a rarity but it was always cool. Kirk and I had that kind of relationship where… there’s a good story. The second time I met Kirk we were standing in line to see a fucking film. He had the long hair and denim jacket with the patches on the back, Motorhead and what not. We struck up a conversation. I remember being utterly floored when I asked him what kind of rig he played through and he said “a Marshall stack”. Back then it was like “whoa dude, this guy must be serious.” (laughs). Same with Pepper (Keenan) , man. I’d seen him around a thousand times and we knew each other. We had similar friends. Same with Jimmy Bower. Eventually, those tentacles all drew us together through music.
DB: When you were younger did you guys have something together or was DOWN the first real get-together with the bunch of you?
PA: This is a fun interview because you’re making me think of some crazy stuff that not a lot of people have really covered, and this is cool, so check this out. I was in a band that had morphed in many different ways member wise and it was at the point where it was about to morph into its final stage before I quit and joined Pantera. It was at the point where my voice had matured enough to where I could really cut the mustard as far as singing Judas Priest and all that kind of stuff in a real full range way. Kirk was in a badass band. I didn’t even know this was the band he was always telling me about when we’d run into each other.
DB: I think I know the one you’re talking about. Name is on the tip of my tongue.
PA: Victorian Blitz.
DB: That’s it.
PA: They were fuckin bad ass man. So good. Kirk was singing and playing guitar and they were doing a lot of Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and stuff like that. I was like “Man, this is the band I wish I was fucking singing for”. This is great considering the history that followed. Oh my God. I actually got an opportunity — and Kirk somewhere when he reads this, he’s gonna cringe but laugh at the same time. We both know the story so well. I tried out for Victorian Blitz. I knew I’d done well. I sang my balls off, whatever they threw at me, but ehhh, the big but. He a… (laughs) I got kicked out of the band because I smoked and drank.
DB: That’s kind of awesome. It’s nice to see you’ve worked your way out of those bad habits, right?
PA: Well, at least the drinking part.
DB: Are you completely off the sauce now?
PA: Yeah man, on two years now.
DB: Wow. That’s impressive. Congratulations.
PA: Really nothing to congratulate man. Nothing to it. After the first few weeks it gets easy.
DB: What do you remember about the first time you died? Did you ever have a near death experience where you remember something? I know watching interviews about your house where people say there’s spirits in it. I know you’re not big on religion, but do you believe in that sort of spiritual middle ground?
PA: Anything I might have said about that house at that time, was due to a lot of corroborated experiences or feelings and a creepy feeling does not constitute a spirit. Anything that went on in that house that might have been off kilter, I would link logically to either great coincidence or scientifically explainable, so I’m just trying to be rational here. More pointedly to your original question, make no mistake, I have died before, there’s no faking death. If you can imagine how you felt before you were born, it was that level of insignificance and impossibility, so I stand hard by my anti-theist views. I’m a staunch atheist. I wear it as no front or identity. It’s just my personal belief. The religious themselves don’t bother me really at all Whatever it takes to have a person make it through the day. Whatever strength they can gain to help them fight through this mortal coil, more power to them, just don’t push it on me.
DB: Amen to that. How is your back feeling? You just finished surgery for your sciatic nerve pain, right?
PA: Yeah man. I’m at the point where it’s good days, bad days. I guess I’m at the period right now of transition. I’m trying to feel new things whilst healing from the obvious invasiveness that is back surgery. It’s like a battle of feelings right now. Good days, bad days. But when I do have the good days, if those are any indicators of better days to come, then I’ll take them. And yeah man, it’s tough for me to gauge right now but I shall. I’ll be alright. Thank you for asking.
DB: You started with opioids due to your back problems predominantly, right?
PA: Absolutely, yeah.
DB: What (new) skills do you have now that allow you to maintain the schedule you do? You go like a man possessed.
PA: When I’m going I absolutely do, but like times right now when I’m on the mend? Even when I was a kid I loved my alone time. Although, right now I’m tinged with a little bit of cabin fever, but I do work assiduously writing all kinds of different stuff so I can get by that way. To your point of my attitude towards opioids. When you feel this type of pain or really, any type of nagging pain that absolutely upsets your day of scheduled activities, when it’s fucking a deal breaker. When it’s an employment jeopardizer. That’s when panic originally happens. Your initial reaction to that is “give me any-fucking-thing you got. I need to keep working.” That in itself, that’s a very tough spot to put your average person in. I made every mistake in the fucking book, you know that, and that’s well documented. Mine should be a cautionary tale. What I did come out of that with I can share and maybe plant a seed if someone is hurting out there and how to deal with opioids would be to number one: resent your fucking condition. Resent the injury, resent it enough to where you know you need to get better. You have to get better. Number two: resent the drugs. Resent the fact that you have to take one. Resent the motherfuckers. The doctors prescribe you the pills and hand you a piece of paper and push you out the door. It should come down to the doctors explaining to people “I am writing you a pill. This pill has a preparation in the middle of it for a reason. It is a strong narcotic. I suggest taking a half a pill and seeing how it affects you.” Not one doctor has ever said that to me ever, and right then and there I could say that is a fucking problem man. No one has explained that less is better.
Another thing that I’ve had to learn the hard way: pain-killers lie to you. Once you’re on them for an extended period of time and you attempt to come off them, your body will produce a new and brilliant pain because it is detoxing. It wants the fucking pills. So, are you seeing the vicious cycle here? It’s a mind fuck. It’s why I say resent the motherfuckers. Get educated on the fucking doses you’re taking and god damn, why am I the dude fucking saying all this shit? Fuck! This is minimal information that deserves a much more thorough and complex going over.
DB: It scares me what those things can do and how liberal people were getting with them for a while.
PA: Well, my thing is this, man, if it worked… pain is a fucking unnatural feeling in the body and that’s why we as human beings react to it so negatively, therefore I see the need for the medicines more than most, believe me. Even if the (doctors) don’t have the time, I understand the medical profession is overrun, if they could even pass you off to a counselor before you took the damn pill and they said very clearly and in elaborate degrees how you should approach the pill and what the long term effects are and be very, very explicit about it. They are not right now.
DB: I listened to the album by the way. It’s a fantastic album and I’m not an extreme metal guy. This was a new experience for me but I liked it. It’s a great jogging album. I just have to imagine that you’re chasing after me because you sound really pissed. That album has a lot of strong themes. It’s not in my normal wheelhouse but it’s just super tight. t’s a very musical album, I like that. It takes a bit of chewing, but it sticks to the ribs once it gets in.
PA: For me it’s something I did a couple years back and did with a great group of guys. I do so many different projects man that it’s almost unfair for people like yourself to get any real feedback from me because it’s just one expression the of music that I’m doing. It’s not any direction I’m going full time or anything. It’s just a pit stop of something I enjoy doing because it’s a different expression of music. Everything I do is for pure enjoyment at this fucking point. For me it’s sharing stuff that I’ve recorded with people who may or may not be interested. Love it, hate it, be indifferent to it, you know? If there’s people like yourself who like to dig a little bit and just see. When it comes to music, I really liken that to food you love or hate or are indifferent to. Or it’s something you have to be in the mood for to ingest and enjoy. So when you say it’s not the type of music you would normally listen to, it’s like “oh shit.” For a guy like me to dig through music I didn’t like, it would take great effort. It would be like trying to stomach some food that I hated.
DB: Well, there’s a difference between not liking something and ….most albums I really grow to love are ones that take a bit of chewing or….even when I was younger, for a lack of a better term scared me a bit. They had to disturb me a bit.
PA: Ah. now you’re on to something.
DB: In the Arms of God. I love that album, but it didn’t really sink in until four or five listens. A Bustle in your Hedgerow? Same thing.
PA: You don’t have to explain it to me. As a music fan myself, the very same thing has happened to me man, and that’s a very wise way to approach this record, it really is, and more power to you brother. Seriously, more power to you man. I wish more people would approach music like that. And honestly, with saying what I said earlier, I do wish I had a little bit more of an open mind to certain forms of music. I’m working on that because there’s certain modern sounds I’m hearing out there, coming from music genres that I don’t know enough about to even name a band or comment on specifically, but there are sounds out there that I do appreciate in modernity.
DB: You are pretty willing to share what’s in your heart with your fans. There’s a certain relatability there that isn’t all that common. If I think of most people whose music I listen to, it’s easy to describe them in a word or sentence.
PA: Oh, I’m a complex fellow, yes.
DB: But the thing is, it’s good and bad. It’s real person complex, and you don’t get that a lot.
PA: And isn’t that the way it should be? Isn’t that ironic!
DB: It should be.
PA: I have fully understood and embraced with a snide joke in my heart and nothing but love, but with a gallows type sense of humor. I know what the fuck I look like. Therefore, what a target. But that’s fine. I’ve toyed with that whole fucking notion. Here’s the thing about all that. Nobody has picked my brain about what my politics are. Look at internet culture. You got this.
DB: The digital mob?
PA: Well, the puritans. The moralists. the finger waggers. I get the whole thing, but truth be told, the people I piss off, I’m happy to piss them off. I am. That means I’m doing something right. I think they’ve manufactured a high moral perch to put themselves on, and I think it’s obvious that everyone sees it. Everything that they are supposedly outraged by, they themselves are guilty of times a thousand. The old boomerang man, hits em right in the mouth and they don’t see it.
DB: If you haven’t done enough bad stuff to be scandalous, you probably haven’t done enough good stuff to be interesting. You’re one of those people where enough sensational stuff has come out that the most interesting (information) that hasn’t been covered is Phil Anselmo the human being.
PA: Aside from the popularity of Pantera and the tragedy and how it all got… you know, of course you’re going to grow up your whole adult life in the spotlight and you’re going to be examined like an insect, you know? Like a scientist does an insect. Honestly, I don’t see anything that I do as so sensational. I haven’t even thrown a meaningful punch in twenty years. It’s like, Jesus H. Christ, how much of a threat am I? I don’t write songs about anything. If anything, I play up characters in songs. I’ve done that since… god I guess my first example I can think of is with fucking hostile with Pantera, you know? Now I’ll play the part of the this, that, whatever. I do that my entire career with other bands, you know? I can see my creativity, sure, take it or leave it, hate it or whatever, but honestly, I have never liked putting people in boxes. However, the media likes to do so, or political assholes like to do so. I’m not like that. It takes all kinds to make the world go round and not everybody has the same fucking idea of how this world works and that in itself is the beauty of the world and the pulse of the world. I get public sentiment when it comes to certain things. I get all that, but when it comes to me it’s like man, am I really all that fucking controversial or am I just a dude who is very much so living out his human experience with his heart on his sleeve, calling it like I see it and making music? I mean really, fuck it, you know? Tear it apart all you want. I just don’t really see myself as this dangerous fellow. I’m 50 fucking years old.
DB: I met you once before, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t stumble and hum and haw You cast a tall shadow, but at the same time you were nice enough to gloss past the stupid things I said and were joking around with my wife and it was a really good experience. But this isn’t about me.
PA: But it is about you because you met me and you’re a person and you knew me as a person who makes music, and what you experienced was that I was just a regular dude. I was out there. Apparently you met me while I was working?
DB: Yeah.
PA: So, that’s the point. I’m doing my job, you know what I’m saying? It would be kind of like me coming to your work when you were busy, but still part of my job. I feel like if I am in your city and I am doing a gig, I feel like I’m a visitor and I’m on your turf. It does not and should not pain me in any way shape or form to stop and be nice when I can. I don’t see why that isn’t and shouldn’t be part of the job. Taking the time to be kind to people who are there, to say hello to you specifically. To me it’s unthinkable to not be kind to those type of people.
DB: The little things matter a lot. It feels less put on because there’s texture there. There’s good, there’s bad. There’s a mix. Despite the fact that people have been various ranges of fair to you in the media, you do wear your heart on your sleeve. You are willing to share and put yourself out there, and when bad things happen you dust yourself off and keep moving forward
PA: I appreciate that man. Once again. I stand behind it. The people I piss off, well, glad to do it. But in that same notion, the logical clear thinking people out there that are just fans of any type of music I’ve been a part of. It ain’t that wide yet, but the net is being cast. I’ve done a lot of different styles of music under the heavy metal umbrella to where I gotta sayany of those people who are specifically a Pantera fan, a DOWN fan, a Superjoint fan, etc., I wish I could hug you all right now. And hey, if they have an email account, I’m sending them an e-hug right now.
DB: (Your record label) Housecore. You’ve been doing that for a while. What’s it like being on the other side of the fence? Did it start as something for you to launch your stuff, or was it that you built the house working with other people and it gave you a spot to work with your bands?
PA: It started off recording music in my off time from Pantera where everything was recorded in studio on the biggest equipment possible at the time. You gotta remember that Pantera started before the digital age, so we recorded our first bunch of records on tape, so in my off time we would just bust out the 4-track recorder and record stuff at the house, and that’s where the idea of housecore came from. With my original house in new Orleans, Housecore was about sounding real, going back to basics. About the love of the 1980s demo sound back when it was about the spirit of a thing as opposed to how modern the production could be and chasing the tail of that, at this point, pretty plastic sounding dragon. We are absolutely a small label but I don’t consider myself on the other side of the fence. I consider myself very much a face in the crowd looking at the stage. We have a core amount of bands that we can pay attention to and we’re very tight knit. King Parrot, they’re obviously an Australian band but still we keep close tabs and work well together. There’s a family atmosphere here. Everybody from my engineer to my wife to every band member I could mention is in some way shape or form a contributor, a member of the house.
DB: Given all the good things and bad things that have happened in your life with music, do you ever think what you’d be like if you weren’t Phil Anselmo the performer and were just Phil from new Orleans, just working and taking over his dad’s restaurant or doing whatever? What would that Phil look like? Is that something you ever consider?
PA: Not even at all
DB: No?
PA: Nooo no no. You’re talking to a guy who knew that he was going to do what he was going to do. Oh god, am I third personing myself? (laughs) Oh God. I knew exactly what I wanted to do by the 6th grade. I’ve had less than a handful of real jobs because I could never own up to them because I’ve been doing gigs since I was fifteen or sixteen full-time. I mean five days a week, three one-hour sets a night in front of zero people or ten people in the worst crappiest Cajun bars where they barely spoke English and they hated you if your hair was past your fucking shoulder. (laughs) Dude, that was great homework for me, let’s put it that way.
DB: If you could get rid of the back injury, the addiction history, the heartbreak and trade in the glory, the fame and the music, would it be a worthwhile trade?
PA: That is a very interesting question. Me, with the same frame of mind, but in my strongest body? Without a tainted thing in my bloodstream.
DB: But no albums. No fame. Without all the stuff that came with it.
PA: Very tough to envision. Would I trade it? When you’re in my condition and try to explain to people if someone stops by, or I wake up not in the best of moods because I feel like I’ve been in a car wreck and all I did was roll over twice in the night. Huh. I don’t know. If someone shot me an email right now and said you just hit the lottery and there you go. You never have to worry about anything and you got plenty of money to do what you want with, it would not solve the truth of my skeleton. Therefore that would not solve my outlook, my mood, my state and quality of life and happiness and being and those who are around me as well. I’d also have to think about this question with the grain of truth that despite all this fucking pain, and all the belly-aching that I just blurted, somehow I’m still able on really good days to do three-week and month-long tours. Put out and record album after album of different styled shit, Let’s be honest with each other. I don’t fear it at all and I’m not unrealistic, the better part of my life is over. (laughs) It’s true. I can laugh at it. I’m not on the better… I mean chances are I could live another 50 years. I’m no medical expert. I would say the chances are not in that favor. So with all that said, that is strange. I get the framing of your question. I get that part of it. That’s not strange. It’s just the fact that I’m finding it so hard to answer when the answer should be so obvious. Wouldn’t the average person say “I’ll take the fame any day”? If someone did not have a pain in their body and could not understand the rigors of having a truly chronic pain condition that hindered their work, that scared the fucking life out of their existence. Because if you can’t work, to exist is pretty tough. I don’t know man. like I said, you take a person who’s never felt pain before, most people I think would say on average “I would take the fucking fame” because pain is just something that comes and goes. It’s a passing thing. Chronic is the magic fucking word. From the moment you open your fucking eyes to the second you go to sleep at night. Yeah man. That is a tough call. That is a very tough question to answer.
DB: It’s kind of a devil’s bargain either way.
PA: It is. I think there, that’s probably the best answer right there, because it’s short and succinct. Unlike me.
DB: This would be a lot less awesome if you were short and succinct, so I appreciate it man.
PA: Thank you so much. Write a good story, brother.
