UNKNOWN, 1994
-------------

Bobbie Steele of: THE UNDEAD
Interview done by Paul Putrid

PAUL: Alight, real quick, I'm sick of asking the damn question.  I'm sick
of hearing them from other people and answering them myself.  We'll get the
damn MISFIT question out of the way.  When were you in the MISFITS?
BOBBIE STEELE: A long time ago, 1978.  I joined in November and I got thrown
out in October of 80.

PAUL: And second question is why'd you leave?
BOBBIE: Certain things that they said and I couldn't work with them after
that.  They said "You suck and you're fired."

PAUL: This is coming from the band that had Doyle for so many years.
BOBBIE: They replaced me with Doyle.

PAUL: I always had the feeling Doyle was nothing but a trained monkey.
BOBBIE: Exactly.  He was Jerry's brother, so he was Jerry's pawn to try to
take over the band, at least that's the way I see it.  So Doyle was Jerry's
way to destroy the band.

PAUL: There's also the walking little ego too, to deal with.
BOBBIE: I think Jerry really played Glen's ego and that's how he convinced
Glen to get rid of me.  It's very easy, Glen's got a very weak ego and it's
real easy to play on his paranioa and manipulate him.  Jerry was real good,
he played Glen like a violin and Glen fell for it.

PAUL: And now to go onto the real interview instead of spending time on
something that happened 14 years ago.  Alright, when did you form THE UNDEAD?
BOBBIE: Right after I got kicked out of THE MISFITS.  It was already pretty
much in the works, it was originally called THE SCABS, and it was me, Rich
Metallion on drums, but Richie didn't wanna be in a Punk band anymore so we
got Patrick.  He was the guy on Never Say Die, and if you look on Act Your
Rage, you'll see Rich came back for a good part of Act Your Rage.

PAUL: Was he the drummer when we opened up for you, the guy who replaced
Tony, sorta longish blondeish hair?
BOBBIE: No that was Eddie.  Tony replaced uo... I'm trying to think if Tony
replaced Stacey, or if Rich replaced Stacey, but it's some place in there.
It gets really confusing.

PAUL: THE UNDEAD is not known for a prolific output.  Any reasons why?
BOBBIE : Lack of money.  That's the main problem.  There's plenty of songs,
There's a lot of songs that have been recorded in various formats that have
never been released.  I've got at least 6 songs that Natz wrote that has
never been released.

PAUL: What happened to Natz?
BOBBIE: He was always the one who was against the establishment and now he
is the establishment.  He's signed to a major label.  He says one thing to
my face and then behind my back he says THE UNDEAD was the biggest
embarrassment of his life, but to my face he'll tell me if it wasn't for me
he'd be pushing hamburgers in New Jersey.  So he's a little bit two faced
there.

PAUL: You've been around for about 16 years, from THE MISFITS to now, I'm
gonna throw a few names out of people who used to be around, and are still
around but in different forms, not all of them are sellouts.  First on we'll
start off with is the Mighty Midget himself.
BOBBIE: The Magical Munchkin?  Sometimes I wonder if playing in a punk band
wasn't a sell out thing for him.  Cause when you get down to it, the way I
see a sellout is somebody who does something just to get a name or exposure,
or money but for something they don't really believe in, and I really doubt
that Glen really believed in Punk Rock.  If he did he'd still be playing it.

PAUL: Actually it makes sense if you think of, there was always a different
vibe with The MISFITS compared to the other horror Punk bands say like THE
CRAMPS.
BOBBIE: Yeah, we were like harder, faster, more violent.

PAUL: You were saying that Maximum Rock In' Roll was giving you a hard time.
Do keep in mind Maximum Rock In' Roll is from San Francisco and anything
that ever had to do with The MISFITS will not be cool with them.  Not after
The Doyle Incident.
BOBBIE: I think that's what my problem is with Maximum Rock In' Roll is that
they hold me responsible for Doyle's actions.

PAUL: Which is funny because Doyle replaced you.
BOBBIE: Yeah.  We played San Francisco about a month after that incident
and I'd have people literally come to the stage and be like "Come on hit
me" and I think that's got a lot to do with it.  They blame me for what
Doyle did.  I was one of them. I got fucked by them, just like that kid Tim
got fucked by them.  I met the kid and I told him "I hope you sue them."
What I understood was he was permanently brain damaged.

PAUL: OK here's another one,- ROLLINS.
BOBBIE: He really disappointed me.  I met him back when he was nobody he
might of still been with S.O.A. and just a few weeks before he went to
California, and he was kissing my ass, and then the next time I'd seen him
was about two years ago.  I just went to talk to him and I don't know what
the reason was but he just gave me the cold shoulder.  I can't say he blew
me off but he just didn't wanna talk to me.  When he was a nobody and I was
a somebody, I spent several hours with him and gave him free MISFITS records
and it just didn't matter to him anymore.  I always thought Henry would be
a more decent person.

PAUL: Here's one on a moee positive note- Charlie Harper.
BOBBIE: Charlie is cool.  I wish I could keep in touch because that's one of
the major label bands that THE UNDEAD has done a show with, and everyone of
those guys bought everything that we had.  Each shirt, each album, each
sticker, button, everything.  I remember Jill(?) said "this real old guy
came and bought everything."  It was when we played with them (UK SUBS), and
The BROKEN BONES.

PAUL: It's hard to think of Charlie as old after seeing him on stage, I
asked him when I met him and he said 56, then, that was like 88.
BOBBIE: You gotta respect a guy who doesn't lie about his age, unlike some
other people.

PAUL: Speaking of which, how old is yourself?
BOBBIE: 38.

PAUL: 38 and still being in the scene.
BOBBEE: Fuck yeah.  Unlike certain someone else (DANZIG) who was 26 when I
was 22 now claiming to be 34.  He kinda goes up and down.  I think a few
years ago he admitted to being 36.  It's amazing that his story's are so
inconsistent and these serious major reporters don't catch this guy as just
a blatant liar.

PAUL: And finally, here's a guy I'm curious on your opinion about- Lee Ving?
BOBBIE: I actually almost started a band with him.  We just couldn't get it
all together, and besides from his racial views we got along really good.
He's still got that Fuck em if they can't take a joke attitude.  He's a
really nice guy.  We tried to get this band together, it was me, Lee Ving,
Joey Shithead and Earl Hudson.

PAUL: Now there's stuff coming out on major labels that's punk.  Right now
the biggest compilation is The GERMS- MIA.  It got 4 stars in Rolling Stone,
4 stars in Entertainment, which is funny because when Darby was alive, they
didn't know who the fuck he was.
BOBBIE: Yeah, people ask he me how come I'm not that big, and it's because
I'm not dead.  If I had died I'd be just as big as Darby and Sid.  Everyone
thought I was gonna do suicide The MISFITS tried to encourage it.  They were
always like "get more fucked up, do more drugs."

PAUL:  I think there's less of an attitude now where you should do more
fucked up shit at gigs, now everyone's "aaahh" if you do that in the age of
P.C.
BOBBIE: Oh yeah, fuck them, fuck P.C.  Adolph Hitler would have been
considered P.C.  You know, burn books, ban thought, you know they're the
thought police.  It's funny, Jello Biafra warned us about the thought police.
They would be the people he didn't think it would be.  It wasn't the
government.

PAUL: Well it wasn't the Fallwells either who made such an ass of themselves
where nobody takes them seriously.
BOBBIE: No it's like these politically correct Punk rockers who are telling
you what to think and what not to think and if you dare think that they try
to silence you.

PAUL: I think he's said stuff like that with Chickenshit Conformist or
California Uber Alles.  That's the one nice thing about Biafra is that he
doesn't trust either side.
BOBBIE: Me and him totally disagree with politics but we've always gotten
along.  Anytime he hear's there's a new UNDEAD record out, he's like "send
me a copy."  He's cool, he's always had a sense of humor, he's never taken
things too seriously, and that's what's gotten him out of a lot of shit.

PAUL: Doing gigs is easy as piss, and recording is easy as piss, well it is
for me because I like doing it.  I feel I'm putting something out there with
my name on it.  I can't understand what's hard about this?  Where's the
effort?
BOBBIE: Yeah.  People wanna do it, they wanna do a record and say "I'm in
this band, but they don't wanna do all the hard work.

PAUL: That's a thing with a lot of New York bands- "they're real nice guys-
but I wouldn't wanna be in a band with them."
BOBBIE: Exactly, so many shitty New York bands are getting gis.  That's the
problem too many bands too few good ones.

PAUL: New York doesn't even have a clue that the rest of the world exists.
I remember going to a D.I. gig at CBGB's I was real hyped about it, when I
talked to my lead guitarist he was like "Who the fuck are they?"  In New
York they don't know who anyone is.
BOBBIE: Same thing with the clubs in New York, they think New York is the
shit.  They expect you to play a club in New York, and you can draw 3000
people and they'll fuckin argue with you about giving you 200 dollars and
you're getting exposure, and that's why I don't play New York clubs too
often, and I'll tell them if I want exposure I'l stand out in the streets
and rip my pants off.

PAUL: What about ABC No Rio?
BOBBIE: I don't trust those people.  Jill was in a band that played there,
and when everytime someone flushed the toilet upstairs everything came down
on the drummer.  They treat musicians like shit.  They're there for their
own pleasure and God forbid if they make half as much money as one makes
working at McDonalds.  They'll be like "you're really nice, you're a good
musicians," but as soon as you make money they condemn you.

PAUL: Switch the subject, what are the upcoming plans for THE UNDEAD?
BOBBIE: As soon as we get some money.  We've got a lot of money owed to us
so we can get a lawyer to go after the money for us.  If I get the money
that'll be for the next album, otherwise there may never be another UNDEAD
album.  We've just been screwed over too many times.  We've had clubs use
our name when they knew we weren't booked.  And if we came back they'd be
like "Yeah right, just like last time" the name has been damaged so many
times, it's gonna be hard for us to keep going at this point.  Fortunately
my girlfriend makes a lot of money so she's trying to help us out as soon
as she pays all her finances.  In a few months I might have an 8 track
digital recorded so we'll be recording at home.  The hardest thing about
recording at home is the drums because you need so many microphones.  I just
might program the drums.  Maximum Rock'n'Roll really slams you for doing that
on a tour.

PAUL: MRR's fun to play with.
BOBBIE: I love fucking with them.

PAUL: I'm still pissed with all the bullshit they gave THE EXPLOITED.
BOBBIE: They give anyone bullshit who doesn't agree with their political
views.

PAUL: Well it seems the second you get bigger, where people outside their
little club...
BOBBIE: They get jealous of your success.

PAUL: Well right now with BAD RELIGION is a perfect example.  They've got
their label signed to Atlantic.  Atlantic is doing all their distribution for
America, and there's been article after article about how BAD RELIGION has
sold out.  I have Recipe For Hate, it's not much different from Suffer.
BOBBIE: If you've read Maximum Rock 'n' Roll in the past few years, I've
become more hated than GG ALLIN.  These people percieve me as being this big
money making rock star.  I've seen countless letters in there slamming me,
never one letter in there defending me.  I've gotten so much mail from people
saying that I've written to Maximum Rock 'n' Roll a couple of times telling
them "I've met you, you're a good guy, that you're not this kind of person."
They will not print any letters supporting me.

PAUL: Well it's one of those things, it's still Tim's zine.
BOBBIE: Yeah.  They took money from me for advertising.  I gave em 200
dollars of adds and I only saw one 30 dollar add.

PAUL: Which leads to a good question, how do you feel about the fact that
punk rock ends up being business?
BOBBIE: Anything's business.  The second money is exchanged there's going to
be some kind of business.  The question is where's the honor?  Where's the
open mindedness?

PAUL: There's supposed to be, everyone keeps claiming on every record in
that collection on how much better we are than society, and yet it's all the
same bullshit games.

BOBBIE: You've just got these vicious people who wanna control and manipulate
people's thoughts, I find it hard to believe that the people at Maximum Rock
n Roll are not making a lot of money.  Every year they put out their
financial statement and you see all this massive income and they list all
their expenses which are basically things they are buying for themselves,
computers and things like that, and there's always this big chunk of money
that's left over that they donate to a cause.  What's the cause they're
donating to?  Their new car?  They don't say what that cause is.

PAUL: Trying to get back to just making music without the hastle, what
influenced you to pick up the guitar?
BOBBIE: I saw THE BEATLES and I saw girls screaming.  I was 7 years old.
I was like holy shit!  That's what I'm doing.

PAUL: When you were first getting into punk, who were you listening to?
BOBBIE: I was listening to The NEW YORK DOLLS when their first album came
out, I was pretty much into it and shit, and I had the attitude, and then it
kind of died for a couple of years music was really really bad.  Then I
started reading Rolling Stone's random notes, and every once in a while it
would have this little thing about this English band The SEX PISTOLS, and
all the trouble they were getting into, and then when Anarchy In The UK came
out I managed to get my hands on a copy of it and I listened to it and I was
like "This is the way it should fuckin be man!", you know just right there
in your face.  Just the sound just fuckin grabbed me and I knew that was the
sound that I wanted, I just fell in love with it.

PAUL: Anything interesting now happening?  That catches your interest
nowadays?
BOBBIE: Kurt Cobaine's suicide.

PAUL: It was hard to miss.  Every newscast on earth.  You get the feeling
that this is sort of grave robbing the little media feeding frenzy?
BOBBIE: Yeah, but I can't respect the guy.  I don't know what you think of
him but I never thought much of NIRVANA.  I thought of them as just hippies
that were trying act like punk rockers and defiant.  Everything that did
just seemed forced.  It didn't seem sincere.

PAUL: Well I think a lot of that was D.G.C.'s fault.
BOBBIE: Possibly.  I saw them on Saturday Night Live, and just like the look
on his face and attitude, it seemed like everything was forced, like when
they smashed their equipment it was like "OK this is what we're supposed to
do now"  You know.  It wasn't like spontaneous.

PAUL: I think right after you sign to a major label though, they give you
this push toward that you kind of have to "we own you now."
BOBBIE: Yeah but I mean if they were really defiant... Why do you think I'm
not signed?  Because they know I won't play that game.  From what I know
about these guys, I don't know too much, the way I understood it was that
was supposedly their attitude too.  They weren't playing the major label
game, "we'll do what we wanna do, fuck what the record company wants."

PAUL: The problem is, you hit this brick wall, and this is why Ian Mackaye
put FUGAZI on Dischord, where every major label wants them.
BOBBIE: He doesn't need a major label, he's a fucking genious.

PAUL: I guess it's that feeling that the second you sign for millions of
dollars they own you, no matter how much you try to fight against them.
BOBBIE: Only if you let them own you.  You ask them "are you gonna play it
my way or am I just gonna make all this money myself?  Ian Mackaye must be
rolling in the fucking money.  Dischord is his label.  He doesn't have to
answer to anyone.  He makes the money from the label and from his band.  If
you compared it to making money to a major label you'd have to sell twice
as much.  That's the same thing, why did DANZIG sign to a major label
when he had SAMHAIN and he was doing so well?  He was probably making more
money with SAMHAIN than he was making with DANZIG up until now with the big
MTV hit.  But even now you don't know the way record company's suck the
money out of you.

PAUL: I remember you and Only were after Danzig because once upon a time
Plan 9 was supposed to a partnership.
BOBBIE: It was suppose to be all of us, that was the original agreement.

PAUL: And part of the reason for Glen diving off of Plan 9 was...
BOBBIE: Maybe he realized that sooner or later they might be able to prove
that that label was ours and we might be able to get part of Danzig's money
which would of been great.  Then I'd be going "Moootherrr" (Imitating
Danzig's stupid voice).

PAUL: There's some interesting stuff coming out, but most of it is from
stragglers from the old scene.  I myself personally the most interesting
new record that I bought was the RANCID ep- Radio Radio Radio, it had a
cover of Someones Gonna Die and they looked Punk so I figured it was worth a
shot.  It seems to be the feeling that most bands don't have any guts.

BOBBIE: That's the bottom line, they don't have any guts, they don't believe
in themselves.  If somebody from a record company comes to them and says
"I've got AIDS , if you wanna get signed you gotta let me fuck you."  And
then they'll be OK!  They're spineless, these bands will do anything for a
record deal because they don't have enough confidence.  These bands will pay
to play cause they don't think they'll get a gig any other way.  So what
happens is the good bands, the bands with balls don't get gigs any more.
That's why music is mediocre now.

PAUL: Do you think from the fans point of view, playing now is that much
different from playing then?
BOBBIE: Oh yeah, there's a lot more bands now.  I'd say that 99% of them are
shitty.  It used to be where you were almost hard pressed to find a shitty
band. It was like the bands were bands.  They were into it not because it's
cool to be in a band, but because it was their life's dream.  It's kind
of like cable TV . Originally you had the networks and they had good
programs, and then you got cable, soon you got 10,000 channels, and you try
to find anything good.  It used to be if you saw a band you had a 99% chance
that that was gonna be a good band.  Now you go to a show and you can see 10
bands on a bill and if you see 1 halfway decent band you're surprised.

PAUL: Sort of off the subject, what do you feel about the recent New York
City Punk rock death toll?  Since 90.  Stiv Bators, Jerry Nolan, and Johnny
Thunders, and I don't even want to talk about GG Aliin.  I'm sick of him,
the man didn't have any talent.
BOBBIE: Actually he had a lot of talent, I don't know when he lost it.  When
I finally heard his first band I can't remember.  Every once in awhile I
would get fan mail, and they would say "I love your band, you sound just
like ..." and I was like "Oh God!?  We're that bad!?" (laughing).  I had
never heard them, I assumed it was one of GG's bands so it's gotta suck.
But one day I was cruising, I got the radio on and they're playing this
great fucking Punk song and at the end they go "that was....", and I was
"Oh my God.  GG was fucking great at one, and I even had some friends that
told me that GG was a big UNDEAD fan, so I told them "you tell GG that if
he's willing to get his shit together and come in the studio, I'll do a
record with him, but he's gotta do it on my terms, and do it like he used
to do his records," but he died.  I have no pity on musicians who kill
themselves, it's become a trendy thing.  And with Cobain, I feel sorry for
his fans, because when you get that famous, whether you like it or not, you
have an influence on people.  And there was a time when I was laying in a
hospital bed, I was documented as one of the first people with AIDS, it was
a mistake, but everybody thought I was dying, and all of a sudden it occured
to me this is gonna have a real bad effect on fans if I let myself go die
like this.  It made me snap around, and live, and make me get off all the
drugs I was doing and shit, and make a better impression on people.

PAUL: I think if people look up to you, whether you're a rock star, or a
sports star, or whatever, I think you have some form of responsibility which
used to be my big problem with JANE'S ADDICTION.  I used to be a junkie,
I've been clean for years now, and I used to resent Perry Farrel going
on and on about how great heroin is.
BOBBIE: Me too, I don't dig these bands who do it, and I don't like these
major labels making a lot of fucking money selling this fucking drug bullshit
to kids, because they sold it to me and I fuckin bought it, and I almost
fuckin died.

PAUL: They sold it to Johnny.
BOBBIE: They sold it to Johnny.  Johnny fuckin lasted longer than anybody.
Everybody gave up on Johnny ever dying.

PAUL: Yeah, he sort of became the Keith Richards of Punk Rock.  There was
gonna be a fuckin nuclear war, there'll be cockroaches and Johnny Thunders.
(laughing) The thing was that I heard was that he was clean before he died.
BOBBIE: I thing the bottom line is that if you've done drugs for that long
I think your body is pretty much your body is pretty much shot. If the drugs
don't kill you the damage they've done will.  I had a friend who just died a
little while after Johnny.  This guy, having doing heroin for as long as I'd
known him and 10 years before that.  This guy held usually do like 300 bags
a day.  Then I ran into this guy, I hadn't seen this guy in several years.
I'd figured out he's dead, then one day I was at The Continental on New
Years Eve, and I turn around and there he is and the guy looks fucking
great, not a grey hair on his head, he looked just like he looked 10 years
before.  And I told him "Man it's amazing, you look great," then he said
"Yeah I got lucky, I got hepatitus when I was real young, so I never shared
needles, and then last May he just dropped dead, his body indide was so
ravished.  His system gave out.

PAUL: Sounds like Jerry Nolan.
BOBBIE: They said he had cancer.  It might of been AIDS.  But he was really
old.  I read this interview with him he was a back-up drummer for so many
bands in the early 60's.  When he came into The NEW YORK DOLLS he was an old
man already.  He almost wound up in The MISFITS.

PAUL: And the final New York death- Stiv.
BOBBIE: Here's a guy going around splitting his head open on stage, hanging
himself, doing everything imaginable, defying death, gets killed crossing
the street.  We were playing over in Harrisburg and someone asked me about
what I thought about Stiv Bators dying.  I was like "What!" and then I
had to go on stage.  I first formed The UNDEAD, I really wanted him to be
the singer for The UNDEAD, because The DEAD BOYS had just broken up and he
wasn't doing anything.

PAUL: What do you think of old bands that have been gone and then suddenly
pop back up?
BOBBIE: It depends on the band.  I think I heard something new fron The
BUZZCOCKS, if that's the thing they do they might as well just have never
come back.  If you can come back and do what you did before, great.  The
ADICTS, they came back and they're fucking great.  If The MISFITS came back
with Jerry and Doyle, and sounded half assed like they did at the end, then
why bother.

PAUL: Are you embarrassed of The MISFITS?
BOBBIE: No, I'm embarassed of Glen, having to deal with it for 2 or 3 years
with Doyle on guitar.  Cause that had to of been a fuckin embarrassment to
have to come on stage with a band that couldn't play.

PAUL: I remember in 86, 87, 88 you were still "Ex-MISFIT Bobbie Steele."
BOBBIE: Oh, yeah they'll always do that.  Unless The UNDEAD becomes really
big, I'll always be an ex-MISFIT.  For every person who knows who The UNDEAD
is, there's probably a 1000 people who knww who The MISFITS are.  I feel
that this band is better than The MISFITS.  We usually have at shows a bunch
of people wearing MISFIT T-shirts and they turn around and buy an UNDEAD
shirt and rip The MISFITS shirt right off and I've been getting people more
and more coming up to me and saying that they think The UNDEAD is a better
band.

PAUL: Anybody who know you knows why you have the cane, but for the people
who don't, why the cane?
BOBBIE: I'm paralyzed.  I was born with spinadyphida it's a 95% failed birth
defect, and I developed a tumor in my spine, came down with some rare
tropical strain of polio, they didn't know what it was, they could've named
the disease after me for all I know, I was one of the only cases with it, I
picked it up in Hawaii when I was a kid, and it screwed up the growth in my
leg, my muscles lost all their strength, and they discovered a tumor in my
spine when I was 13.  I fell between a car and a moving subway when I was in
The MISFITS, I've just had a lot of weird shit happen to me.  Let's put it
this way, the Devil doesn't like me.  I had some Skinhead when I was in
England, come up to me.  I was pissing, and he comes up to me and starts
pissing too and he goes "What's with the crip-stick?"  And I looked at him
and said, "I'm a cripple, what are you gonna do about it?"

PAUL: What was growing up like?
BOBBIE: Well our generation was like The American Dream.  Our parents fought
World War II, and when they came back it was a whole new prosperity, it was
the first time everybody was basically rich to a degree.  It was the first
time people were buying housed a few days after getting married.  It was a
very spoiled era.  America became almost isolated.  We weren't realistic
about what was going on with the rest of the world.  Your parents would put
food on the plate, and no matter how much you ate, if there was one pea left,
they'd be like "Don't you realise there's people staruing in China?" and I'd
be like "They can have my pea." (laughing). In contrast to the whole
prosperity thing, we also grew up in the shadow of the atomic bomb.  I
remember when I was a little kid 3 years old, watching TV between
Huckleberry Hound and Bugs Bunny cartoons they'd be showing you commercials
when Russia was dropping the bomb on your house.  I remember times when I was
afraid to go outside because I thought this bomb at any second was gonna fall
out of the sky and blow me to smitherines.  It was a very, very,
contradictory time.  It was a common thing for people to have bomb shelters
in the back of their yards.

LATER IN THE INTERVIEW...

........ I had an incident that happened to me about 3 years ago, I was on
tour in the Midwest we were playing this club in Clinton, Iowa and some
priest told his congregation that this band was coming to town, and they're
Devil worshipers and they sacrifice animals, and we gotta stop them, and he
got the town's people to start tearing down our posters, and got the police
department to go threaten the club owner, doing everything to take away my
right to perform.  I got on the phone and called the ACLU, I tried getting
a hold of Music In Action, all these free speech organisations, and they
all blew me off.  I called the FBI and they all came down to protect me.

PAUL: Around 88 I got busted for flipping this guy the finger, and I got
busted, and you told me to call the ACLU, they can't do that, and it's
funny how the same people two yeras later blew you off.
BOBBIE: Yeah their exact quote was "We don't defend free speech cases."
I wrote all these music organizations and they said that my speech wasn't
the kind of speech they wanted to defend.  I wasn't going around saying
"Siech Heil" I wasn't going around being sensationalist, all I was doing was
being accused of something I didn't do.

PAUL: Would there ever be a time where you pull a song, because you think it
might get you in trouble?
BOBBIE: I wouldn't pull a song because I thought it would get me in trouble,
I wouldn't do a song if I thought someone else might do something stupid
because of it.  If I thought, say like Verbal Abuse would trigger someone to
go off and kill his mother, I would pull the song, but I wouldn't pull it
because a record company told me to pull it.  That's the thing people don't
seem to get, they'll condemn a song about a vampire, but they'll give an
award to someone who plays a vampire.  All they're doing is portraying a
character.  People don't seem to understand that sometimes a song is an act.
If ICE T came out and said "I want you all to go out and kill cops.

PAUL: I think it was also a feeling of "They're killing us now, I'm afraid
to walk the streets, not because I'm afraid of criminals, but because I'm
afraid of cops."
BOBBIE: But that's the truth, I'm more afraid of the cops.  I live a block
away from The Hell's Angels.  I feel safer walking down they're street than
walking two blocks up from where the police station is. I've never been
harrassed on East 3rd street.

PAUL: And here was also that big police thing on, 7th street, I resented.
On 7th and D, this is the big heroin and weed block.  If you wanna be a
hero, there is 13th and up there where they're selling crack.  Go leave me
alone when I'm walking to work.
BOBBIE: Well you know what it is?  You're not putting money in their pockets,
crack dealers are.

PAUL: And on top of it, crack dealers have AK's.
PAUL: I'm gonna ask the end question now.  It's 1994, what's THE UNDEAD's
place here now?

BOBBIE: I think as usual The UNDEAD doesn't seem to really fit anywhere.
As far back as I can remember, when I was a little kid, I was kind of
outside of everything, I never really cared to fit in.  It never mattered
to me if I was excepted or not, and I've always been some sort of outlaw or
renegade, not what people usually think of as an outlaw as a criminal, but
some one just outside of everything.  I do things my way, and I really don't
give a fuck what anybody thinks.  "People always fuckin star in at me, I
wonder what it is you see, some freak from menacharie.  That line had been
brewing in my head since the day I got this leg.  When I was a little kid,
I used to wear a brace and a cane, and I'd see all these fuckin people
just staring at me pathetically, and sometimes I'd just turn around and
stare,them right in the eye and be like "What.  You've never seen a fuckin
cripple before?" (laughing).  So that song was in my head when I was like
13.  I was like "What am I?  Some kind of freak show?"  I thought it was
hysterical that these people who thought of themselves as such good good
people would fuckin stand there and fucking stare at me.  I mean "You're a
fuckin loser."  Actually I first started writing that song when I was in
The MISFITS, I was in my bedroom, I was playing my guitar, getting a high
and my mother called me and told me she just heard that Sid Vicious had just
died, and I smashed and wrote the song.

PAUL: To tell you truth, the biggest Punk rocker who ever died and hit me
was Cobain.  Just cause his lyrics were so damn interspective.
BOBBIE: I never understood his lyrics. (laughing).

PAUL: Because the first time I ever heard the song Negative Creep.  I
couldn't believe the song was on Sub-Pop.
BOBBIE: The only band I've ever liked on Sub-Pop was The DWARVES.

PAUL: Even The DWARVES get on my nevves.
BOBBIE: I've always liked them because they get on people's nerves.

PAUL: I remember when Darby died.  I wasn't into Punk then so it didn't mean
anything to me.  But then I listened to the GERMS, I sat down with the
lyrics to GI.  I was like "Fuck."  The GERMS changed Punk rock.  Because
they were probably the first of what we consider Hard Core.  This band goes
back to 1977.  They were on the first Rodney show.  The guy died when he
was 22.  I couldn't believe a kid this old was writing these lyrics.

PAUL: Is it hard to keep your integrity year in and year out?  There's been
so many bands- DISCHARGE, TSOL, DRI, AOD, I don't even wanna mention Glen,
because he's so obvious.
BOBBIE: I've had so many offers to sell out and I think it's harder to sell
out.  It's just like I'll keep doing what I'm doing, because this is me, and
for me to try to fake something, and lie to people is hard.

PAUL: I always make it where at least the bands should've changed their
names.  DISCHARGE is a perfect example.

BOBBIE: We did a show with them once, and it was right when they were
getting ready to make a change, here they were a fuckin Hard Core band
but during the soundcheck when nobody was in the club they were doing
all these Metal songs and the fuckin singer is, going "Ayyeeaahh" (doing
that high pitched metal shreek.) and I was like what the fuck are you
doing?!"

PAUL: Well Glen and Henry were the only people who made any money selling
out.  DISCHARGE and TSOL never made any money.
BOBBIE:That's exactly it, you can sell out and still not make any money, and
you've lost all your integrity.

BOBBIE STEELE in 1984 from Flipside Vinyl Vol.1
All other pics from the album Live Slayer.