by Morgan Y. Evans
private photos courtesy of Sean Yseult
LINKS:
It also, as we all know well, happens to be the name of one of the best heavy bands of all time. I say “heavy” and not “metal”, however, because the early days of the band were informed as much by punk as the latter days, pre-solo Rob Zombie, would be informed by thrash, groove and arena crunch.
The year 2008 is in the home stretch, and it is just as great a time as any to open the vaults and finally (FINALLY!!!) unleash a full career White Zombie retrospective. Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, in stores now thanks to Geffen Records, is a monument to this band’s achievement.
If you were like me, you became aware of White Zombie in the early ‘90s, when “alternative” was already an over-used word but was somehow a term to lump a lot of things people on a more macro-cultural level were still wrapping their brains around culturally. These included sub-genres of punk and metal that were old hat to those in the underground, but White Zombie sure made the other bands on MTV look way less grungy. Pearl Jam may have been great musicians but seeing White Zombie command a stage with possessed stares and no-bullshit attitude was a pure attack on tame sensibilities. They rolled out like a neon heavy metal exploitation film starring gutter-rats from Mars. This band was truly subterranean and macabre, with a whirling dervish madman at the helm and a bass playing girl that simultaneously scared the shit out of 15-year old boys everywhere and made them have crushes on her... AND, the music was fucking insane.
“They came from the bowels of hell.” Not really. It was the mid ‘80s New York noise scene that really first spawned these entrepreneurs of all things sonic and demonic. In 1985 front man, horror buff, and art student Rob Zombie, along with bassist and visionary Sean Yseult (then Zombie’s girlfriend) started the band with engineer Ena Kostabi (an Estonian like me!). Mix a warped world view, seriously deranged sounds, and a bagful of attitude, and suddenly one of the coolest bands in history was born.
White Zombie had it all. They may have been from the New York art scene, but from the start this band was more Manson than ‘80s faux-Warhol descendants, less Exploding Plastic Inevitable than a mind-warped monster. This band was demon-speeding down a highway that would incorporate everything from shock theatrics and Ramones-inspired goonery to eerie film samples, grind house, and camp sensibilities, plus El Phantasmo and the Chicken-Run Blast-O-Rama. They were as important to New York noise as they later were to metal, undergoing numerous line-up changes over the years, their sound shape-shifting yet evolving with each guitar player, and yet each stage had something awesome to offer.
A lot of metalheads who have grown up on the band over the last two decades don’t even know about their early output! You can’t like “heavy” and not like noise, and this boxed set is a great way to absorb the full psycho-genesis of this “won’t be stopped” horror locomotive outfit from start to finish. It’s almost too much to process because it is so cool. You need to take time off from other things in your life because delving into the 64 studio recordings the band made during their tenure (along with ALL their frightful and groundbreaking music videos and numerous live clips) is like being sucked into another dimension of black humor and sci-fi informed lysergic bliss.
Rob Zombie always came off like a crazy, half-dead LSD witch doctor, but on early songs like “Tales From The Scarecrowman” and the thumping “Eighty Eight” (which opens ala Sonic Youth squall and then hints at the heavy route to come) Zombie sounds TRULY like he’s in the thrall of a bad acid trip, gripped by mania and trying to claw his way out of a basement. “Crow III” from the Soul-Crusher album is like Pussy Galore if the devil was a member of the band and roasting everybody over the coals, backed by a booming bass-line. The shrieking on some of this shit is downright disturbing! And another thing…this band was one of the few bands related to the noise scene to make it on a larger scale and to have much of a chance to be a gateway for more people to find this era’s shit. You don’t see a Live Skull retrospective out there, do you? (Note: Even though that’s a shame. Thalia Zedek forever!)
Again, it’s killer to hear the group’s development on Let Sleeping Corpses Lie, from the dirge/rant of “Drowning the Colossus” up on to “Super-Charger Heaven” and beyond.
As much as I love stuff all members of White Zombie have done afterwards, White Zombie is my favorite. Sean Yseult’s bass had more rumble and groove than legions of tough-acting metal boys and the Jay Yuenger guitar period has some of the most jaw dropping arrangements and hypnotic mosh moments in metal. I can’t remember how much acid I took listening to La Sexorcista: Devil Music Vol.1, but I think it’s a safe bet that it was more than any other album. There was just something about the way it all came together that was enthralling. And they weren’t singing about Will Smith in “I Am Legend”.
They put to fucking Shame all the “horror” bands scampering about on the Warped tour these days. CAN WE PLEASE END THESE FAGGY BANG RETARD HAIR-CUTS ONCE AND FOR ALL!!??? DO YOU FUCKERS HAVE NO SHAME??? DO YOU REALIZE HOW STUPID AND UNIMAGINATIVE YOU ALL LOOK ?
Anyway, back to real music…White Zombie’s “Feed The Gods” from the Airheads soundtrack or even their cover of KC and The Sunshine Band’s “I’m Your Boogieman” (a hint of disco influence to come for Rob), are just no-brainers. Just plain awesome and legit. Let’s take a minute for a COMMEMORATIVE SIGH OF RELIEF!!!
I was thrilled to talk to Sean Yseult via telephone on a recent trip she took to New York City. These days she is married to Chris Lee of the fucking top-notch, bad ass rock’n’roll band Supagroup and owns a bar called the Saint in New Orleans, the city where they live. She has been making excellent music in a creepy, piano and gloom-laced outfit called Rock City Morgue (think Nick Cave meets horror-punk) and has even performed with her heroes The Cramps! She also works in fashion and keeps her mind open to fresh sounds and styles, while knowing what she loves and where she comes from.
It was a real trip talking to someone like Sean who was part of a band that I loved the shit out of so hard and obsessively as a teenager. They took the underbelly of America, exposed and gutted it with cartoonish glee and a rictus grin, true rebels.
Do yourself a favor and get your ass out to a store and fucking buy this thing for Christmas for someone or yourself. It may not be in the most “Christian” spirit, featuring tales of murder and mayhem and all, but you’ll be glad you did and you’ll be a big fat pussy if you don’t!!!
SEAN YSEULT: Yeah. We definitely went through a lot of transformations over the years. A lot of different scenes.
MYE: Every different stage, it’s all there. You always encompassed every stage of the band IN every stage of the band, if people listen closely! There’s lots of hints and dialogue between all of it. It just morphed and was always all there within the different sides of the band’s carnival aspect.
Sean Yseult on stage at Donnington
SY: The heart of White Zombie and what we were doing was always the same idea. We were always a little too metal for the underground art scene and a little too weird for the metal scene. It all worked out in the end. [laughing]
MYE: I remember when I first discovered the band like a lot of people when I was younger through “Thunder Kiss ‘65” (NOTE: one of the most unlikely names for a hit single EVER!). It was darker and more metal than some of the alternative bands, more weird and edgy.
SY: Rob and I, when we met, we were checking out hardcore matinees every Sunday at CB’s and in the East Vi8llage. We used to listen to a lot of bands like Sabbath from way back and that was something different with us from lots of the other bands. It didn’t quite fit in.
MYE: It wasn’t cheesy metal, though. It was more grimy. There was a mockery of evangelical stuff and more. In the ‘80s there was the mass denial that things were bad and in the ‘90s all this optimism when the Clintons came. Even in the early ‘90s you guys kind of came along to the mainstream and it was all sort of campy and mocking things and a joke and it was so metal.
SY: [laughing] That’s a good assessment of it. We always had our love of horror movies and Russ Meyer’s films and the elements that go along with that. A certain camp element goes along with a lot of the darkness there.
MYE: Yeah…but you guys still scared people too, I think.
SY: [laughing] Good! I like that.
MYE: I remember seeing you on MTV, some live performance. I can’t remember what show it was, but I was like, “WHOA!”
SY: John Stewart had a show on MTV. That might have been what you saw.
MYE: I think it was, actually. You were also the first record my parents said I couldn’t keep because of the artwork on La Sexorcista and “Welcome To Planet Motherfucker.”
SY: [laughing] We got banned from your household!
MYE: I had a heated argument about how Zombie-boobs were healthy and didn’t matter.
SY: [laughing] That’s great. I’m certainly glad to hear that. We certainly tried to inspire that rejection from parents and authority.
MYE: Yeah, and mine are very cool and liberal! [laughing] It was really fun, but your band was really looking at the underbelly of things in America. What’s it like having this all collected for you? Now that time has passed, that is?
SY: I’ve always had all these records. Rob and I each kept a stash of the seven inches and stuff we put out over the years, but it’s great to have the wider release of the stuff! I’ve had so many people ask for it over the years, and it’s great to have it in one box and let people hear it from beginning to end.
MYE: There’s so much continuity and integrity in it.
SY: Thanks. It’s nice. I have a few regrets. I think there’s not a lot explained in the package and no liner notes, for some reason. A lot of the art is obscured, sort of collaged. It’s all there in bits and pieces but it would have been nicer if they talked about each record a little bit. I think that’s kind of missing. But, otherwise, it’s great to have everything together.
MYE: As far as the art and the aesthetic and what not, not that you were out there alone, but you filled a weird niche. You blew up in the early ‘90s and I am thinking of how The Misfits were really big underground but never broke as big in one swoop as you did. You broke some of that horror music to mass consciousness more through touring and people loving the records and through Beavis And Butt-Head and stuff. Between each record what do you think were the turning points that made each album sound different yet related?
SY: Starting from the beginning? In the beginning when we were making everything on vinyl, a lot of what changed our sound each time was a revolving door of guitarists.
MYE: Of course.
SY: Yeah. Practically a different one on each record for awhile there. We kind of settled on a sound for a little while with Tom Five, for a little while, and that was definitive White Zombie. Psycho-Head Blowout and Soul-Crusher, that started getting notoriety, and during that time we got more influenced by metal and Slayer and Metallica and switched and got Jay (Yuenger) in the band. And that was how we got more famous, but being a singer and a bass player…Rob and I…you don’t have as much control over the band as what a guitar sounds like. I mean, we do, but a guitar changes what a band sounds like so much. It was good to finally settle on a guitarist for a couple of years and get to do what we really wanted to settle on with our sound with Jay.
Jay and Sean backstage
SY: Yeah. I think Jay grabbed a bottle or something, he didn’t have a slide. It was kind of like he grabbed something and “OH! There’s the song!” You know? [laughing]
MYE: [laughing] No shit.
SY: It was great with Jay. We had so much fun writing
together. A song like “Thunderkiss” was mostly Jay’s
riff, and a song like “Black Sunshine” was mostly my riff,
and sometimes you get a combination like the song “Soul-Crusher”
on La Sexorcista. That’s pretty much the two of us together
exemplified. He’s a really creative guy. He produces bands now and
comes up with recording tricks all the time. It’s great to follow
what he’s still doing. (NOTE: everyone check his
work with Puny Human!)
MYE: Yeah. I remember seeing his guitar a number of years ago in Philly at the Hard Rock Café. I went there and was one of 13 kids from around the country picked for community activism by Rock The Vote and we got to meet the MTV VJ Ananda Lewis and introduce the Roots at a show in Philly, but seeing Jay’s slimy green guitar was the highlight of my trip!
SY: Was that one of the Iceman?
MYE: I think so. They had, like, Madonna’s cone-bra there but I was like, “Fuck that! I want the Zombie guitar!”
SY: [laughing]
MYE: What’s some of the craziest memories from the live touring of that band? People used to lose their shit to you guys.
SY: Yeah. We had some insane shows. There was this place I swear was called The Outhouse or something! It was this cinder-block shack in Lawrence, Kansas or something.
MYE: That sounds American Gothic and fitting enough!
SY: Black Flag had played there many times. We played there once and packed the place. And we came back and we packed the place AND the whole cornfield outside and people were upside down and every which way. Right as we were getting big we were playing clubs and it was so steamy and hot and fogged over. We tried to shoot a video in Chicago at, I think the Avalon…I can’t remember. The cameras fogged over. It was too many people and too much going on. We started playing arenas and a big stage show on big tours and within thirty seconds you’d have people and stuff flying up on stage. Boots. Watches. Bras. You name it. [laughing]
MYE: [laughing]
SY: I don’t know how many people got home without their clothes but…Sometimes it didn’t even look like they were throwing things. It was just flying out of these huge mosh pits. So many crazy memories…All the tours with Pantera were, of course, nuts! The band added to it by pranking us every night. [laughing] That was always fun.
MYE: How ‘bout some of the video shoots? They are represented on the boxed set. A lot of them were so cool and there was live footage representing the band and also the crazed, carnival aspect like “Electric Head Pt. 2 (The Ecstasy)”. It was so over the top and had a lot of the stuff that Rob brought into the movies since. What was the process like making some of the videos? They seem really complicated.
SY: I really love them all. I love “…Planet Mother Fucker” because it really caught one of our live performances so well and that was really exciting. All the ones that were more staged were really directed by Rob and with “Thunderkiss ‘65” Rob wasn’t allowed to direct it. Geffen didn’t want to give us the money. But, even with limits, he really knew what he wanted. Rob was always equally obsessed with movies as music and when it came to making videos he knew exactly what he wanted. The angle. The cut. Everything. It was interesting making that first video having to pretend he wasn’t really directing it, but he really was, secretly. [laughing]
MYE: [laughing] That’s cool.
SY: He told them exactly what to do. [laughing] After that they kind of trusted him and let him take over.
MYE: “Black Sunshine” is one of the most recognizable and badass bass-lines in history. Every metalhead at some point growing up has practiced that or tried to learn it. What do you remember of writing it and getting Iggy Pop to collaborate on the great voiceover he did on the track?
MYE: You had coffin basses and stuff, but what was the first instrument you ever got in the early days?
White Zombie with Testament (somewhere on tour)
SY: Early days in White Zombie or in my life?
MYE: Post-womb.
SY: [laughing] Well, I was playing and reading music before I could read the alphabet. My parents put me in piano classes when I was four or five, and I was playing piano and shortly after that played violin. I had a teacher who made me practice four or five hours a day and I had a nervous breakdown at the age of twelve. I had already had to perform so much that I kind of quit, and that was part of the appeal of picking up the bass and being in a punk/metal band. It was kind of fun and it’s no work. I think it’s Wikipedia that says Rob taught me to play bass or Ena (our first guitarist) and I’m like, man!!! I grew up playing violin and piano! No one taught me to play bass! Bass was simple. [laughing]
MYE: Yeah. Damn.
SY: It was like violin with a cheat sheet on it! [laughing] I didn’t have any trouble learning the bass, believe me. But yeah, I grew up learning entire classical repertoires, but I was also playing in nightclubs by the age of eight doing improv.
MYE: Whoa.SY: It was kind of an odd upbringing, but definitely very musical.
MYE: What do you think of the current state of heavier music or experimental stuff these days?
SY: You know, it’s so overwhelming with everything online. It used to be everyone and their Grandmother had a band. And now it’s everyone and their Grandmother and their parents and little sister has one! EVERYONE has a band! It’s really hard to keep track of them. Every genre has a lot of crap, but every genre has cool stuff too. It’s just hard to find. You have to get things recommended and dig deep. I still see bands live for that reason. I’d rather see them live and find out that way.
MYE: You also have your own bar nowadays.
SY: Yeah, my husband and I. We don’t have bands but we own a bar called The Saint in New Orleans and we have a great jukebox. Everything from Kyuss to Abba to Eyehategod to, you know…A good healthy mix!
MYE: [laughing] That’s a good mix!
SY: [laughing] Yeah, yeah. It’s fun.
White Zombie with Voivod (somewhere on tour)
SY: You know, that was really understated. I don’t think we went up on stage to accept the award. I remember it coming in the mail or something. It wasn’t a big moment in our lives. [laughing] Here’s this little…moon man that came in the mail.
MYE: It’s bullshit when they do that to heavier bands at the Grammy Awards too.
SY: It wasn’t a category they wanted to put out
there, but it’s alright. We still won an award and said what we
said. It was cool when we got nominated for the Grammy’s and bumped
into Liza Minnelli on the way in and ended up at the bar with Alice In
Chains, you know! [laughing] It was kind of a fun night.
SY: Yeah. I started off wanting to get back to doing graphics. I’ve always done graphics and I did silk-screens. I didn’t intend to get into the fashion world, but it just happened, and I’ve gotten into some great department stores recently. I have wanted to do prints and journals made with my graphics on them lately, not exactly fashion…more of a design company.
MYE: Right on.
SY: We never told anyone, but we actually started off as an art school band at Parsons. Ena Kostabi is Mark Kostabi’s little brother. We had a little Lower East Side art thing going even though we liked heavy metal.
MYE: It’s New York City though, man. It’s hand in hand.
SY: The rest of the world doesn’t know it, but we know it from living in New York, right?
MYE: Yeah. Speaking of school, another story I wanted to tell you was that me and my friend Ryan Sessler in High School, we hacked into the school P.A. system and played “Thunderkiss ‘65” over the whole school!
SY: Wow! I’m honored!
MYE: No. Seriously. You guys were responsible for one of the greatest moments of my educational upbringing at Onteora High School. [laughing] Pure villainy.
SY: That’s really great. How did people respond to that? Did it go over well? [laughing]
MYE: We were heroes. [laughing] I didn’t get beat up anymore after that.
SY: [laughing] That song was amazing for us. We started getting more and more of a response. It actually got on radio and MTV. And our record we were touring did a lot better than Geffen ever thought we’d do. We ended up going on tour for a whole other year and a half after that! [laughing] It was a fun time for us, that’s for sure.
MYE: You had more attitude to offer than a lot of other bands.
SY: The Lower East Side would do that to ya! [laughing]
MYE: You might be sick of this, but, how many times does the word “yeah” appear on the boxed set? It might be the most times of any boxed set ever!
SY: [laughing hard] Yeah, I’ve never counted, but I’m sure…Yeah. It would be difficult to keep track.
MYE: This is the Holy Grail!
SY: [laughing] It is the main lyric, you have to admit.
MYE: It’s cool. It’s cool. No offense meant. I love that. What’s going on with Rock City Morgue, your newest project?
SY: We just got out of the studio. We did a four song EP recently and are getting ready to do a new 6-song EP. It might be smart to put them together and release a CD, but no one seems to be buying CDs anyway, so…[laughing] We just kind of like doing vinyl and downloads, but we’re opening up for The Misfits at the House of Blues in New Orleans and we’re touring Europe in the Spring. It’s cool to have a paid vacation and have some fun and some shows.
MYE: Your husband’s band Supagroup was just in Barcelona and was with our friend Donna from the She Wolves.
SY: Yeah, we were there together and had a great time. I love it over there. When Katrina hit, Chris and I had a forced vacation, and ended up there a couple weeks and thought we might as well enjoy it. They’ve toured over there quite a bit now, and we have a lot of friends in Barcelona. It’s great.
MYE: How’d you end up in New Orleans in the first place?
SY: The first White Zombie tour, we toured in a van around the country. And I’ll never forget the first time seeing two hundred year old mansions and trees and crumbling cemeteries. I fell in love with it, and met great people, and got more obsessed, and as soon as we broke up…We were based out of L.A., and I’d loved living in New York but never liked L.A. and …I didn’t drive, first of all… [laughing]
MYE: It’s a pain in the ass.
SY: Yeah, but I love history and old architecture and that’s just not L.A. So I hopped on a plane with a guitar and a suitcase and I was there. I got a house and planted my roots.
MYE: Lastly, looking back on the period of time the band encompassed, you’ve left a legacy. What did you learn about yourself in that time?
SY: Just really to go and follow through. We were a band for eleven years, and it’s not like when we started we had to sell millions and play arenas. But we set our goals and loved the Ramones and The Cramps and thought if we could sell out theatres and have a nice crowd everywhere we went it would be great. The fact we did so much more was so great. It was incredible. A bit of luck and timing and a lot of hard work, but it paid off.
MYE: Don’t forget the great music.
SY: [laughing] Thanks.
Sean with Dimebag & (possibly) Phil Demmel monkeying around with heavy machinery backstage somewhere...(they let these people drive that thing???)
Sean and a fan with her tattooed portrait!
The view from the White Zombie stage on any given night!