Andy Biersack of Black Veil Brides on revenge, internet love and hate, and new EP Bleeders!

Estimated read time: 1:20

Summary

In this engaging conversation, Andy Biersack of the band Black Veil Brides opens up about his journey in the music industry. From his early days growing up in Ohio influenced by Kiss and punk rock legends, to his challenging experiences living in LA, Andy recounts tales of resilience and passion. He discusses the transformative power of sobriety and the impact of internet hate. Alongside sharing anecdotes from his past, Andy talks about the band's latest EP, "Bleeders," and what fans can look forward to on upcoming tours.

Highlights

Andy recounts his discovery of Kiss and his deep connection to the music from a young age, attributing a lot of his passion to his father's influence. 🎶
He speaks about feeling like an outsider in Los Angeles despite his long-term residency. 🏙️
Andy's journey into sobriety offered him new clarity and transformed both his personal and professional life. 🧘‍♂️
Challenges in the music industry, including internet trolling and navigational hurdles, never stopped Andy from pursuing his dreams. 💪
His experiences with bullying and being an outsider fueled his creative exploration and eventual success. 📈

Key Takeaways

Andy Biersack's early love for rock and punk was heavily influenced by his family's musical background and iconic bands like Kiss. 🎸
Andy faced a lot of challenges and adversity growing up, including bullying and isolation, which fueled his drive and ambition. 🤘
His move to LA was a turning point, filled with hardships but ultimately led to greater opportunities and forming Black Veil Brides. 🚗
Sobriety became a major positive change in his life, allowing Andy to perform and live more authentically. 🙌
Internet hate is addressed by Andy as being more about people seeking connection rather than personal attacks. 🌐

Overview

Join Andy Biersack, the charismatic frontman of Black Veil Brides, as he reveals his musical journey that began in Ohio and took him all the way to LA. His childhood was enriched with rock and punk influences, especially through the larger-than-life persona of Kiss, leading him to embrace an outsider's mindset with fervor and creativity.

Andy shares candid stories from his tumultuous time settling in Los Angeles, including living out of a car and facing naysayers early in his career. He maintains a humorous outlook on the varied experiences that shaped him, from performing in skate shop parking lots to ultimately establishing Black Veil Brides as a force in the rock scene.

Sobriety has marked a significant chapter in Andy's life, bringing clarity and positivity that transformed how he navigates the pressures of fame and the internet's ups and downs. Through it all, Andy remains committed to his own authenticity and the band's art, looking forward to delivering new music and engaging performances to their ever-loyal fanbase.

Chapters

00:00 - 05:00: Introduction and Early Influences The chapter introduces Andy from Black Veil Brides, detailing an upcoming conversation about his musical influences and life experiences. Topics include his passion for bands like KISS and W.A.S.P. and his journey towards sobriety. The interaction starts with a welcoming conversation as Andy prepares for a tour performance, setting an enthusiastic tone.
05:00 - 15:00: Forming Black Veil Brides The chapter 'Forming Black Veil Brides' features a conversation about a concert in New York City at a venue called the Palladium, which frequently changes its name, often due to corporate sponsorships. The speaker expresses satisfaction with the venue reverting to a non-corporate name. Details of the tour are discussed, indicating that it will end in Los Angeles, with plans to resume during the late summer or early fall. The discussion hints at a personal connection to Los Angeles, as it is a place the speaker moved to at some point.
15:00 - 30:00: Struggles and Breakthroughs The chapter explores the narrator's feelings of both connection and disconnection with Los Angeles. Despite living there from the age of 16 until 30, the narrator never felt like belonging to the city. They describe Los Angeles as a lonely place, reflecting on the paradox of being in one place for a long time yet feeling like an outsider.
30:00 - 45:00: Dealing with Fame and Criticism The chapter explores the artist's experiences with fame and dealing with criticism, focusing on the emotional connection and disconnection with Los Angeles.
45:00 - 60:00: Sobriety and Personal Growth The chapter discusses the early days of the author's journey, focusing on how their music was first accepted in Los Angeles, despite feeling like outsiders elsewhere. They played in unusual venues like the back of Tony Alva's skate shop. The narrative also touches upon the author's Ohio beginnings, mentioning the presence of other well-known bands from the area, like The Black Keys and DEVO.
60:00 - 75:00: Latest Projects and Upcoming Tour The chapter discusses the narrator's musical influences and background, focusing on their father's involvement in punk bands reminiscent of 'Stiff Little Fingers'. The conversation highlights the unique upbringing the narrator had, surrounded by diverse music, and humorously notes the impression their father's tattooed appearance makes on others.
75:00 - 80:00: Top 5 Lists and Conclusion This chapter reflects on the speaker's upbringing and formative experiences, highlighting how their immersion in music, art, and poetry at home differed from their external environment, particularly during the time of the W. Bush administration in Cincinnati. This cultural contrast contributed to the speaker's feeling as an outsider.

Andy Biersack of Black Veil Brides on revenge, internet love and hate, and new EP Bleeders! Transcription

00:00 - 00:30 coming up next Andy from Black Veil Brides on the show I think you'll really enjoy this conversation we get into everything from his love of kiss and wasp to sobriety and everything in between Andy from blackvale Bri coming up next on the [Music] show welcome to the show Andy beap from Blackville Brides how are you my man doing good how are you doing great to see you on tour tonight exciting right
00:30 - 01:00 tonight here in New York City uh a venue that every single time I've ever played in my career has a different name so what is it tonight it was uh tonight it's the Palladium okay it's been many other things all corporate names I'm glad they finally laid like they decided to to get rid of the corporate name now it's just the Palladium and the shows I think you're on tour for like another two weeks or so that's exciting yeah we uh we end in LA and then uh got a little bit of time and then we head back out um over The Late summer early fall so do you feel like a special connection to La I know that you moved there when you
01:00 - 01:30 were like 17 or so but do you have a special connection you know it's strange I I kind of I vasolate between considering myself someone who is from Los Angeles in the capacity that I was there so long and then also feeling like I never belonged in the city you know what I mean I lived there from the time ostensibly from the time I was 16 I was there almost fulltime and then throughout all of my teen years into I I moved out when I was 30 so um you know kind of a lonely place though right yeah it's just I never felt like an Angelino it's funny cuz my cousin cousin who I
01:30 - 02:00 grew up with he moved out at a similar time and over the years he has become an Angelino he goes to the farmers markets you know he loves it there uh I always felt like sort of it's so it's such a like a place of of uh you know obviously it's very transient there's not many people aren't from there but I never felt the connection so um the one thing that always tied me to there is the band has always had such a connection and when we play shows in Los Angeles um it feels like a homecoming you know and the
02:00 - 02:30 audience for us there it happened for us there before anywhere else we were playing in the back of Tony Alva skate shop in the parking lot to people um before anybody accepted us anywhere so while I always felt a little bit Like a Stranger in a Strange Land La accepted us and took to us before anywhere else did but early on let's talk about the fact you started in Ohio early on and I think you spent a lot of time in Kentucky too right so Ohio like some great bands from there The Black Keys were just on the show obviously from their dvo I think um some great bands
02:30 - 03:00 like St baders maybe the Lords of new church The Dead Boys Dead Boys era but ultimately became Lords of the new church yeah so talk to me about growing up and how you eventually got into this like early on I know music was all around you your dad was into Amazing Music growing up right the crew and kiss and stuff like that he was in punk bands um kind of in a similar style to like stiff little fingers so uh you know I always joked that you know it's funny because when people meet my Daddy's got full sleeve tattoos and you know uh I grew up with like a big version of you yeah exactly I grew up with a very different um compared to the other
03:00 - 03:30 people around me my understanding of whether it was musically or politically or whatever else it was always kind of seen through the prism of that and my mom also is very much into music and art and poems and it I was just always raised around it so uh I think that that also contributed a little bit to my Outsider feeling as a kid because within the context of my home it was like this bubble then I'd go outside and it was very different you know contextually because particularly at the time I'm growing up we're talking you know W bush administ in Cincinnati it wasn't
03:30 - 04:00 particularly um Progressive uh socially so the things that I was being raised on were very different than the things that were happening around us and uh maybe it started this kind of Outsider mentality that I had but you know I was introduced to and also my dad was um with the CCM which is college Conservatory music he was a musical theater major um you know my mom was really into writing and creat creativity in general so I just always had that be a part of my life did you hear kiss
04:00 - 04:30 and just say this is something I want to do did you see the make it was actually pre it was after the makeup I believe right you kind of got found them through his 70s trading cards that was my introduction was I we had a shoe box in the basement of our first house and it had some of my dad's belongings from his adolescence and you know there was sports stuff whatever but then there were you know 30 to 40 kiss trading cards in there and I don't know you know those sort of watershed moments that happen in movies where somebody sees something and then it's that like pivotal thing that Chang changes their
04:30 - 05:00 life um it really was transformative for me because I loved superheroes and I loved the music on the radio that my mom would you know to and from you know preschool or whatever but this was the first time that all those things were combined and I'm looking at this uh you know love gun era jeene Simmons with the blood in his face and the studded base and this was when he still had like the horns on top of the costume and it just seemed like I didn't I was this a person is this a superhero like what is this and I was just all in and then it became dress up like this every day when I got from school beg my dad to do the kiss
05:00 - 05:30 makeup on me and then he how old are you at that point are you 14 or 15 no I'm five or six five or six okay there's uh you know soon as I got home from from kindergarten first grade it was everything so around that time uh is when 96 so I'm five they got back together in the original lineup right and then kisses everywhere right so then it's just like I'm going to the store and they're on the cover of spin they're they're everywhere so um it was it was a big thing and that then led to you like
05:30 - 06:00 that well how about this and then it was ACDC and Aerosmith and you know everything wasp as we talked about beforehand and then it was punk rock Misfits Lords the new church stiff little fingers the Damned all that kind of stuff your mom was not into this kind of music my mom was I mean she didn't hate it but she was into her number one artist was Bruce Springsteen which is I would say for me um the artist I listen to the most in my life um the artist I've stolen the most from a lyrical perspective uh tattoos you know
06:00 - 06:30 Springsteen is my if there were two minds that I wanted to mold myself after creatively it's uh Bruce Springsteen and pendulette the magician yeah because I don't think like Sweeney Todd and Springsteen yeah but here's the thing um you know look if you if you listen to from a lyrical point of view if you listen to uh a lot of what Bruce is writing about he speaks on Revenge and Sweeny Todd is the Revenge sool so there's a there's a lot of through lines I've always viewed that the issue that I
06:30 - 07:00 had with glamrock or um 80s rock was how literal everything was I loved the iconography but I I wanted the songs to be saying something and so often as a kid I couldn't relate to the idea that this music is going to be about how we're all the coolest people in the whole world cuz I didn't feel like the coolest person in the whole world but when I listen to you know Born to Run I was a kid who wanted to get out of this small town and I wanted other things and jungle land and these Larger than Life
07:00 - 07:30 things and and that appealed to me so much more so the goal was for Black Veil it was the lyrical content of Springsteen the the musical style of say like a Metallica and the vocal style of Mike NES from Social Distortion that was my first sort of vision of what I wanted to do and I think to a certain degree we've gotten to some degree where that is other than Guns and Roses I don't think the lyrics were getting that deep in the 80s right mle crew had looks the kill shout out to Dev but we weren't going deep and it's nothing against like say Nikki's a great writer but it just didn't appeal to me on a I was a very
07:30 - 08:00 emotional kid and I wanted the I wanted something that would um make me think or make me consider The Human Condition and I wasn't getting that from these 80s bands which I loved from a musical perspective and a show perspective but that's when punk rock changed everything because I had gone to kiss Aeros Smith ACDC these shows where the show is the songs are fun everybody sings along and look at all the [ __ ] that's blowing up behind us right and then I would go to Warp Tour
08:00 - 08:30 and I 2002 was my first Warp Tour sure and I'm seeing these bands AFI and Dropkick Murphy's and rancid and they don't have anything blown up around them but their emotion that they're delivering and the passion of the performance and Davey Havoc is uh just a a you know basically a whirlwind around the stage like a tornado and that was what changed it for me was you can you can have something more substantive to say and you can have [ __ ] blow up around you and that's sort of the dream right even before that was your dad getting into the Misfits and things like that
08:30 - 09:00 cuz that's that that was earlier so my dad uh his band did some touring he played at cbgbs a number of times um played with the original Misfits and uh RI oich from the cars and a bunch of other artists over the years uh so that was always kind of spoonfed to me to a certain degree was the punk rock side of things you know my dad there's pictures of him when he was my age wearing the priest outfit and the razor blades around his ears and you know the tattoos and everything so I was always very inspired by that um and I'm an only
09:00 - 09:30 child so everything that was theirs became everything that was me you know when you're an only child and you're not a particularly social person you spend so much time with your parents that you can't help but part of the whole gestation experience of becoming an adult is to take in all the stuff that you learn and I was very lucky that they treated me like an adult and that we laughed at the same stuff whether it was you know letting me watch Mr Show with Bob and David when I was like eight or you know and then explaining deally
09:30 - 10:00 those things to me or the politics of the day or whatever it was I was always part of everything in my home and so I didn't rebel against those interests I wanted to kind of harness them and bring them into my own but when you go to school and you're whatever it may be at that point 14 15 you're getting bullied because you're listening to stuff like mly crew and ACDC or the kids like you're in Ohio I don't know how many people were listening to that at that point or the kids kind of embracing that I don't I I I think I was just weird to everybody you know and it was beyond the stuff I listened to I was just an odd kid I'm an odd adult you know I'm a hard
10:00 - 10:30 I'm a hard person to talk to not really well in that I don't ever let you talk um no uh I I think that the biggest thing was I was just sort of such an outsider to everything and I I you know whether it was the ADHD or whatever you want to say um I struggled to relate to other people and um the only through line that I had to connect anybody was Sports so I was I played every sport I was really good at every sport um but I
10:30 - 11:00 was joked I was the only kid who's like mascara was running underneath my helmet you know um but even then I on those teams I had like Misfits patches on my gear and you know I was just I I I could never figure out a weigh in with other people and so the bullying made it so I felt so isolated but the thing the advice that my dad gave me when I was a kid and ultimately manifested in me sort of going overboard with it as an adult but essentially the idea was within the context of this bubble you can be whatever you want but when you go outside you can't expect
11:00 - 11:30 everybody to agree with everything that you think or say uh and you have to be prepared to defend yourself for those choices that you make and if you want to go to school at 15 dressed as Alex from A Clockwork Orange uh this might be a fight yeah with a cane and and the crotch piece in the eye and which I did um or match my eyes Shadow to my shoe color or whatever like people might give you [ __ ] and you have to be willing to stand up for yourself and that was always to me the sort of the the moral
11:30 - 12:00 through line that ran through the early part of my career and why if you Google me you see me yelling at people so often and uh um it was about if you're going to be what you want be prepared to to stand up for it and believe in it and if you aren't then the expectation that everyone else is going to agree with all of your choices is a lovely sort of idealic world but it's very unlikely so be strong in your convictions and who you are and
12:00 - 12:30 that also made it so I I ended up getting kicked out of several schools and yeah uh didn't even finish high school so I'm I'm uh I have no no high school education no GED nothing I dropped out and uh just started touring but it's hard to imagine you weren't the popular kid I think they used to call you chunk which is again you look at you kind of look like a model so but at the end of the day like you could model so it's it's weird that people would not I was a little bit of the The Ugly Duckling thing right I hate that term but I I was uh I was definitely an awkward kid and I always had this sort of
12:30 - 13:00 sensibility about me and I I found out that since I was funny I could make people laugh right so that was sort of my in but I was only ever seen as like the funny chubby guy right who like was lagging behind everybody else um I was never popular I was never uh seen as you know girls never talk to me when I was when I was young and then the the the I suppose negative thing that happened was when I went to theater school I shot up in height and I suddenly was you know
13:00 - 13:30 popular so to speak and I totally let it go to my head and then that started the like 10year period of me being one of the top tier [ __ ] of the world uh and then you know by mid to late 20s I started to taper down into being a more less of a piece of [ __ ] so to speak um but yeah I kind of went a little nuts when people were like hey you're goodlook or hey let's talk I was like oh my god I've never gotten attention before I'm going to be an egotistical [ __ ] for a decade at 15 or 16 yeah so at that point you you you just mentioned
13:30 - 14:00 theater school so you got into Sweeney Todd and early on that's kind of even before you started a band that's kind of what inspired you right yeah it was um I mentioned before you know I struggle with a lot of stuff with mental health as a kid and one of the things that really was difficult for me was ultimately what is you know known as like OCD or anxiety um uh obviously those are mutually things that can coexist but um for me it manifested in in a lot of fears of things as a kid I'm afraid of everything so
14:00 - 14:30 to that but it was it was this sort of for boing fear that something was going to get me you know and I didn't know what it was and it wasn't I never had vivid imagery of like a monster killing me it was just this sort of unbelievable fear that something's behind me something's about to get me something's right over there something's around that corner and so things that were horror adjacent as a kid were terrified but also I couldn't stop thinking about them or wanting to associate with them in
14:30 - 15:00 some way so when I found stuff like Sweeney Todd and the phant of the Opera it's very hard to be scared of Broadway you know like the when they're singing the fear of it is taken away a little bit when it goes into a show tune you know what I'm saying like it it takes the fangs off a little bit and even though in totality Sweeney Todd is obviously much more um chilling in the way that the songs are written intentionally by sonheim a lot of things are done in a way to make it sound spooky it was the little bit of kitch
15:00 - 15:30 that was there and the fact that you have to understand I'm a child of the 90s so like Mrs pots from uh Beauty and the Beast is the voice that's on this record because Angel lansberry is you know so I and the other funny thing was Len Karu who played uh Sweeney in the original production by the time I'm a kid he's most known for doing the voiceovers on Major League Baseball vhs's so I'm watching the Home Run race between Sammy Sosa and Mark Maguire and I hear Len Karu talking not so scary yeah I'm I'm pretty convinced he's not
15:30 - 16:00 murdering people um so it was a great introduction to having something that I loved that was scary but you know was maybe a little bit of a paper tiger and then it goes into like famous monsters from The Misfits very cartoony you know all this stuff that was scary adjacent but not terrifying and then that kind of helped me uh in a weird way there was therapeutic for me to discover swe to I just went to see Pinball Wizard and I was thinking wouldn't be weird if everybody was singing Everything life you just walked up the boom started
16:00 - 16:30 singing and then it definitely is not scary it's just it's just weird there's a weird moment in Greece 2 that I always think about um where the uh one of the characters stops singing or all the characters stopped singing except for the main character who continues to sing and then everybody's looking at that character like oh what are they doing and they never comment on it again in the movie and it made me think like they accidentally systematically took down the whole idea of musicals because if one person is self conscious about singing then the whole town must be as
16:30 - 17:00 well and what were you just doing amazing so walk me through at that point up until you started your own band because it was first called Andy beac right it really wasn't called black Bale BR early on well that was just Danzig uh you know it was like okay well I got a German sort of aggressive sounding last name so we'll call this there's Danzig we'll call it beers sack um and there was a singular show of beer saac uh one one show at in Norths side in Cincinnati which was at the time like the sort of AV on guard cool neighborhood um in an
17:00 - 17:30 art gallery and there was 75 bands on it and uh nobody wanted to play last but I was 14 or 15 and they were like hey do you want a headline and I go oh of course so we had to wait till like 2 in the morning and play to nobody uh we didn't have a drummer so my dad called a favor upon his friend Frank who drummed in one of his bands so it was a couple of 14-year-olds and a 40-year-old man drumming playing exclusively Alkaline Trio missfits covers amazing um and uh I had my hair
17:30 - 18:00 big Liberty spikes and I think at that show I wore uh batting gloves and a black tuxedo shirt with a white bow tie that was like I was like this is my stage look oh was a good look yeah um and I made a bunch of like uh you know like David S pumpkins looking like Halloween decorations that I surrounded the uh the stage with and uh you know that was like but once we did that I was like this is what I have to to do this all the time so then it
18:00 - 18:30 became what's the next thing you can do so then it was High School Battle of the Bands so by the time um High School Battle of the Bands That year rolls along the name is now Blackville brides and uh we made it to the finals we lost in the finals to another band uh I don't believe that they're still together I was going to say Where's that P now but I guess I don't think things worked out uh as much if if I'm wrong apologies I mean look you've already won that um but that was where I also took something from Kiss which is um I remember there was a story about Shawn
18:30 - 19:00 Delaney and B a coin printed kiss shirts and would hand them out to the people that would come to see them at the Coventry or the daisy or whatever and so when industry people would come in they would trick them into thinking that all these people were kiss fans because everyone loves a free t-shirt brilliant yeah so I went to my dad and I went to a place called Steven berries which was a store that existed back then that was for like um gross colored clothing that nobody wanted and it was called Collegiate apparel okay and it they had
19:00 - 19:30 no licenses but they would print like Boston on like a lime green t-shirt and then they like any of the ones that weren't printed on they would just have stacks of like mauve and green and yellow like things that nobody wanted to use that were just t-shirt blanks and you get them for cheap so my dad helped me got like a stack of pink and brown and green shirts and then I went and uh to like a Michael's crafts and I bought an Emulsion kit and I learned how to screen screen print and I made
19:30 - 20:00 Blackville Brides logos and I hands screen printed 150 shirts and every night of the high school battle of the bands I would hand out before the show these disgusting looking Blackville bride shirts and so the first band would come out of the night and they'd look out at the crowd and see everyone in the whole crowds wearing Blackville bride shirts and that was like my mind game great marketing every actually early on too right it's amazing so at that point you start doing this and you decided to move to LA I think like 17 or so right you just figured like Ohio is not it's not going to happen from me Ohio and
20:00 - 20:30 well it just became clear to me I I the ticking clock started for me in 2005 I came out to LA with my mom in art school they would send Scouts to the school and the idea was at the time this is like Dawson's Creek era so they were always looking for what they called Midwestern kids so they would send talent scouts to the art schools in the midwest to try to find kids that could fit on to these you know Warner Brothers TV procedural shows about teenagers right and and I didn't look like a Midwestern kid but I came in
20:30 - 21:00 and I did a monologue from Jimmy Stewart's Harvey and uh I they were just so intrigued by this weird goth kid that wanted to to act and so they asked me to come out and we had like two or three weeks in LA and I booked um a uh Montana meth was it was it was a PSA directed by Tony Kay who directed American History X amazing director um and he liked me because he said I it looked like I was a
21:00 - 21:30 heroin addict uh which is an odd thing for a 14-year-old to hear I'm sure that's a compliment to 14 but I was down you know and then uh we did it and I got to wear all this crazy prosthetic makeup and um then I I booked an AT&T ad and a couple other things and then it was time to go home because you know my my parents both worked full-time we couldn't just stay in LA but I at that point I had already had the bug and I had met all these actor kids you know I was hanging out with people that have now gone on to become pretty
21:30 - 22:00 substantially famous and I was so envious that they got to stay there and work and do stuff and I had to go back to Ohio and I thought well okay I'm going to double down on music and then I get back to Ohio and I tell everybody that's in every iteration of the band okay this is the date I'm moving to LA and everybody's like we're going to come with you and then over time that number dwindled to zero people are coming with me and I'm like all right it's time to go guys and no one's coming with me um were your parents supportive at that point they're like you know we're not
22:00 - 22:30 sure if this is something you should do or you know what go to La we're 100% behind I was singularly minded from the time I was about three and I remember my mom always tells the story of the first time my first like check up with a pediatrician they asked me what I was going to do and I said I was going to be an internationally known rock star and they laughed and uh said you know like oh okay but that's not really like a job that you can do and I got so angry um because I remember and I'll never forget it um uh Jean Simmons actually was on
22:30 - 23:00 one of the VHS tapes I used to watch Jee and Paul every day when I got home from school it was like they were like my teachers and I would watch them talk about what what it takes to do this and um who they are as people and I remember one of the two of them saying something about like it's not rock stars are not [ __ ] out of the sky by some deity they're people who work really hard and have a little bit of luck and they can do and I and it stuck in my mind so I told my pediatrician this I can do it anybody can do it and so that was always the thought and
23:00 - 23:30 then the time came for me to leave and um you know I had gotten really lucky in that I had one of those um Whirlwind childhood relationships where the girl that I had fallen head over heels in love for at the time was an actress and she had some stability in LA and we were both around the same age she was a year two older than me but she had gotten so far in her career that she had an apartment so I had the stability of I can go now in retrospect mooch off of
23:30 - 24:00 this person uh at the time you know I was so L struck I was like I'm going to go be with this person and I and and then I you know now in retrospect if it wasn't for that relationship which ultimately didn't work out because we were kids and you know it was a chaotic thing but um if it weren't for that opportunity I wouldn't have been able to get to La but because that didn't work out ultimately I ended up living in my car pretty quickly uh but at the time you know because I had that situation they at least knew that I had somewhere that I was going and so I said goodbye to them at the
24:00 - 24:30 airport and they knew that I was going to live with this girl and um you know and they knew her and that we had a good situation and which is by the way in retrospect kind of ridiculous for two teenagers to be living together in an apartment like two people that are not old enough to know how to function um but we made it work for a time and ultimately you know I ended up living in my car and uh for a short period and then bouncing around to couches and living with people for whatever money I could get together for mon I remember at one point I was renting a uh 5x10 space
24:30 - 25:00 on someone's floor for $200 a month what is that just like just the floor they pointed out the area on the floor that was mine was it did they draw it out or something in North Hollywood okay and this is the craziest story I've ever heard by way uh they they allowed me to live in that box okay and what was the rent on that it was $200 a month okay for just the space some yes it also meant that I could be in the house I could use their bathroom whatever but like that was my space now the problem was um at the time this they were it was
25:00 - 25:30 sort of a contentious marriage that was going on between the two people that were there okay so anytime that they would get into any kind of argument I would have to leave my little space and just stand outside cuz I had nothing else so um and then eventually I ended up getting my car from Ohio so then I I was like okay I'm going to go live in the car and I discovered that you can't live I first went and parked in the Kmart parking lot in North Hollywood and I thought okay this is be this will be where I live by the way I'm lying to my parents parents the whole time every time they call me everything's great I
25:30 - 26:00 live in a mansion I used to make up I used to go to an internet cafe and I made up a fake label person that would email them and say like we want to sign Andy everything's going great he's the best just to buy myself time and uh I discovered you couldn't live in a parking lot but I I what I figured out is if you go to these lockout rehearsal spaces nobody checks the cars cuz people are there 24 hours so I go and I we the version of the band at the time I'd pull together a couple people and we we
26:00 - 26:30 pulled our money and rented one of these lockouts and I'd sleep in my car in the parking lot and at the time I don't know what was going on in his life but Chris Holmes from was was living in his lockout so that became my friend I'm like you know 18-year-old Andy and and Chris Holmes who's like at the peak of you know craziness in his life whatever I mentioned to before we got on when I was 14 I went to LA the first gig I think I ever saw was wasp at the trador yeah I'm a kid I walk in first of all I
26:30 - 27:00 don't know how I got in I was 14 Blacky Lawless is throwing raw meat at the audience there blood I I tried to duck little bit and I'm just like what I think I met David L raw at the thear with the triador and like Quiet Riot I'm like what the [ __ ] is this I'm moving to LA but you obviously became friends with them which is at that point it was the height of craziness in LA right yeah I mean what year was that this was 2009 okay so Chris Holmes is like before I think he got sober after then
27:00 - 27:30 so he's like building guitars out of wood pieces in his Loft and it's like this sort of Howard Hughes thing where like he lives in this space the nicest dude he'd bring me bags of ice he'd knock on my window my 98 Cadillac El Dorado that barely ran and I would sleep in the back and he would knock on the thing and I would go there was a 7-Eleven around the corner and at night they don't still do this I've been told because I've told this story before and people say it doesn't work but in those days in the valley you could go it was 7-Eleven at night and they would throw away all the taquitos
27:30 - 28:00 and [ __ ] and if you came at the right time and they liked you you could get pizza slices Taquito whatever so I lived exclusively off of like Junior Mints and old taquitos and [ __ ] that was being thrown out at 7-Eleven and then bags of ice from Chris Holmes um but yeah I mean it was it was a it was a time and then we got our first manager and uh within a couple weeks he dropped us he called us and said there's nothing here for you we couldn't get booked and then that's how by the way I'm now segueing back into
28:00 - 28:30 the first thing I said which is how we got our first ever show in La cuz we couldn't get booked anywhere was uh Tony Alva and Richard Villa who ran the Alva skate shop in in art uh installation place in La allowed us to play in the parking lot so that point you're 16 or 17 you had a mandat he drops you you're uh almost he said and I quote I nothing's going to happen for you guys so again you know I don't know what's going on with him but I you know I feel like maybe bet on the wrong horse I don't know so and you're kind of living with Chris Holmes kind of living with Chris Holmes kind of living in my car so
28:30 - 29:00 how does it happen to you that you meet the other guys and you eventually start to get some traction so things move along at a pretty rapid Pace at this point once we start getting some attention in La um I'm introduced to jinx and then Jinx is in the band for a time and then he introduces me to Jake who's his friend and then Jake introduces us to CC and we just like you know it's one of those things where once people start to see the you got something going on then they kind of perk up a little bit and they're like
29:00 - 29:30 hey you know this this could be I mean but then it got to the point where some the growth started to outpace our ability to even keep up with it on on that time because I go from absolutely nothing and I'm still broke but now all of a sudden there's a tension where I can't get I remember I remember spending the only money I had to get Roadrunner Records to look at a press kit of ours and we got an email from a guy at Roadrunner who's like oh I think I can run this up the I spent all the money we had to make a a
29:30 - 30:00 press kid old school press kid sent it to him never heard another thing years later subsequently I got an email from the guy like hey yeah still got it thanks for sending that um but so but all of a sudden you know we ended up getting this deal with a small subsidiary of Victory um and once you have that elusive record deal regardless of whether it was a big deal record deal or not we had a record deal and maybe other people in the neighborhood didn't so to speak so um what was that record deal like it was I mean it was not a
30:00 - 30:30 well structured record deal right uh was it like $600 and a can of beer or something yeah if you listen to our first record you can hear how much money we got for that record uh and but it was somebody who believed in US man and that just didn't happen everywhere I went you know there's people that I work with now who I remember seeing them say negative stuff in the past not people that I've chosen to work with but tangentially are related because some company bought some other company and then all of a sudden you go wait a second that guy is now of my business in some way that guy said that I sucked in 2009 um but so I it was
30:30 - 31:00 just so hard to get anybody to believe so all of a sudden somebody believed and I was just ready to take whatever deal was available you know I'm I'm a kid I'm literally a teenager and so we signed this deal and we met Jake who then you know has gone on to become the league guitar player principal writer in the band when it came to all the musical side of things and he was working at uh Verizon so we came up with this ridiculous thing from to tell Verizon that it was horrible in retrospect it
31:00 - 31:30 like he had three or four deeply Gravely sick family members and he needed to leave for amount of time so we go on tour so we meet Jake and like a week later we're all riding together in a car through winter streets going on tour to bars and clubs and and who books you that tour at that point because you don't I mean you don't even have a manager that's all we had we had a we had two things we had an attorney I think we got an attorney first okay Dean leol uh had found out about us through Nikki 6's base Tech who had
31:30 - 32:00 taken a shine to us in some capacity and she was just going to take a flyer as a favor to him to meet with us and then she met with us and she told me that I reminded her of share uh and which you know take what you want from that the young share or the old share maybe all shares uh certainly you know I'll take any era share but she said I was like share um I don't really see the comparison but I you'll have to talk to Dena you know but Dena is one those people who has fiercely believed in me and fought for me from the time I was a
32:00 - 32:30 kid and she said we're going to get you a manager we're going to get you a booking agent we're going to get you everything uh and I'm going to figure out how we can deal with this deal that you signed before you met me because it was not a good deal so she came in restructured our deal made it so that we weren't screwed for the rest of our life and through that introduced us to Ash alvinson who ultimately became our booking agent um and then uh Blasco who who I had a meeting with I'll never
32:30 - 33:00 forget the day um I the girl that I was dating at the time were still together and we're in my Cadillac and we're driving in vur to his old office and the car stalled out or broke down every day but we're like three miles middle of summer on Ventura Peak traffic like sushi row area got to get all the way to the other side the 405 totally breaks down [ __ ] okay black smoke coming out of the the hood I got got to get out of the car push it with
33:00 - 33:30 her behind the wheel the remaining distance to get to this meeting so the first time I ever meet this manager who's now my manager to this day I am we know each other I'm sweating I'm covered in black soot from the car and I go hey man I just pushed my car to get her to meet with you and I guess he took a shine to me because of that he thought that was so cool in punk rock but yeah that was we had those three things in place we went on a regional tour and uh it was kind of Off to the Races from there some crazy stories you play like a hookah bar early on your car got towed or something in Chicago yeah so we
33:30 - 34:00 played a hookah a hookah bar in Chicago uh like the suburbs and I'll never forget it because our opening act was a guy who um he used a projector to project old like filmation cartoons okay and he had a box full of change and that was a snare drum and then he played a guitar with two strings and he play his song on it's been in my head for 25 years I like Star Wars I like Star Trek bring it back bring it back bring it bring it bring it back just those lyrics over and over again for 30 minutes uh
34:00 - 34:30 could have been a hit and then we played uh very different set but on the way out of there uh got T-boned uh we went into the city got T-boned right what's that Park the big Park in Chicago uh where Obama gave his inauguration I want to say Grand Park I think Grand Park there you go think so so get stuck in Grand Park overnight me and my friend at the time Chris who was the other writer of the band with me and we're kids we have no cell phones we have no way of telling telling our parents what's going on uh we had
34:30 - 35:00 somehow got a carton of cigarettes on the way out so we're having people like messing with us these two kids stuck in this giant like Park overnight and we started trading cigarettes like for protection with like you know unhoused people in the in the park um finally get through to the morning uh somebody gets a hold of our parents that drive up take us home but it was just always stuff like that there was always some chaos going on in those days someone tow the car you know what's funny is I see I see
35:00 - 35:30 sometimes and you can't read comments CU like you know if I read comments I would be long gone because I mean the internet has been [ __ ] on me for 20 years but I do like that mean tweets though if you ever seen that on like Kim but somebody said recently on the new video and a buddy of mine sent this to me because we were laughing about it knowing these stories about my life yeah they go industry plan and I go what could it not could not be farther from uh could not be farther from didn't benefit from any nepotism uh and was trading cigarettes for production in Parks as a kid is it
35:30 - 36:00 because you have incredible fans right but you also it's the band is very polarizing is it hard to deal with those reactions sometimes of the love and the hate at the same time or do you not read any of it because you just don't want to know um there's a lot of love too I think that I would be disingenuous to say that it doesn't that I don't ever get affected by negativity yeah I've just gotten better at it over the years in terms of being able to compartmentalize it and make it be something that is uh I can more often
36:00 - 36:30 than not laugh at than something that gets me angry I think that if I were angry all the time about every negative thing that was ever said about me I would not spend a lot of time happy if you know what I'm saying sure and so uh yeah it sucks to work really hard on something and to earnestly try your best so that someone who's never made anything can take a big [ __ ] on it on the internet but that's the world we live in and the problem is people
36:30 - 37:00 struggle to realize this we live in this sort of economy of if you say something negative about somebody's thing that they make it's almost like you're casting out a line to make a friend in a way because so many people love the idea of going I hate this is anybody else going to hate this too and then somebody else goes I also hate this and then W you've now been validated by somebody else for the [ __ ] thing that you said and now you have a friend and then they can talk [ __ ] and then it just becomes
37:00 - 37:30 this sort of endless cycle and I think if people started to see that Internet Hate is more about um maybe validation in exactly it's it's it is a ver it's a it's a really [ __ ] up and weird version of it but all of us are constantly seeking some connectivity in this world and the unfortunate thing is that that is developed into if I hate on something in the right way or say something Savage enough about somebody somebody else will agree or validate it or laugh at it and then
37:30 - 38:00 I'll have won something because even though I've never created anything I can win the day by [ __ ] on this thing that was created so I think if you can't see that for the structure that it is you can start to get like well what I tried so hard and what but at this point it's just I kind of feel like I'm not above it I just know what's happening though I would say this nobody would ever come up to you in person and say I don't like your ban you s like happen it would never happen it's just because it's faceless in a way I think people feel V to hide behind the animin of like a weird meme or whatever it might be and
38:00 - 38:30 think I could say this cuz there are no consequences but the end day I you say something that disappoints people all the time I'm constantly disappointing to people I can I can tell you that on this meet and greet we do 150 person meet and greed a day Zero people have come up and told me how disappointed they are no they're paying to meet you too but my point is if you've paid the money right then you almost have earned the opportunity if there's ever going to if I'm in Auto Zone come up and say you're disappointed in me can you leave me alone I'm in AutoZone but if I'm in a
38:30 - 39:00 room that you've paid to come in and this is your chance if you're truly so disappointed in me make that the theme of the discussion you've paid for the opportunity but it never ever ever happens Because the Internet is this whole other sort of world that it can be very hard for younger people especially to understand the distinction between what happens in real life versus what happens on the internet and um even I didn't realize it until very
39:00 - 39:30 recently you know I there'd be weeks that would go by where I would do something say something something would come up whatever and uh I would be so concerned that oh no everybody hates me now and then we'd be on tour and that thing whatever yeah you know and then something else happens and it's just this you're in this constant battle to stay on top of this sort of thing that's impossible to predict or whatever else and I think that the the
39:30 - 40:00 great tragedy that has become of this or has come from this is people feel like they need to be infallible and they need to be perfect and without fault and they need to have a stance on everything that's the exact right stance and they need to have the exact right thing to say when something happens in the world or whatever else because if they don't then their whole audience will leave them and that has made it so generally speaking everyone is really sort of anod and
40:00 - 40:30 boring because nobody can say anything for fear of upsetting everybody especially now would never want to be a comedian it' be the worst time in the world to be a comedian ever yeah and you can't even you can't even acknowledge that something uh makes you laugh yeah because something that made you laugh it's going to offend someone may have not even that the person that made you laugh may have at one time been in a podcast with somebody who was on a podcast that said something that you don't agree with and how could you um so
40:30 - 41:00 it just got to the point where I've been screaming since 2013 I am incredibly insecure and [ __ ] up and I try my best and I would love more than anything to be a good person and positive and ethical and moral and I try really hard but there are going to be sometimes where I'm wrong about something or I said something wrong I was a huge [ __ ] when we first got popular I was going to ask you was it hard for you to stay grounded at that point when you can't give a
41:00 - 41:30 19-year-old a world where um you're successful in rock music and you're constantly told that you're attractive and you're constantly told that you have the microphone and you're constantly cheered for everywhere you go like that's the recipe to create one of the worst people in the whole world and I lived up to that for some time um and it took a lot of my life uh it took a lot of experience and time I would give uh
41:30 - 42:00 my wife a tremendous amount of credit in terms of helping me to find myself that's the version of me that is more true to me the version of me that just loves to buy action figures and watch the Bengals you know and and not have to push myself to because but you know and I and I mention her in particular because we're both lead singers right and we were both crazy people when we got together and our our our growth happened at the same time where we were both like we need to become the best versions of ourselves and so we move
42:00 - 42:30 past it but there is a whole period in my life when I'm sure I was mean or shitty to half the people in a day but right now in my life I want to be nice and I want to be nice to people to come to the shows and I'm going to try my hardest but I'm not always going to know what to do or say when you look back in the golden gods and you won three Awards you know the speech you gave do you feel like that was a time in my life that I was to regret that speech or you feel like at the moment that made sense regret it the contents being
42:30 - 43:00 about uh somebody's body and weight yeah but when you're three things when you wrote a song about your grandfather's death and then that song wins an award and you're going to give a speech that you wrote about his death and you're so excited to honor him and then you get really drunk beforehand uh and then everyone in the whole crowd booze you and spits on you before the cameras pick it up because what people don't realize is didn't see that we had to stand at the barricade for 20 minutes while the
43:00 - 43:30 changeover happened at the commercial break and then they brought up uh Sebastian to present the award and at that time the audience already knows that we're winning the award and the audience is people who have been waiting around all day to watch Metallica and could give a [ __ ] about what's happening at this award show and now they've got to sit through this band that they hate give some big speech about their song so they were already spitting throwing booing all of a sudden I come up on stage and it looks like I've just heel turned out of nowhere but it was this it was years of it was
43:30 - 44:00 kids putting raw fish in my lockers and it was people making fun of us or bands ripping on us the singer of FiveFinger Death Punch you know using the fsor about us on Facebook every other day or you know whatever band is saying some terrible thing about us every day and it was all those things built together to where I just my cup had run over with anger and uh I turned into as Chris Jericho described a professional wrestler heel turn um and you know I don't regret doing that because if
44:00 - 44:30 you're not going to stand up for yourself who is going to and that's the thing beyond anything else that I want people to understand about what our message is in this world today we exist in the capacity where there are a lot of people who really earnestly want to be the person that they are and I believe that they should be but I also want everyone that listens to me to know that you need to stand up for yourself and insist on the person that you are you cannot let other people take away from
44:30 - 45:00 the way in which you see yourself the things you like the way you want to dress the things you listen to you can't let them take that away from you and you cannot assume that they are going to to agree with who you are uh when I was a kid I was told that by my dad you can't assume that people are going to love your Clockwork Orange outfit but if you're a kid that wears a black veil shirt to school you cannot assume that you're never GNA get [ __ ] with and I'm sorry about that but that's just the way the world is what you should do is know
45:00 - 45:30 that you love this band and don't let those people tell you that you shouldn't listen to this band and lyrically the concept of Revenge has always been a big thing for you right so we we should talk about that because there's probably 10 or 15 people that you would still hate at this point right you can't talk about who they are but there probably are 10 or 15 people that you'd love to get revenge on yeah I'm not gonna listen I almost did names but I'm not going to uh we could but that would be podcast um some of them I got small Revenge yeah isn't the best revenge just success in a way I was kicked out of the vocal music department at the school for Creative
45:30 - 46:00 and Performing Arts in Cincinnati because the leader of the vocal music department said that I was not a singer I got to go back a number of years ago to visit the school because I'm listed as a notable alumni on their Wikipedia despite the fact that I was kicked out of the school and did not uh graduate uh I got to go back because David Roth who was the head of the drama Department there is a top if there was a Mount Rushmore of people who were impactful in my life and believed in me it was David Roth who was the the department head and my teacher at that school still to this
46:00 - 46:30 day I talked you know the other day he was sending my mom stuff about the play Bill article about uh our music video um the opposite side of that is the head of the vocal music department who I did get to walk into his office and say you'll never guess what I do for a living uh so little small revenge for yeah little small Revenge pieces there um but uh what I have found is that you never get what you want out of Revenge and it's so infuriating because you want so badly to have that moment where you're gonna get
46:30 - 47:00 back at somebody and they're gonna see and then they just turn around and you know all these Cincy punk. org and all these things when I was a kid they'd make fun of us and lambast us nine times out of 10 those people oh you know what I'm I'm a big fan of you I used to be on that website it's crazy you guys have made it so big and I go like don't you understand that you're my mortal enemy and we're you're supposed to feel shame um meanwhile Kang is saying whatever but you're on the cover so at that point it's like you know it's hard when you're somebody who always wanted to to get
47:00 - 47:30 back at your demons and your enemies and then you just you're winning a race but the good thing for me is that Blackville has never fully won the race because I mean the comments of this video will show there will always be people that regardless of what we do uh just hate me regardless and that's fine I don't need I think the worst thing you can be as an Entertainer someone who's given the keys to this kingdom is is to not be divisive enough for someone to have an opinion on
47:30 - 48:00 you my job is only to entertain that's true that's it I'm I'm only on stage to entertain you and by the way if you hate me and you watch this video or anything else all that matters I have still entertained you because I gave you something to watch for a while to go I [ __ ] hate this guy so there is no way to get the restitution that you want and that sucks but I'll always be seeking it and you're sober I am so I'm sober too I actually I don't even drink coffee I drink these have you ever had these before no it's it's magic can I have this mental alertness I'll do a shot with you if you want instead of drinking
48:00 - 48:30 coffee this is what I drink they're amazing but yeah talk to me about sobriety cheers Che Cheers Cheers Cheers oh [ __ ] I spilled in my pants sorry I love this energy shot it's from mental Clarity it's called Magic M use the code lips that's Li I PPS magicmine dcom use the code lips they talk me about sober cuz you know what's good about all black pants and black clothes I just spill [ __ ] on myself all if if you were to like take like a magnifying glass there's barbecue sauce and all
48:30 - 49:00 kind um sobriety for me was it's interesting because it's different for everybody right and mine boiled down to um I was drinking because around 20 years old I discovered 19 years old um in fact I know I was 19 because I remember the first time that I actually drank and I discovered that if I drank so much of the social anxiety
49:00 - 49:30 that I had and the fear of being around people would go away and by the way in my line of work at 19 years old going to the rainbow and all this stuff to be able to socialize and talk to people was kind of part of the job so I go it's magic the my my innate difficulty my sort of the the feeling because of being neuro Divergent and the feeling of having a difficulty attaching myself to
49:30 - 50:00 other people if I drink this juice here I can not magic no if I if I drink this whatever yeah I can talk to people and then like anything it became well now I'm hyper fixated on this because as with action figures and Sweeny top whatever it is I go all in on something so now I'm going to I'm going to figure out exactly what my drink is I'm going to get three tattoos of the logo of it I'm going obsess over it every show I'm going to drink all the time this is going to be my full brand I'm going to be drunk all day oh and now I'm going to
50:00 - 50:30 Institute a thing where I I it's a a fun thing to drink a whole fifth before I go on stage every day and if I don't finish the fifth then it's a failure and everybody has to you know like laugh at me and ah and it just became I'm gamifying it and it just like it's like anything else now in retrospect because I've been sober for eight years I can realize what I was doing but the time I didn't realize I was doing what I do with Batman and comic book and everything else where I I I invest myself into these things and I was doing
50:30 - 51:00 that with alcohol and I did it for so long that it became a crutch and then I thought I couldn't perform without it and then in 2014 end of 2013 early 2014 uh actually before that it was was mid 2013 and then through to the end of 2014 um I had broken my ribs in 2011 I jumped off drunk I jumped off the stage and I smashed all my ribs 910 11 11th rib totally gone I went on to a right away finished the show went on tour did a Warp Tour never did any Physical Therapy
51:00 - 51:30 nothing around mid 2013 I'm driving I'm sitting on the 405 and my legs go completely numb while I'm driving numbness legs my waist all the way down and I'm get to the side of the road freaking out um feeling comes back to the legs after about an hour but I can't I still can't feel things right so I look up on the Internet um what are causes of not being able to feel your legs and blah blah blah so I'm just and
51:30 - 52:00 this is like 2013 Google MD you know this is before we all realize that everything on there is incorrect yeah um and so I'm just going down the list of what are the possible ailments that I have and of course I've now convinced myself I have all of them so I go to just a a a regular general doctor at the time I don't have like a a doctor that I go to I don't have medical insurance I'm just a I'm a kid so go to regular doctor they have no idea what's going on they say well could be that you need to go to
52:00 - 52:30 your urologist so I go okay they go they they're convinced that I have a UTI that's what they're saying and I they're they take they say take a bunch of cranberry and go to a urologist so mind you I have no feeling in my like up down to my knees sometimes and then other times down all the way to my feet and they're they're saying it's probably drink some cranberry juice yeah so go to your urologist the urologist uh does the finger up the ass um which is always fun yeah it's awesome especially when you're
52:30 - 53:00 22 to be you know and there they go we're going to take a we're GNA get our finger up your ass and we're g to mess around in there and then we're going to take a blood test and we're going to see what's going on with your blood they do that they take a blood test they say it's inconclusive but just to be sure um you're going to need to come back every single week for the next three weeks and we're going to do this thing up your ass every time but now we're going to start doing the scope so we're making the record we're making a record at the time
53:00 - 53:30 and uh I have to leave the studio like in the middle of the day every day to drive to the valley to go have a camera and a thumb stuck up my ass then go back to the studio and try to work and at that point it's so painful it's so terrible I am so exhausted by the whole thing that I'm just drinking constantly to deal with that like now I'm not drinking because I'm trying to get rid of social anxiety I'm drinking because I'm always pain I can't feel my legs and my job now is to have someone shove
53:30 - 54:00 things up my ass and so finally they go well we don't know what it is um but we're going to put you on this medication because we think you might have a blood infection that's what I'm told it's a blood infection so they put me on this medication that subsequently has been banned by the FDA the medication that I was on there was something like a a 6 to 10% suicide rate crazy things um and I say to the doctor can I drink on this medication and he said a couple glasses would be okay now
54:00 - 54:30 in retrospect he was saying a couple glasses of wine but at 22 yes so I'm like well a couple full glasses of whiskey like that's a lot of shots so I'll just keep drinking like normal so I'm drinking like normal but the problem is you absolutely cannot drink on this medication not even wine I've subsequently found this out I lose my mind and I don't mean in the sense that I'm doing crazy things I mean that I am not there I
54:30 - 55:00 am I'm losing long tracks of time I'm blacking out I'm Blair Witch you know standing in the corner my tour manager finding me in weird places Lobby call happens to go from point8 to point B I'm sitting in the lobby with none of my bags or anything like the things aren't occurring to me can't remember songs I basically don't remember a single moment from 2014 and I'm on this medication the whole year oh just constantly I'm going through long stretches of blackouts and then I'm drinking because I'm so upset
55:00 - 55:30 I'm drinking until I black out um and then is that your wake up call or no so I started standing we're in a we're on tour and I just start standing at windows and I'm consciously thinking of like six different ways that I could kill myself just looking out this window and I've never been suicidal and I'm not actively having these thoughts I'm there's such destructive thoughts that are happening there are like happening to me and I'm going I'm getting freaked
55:30 - 56:00 out by this and I go I don't feel this way but I can't stop everything is manifesting into the darkest possible thoughts so I get done with that run and I go something has to change so for me I was very fortunate that um I never was someone that was drinking out of I never got the shakes I could long times I drink but I drank to exist the only way
56:00 - 56:30 I could become Andy was to drink in my mind I couldn't go on stage I couldn't I couldn't sit here with you and do anything if I wasn't drunk and I realized I have to try so we go and do Warp Tour the following summer and it was the first tour I ever did not drinking and I go holy [ __ ] it is so much better to do a show when you're not blacked out and my wife was also struggling significantly with alcohol at the time and we both made the decision together because we you know I
56:30 - 57:00 stopped drinking then I would start drinking again stopped drinking we both made the decision together um in a way you probably had to go through that to get S because and we had you know we had big crazy moments and you know we we had plenty of times where you know we would get into a big crazy Sid Nancy argument or something because we were both drunk or whatever and that just wasn't us and we realized together this is it and our love for each other is way more important than this dumb thing and our careers are way way more important than
57:00 - 57:30 this dumb thing so why are we allowing this dumb thing even into our house so we did it together and we continue to do it together and it's been the greatest thing that's ever happened to to both of us and for me it's changed my life it's changed my career it's changed me as a person I'm significantly less of a piece of [ __ ] than I used to be and uh I just love I love living the life that I get to have amazing well talk to me about the new record the tour because obviously you just put out you know bleeders which was a great track the video is amazing based on Sweeny Todd uh
57:30 - 58:00 there's a tour coming up with fallen in Reverse Ronnie Ry I guess you guys are probably friends for years right known him since I was uh 16 I met him at a show in Cincinnati uh another polarizing individual very much so yeah but you know it's funny you I think you brought up David Lee Roth earlier I've always said that that Ronnie is a little like uh our scenes David Lee Roth way that's true that's a great but from the time I've known him he was always sort of that way I remember the first time I met him he walked up to me and started um saying something along the lines of like there's only I only one of us can be
58:00 - 58:30 Nikki 6 you can't also be Nikki 6 I never thought of him as Niki 6 well yeah you know well if you look at like the drug and me as you Era uh especially you know I I remember because we did Warp Tour when he first put out that record and he and I kind of had like the exact same hair walking by each other uh the very Nikki 6 hair um but I've always I've always thought of him as you know I think sometimes when people um are so divisive and
58:30 - 59:00 things that they say are things that you don't necessarily agree with all the time or their perspective is wildly different than what is considered a normal perspective to have in today's day and age it's seen very differently than in previous times where I grew up where so many of the artists that I loved okay great example is we talked about kiss you know um um kiss would take Ted Nan on tour and it never
59:00 - 59:30 occurred to me that they all must sit backstage and agree on all of their philosophical ideas you know what I mean it never was it never was anything to me Beyond maybe a mutual respect for music or a timeline or knowing them for a long time or plainly when it comes to the perspective of Ronnie by Far and Away the most successful person in our scene and someone that is by far and away one of the most entertaining and maybe only truly charismatic frontmen that we have um you know myself excluded of course I
59:30 - 60:00 believe I got to put myself in there but uh you know other than us um no but it's about putting on a show and the other thing is I I find it interesting whether you agree with what somebody says or not there are people who are objectively comedic in what they do and the delivery is meant to be comedic I found it funny cuz for me to say that I think Ronnie is very funny feels like a pretty obvious statement he's always had a comedic Bend to what he does and whether what he's saying is
60:00 - 60:30 completely incendiary or in an attempt to get a rise out of you well like Kiss did back in day sure but but it's so very clear that it's it's meant to make people go I can't believe he said that or or go no I disagree or start be for drama whatever but he knows he's doing it and he telegraphs that he's doing it because there was times when you would say our records are better than Zepp exactly back in the day uh and I knew when I said that I like the world on fire more than Led Zeppelin that people were going to hate me for it but I also
60:30 - 61:00 knew that Kang was going to put it on the front cover and it didn't mean that I truly believed in my heart of hearts that the second record I ever made was better than one of the most important acts in the history of music but if I wasn't going to say it then who was and if Ronnie isn't going to get you angry about something clearly nobody else is and I'm not saying I there are things and I I've told him this he and I differ philosophically on a great many things
61:00 - 61:30 and there are things that I philosophically and socially entirely disagree with him on but that doesn't exclude the fact that I've known him since I was 16 and I know he has a good heart and if I thought that he was an evil person who believed bad things I would have no interest in knowing but I know where his heart's at and I also know that he's very good at getting people very angry and the show will be wildly entertaining if you come to the tour I I well look between the two of us there's going to be a lot of ego going
61:30 - 62:00 on at the very least you'll see the greatest display of eyeliner wearing ego you have ever seen amazing well we do these really fun top fives at the end of the show so I got a bunch of them for you your top five hair metal bands of all time knowing what you grew up on starting with number five okay we're going to start at the bottom at the bottom oh [ __ ] uh hair metal bands um that that can include the mly crews of the world right uh Hammer punks they're a band from La uh yeah I'm going to put
62:00 - 62:30 them number five because they never got very big but I was obsessed with them when I was a teenager I found their music you know it was hard to find it was one of those like underground things um and it meant a lot to me because I liked how punk rock they were you know cool number four I'm going to go with a band that is also super underground but I really enjoyed um and unfortunately the drummer passed and and got to know him a little bit but uh peppermint creeps from La uh they were another
62:30 - 63:00 Great Glam Revival band that were behind that you know like they came too late but they were a great band number three uh gotta go wasp amazing uh still great to this day kind of pretty good I mean and again another guy who I I could not disagree with on more things philosophically than black elol I think a lot of people agree with a lot of things I would absolutely go to the damn show and and sing along to I want to be somebody you know because it doesn't whatever but I'm also apparently that
63:00 - 63:30 I'm I'm in the minority in that capacity but regardless not of people that would go sing with blocky meaning the people that would be willing to accept that someone disagrees with them uh anyway uh two number two this is just for me right this is not this is your own list okay this is not I want to be clear because sometimes people take this as like the gospel but this is yourist this is not gospel this is not because all the bands I've listed so far have a combined record sales of just wasp you know what I mean if we
63:30 - 64:00 pulled all the other bands that I've listed we're just looking at wasp's numbers um so I'm talking about how it personally affected me so number two mly crew particularly early ER mly crew Shout Out the Devil Too Fast for Love Too Fast for Love Shout Out the Devil in particular just the very you know the the very Punk Rock the very Mad Max look the whole thing strange fact they introduced nicked to his wife oh interesting yeah okay cool fact that's awesome yeah that's awesome uh we uh we
64:00 - 64:30 worked with Nikki a handful of times early on in the band and she was around very very nice cool Courtney very nice well great choice and number one this is going to be AAL great hair metal band of all time not a hair metal band but the band that got me the most interested in the fashion of hair metal hair metal adjacent everyone's goingon to boot me because this is kind of a copout Lords the new church is my favorite look at not metal method to my madness watch the music video and tell me that's not a hair metal band yeah I mean they look amazing I don't know metal but they're
64:30 - 65:00 great are you there is nothing any less metal about method of my madness than any Poison song yeah that's true you're if you watch method of my madness go watch it right now and then watch Unskinny Bop and tell me which is the metal band I never thought of them in the same breath poison Lords in your church but yeah I can get that I'm here to I'm here to make that comparison and last but not least your top five lead singers of all time Andy uh okay Peter
65:00 - 65:30 steel um number five Billy Idol number four uh Mike NES number three Matt skeba Bruce Springsteen amazing list by the way if you like magic mind everyone has the same tone of voice by the way sorry if you like magic M pick it up check out lips in the codes description below this is great we have to do another one of these for sure yeah well the tour is coming out black bb.com
65:30 - 66:00 yeah uh just Google US you'll find good stuff and not so good stuff all I have to have you back by there because I can talk to you for hours this thank you my brother thank you awesome [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music]