WEB-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: ROB ZOMBIE, ON REVISITING WHITE ZOMBIE FOR THE NEW BOX SET AND LOOKING AHEAD TO THE FUTURE

What were your influences when White Zombie started up?
I grew up on arena rock back in the ’70s. I loved Alice Cooper, KISS, Blue Öyster Cult, Queen. But then later, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, I discovered punk rock, the Ramones and all of that. So White Zombie was always a conflict of both worlds—a DIY punk-rock mentality while trying to create an arena-rock band. We loved Black Sabbath, the Birthday Party, the Cramps, the Misfits, Van Halen. Back when we started, we got a lot of ‘What’s with you guys? What’s the deal?’ ’Cause we had long hair and were playing with bands that didn’t, because we weren’t playing in the heavy-metal scene, we were playing in this New York Sonic Youth underground, and everyone was very college-y, and we…weren’t! [Laughs]

That might’ve led to the gigging problem.
Yeah, well, we didn’t really fit in anywhere. Everything was very much a scene, and we weren’t—I mean, at that point, New York hardcore was very much Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, and we obviously weren’t that. And then the art-rock scene, Sonic Youth, Live Skull, we didn’t really fit into that either, so we sort of just got lost in between them.

I think it was really Make Them Die Slowly when you guys really focused more on metal. Why did you take that direction?
Well, it was that thing of being trapped between two worlds. We couldn’t play here, couldn’t play there. But in Brooklyn—it’s amazing what happens when you cross the bridge—there was a club called L’Amour, and it was like a whole new world. We would rehearse in Brooklyn ’cause our drummer lived there, and he was big into going to L’Amour, and we started going there. And I was like, Fuck it, this is where it’s at! In Manhattan, you’d maybe play one or two shows, and also, that art scene was just so pretentious. It was very fanzine- and critic-driven, which always bothered me. And then when we went out to the metal scene, there’d be 2,000 kids at a show going ape-shit, and I thought, Fuck yeah! You guys’re having fun while everyone else is staring at their shoes back in Manhattan. So we thought, Fuck it, let’s just declare ourselves a metal band, even though we really weren’t, musically. We never knew what to call ourselves, so we decided to just call ourselves that.

Movie samples have always been a big part of the White Zombie sound. Was there ever a time when labels tried to monitor your use of samples?
Yeah, that became a problem when we signed to Geffen. The samples actually held our record up for quite some time, and then we had to get permissions.

Are there any you regret not being able to clear?
We had this cool sample of Vincent Price form Last Man on Earth, and I remember trying to get clearance, and we’d spoken to his secretary or daughter or somebody connected to him. It was right before he died. And all we got back was that he didn’t want to give us permission because he felt he’d been screwed giving his voice to Thriller, like they’d paid him some tiny amount of money and then the thing sold a bazillion copies.

What song was that for?
It was for “I Am Legend”, which was written about [Richard Matheson’s] book I Am Legend, which The Last Man on Earth was based on. So it was perfect; it was a perfect sample. It tied into the song perfectly, but we couldn’t use it.

White Zombie, “I Am Legend” (live in 1991)