NME conducted an interview with ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian at the U.K. edition of the Sonisphere festival, which was held July 4-6 at Knebworth Park in Hertfordshire. You can now watch the chat below. A couple of excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On performing the 1987 album “Among The Living” in its entirety at Sonisphere:
Scott: “We’ve done all the songs in a concert before, but we’ve broken it up. Like, we’done it side A, and then played a bunch of other stuff, and then side B and then do some encores. So we’ve done it in that context. But tonight we’re only playing the nine songs off ‘Among The Living’, so it’s the first time ever.”
On the making of “Among The Living”:
Scott: “We had just come off the METALLICA tour in the fall of ’86 when [METALLICA bassist] Cliff Burton was killed, and we had come off that tour obviously early because of the tragedy. And that’s when we started recording that record, pretty much right after that. I feel like the energy just really jumps off that record; you f**king hear how pissed off we are playing our instruments on that record. There’s a brutality on that album that you don’t hear on the two records before ‘Among The Living’. It was just the record of its time; it really was.”
On pop superstar Lady Gaga:
Scott: “We are actually hoping Lady Gaga will cover an ANTHRAX song. ‘Cause we know she’s a big fan, and Charlie [Benante] is actually friends with her, our drummer, and so is our bass player, Frankie [Bello], actually. And she is a huge metalhead. She knows her s**t. She knows all about ANTHRAX and she knows things that we don’t even remember. So I jokingly said once, ‘Tell her to cover one of our songs and put it on iTunes.’ [laughs]”
On sharing the stage with other bands:
Scott: “We just did three shows with LIMP BIKZIT in Germany on this tour. And on paper, you might say, ‘OK, well, ANTHRAX did some rap stuff and LIMP BIZKIT is rap metal. It kind of makes sense.’ It makes no sense at all when we walk on stage in f**king Munich to 5,000 people staring at us like this [makes expressionless face]. I’m talking for four songs. And then slowly but surely hands start to come up. And by the fifth song, we f**king own them. And then we still have another 40 minutes to play. And we just made new fans. And that’s what you’re supposed to do as a band. Preaching to the choir is great, but the fact that we got to play three shows with LIMP BIZKIT to their audience who’s all young kids, and they left there, and you know a whole s**tload of them went home, Googled ANTHRAX and f**king stole ‘Antisocial’ off the Internet. [laughs]”
Source: Blabbermouth
