Kyle Milner
 talks zombies, air guitar)
In 1981 Scott Ian formed the band Anthrax, laying the foundation for what would soon become one of the iconic Big Four of thrash metal alongside Slayer, Megadeth and Metallica. Nearly four decades later, Ian’s guitar work and lyrics have made him one of the most recognisable and respected names in metal. When not on the stage, Ian has had an incredibly diverse career in media hosting VH1’s The Rock Show, making appearances in television series like Metalocalypse and The Walking Dead, writing comic books for DC (Lobo: Highway to Hell) and even his own radio talk show currently airing on SiriusXM, Never Meet Your Heroes.
He’ll be heading down to Australia in the coming weeks for Oz Comic-Con, where fans will have the chance to meet the legend himself. Moviehole had the opportunity to speak to Scott as he wrapped up the most recent leg of his current live tour with Anthrax.
Scott: Hey, how’s it going?
Kyle: Hey, not too bad! Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, I really appreciate it.
Scott: Yeah, no problem.
Kyle: You’re a super busy guy at the moment – on top of touring with Slayer and a killer line-up of bands, you’re coming to Australia for Oz Comic Con and your speaking tour. Is this a bit of down-time for you, or another part of your busy schedule?
Scott: We’re off now, we finished – I don’t know, a week ago? Two weeks ago? I can’t remember already [laughs]. It all flies by really fast. I’m at home right now, we’re on a break until we start again with Slayer on November 1st in Europe.
Kyle: You’ve played with so many bands, but you’ve also interviewed quite a few bands and artists yourself. Out of personal interest, do you find that being a musician yourself lends itself well to interviewing people?
Scott: Um, I don’t know [laughs]. It doesn’t sound like it right now because I guess I don’t really know how to answer that question. It just comes natural to me. It’s not something I think about. I don’t plan, I don’t really do much research, or anything like that. I just sit down and I have a conversation with people. And I don’t know if my ability to do that is because we have a lot of common ground with a lot of people that I’ve had on my radio show.
I don’t know, I just don’t ever want it to actually feel like I’m interviewing somebody. We just talk. I don’t even tell people that we’re recording, generally. We’ll be twenty minutes into talking to somebody, and sometimes people will ask me “well, when are we going to start?” and I’m like, “we started twenty minutes ago”. So, I think there’s a way of putting people at ease in that way. It’s just not a question and answer thing. But like I said, it’s not something I ever thought about, it’s not like I said “here’s how I’m going to do interviews”. It was never like that. It’s just the way it worked out. Probably because some of the first few guests I ever had – whether it was on my old VH1 TV show or on my radio show – it was people I knew.
So if I’m sitting down with a friend, then obviously that opens the door for it to just be a conversation. Because we’re friends and we know each other. I can just start talking, and an hour later we’ve got a really good interview. Meanwhile, I didn’t do anything! [laughs] I just had a conversation with a friend. So, I guess that’s really the only way I can do it. If I had to like, sit down and think of questions I had to ask people, there’s no way I would ever do that. I don’t think I would be good at that.
Kyle: Yeah, personally speaking I get very nervous interviewing people, especially if it’s someone I’m very familiar with. It’s like, “man, there’s a million things I want to ask you”, but I don’t want to just ask the same questions everyone else has asked. So it’s cool you get to sit down with people you’ve probably toured with, or you just know as a friend and you can just shoot the s!@#$ with. That’s really neat.
Scott: Well, it’s not everybody, I wish it was that easy. I had Nancy Wilson from Heart on my show not that long ago, and I had met her one time. We don’t know each other. And yeah, I was really nervous because I don’t know her at all, I don’t know if she’s a talker, I don’t know how she is conversationally – if she’s going to be tough to talk to. Like I said, it’s not like I spent two weeks researching her and her band. I just said “screw it”, I’m going to sit down and start talking and see where it goes, and it turned out great.
But I was definitely nervous going in, because – there’s been a few people, I didn’t really know them. I may have met a person, but it doesn’t mean I really know them personally. But I still take the same approach – basically just start talking. With Nancy I just started talking about a fire that had happened in Los Angeles, and that lead to us figuring out that we actually lived about a mile away from each other for the last eight years and had no idea. That opened the door and it kind of made everything go easy from that point.
Kyle: So, eleven studio albums with Anthrax, you’ve played with some of the coolest acts on earth, but you’re not just a musician. You’ve done all sorts of things, especially television and radio. Is working in television and radio a passion from way back, like music, or are they something you just kind of fell into as you were doing them?
Scott: No, it wasn’t ever my idea, at all. It wasn’t something I was ever looking for. Back in 2001 I got asked to go to New York to host an episode of this VH1 thing called The Rock Show, because I guess they had decided that the guy prior to me, they didn’t want him as the host anymore. A friend of mine, who worked at VH1, put my name in, saying “I think Scott from Anthrax would be really good at this, because he can speak really well and tell stories and he has a personality”. So it was really out of curiosity. I decided to make a go for it, and say “yeah, I’ll try it”. If I don’t like it, what’s the worst that can happen? I’ll have done one, and I don’t have to do it again.
Kyle: I mean, why the hell not?
Scott: Yeah, and you know, I really ended up enjoying it. That first one I was doing, that VH1 show, it was basically just me talking a whole bunch of crap and playing videos and talking about bands and telling stories and playing music videos. It wasn’t until a few months in, then they said “we want you to start interviewing bands and having guests”. I initially balked at that, because I didn’t want to be that guy. I’m like, “no, I’m in a band, I can’t be sitting and talking with guys in a band, that’s weird to me”. It made me feel like people wouldn’t take me seriously as a musician anymore.
Kyle: Right.
Scott: I was a guy interviewing people, and I didn’t want to be that guy. But if I’m not mistaken, I think the first band that I interviewed might have been The Cult. I think it was them. And I had been friends with them since the 80s, and you know, I figured “alright”. I’ll just do it. I really like this gig, and I don’t want them to fire me, so I might as well try it. So, The Cult came in the studio that day. And that’s where it all kind of started. I had a script that the producers wrote for me, with all these questions like they would for any host. And I didn’t use the script at all. I didn’t use any of the questions, I just sat and talked to my friends in The Cult.
And it went even better than if I had used the questions they gave me, because, you know, if you’re just sitting having a conversation with someone you know, you’re probably going to get a better story out of them than if you’re saying, “so, how long did it take you to make your new album?”. You know? Who gives a shit about that? I don’t! And it went really well. My producer said after the fact, “I don’t need to write questions for you. You know what you’re doing”. And then I didn’t feel like I was selling out, either. And I really enjoyed it. I ended up doing about 48 of those.
Kyle: That’s pretty impressive!
Scott: That kind of opened the door for me to understand that it was something that was fun for me to do. I was capable of doing it. It was also enjoyable. When that ended back in ’02 or ’03, I didn’t really do anything like that for a long, long time until I got my radio show on Sirius. It just depends on my schedule. Sometimes the band is just too busy, I just don’t have any time to do anything else. Everything takes a back seat to that.
Kyle: You have, of course, managed to find the time for some work in television – a personal favourite of mine you did was the cameo in Metalocalypse. I miss that show so bad! And of course, The Walking Dead. You were on the panel for (companion talk show) The Talking Dead, right?
Scott: Yeah, I was on that. That’s not why I was on The Walking Dead, but I did do The Talking Dead once.
Kyle: I was wondering how that came about. Did they approach you and say “hey, we want to turn you into a walker”, or…?
Scott: Well, I’m friends with one of the main producers and directors on the show, Greg Nicotero. His company KNB also does all the zombie and makeup effects for the show. So we’ve been friends for a really long time, and it was through him. I always had an open invitation to go to Atlanta to be on it, but I wanted more than just to be on it. I had my web-series on The Nerdist online, and I wanted to be able to go and film it for my show. Greg was able to make that happen for me, so that was just incredible. There’s no way that it ever would’ve happened if not for the fact that I’m friends with Greg. He really kind of went above and beyond to make all of that happen for me, and it was amazing. Just a completely mind-blowing experience that I got to be part of that world.
Kyle: Yeah, I bet that would be totally surreal.
Scott: I’m in an episode getting a pole stuck through my head by Carl. [laughs]
Kyle: That was badass! Of all those episodes you did talking to different special effects artists, would that be your favourite experience out of all of them?
Scott: Yeah, I mean I guess if I had to pick…I don’t know, there’s so many. It’s so much fun any time I get made up, it’s great. The Walking Dead one certainly would be special, because it wasn’t just me getting made up and hanging out. I got to be part of that TV show, which I’m a fan of, and it’s such a huge, big deal around the world. No-one else really got to do what I got to do, and had the access that I had, and I was able to make that part of my TV show, Bloodworks. It was really kind of mind-blowing that the whole thing happen. So yeah, I guess I would have to say that’d be the most special thing I got to do in the context of that.
Kyle: Aside from your music work, your TV work, your radio work, you’ve also been doing some writing over the years. There’s your autobiography, and a little more recently your book where you’re telling a lot of anecdotes from the road. Is that a lot of what people can expect from your live speaking tour?
Scott: Well, yeah. My live show is me telling stories from my life. It’s all part of my life. One of the questions that you get asked the most over the years is, “what’s the craziest…?”. Everybody wants to know what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen, who’s the craziest guy, or whatever. So that’s pretty much my show, answering all those questions.
Kyle: That’s cool to have to opportunity to give some definitive answers to people who are probably leaving comments on Instagram like, “please tell me!”.
Scott: Yeah, it’s easy, just come to my show!
Kyle: As someone whose favourite author of all time is Stephen King, I can’t help but ask – how does it feel to know he’s a fan of Anthrax?
Scott: When I first found that out, that he was a fan, it was obviously very exciting – to know that he liked what I did! That was definitely an exciting moment, to know that the guy that you’re such a fan of is also a fan of what you do, that was really cool.
Kyle: I understand you’re going to be judging an air guitar competition on-stage at Oz Comic Con. Is that something you’ve been asked to do before?
Scott: Nope!
Kyle: This is surprising!
Scott: Not that I remember, anyway. I mean, are there that many air guitar competitions out there? [laughs]
Kyle: I feel like it’s the kind of thing that’s at conventions, for some reason!
Scott: It’s not exactly something that’s on my radar – I can’t say that I’ve been asked to do that before, but that’s why I’m looking forward to it. It’s new to me, and just like anything else, I said yes because it seems like fun. So that’s what I’m hoping for!
Kyle: Going into it, do you think there’s going to be a particular kind of performance that you’d probably be impressed by?
Scott: I have no idea! [laughs] I have zero expectations of what going to happen. I’m going to sit there, and in the moment I’m going to figure out what I need to figure out. I really don’t know what to expect.
Kyle: So, what’s coming up for you in the next while that you’re quite excited about?
Scott: Well, the Slayer European run, and obviously coming to Australia. But after that, the Slayer European run, and then next year we’ll probably get in a room and start working on new songs as well as hopefully getting down to Australia. Because it’s one of the few places we haven’t been yet on the For All Kings tour. So I’m really hoping that’s going to happen sooner than later.
Kyle: That’ll be awesome to see, I’ll be trying to catch you guys if you do!
Scott: Yeah, they’re sending me down as a scout on this run! Hopefully the whole band will come down with me in a couple of months.
Kyle: Awesome. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me, Scott, really appreciate it!
Scott: Right on, cheers man!
Scott Ian will be appearing at Oz Comic-Con Brisbane on Saturday, September 22nd and Sunday, September 23rd; Oz Comic-Con Sydney on Saturday, September 29th and Sunday, September 30th. More information is available at http://ozcomiccon.com/
