Stereo Warning

Ozzy Osbourne talks to us about his fascinating autobiography, "I Am Ozzy." It turns out that there are many things he'd do over, but he's got no regrets. Oh, and that lawsuit against Tony Iommi? "That's my wife's department," he says, adding that he wouldn't rule out playing with Tony on stage again some day. And that's good news for Black Sabbath fans!

How did you go about writing this book?
Chris would talk to me and ask me what was your childhood like and then he'd find something interesting of what I was saying and he'd go 'can you elaborate more on that incident'. He would pull stuff out that way. I didn't actually put pen to paper; if I'd done that I'd still be on page one, you know? It was quite easy actually.

So you didn't write it all in pencil like Sharon said?
No, I did it all through Chris.

Why write it?
A lot of people through the years have asked 'when are you ever going to write a book'. There's been a lot of unauthorized books written about me. I just decided to do it, you know.

Continue reading "Ozzy Osbourne Talks Drugs, Sex & Alcohol (Sorry, No Bats) -- Interview" »

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We're super psyched that Mike Patton and Faith No More are getting back together. So psyched, in fact, that we're republishing our interview from last year with Mike in which he talks about the last year or so in Faith No More's life, when things weren't going so well. At the time, Mike told us he would never be a part of a FNM reunion. We're glad he changed his mind!

So check out what he had to say after the break. See you at the shows!

Continue reading "Mike Patton talks about Faith No More reunion" »

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Here is the final piece of the interview with Lars Ulrich from Metallica. Enjoy !

Where do you see the music business going?
It's an interesting time right now. A lot of defining things will happen for the next decade but it's not settled yet. For the next record we can do whatever we want. We look at all options but it's too early to say. By the time the next Metallica record rolls around who knows what the landscape will be. It goes back to communicating with the fans -- a few options would be to cut out the record company. Their biggest function is being a bank. When you don't need them to pay for stuff you don't really need a record company. You can go with independent distribution or do it over the internet. I'll figure it out in five years. Now it's interesting to see what Trent is doing, what Radiohead is doing, but it feels like everything is in transition right now.

Continue reading "Lars Ulrich from Metallica -- interview part 3" »

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Here is part II with Lars from Metallica. Check back tomorrow for the final installment.

Rick Rubin said he wanted you to go back to the mind set you had when you write Master of Puppets. How do you go back to that 80s mentality, where do you go to find that hunger?
I've always struggled with this concept that you have to be hungry to make a good heavy metal record. I'm not saying it's wrong but I don't know how applicable they are to us. We make fine records at home in our backyard where it's comfortable. With rick, he set the bar maybe higher than it's been set for a while and we were up for that just to challenge ourselves. It took a while to get to that place where we would feel comfortable revisiting some of the things we've done before. I purposefully tried to steer our band as far away from that as possible for many years out of fear of repetition and of cheapening the previous work by getting too close to it again. Rick found ways to make us feel comfortable about doing that again. It also coincided with the 20th anniversary of the Master of Puppets record, which we relearned and played on a nightly basis. As we got close to that record again and Rick was slowly steering us in that direction it started thawing away at that wall, that fear of repetition. It's been surprisingly efortless to go back to some of that stuff. Not as difficult physically or mentally as I anticipated.

Continue reading "Lars Ulrich from Metallica interview - part 2" »

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Here's the interview with Lars we promised. It's gonna come in installments, so check back for parts II and III.

At this level in your career, you hardly need any more publicity. Why still keep such a busy schedule and do these interviews?
It's a way of communicating with the fans. You choose your path early on and it was pretty clear for us early on that the bands that we idolized were more accessible. The people I idolized were on the level and were accessible. We've always prided ourselves and enjoyed being accessible. It's okay to sit and talk about what you do. You choose to answer the questions you want, and the ones you don't want to you come up with a silly, smart-ass or sarcastic comment and find a way around it. I don't mind it.

The kids are definitely interested in what you have to say and you work hard to give your fans a lot of access into the inner workings of Metallica, probably more so than any other band.
Maybe more so than they should have, ha ha ha. But it's the path we've chosen. People sit there and talk about the movie (Some Kind of Monster, ed.) but once you open yourself up you have to deal with that. Either you open yourself up and its carte blanche or you shy away. Our path has been the carte blanche accessibility, for better or worse, warts and all as they say.

Continue reading "New interview with Lars Ulrich from Metallica - part 1" »

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One of our journalist friends is lucky enought to have been granted an interview with Lars Ulrich from Metallica and he's been nice enough to agree to ask him a few questions on behalf of readers of Stereo Warning. So leave your questions for Lars in the comments to this post and then check back in a week or so to find out what answers Lars gave. Pretty cool, huh?

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Is Lars Ulrich a happy man?
Ha, ha. Yes, Lars Ulrich is a very happy man. It’s going well. We’re driving hard and it hasn’t gotten any easier just as I’m getting up there in age. But as I like to say, if you ever hear me complain, smack me over the head. I have some wonderful children and a girl I’m very happy with and a father and a family and three guys in a band that I actually can talk to. We can hang out in the same space. When we’re in the same city we stay in the same hotel, ha, ha, now that’s luxury.

Have you learned to deal with the restlessness you are also known for?
Remember who you’re talking to. I still have a very frenetic energy. But I’m less restless today because of two or three things: kids, the fact that I’ve become older and… shit, we’ve been doing this for 27 years. When you’re in your 20s you don’t stop long enough to embrace what you do but 20-25 years later it’s a different story. I’ve gotten better at opening my eyes, look around me and just be for a moment.

Continue reading "Metallica: Lars Ulrich interview" »

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In a dusty parking lot at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in the California desert, a shiny tour bus sits in the sun, engine running to power the air conditioning. Inside, the founding members of the Brooklyn electro-psychedelic band MGMT relax on leather couches having just performed to an adoring crowd at one of America’s biggest rock festivals. Several attractive young women climb aboard, smile sheepishly at the two guys and head straight for the room at the back of the bus. As the door opens and closes, a whiff of marijuana escapes. It is a scene fitting for the young musicians, whose meteoric rise to stardom has been fueled by their hit single “Time to Pretend.”

"Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives," Andrew VanWyngarden sings on that song. "I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin and f*** with the stars/You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars/This is our decision to live fast and die young/We've got the vision, now let's have some fun."

Continue reading "MGMT interview" »

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As a teenager in California, Peter Hayes first tried his hand at playing guitar by learning the Jimi Hendrix song “Castles Made of Sand.” Years later, after four albums with his garage rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, he is keenly aware that a career in music is just as fragile these days as a kid's construction on a beach. He laments high-spending rock stars that ruin the good name of modest, hard-working musicians and low-spending music fans who would rather download BRMC for free than support the band with a little cash. Check out our interview.

Where/how did you grow up?
I was born in California and raised in Minnesota on a farm of 90 acres until I was 14, then I moved back to California. I guess I grew up with a healthy disrespect for city folks. Us farm boys stuck together. I still have a bit of that even though I live in a city now. Just holding on to the roots... I just look back at that and what I do now I don’t really consider work. That was work, on a farm. Out here, playing music, is nowhere near working. I try to keep that reality in my brain.

Continue reading "Peter Hayes - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club interview" »

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Sinead O’Connor is finding her way back after a long struggle with bipolar disorder that drove her to attempt suicide eight years ago. “It gets better as you get older,” she says. “You get more used to yourself. You’re not so angst-ridden because you don’t give a shit. It’s a good place to be.” After long avoiding them, she is again performing the songs that made her famous in 1990, like “Three Babies” and the Prince cover “Nothing Compares 2 U.” After a seven-year diversion into roots reggae, she wrote the Bible-inspired “Theology,” an album in which she says God is getting a bad rap because of man’s use of religion. “It pisses me off to see people blowing up people on behalf of God,” she tells us. “I wanted to lift out scriptures and show the peaceful nature of the God character.” Amen! Read on for the full interview.

Continue reading "Sinead O'Connor interview" »

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Ben Harper has been playing with the Innocent Criminals for more than a decade, each album soaring higher than its predecessor, hitting a peak with the soulful “Lifeline.” On stage he delivers electrifying slide guitar solos. He sings with abandon, eyes closed, living and breathing the songs, easily ranking as one of the most magnetic live performers out there today. Ben is a true music fan who still does it old school, listening to CDs instead of mp3s, studying the lyrics and the liner notes. In this interview, he reveals his secret: an early immersion into music and a keen ear for inspiration.

Where and how did you grow up?
I grew up in a town called Claremont, in California. It’s about 40 miles east of Los Angeles. I discovered music through my parents’ passion for it. They have a music store they built up since 1958 and it’s been open until now. That’s my earliest inspiration, the earliest way that music formed me.

Continue reading "Ben Harper interview -- this guy is cool!" »

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This is a long conversation we had with The Cure's Robert Smith while he was working on his band's latest album, 4:13 Dream. A very candid Robert talked about everything from his relationship with Porl to the trials and tribulations of writing the new record to his approach to the live show. He even talked about drinking, getting old and (maybe) working with Ashlee Simpson. Enjoy!

Once again, you made big personnel changes in your band. What happened?
At the turn of the year 2005 it was time for a change. Roger O’Donnell and Perry Bamonte left and Porl Thompson returned for his third time in the band. It’s very hard to leave a successful group. Sometimes it takes a little cajoling and a little nod to make people realize they’re not happy in what they’re doing and holding everyone else back. I’m always the driving force of the band and if everyone’s happy with what I want to do it’s a happy band, if they’re not it’s not. I’m not very good at compromising when it comes to music and art. I just find it ridiculous that I should have to do something I don’t want to do, so it leaves everyone only one option, to leave. That’s what happened to Roger and Perry.

Continue reading "Robert Smith interview about The Cure and his latest album" »

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STEREO WARNING: When you were preparing for your comeback , did you have a clue whether anybody still had an appetite for you brutal sound and dark lyrics?
TRENT REZNOR: The culture, the times, the people and the business had changed. I had a new excuse to fight: what if I can’t write sober, what if I don’t have anything to say, what if I’m irrelevant, what if I’m just old now, what if it was just an accident that I got popular in the first place? My lack of putting out records and time between records, although not a calculated career move, may have benefited me because it skipped certain whole subgenres of really bad music. But I didn’t go into the record cycle [for "With Teeth"] assuming that I had all the power that I once wielded.

Continue reading "Trent Reznor Nine Inch Nails interview: Year Zero The Slip" »

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The Roots are the best live group in hip-hop right now. The only other performer that comes close is Kanye West. So when we talked to Roots drummer ?uestlove recently, we had to ask him why so many hip-hop acts suck so bad on stage. He also told us most hip-hop artists are broke, both financially and when it comes to meaningful lyrics, which of course we know is at least party caused by a rotten attitude of "sell big or get out" at major record labels. On the lighter side, we discussed his former bandmate and current in-demand producer Scott Storch's recent propensity for fast cars, thick gold chains and appearances in tabloid pages alongside various starlets. So, check it out, and catch The Roots world tour, coming soon somewhere near you.

Continue reading "?uestlove from the Roots tells it like it is" »

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Stereo Warning: You guys took three years to make this record and almost broke up because of it. What happened?
Abe: I didn’t expect this album to ever be completed. It was difficult. It took three years to make, a ridiculous amount of time. There was no communication. We were very burned out after White Pony and the self-titled record. We came very close to being over with. This is what I do, music was my dream, and so I was uncomfortable to think that it could be over. I took a deep breath and it got pretty heavy, but things work in strange ways and we’re better now for it. We’re best friends and we’re brothers and we needed to tell each other that.

Continue reading "Deftones interview: Chino Moreno and Abe Cunningham speak" »

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Mike Patton: the man, the screams, the wacky on and off stage antics, the Epic rap-rock smash hit single, the legend. After Faith No More broke up, he set up one of the most creatively exciting indie labels, Ipecac, and produced some crazy avant-garde music with Fantomas, Tomahawk and others, as well as discovering some real gems like ISIS. Still, we gotta admit, most of the songs he was himself singing on were pretty hard to digest, with the exception of Get Up Punk from the album General Patton vs. The X-ecutioners.

Then Mike brought us Peeping Tom -- music the masses and us poor chaps at Stereo Warning can understand. A bunch of awesome songs set to trip-hop beats and grooves and featuring cool cats like Rahzel, Kool Keith, Massive Attack, Dub Trio and even Norah Jones (her track is the weakest, though). Download Five Seconds, Mojo, Don't Even Trip and We're Not Alone.

Here's a conversation we had with Mike about Peeping Tom, about why Faith No More broke up and about how much money it would take to get them to reunite. Enjoy!

Stereo Warning: After Faith No More, your music has been very avant-garde and not very accessible. What brought the more mainstream music of Peeping Tom about?
Mike Patton: It's more song-oriented. Balance. I really felt stimulated to embark on these adventures and a lot of the time I don't know where they're going, and some of them ended up taking a lot more time than I thought. Fantomas, for instance, started out as kind of a studio experiment and it turned into a band, which is great. I'm gonna keep it on that path. But as a result, a lot of melodic song ideas were seeping up and I had no outlet for them. I remember looking over on my desk and seeing a pile of these tunes and I thought I really gotta focus and start to take note of other adventures and bring them to life.

Continue reading "Mike Patton on Faith No More reunion (keep dreaming), Peeping Tom and Axl Rose" »

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