At home with PETE STEELE of TYPE O NEGATIVE
Type O Negative's frontman, the imposing six foot-plus Pete Steele,
has lived in Brooklyn, New York City, since he was 19 years old. He
invites Ian Winwood in for a glass of red wine and a chat about carpentry
and pancake making...
HOME SWEET HOME
"I'VE been living down here since I was 19 years old. My parents and
sister live upstairs, and I moved down to the basement when they started
to get really deaf. I would come home and try to get to sleep cos I had
school the next day, and they'd be blasting the radio, so there was no way
I could ever sleep. One night I just got really fed up so I dragged my bed
downstairs.
"My old band Carnivore ['80s New York hardcore outfit] was quite a
sight and sound! We rehearshed here and used to make everything miked -
drums miked, amplifiers miked, Marshall stacks. How my parents dealt with
it I just don't know. And it didn't look anything like this, it was old
brick and these really ugly fluorescent lights.
"When I moved in I decided I didn't want to live like an animal, so
the first thing I did was put a bathroom in so I didn't have to keep going
upstairs all the time. Then I put a closet in, got a bunch of weights so I
didn't have to keep going to the gym whenever I feel like working out - which is generally every day. So
everything I need is right here. I've got music, I've got my bed. It's very small, it's very comfortable, it's
efficient.
"I noticed that I got kind of cold and draughty down here during the
winter time. Now I love the cold, but from time to time when I would have
female guests they would get a little chilly. Apparently my body heat is
not sufficient. So these pipes [red piping that runs across the ceiling]
used to be covered with asbestos insulation, and I got the bright idea to
just rip it off. I bagged it and tied it up and got rid of it. And it gets
quite warm down here now."
THE DOUBLE BASS
"I bought the double bass from a
bassist lived in Staten Island, right next to Brooklyn. He had about
fifteen for sale and I chose the least worst. It cost me $1300, which
looking back I don't really think was worth the money. But I painted it, I
glued, I refurbished it and stuff. I can play it after a fashion, but
usually it just hangs there grinning.
"Where I usually write [music] is over on the keyboard. I'd put the
closet in and I had a little space there, so I thought why not get a
little music area. So if I'm feeling sorry for myself I've got my dopey
little thing here which I can play on and hopefully create some new
music.
THE HOUSE-PROUD BACHELOR
I didn't tidy the place today just because you guys were coming, this
isn't even up to my standards. I've been at the studio so long that I
haven't been able to get the place up to a standard that I can be happy
with. But I try to clean here every two or three days; you know, mop,
sweep, clean up. I try not to create a mess, ever. When I take something
out, I put it back; if I turn on a light I turn it off again. So I can
generally get the whole place cleaned up in about an hour or an hour and a
half. So actually I can work the housework into my workout. If I have to
rest for a minute beetween a set, I have time to make the bed. Or sweep
the floor beetween the next set. And I'm doing thirty sets now during a
workout, so that's half an hour of time where I can tidy the house. And if
I get called on the phone during a workout I can just put them on speaker
phone and they can hear me grunt, fart and moan as I try to push up the
weights.
If and when you use my bathroom, another sign of success is having a phone by the
toilet. That means I can pick it up and best utilize my time!"
COOKING PANCAKES
"My cooking is actually quite good. I don't like to cook just for
myself, but whenever I have people around me I like to cook 'em a good
meal. And no one seems to complain - they always come back for more, and
there's no visits to the hospital or anything. One of the things I like to
cook is pancakes. I've loved pancakes since I was seven or eight years
old. And if I had any batter I'd cook you some now.
"Being in the studio means that two out of three meals each day are
consumed outside of the house, so I only really eat breakfast here. I have
TV dinners in the feezer, some soda, pickles...regular stuff. I also have
some pretein shakes, and I drink two of those a day. I try to maintain a
protein intake of one gramme to two grammes of body weight, which is a lot
of protein - we're talking about five quarts of milk per day!
"This has to do with the weights, which came about when one day I
looked at myself and I didn't really like what I saw, so I decided to get
into exercise. I like to challenge myself and I like to set myself goals.
I work out for six of seven days, which is difficult with recording and
touring. But I meet guys who went to high school with who are my age and
they look like they're ten years older than me. They've got bellies and
they're going bald, they're unhappy with their marriages or they're kids
and they spend the whole time complaining. I just didn't want to get like
that."
LET'S TALK ABOUT ART
"I like totalitarian poster art. I guess
that's one of my few hobbies. I like art that glorifies the State, that glorifies women, the land
and the worker. It's a really strange thing, because I find these aspects
of fascism and communism so similiar. An outsider that doesn't know
anything about them would say that these are the same thing. The ideals
go so far left and right that they end up just coming round full circle. I
find that ironic and amusing at the same time.
"Also up there you'll find that I have some books on how to fix things
- carpentry, electrical work, plumbing. I refuse to pay anybody to do a
job that I could potentially do myself. I'll go
out and buy a book, figure it out and do the job myself. The way I look at
it is that even if I screw the job up it's going to come out cheaper that
paying somebody else to do it. And plus I get a free education. So if
something breaks I can fix it, no problem.
THE 'HOOD
"I do like Brooklyn. Right now I can't really see myself anywhere
else. Every place that I've been to on tour, as much as it was stunning
and beautiful, I've always longed to come here. And it's really nothing
special, I'm just used to it. I know where everything is, I have friends
here, family. It's the devil that I know.
"Some parts of Brooklyn are kind of rough, but if you're stupid enough
to go venture there then you deserve what you get. A lot of bands make a
big deal of that aspect, but we don't because: a) other bands are doing
it, and b) we don't see ourselves as boys from the 'hood. We're not into
that.
"Brooklyn is just made up of vastly different neighbourhoods. You have
carjacks and shootings every day; you have beautiful tree-lined streets
with gorgeous houses. That's a complete 180-degree polarisation. It's like
a little country. There are beaches here, there are woods here. Mostly
this neighbourhood is Jewish. A couple of blocks down there are a lot of
Russian; there are also Koreans, Poles, Irish, Puerto Ricans... And there
are no problems. I don't know if that qualifies as harmony. I mean, I
don't see blacks and Russians walking hand-in-hand, but they're not
throwing bricks at each other either. There's no real inter-racial crime
or violence. Well there is a little, but that's something that happens
everywhere. It's not something exclusive to Brooklyn.
