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Interview with Rat Skates
By Metal Mark : December 2007 |
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Rat Skates was the original drummer for Overkill
and left the band in 1987. He recently released his film “Born in the
Basement” on DVD. The film is a documentary centering on the early
days of thrash and the hands-on approach that many bands had to take
to promote themselves. I recently got to talk to him about his film
and his days in Overkill.
I just finished watching "Born in the Basement" last week. When did
you come up with the idea to do this documentary?
I had thought about it for quite a while…but only very recently, I
guess it was late 2005…that we decided to give it the green light.
Over the years, I still kept getting mail from fans who have been
wondering how (and what) I’ve been doing. It’s actually pretty
amazing, kind of a hardcore following that I never knew existed. It
was then, I guess late ’05, that someone brought me over this Wrecked
Everything DVD that apparently had been out for a while, and it didn’t
hit me right away, but when it did, I realized that it wasn’t about a
weak effort, or uninteresting or anything, it was just that it was
just plain wrong to claim to tell the bands history, and talk about
only the things that best fit into the current personal business
agendas of the storytellers and NOT tell the actual story, just a
myopic, totally self-oriented overview. As with every group, there is
a line-up and a time period that the fans decide to be the classic
line-up, classic album, etc. Now, every artist from every genre has
the same situation, and being that their “golden era” might be that of
20 years past, nonetheless, the fans are the ones who make that
choice. As these post-heyday members continue on, they’ll always try
to tell themselves that people really do care about their new
material. Since this is proven otherwise by the all the reunions and
horrible sales numbers of their newer releases, whether they want to
come to terms with it or not, its just a simple fact in the
entertainment business, it’s the same with actors and the movies they
are acting in, same with athletes, etc.
So, there’s 7 years of history…the important stuff…the stuff from the
beginning that determines if there is a middle and an end that was
entirely ignored, it was obviously completely unfair to the fans, who
are my fans as well, to get something so shallow. So after my dismay
at that effort that still bears the logo of my work, and seeing what
“Get Thrashed” was going to cover on the subject, I basically just
filled in the blanks, combining all these things together, and there
you go…
What has been the response to your film so far?
I’m absolutely blown away by how well it’s been received… all the old
school crowd (especially the musicians) have been saying
“finally!…there it is…that’s how it was and that’s how we all felt”.
I’ve been told that the honesty and sincerity is what has made it so
unique…that’s exactly how I was hoping this would come across…someone
just said in another review that for the Old School, Born in The
Basement is “A declaration of how we all felt”…I thought that was
right on the money. Since we covered all the factual end in Get
Thrashed, I had to “open up the hood” on what we were all about…So, I
guess it’s cool because Get Thrashed sets up the Wikipedia-type stuff
so the “New School” crowd has somewhat of a stat sheet, and Born in
The Basement goes “under the hood” and tells the “why” and the “fell”
part. All the musicians from the day have commented on the opinions I
expressed, they’re really just me speaking for all of us, as we were
all cut from the same mold…
How long did the film take to make?
Start to finish, about a year…it could have really been completed in 6
months, but I am (and was) usually working on multiple projects.
Overkill worked several years before getting
signed to a label. What was the most shocking thing to you about being
on a record label?
I was shocked as to the amazing incompetence displayed by many of the
companies and individuals working in it. Even though, at that time,
Thrash Metal was just breaking out into somewhat of a “mass’
acceptance, some of the fundamental things in the business, Thrash or
not, things like travel arrangements, album artwork, merchandising…
were handled on a clueless kindergarten level. It took a while for
things to get straightened out, not that they ever were totally right.
Things in some aspects got a lot worse before they got better. It was
shocking at how many records you could sell, how many t-shirts you
could sell, how big your crowds were, and the tour manager hands you
15 bucks to live on. Even that 15 bucks was borrowed from the bank,
the bank that is your Record Company. Everyone made money but me. The
repeated term was “Such-and-such (meaning your album) hasn’t recouped
yet”. Well, when your that young and supposedly on your way to living
the rock-star dream, your response is “Wow dude, that sucks” in a
full-on Jeff Spiccoli voice…I don’t think I even knew what the words
“accounting” or “audit” meant, I just new that it was boring to me and
I wouldn’t be able to pay attention to it. Unfortunately, musicians
don’t pay attention to the business side of music until they’ve been
burned by it, and mistakes have been made.
In "Decline of Western Civilization 2: The Metal
Years" there was a part about bands having flier battles where one
band would replace another band's flier with their own. Did you run
into any of that in the New Jersey/New York area in your club days?
Yeah absolutely…there were some “high-visibility” areas like around
the clubs in NYC, like the utility poles, sometimes around record
stores and music stores too, but the toll-booths were a big one. You
could see how many bands were putting there stickers on there at any
given time because no one ever had the time to worry about perfectly
overlapping or covering the band before you; you had to do it as fast
as possible so you wouldn’t get caught….we would actually get it down
to a science…man that was a lot of fun, especially when you drove
through a different toll a few weeks later and no one covered you up
yet…it always me feel like I was the headlining act of the Garden
State Parkway.
Before getting signed, about how many hours a
week did you spend doing things towards promoting your band?
Way too many…Overkill was all I did. Seriously, I had spent way more
time in marketing and promotion than I did playing the drums…it took
me a while to realize this, but I had made the mistake of trying to
delegate out some of my responsibilities, but that failed…big time.
Hey, everyone has certain abilities, you know… Where a person might
not be cut out for some things, they may excel in others…like Blitz’s
lyrics were very imaginative, I thought. Gustafson learned to
silk-screen in High School and DD used to book the shows and a couple
other things, but I was consumed with the rest, and that was also
because I did not have a choice. Lori even had to do all the
mail-orders and promo packages while I was on the road, and she didn’t
really even know my parents that well…it was ridiculous when I think
about it now.
When I had to drive somewhere, I would really only listen to our
rehearsal tapes, a lot of which just had basic guitar parts or basic
jams…I used to assemble most of our songs while driving. It’s referred
to as the songs “arrangement”. I vividly remember who, what, where and
when everything was written, I think because it was kind of like
things on my “to-do” list. Bunch of cool parts, but no songs, yeah, I
did a lot of those song arrangements in the car, sometimes on the way
to or from practice…I guess that was my first real experience in
‘multi-tasking”, and it wasn’t by choice, but I had to get it done. |
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In "Born in the Basement" you
talked about your frustration with local cover bands of
the time getting the best slots at clubs. How did
Overkill manage to break in and get better slots? Was it
hard work over time or was their a few gigs that broke
you through?
It was a combination of both, but mostly just
slowly….and I mean slowly building up a fan base. I
tried to do as much advertising (legal advertising, not
“street” advertising) as we could afford. It was pretty
much a matter of peoples’ curiosity getting the best of
them when they saw an ad with us looking like five Alice
Cooper wannabes and the vampire cape thing and my
tagline on our ads was always “beware…” People would
never forget those ads, or the green logo, because they
had never seen anything like that before, it was SO much
different than everything else that was out there at the
time. And on the music front, our fans…the same people
who occupied the first ten rows of the early shows at
The Palladium…Priest, Maiden, Motorhead, The Blizzard of
Ozz…these were the guys that came to see us, and bang
with us, because we were doing covers by all those
bands. So, when you couple all these things together, we
were doing something that was really unique and just
couldn’t be ignored.
But the hardest part initially was getting booked at
all, because as I |
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explained in the movie, we were playing covers, but not
Zeppelin or Billy Squier or The Who…it was all from bands
that the club-owners never heard of. I think that one of
our biggest strengths was as an opening act. It really
pushed us (like any opening act) to perform that much
better. It wasn’t about pleasing the crowd, it was about
stomping the crap out of the headline act, and that ranged
from opening up for other cover bands to bands like The
Plasmatics, Anvil, Venom, WASP…shows like that would
always re-define our own energy level.
Do you still have all or part of the
cobblestone prop that went in front of your drum riser?
Yeah, I have some of that stuff that wasn’t being used
anymore, but I left most of it behind so they could use
it. Actually, I left pretty much everything back there
that I made, even the songs that were on the next record
after I left was all stuff we had been working on, and a
bunch of other ideas I had too…I don’t want to get into
listing things, all you got to do is look and listen to
the before and after, everything changed, very noticeably.
You mentioned learning some things
through watching Twisted Sister, the Dead boys and other
bands perform. Once Overkill started to get more popular
were there smaller local bands being influenced by what
you were doing?
Yes, but not right away…that didn’t really happen until
the first record and the L’Amour scene started opening up
to more aggressive and heavier stuff. But, we were really
a local representation and interpretation of what I was
scoring from the Import Section…that’s were it all came
from. I was turned on to it by the tape traders, and so I
turned on whoever DD and I had in the band at the time.
Aside from the core NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy
Metal) bands that had inspired us, like Priest, Maiden,
Saxon, Motorhead, etc. we had stepped it up to pulling
some influences from they “gray area” time period of metal
(as I like to call it). This means the bands from like
’81-’83 that were not traditional metal, but had
definitely stepped things up quite a bit as far as tempos,
aggressiveness and lyricism, bands like Anvil, Riot,
Accept, Mercyful Fate (musically) and even Manowar (listen
to “Fear His Name” from “Taking Over” and tell me there’s
no Manowar influence).
So really what happened is that we had such a devoted but
very specific group of fans, who were 99% the same guys I
would always see at the flea Market, around Rock n Roll
Heaven, and at the Import section of the few record stores
where I got my goods….that was my ‘connection”…our fans
were very hardcore because of our obscurity in the early
days, and I think other bands wanted that, so yeah, they
mimicked certain aspects of what we were doing to try to
get that devotional following…a loud crowd with fists in
the air was straight-up “success”.
It sounds like you spent several
years wearing the ghoul make-up, Blitz wearing the cape
and the other horror type props you used. When did you
drop all of that? Was it because most thrash bands were
going for the plain jeans and t-shirt look or did you have
a label or someone ask you to change your image?
That whole theatrical thing wasn’t just suddenly
“dropped”, but it did dissolve over a short period of
time…it was pretty much gone by I guess 1985 because it
wasn’t understood. When you have a band like Exodus who
was kicking the shit out of everyone (musically), the
“denim and leather” mindset of the headbangers at the time
really are the people who persuaded us and Slayer to take
it off…it was like “why are you wearing all that shit,
Exodus doesn’t have all that crap on”. And of course, that
was what was Motley Crue was being recognized for, so we
certainly didn’t want that comparison. So they were
correct in the sense that Exodus had the music as their
building block, we (Overkill) grew up in the New
Jersey/New York club scene era from 1978-1983 that was
totally dominated by Twisted Sister, so that was all that
we knew in a way, it was the standard…just like long hair
and spandex pants, you go with what you know. I think we
(us and Slayer) should have continued on and stuck to what
we believed in…that’s why we did it in the first place…for
a little longer, because to me anyway, the theatrical
aspect of the show just was just a visual extension of the
music. I enjoyed using that part of my brain to be
imaginative like that, and DD was really into it and
really good at it.
Which album do you prefer "Feel
the fire" or "Taking Over" and why?
“Feel The Fire”, without a doubt. A band’s first record is
usually their best, and that’s the case here. I think it’s
blatantly clear that “Taking Over” was being attracted by
that Metallica-magnet that consumed a lot of bands in that
time period, and Gustafson was no exception…which was too
bad, he had is own style early on, very Priest/ Sabbath/
Maiden-ish. That record was recorded at the start of the
period where everything became a comparative to the peers;
lets A/B ours to Master of Puppets or Slayer or they even
tried Pantera…You can fool the people for a little while,
but not forever. Eventually the copying or ripping off
even could put such a big bruise in your credibility that
you’ll never be able to get out of. How about doing what’s
best for you and your music, instead of just hoping you’ve
changed some things enough where no one will peg your
influences, or even who you are directly ripping-off?
In “Born in The Basement”, I freely talk about some things
that I ripped off, like Maiden’s letter “O”, and there’s
even more that didn’t made the final cut. There are two
things about that thinking; first, it clearly shows how
strong our influences were, and how those influences
directly dictated our directions going forward. Second,
the competitiveness. There’s a very fine line between what
fuels you to push something up to the next level, and just
complacently existing as a wannabe.
“Feel The Fire” was honest; there was very little
influence from the fans, media, or all the other things
that cause most bands to swing the pendulum in whatever
direction the fans want, or whatever band they have a
hard-on for. The production on “Feel The Fire” was pretty
rough, but at least you could hear the drums. On “Taking
Over” we tried to make the guitar so fat and layered it a
billion times that it devoured any bandwidth where things
like snare drums should reside. I’ll never forget having
this ‘argument’, as I kept explaining that the clarity of
an instrument should be a given…I mean you could hear the
drums very clearly on those Slayer and Metallica records,
right? And they’re still heavier than hell. I thought the
first Metal Church record was produced very well and that
we should have used that for guidance, if anything. They
took my advice, amongst other things, immediately after I
left…the drums were heard!
On “Feel The Fire”, I think that Carl (Canedy) really did
do a heck of a job, considering that everyone was still
figuring out how to record music this heavy and fast in
1985…and if nothing else, at least it didn’t sound like
everyone else, and when everyone else just kept gauging
themselves to Metallica, in songwriting and production,
when that became the standard in metal, which Priest had
up until then been the benchmark, all the groups
subsequently had their best sales in like 1988-1991-ish.
As long as you had the Metallica crunch-thump, the black
stretch pants and Reeboks, you did well in the game…the
sound was the priority, not the songwriting, and that’s
what caused the collapse of the “Thrash” bands. |
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What was the most difficult aspect
of making your film?
Well, it was kind of weird in the way that I approached
the “interview” parts, because I wanted to keep the
audience that I invited (which was really just a dozen
select old school people of that era) interested in the
whole story. Some were primarily Overkill fans and
wanted to know that history, but some couldn’t care less
either. I had to try to keep everything consolidated and
to the point; painting the timeline in which all this
happened, and relating it to the culture as a whole, and
my obsessive/compulsive behavior that drove me everyday.
Quite honestly, I was conscious about how much I
wanted…or needed…to talk about Overkill. There weren’t
Cliff Burton-type tragic deaths or anything really so
unique about how everything came to be, so all the
references are just that…references. I also reference
Twisted, The Dead Boys, on and on to make everything
relative, but my focus was just to tell my story of the
struggles I experienced, relative to the time period and
within the culture of the Northeast. It was Lori
(Director) that really kept everything in perfect
perspective; not too much, but not too little, make the
point and move on. There are quite a few really
interesting bites that didn’t end up in the final cut;
more honest, straight-up stuff, but Lori really kept the
whole story in mind, beginning, middle, end. There is
also a cut/fade that everyone’s been asking about what I
was saying (the part is towards the end where I think
the words I used was “making a mistake by turning my
back and walking away”)…this was actually a great piece
about money, where I got pretty detailed. It may not be
super-clear, but Lori thought we should fade out and
back like that so it would be understood that talking
about financial matters in any detail is in poor taste,
it’s finger-pointing that is supposed to be a private
concern, so it could be mentioned as an issue of
discussion but not elaborated on, and I totally agree. I
mean you’re watching this whole story and at the very
end it turns into this propaganda thing about money?…I
don’t think so…Fans are interested in us as musicians,
not as businessmen. That “Wrecking” DVD was a great
example of what not to do, so we didn’t. In another
recent project that David Ellefson and I just did, we
had some Grammy- award winners with us in it who
reaffirmed it…money has single-handedly ruined the art
of music…I wasn’t going to let the subject of money ruin
our film as well, that’s not what this was about.
Another thing that we considered, since I am a writer,
and as a songwriter I was noted for writing Thrash
music, but no way did I want another label to box me in
as a filmmaker, that’s why I didn’t use the words
“Overkill” or even “Thrash” in the title of the project,
those labels could help in some aspects, but for the
long haul they could hurt even more…if Overkill was a
really popular band, I guess using the name might help
on an awareness level, but again the friggin’ label…I
write what I feel, regardless of whatever “genre” the
public decides to tag my work with, same with playing
music.
So, back to your original question. It was a challenge
to keep it interesting and understandable for everyone
to understand everything I was talking about while
shooting it live and trying not to shoot re-takes. The
other thing that was hard (but fun) was rounding up all
our materials, hooking up with some people that helped
that I hadn’t talked to in years…I actually came across
some more unbelievable audio and video material that I
could have used in it, but we’ll use it in an upcoming
project….and we’ll have to put more of the cut about
that money part on YouTube so everyone sees where it was
going.What were you doing in
the 1990's?
My main focus was to raise…correctly raise…a family, by
my standards and values, which meant staying off the
road, and re-assessing some real-world issues like
financial portfolios and so on…I really needed a break
from the music business. Music is, and always will be
the absolute best thing in someone’s life and also the
absolute worst. Love to play, hate the business, but one
needs the other. It’s an act that can never be perfectly
balanced. After Bomb Squad (my band post-Overkill) broke
up in ’93, I continued as a full-time percussion
instructor, both public and private, did a little stint
teaching at Rutgers University in NJ, did audio
engineering in and out of the television business, and
generally I just tried to have fun with music again. I
did some hired/studio work (not using my professional
name) in all kinds of music from electric jazz-fusion to
rhythm and blues to everything else in-between. It was
actually a lot of fun to play drums again, to enjoy my
instrument for all the reasons I am a drummer. I don’t
care what anyone says, there is no possible way that
your creativity will ever expand if you only listen to
one type of music and nothing else. Period. Even if you
play Thrash or whatever…the narrow-minded thinking of
some people amaze me. And some people admit to this too!
“No, no…all I listen to is Thrash”…and they call
themselves musicians. Those are the guys who will asking
you if you want more coffee at Denny’s when everyone
else is retired.
How did you think things have
changed for up and coming bands from the early 1980's
compared to what it's like for bands today?
It is drastically different today, some for better, some
for worse. Fortunately, the traditional record industry
as I know it is self-destructing. I for one, am happy to
finally see this. As you saw in the film, when the
industry became involved, things changed. I did
everything by myself because I didn’t have a choice, but
that wasn’t how I wanted it either, I was always
striving for that plateau of being a Recording Artist
that was signed to a Record Label, and when I got there,
things never really got better, they just got different.
Here’s a quick example: did you ever notice how many big
variations of the color green my Overkill logo has been
through over the years? This wasn’t rocket science, I
picked a simple fluorescent lime-green, I even used to
give the record company people actual color samples,
saying “here, do this…not darker, not lighter, just do
this”…and see what happened? To them, this was
apparently no big deal, but to me it was my entire
world. It got screwed up all the time, everywhere. But
on the flipside, I could never have sold more than a few
thousand “Power in Black” without a record company
behind me at some point. (There was no such thing as The
Internet). So, We able to sell a lot more of the wrong
colored albums!
The thing that hasn’t changed is the fact that every
successful band always has one guy (usually one guy) who
is the pragmatic guy with the initiative to keep forging
ahead onward, and completely ignore the odds. When I was
out there fighting the world for the cause of Metal and
getting my band on the map, in retrospect I was pretty
blessed to have instinctively acquired enough business
skills that had to be implemented along with the
creative element to ultimately reach my goals…Today If a
particular individual within a band can also merge these
two elements together, the rest is so much easier…As I
said before there was no internet…and there was no CD
burning, digital cameras, home recording, on and on…the
resources that I had available sucked compared to today,
no comparison. With all these great tools, a band can
obviously be known around the world literally overnight!
Get a Pro-Tools recording system or Cakewalk or one of
the countless other software recording packages, record
something that may not be great, but it just has to be
on par with the other guys who are also recording in
their bedrooms, shoot it out to the ‘net via MySpace,
YouTube, etc. and bingo! You’re in the game. Look at
what Radiohead did?…brilliant. But of course they had
prior success via traditional recording industry
protocol, and of course have the music to back up their
marketing moves. So the playing field is pretty even
now, but if your music can’t carry you, all the MySpace
friends in the world won’t get you past playing Bar
mitzvah’s.
What plans do you have for the
future?
Well being that you see that I have a real-world
assessment of the business of music, I can’t say too
much here, but David (Ellefson) and I just put together
something totally unrivaled about this subject and then
some…I’m not saying anything more right now due to the
“shit-happens” factor, but, it is a completed project we
did, only the delivery end of it is the process that
we’re just now working on. I’m also sorting through my
own scripts for an actual feature-length movie that I
can’t wait to start filming….wait ‘til you see this…
I’ve also got projects with Kick Ass Magazine and The
Old Bridge Militia on the boards…just deciding on which
comes first tends to be my difficulty sometimes.
Anything else you want to say?
Yep…I would like to say ‘thanks” to everyone who has
supported this film, the contributors, the fans, the
reviewers, and I would like to thank you Mark for giving
me this opportunity to share some thoughts with your
readers. Keep up the great work.
www.ratskates.com
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www.myspace.com/ratskates
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