Interview #3: Stickman, Volume II

From nearly the beginning of my involvement with hardcore, I can always remember hearing wild stories about Stickman. They usually involved some insane fight story that no one would believe if it was told about anyone else, but with him, it seemed as though it might be plausible. After the first Stickman interview was published, a surprising number of people requested that I do a follow-up interview with him. "Did you ever ask him about Coal Chamber?" "What's the deal with him hating Pantera?" "I heard he disarmed a man with an Uzi..." There was a list of stories that I'd been secretly wanting to hear about in detail anyway: some that he'd told me about already, but most that I'd never gotten around to asking since we became friends. All of the requests that I was getting for a follow-up interview gave me the perfect excuse to do just that. The result is a solid mix of stories that I've been waiting years to hear. A genuine thank you is again due, of course, to Stickman for spending his time talking with me about the stories that follow. Enjoy.

Jennifer: Can you elaborate on the whole Pantera beef?

Stickman: On the Pantera beef?

J: Yeah, like the whole story with Pantera that you told me.

S: Oh, the one where I was in Europe? Or the one where we made them stop playing?

J: Well, you can tell me both.

S: Well, the first one happened with my brother. We were in Convention Hall, we were all chilling. It was me, Jay Fury, a couple cronies. Not a big squad at all—maybe like four or five of us, I don’t really remember, I just know it was me and Jay, mainly. I was chilling, talking to somebody, and all of a sudden, I see my brother being dragged from a distance across the floor, and just—blood spewing out of his eyes, and I’m like, “Holy shit!” I said, “Yo, what the fuck happened?” And this dude called Crazy Mike was like, “Yo! I know who hit your brother! I know who hit your brother!” I said, “Well show me that mother fucker, yo!” So me, Jay, and whoever we were with, we go into the Convention Hall—now we were in, like, a foyer-type place—we step into the “pit.” Machinehead had already played, I forget who else, but Pantera was the headliner. Now, the place is packed. Pantera is playing. This mother fucker [Phil Anselmo], not even before this happens, was talking about how tough he was from the stage. How he kicks ass or something—he was definitely referencing something of that nature before I saw my brother. So, we run in there, people are moshing, we came in there… The place just stopped. Most of the place knew who we were. We came into the pit, and my man was looking around and was like—looking at everybody, and all of a sudden, my man said, “Yo, that’s the mother fucker right there!” And that was it. Jay Fury popped up on the side of him like a freaking devil on his shoulder, and yo, we beat this mother fucker from the middle of the pit to the back of the convention hall with so much momentum, just—oh my god, it’s indescribable. A pack of lions on a fucking hyena by itself. Ran this dude into a wall, Jay dislocated his shoulder, and we just started fucking destroying this dude. The lights come on inside, and it just lit up. We’re just all throwing haymakers and kicks and we’ve got the dude up against the wall, and then we hear Phil Anselmo on the stage like, “Yo, chill out, big guy!” It was fucking comical. Then, the dude kinda squirmed out from underneath the ruckus, because when you’re getting smashed by a couple dudes, they end up hitting each other mostly. He kind of got away, so we chased him out into the hallway. It kind of got squashed for a second. Then something happened, I don’t know what happened, but the dude was in front of bouncers, I was around bouncers—they didn’t have me, they kind of had him blocked. He said something, and I went at him. BOOM! I hit him, he hit me, and then a bouncer grabbed me from behind, the dude’s coming at me like crazy, like to smash me. I just throw the bouncer into him. WOOSH! I just flipped the dude around, and another melee broke out, to the point where nobody could get nobody. We go outside, the dude runs, I don’t know what happened, he ran into a door that wouldn’t open. I took a big ass steel garbage can filled to the top and smashed the dude with it. And the dude just crumbles, tries to get himself back together, and takes off running. So now, it kind of calms down. I wasn’t chasing the dude anymore. The cops show up, we’re all hanging out, somehow this one dude and his buddy were part of his crew. But the one dude, that we were hitting? That wasn’t the dude that hit my brother! So we’re all outside—my brother comes back to his senses, he’s on his feet, his eye is totally shut, he had to get 28 stitches in his face, and, uh… You know, all these cops around, Asbury Park cops. I knew some of them from the gym, so one of them kind of grabbed me on the side and I said, “Yo, don’t get involved, we’re just talking.” And then my brother realizes that the dude who hit him is standing right there. My brother says, “Yo, you fucking hit me, mother fucker?” BOOM! He hits this dude right in front of the cops. The dude just crumbles. And the freaking cops start beating on my brother, so I go to help my brother, and the cop that I was talking to said, “Nah, it’s not even worth it, man. Just go.” I didn’t want to see my brother to get beat down again, the second time of the night. He got arrested. So that was that Pantera story. It was a pretty good one. It was very violent.

J: When was that?

S: Uhh… that had to be like ’97ish? Early ’98, maybe? Because not too long after that is when we went and played the Dynamo Fest with Pantera, and we were all chilling. We already had beef, we already words with Coal Chamber and the management, and Jay Fury went and punked Dez from Coal Chamber hard as hell, we had it on videotape and everything, man. This dude, him and a couple other dudes from like Sevendust and whatever bands got beaten up that night at the Stone Pony, went to a magazine and said that they got beaten up by a racist band called Fury of Five. Which was not even true—this was real, I read this in a magazine, it was shown to me, you know? We were pissed off. Jay’s Jewish, Chico’s Filipino, I talk like a black dude… [J laughs] But they were saying, because the N word was being dropped, because Sevendust’s singer is black, so they heard the word the way we would say “nigga” with an “a,” when we were talking to each other, and they just used that and said we were a racist band because of that word, or something to that effect. So we were there, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere—well, when we first got to Dynamo Fest, it was funny, because we came out there with a squad who we flew over with, plus we had some Euro heads over there who we chilled with, so, we were walking around the compounds of the place, because it had three stages: there was a tent, one was inside a hockey arena, and one was a main stage. We come around this corner, going to where the death metal tent was, and the first people we see are Sevendust and Stuck Mojo. And they looked at us, and we looked at them, and they were like, yo, slowly getting back into their buses. [J and S laugh] It was funny as hell. But, you know, the rest of the time, we just became tyrants. Because now, we feel like—we felt like we were gonna beat somebody up. The next day, we see that dude from Coal Chamber, and Jay corners this dude up against a freaking van, or like a—some kind of box truck, I don’t know what it was—and Jay Fury’s up in his fucking face going, “Yo, you think we’re fucking racist? You see this fucking Jewish star on my chest, mother fucker? I’ll fuck you up!” And Jay is poking him in the face with his finger. The dude was like, “Yo, I ain’t got no problem with you guys, blah blah blah…” I just start laughing. Sometimes, when people are real weak and cowardly—to me, it’s funny, so I have to walk away. I can’t even see a dude like that get maimed sometimes, you know what I mean? So I walk away, and the manager is like, “Yo, can I talk to you, man?” I’m like, “About, what mother fucker?” He’s like, “I would like to squash this beef between you and Coal Chamber, maybe you guys could do, like, a tour together?” [J laughs] I’m not gonna do a tour with those homos! Yo, fuck you, man! We were just fucking assholes, plain and simple. Instead of using that to our advantage to get known, I'm like, “Fuck you!” Alright, so the next day was a Sunday. Friday, we saw Stuck Mojo and Sevendust; Saturday, we saw Dezi from Coal Chamber; and Sunday—and don’t get me wrong, I am a Pantera fan—I do listen to Pantera on the regular at the gym. But it was just him [Phil] as a person. I couldn’t stand him from that night when he was talking all that tough guy shit onstage, and then when a fight broke out, he was like, “Yo! Relax!” So I had a little attitude towards him. So he comes rolling out, I swear to god, like he was the fucking President of Heavy Metal or something. They lined up a walkway so he could walk from his bus to the stage with lines of people. And I was like, is this guy for real? No way. So he’s walking by, and I started calling him names and shit. I said, “Yo Phil, you’s a faggot bitch! I’ll knock you out, mother fucker! What’s up, bitch?” He wouldn’t even look! His bodyguard—yo. His bodyguard, he had a female bodyguard that was so cock diesel, she coulda probably killed me. [J laughs] Yo, she was gigantic! I was more scared of her than of him. I’m like yo, this bitch could really get me! But he didn’t even look though, he just kept it moving and went and played the Dynamo and that was the end of that.

J: What happened originally with Coal Chamber? I heard a story that something happened in Jersey with them originally where they insulted someone’s girlfriend or something?

S: Well, this is what happened—I can tell you part of it, I wasn’t there, and that’s the same thing I said in the book, so I can say it to you right now… I wasn’t there. At that time of my life, I used to get real bad anxiety and panic attacks, and I would have to go home, like I couldn’t be around. I always thought I would die or have a heart attack. It was very strange. And I think that’s only because when I started Fury of Five—before Fury of Five, we used to party. Not crazy, but I used to do a little drugs and drinking. And when we started Fury of Five, I went totally sober: I stopped smoking, stopped drinking, everything. And I guess just that, and me as a person being always very stressed out and high strung, I started experiencing panic attacks. I didn’t even know what the hell they were, but they really bugged me out. So I had left, but from what I know, there’s this dude from a band that I cannot stand because they talked shit on us after Fury of Five broke up, but I’m not gonna say the band’s name or who the person is, but the dude’s girl, who was there… I don’t want to say anything like she’s a slut or anything, I don’t personally know her, I don’t want to blab about the girl, but anyway… She was conversing with Dez from Coal Chamber. The drummer had said something to him a couple of times, and the dude was like, just kind of herbing him off, like, “Fuck you, I’m gonna hit this shit.” So, at that time, we were like… We were like the superheroes of hardcore. [S laughs] People would come to us. So, I guess he went to Jay Fury and Chico and a couple of other people, and they surrounded this dude. They’re like, “Yo, that’s my man’s girl, you need to step off.” And the mother fucker got an attitude! We did a skit on this, for the CD, and they wouldn’t let us put it on--the label wouldn’t let us put it on because, at the time, one of the bands was on the same label as us. But the dude said something like, “I’m crazy! You see all these piercings in my face?! I’m fucking crazy!” Jay Fury’s like, “Oh yeah, mother fucker?” BLAOW! He just fucking crashes the dude, and it started a whole melee. It got broken up, and then some clowns from Sevendust want to be fucking superheroes [J laughs] and try to come to his rescue, and they got stomped out. It turned into a whole fiasco between us and them. To the point where we weren’t even around and those bands would get police escorts to their shows. State troopers used to stay, because they were scared to death to play. So it was serious. People would call us up: “Yo, you guys are not even in the country, and they’re getting police escorts to play their show.”

J: That’s funny.

S: Fucking retards, man!

J: Have you seen them or run into them at all since you saw them in Europe?

S: Nah, but my man Mahmood the other day said, “Sevendust is playing the Croc, man! We should get on the bill!” [S and J laugh]

J: I was told another story that you once disarmed a man who had an Uzi, or some crazy gun?

S: I disarmed a dude with a gun. It was at the Fast Lane. I was a bouncer, but I wasn’t bouncing that night. A fight broke out. I knew the person, so it wasn’t like—it wasn’t a real big deal. I didn’t think the dude was gonna kill nobody, so don’t think it was like, some stranger. But the dude had a gun, and it was a real gun, and he pulled the gun out. I just rushed him and took the gun. There was a big melee right before this happened, so the cops were en route when the gun was pulled. So, at the time the gun was pulled, I ran up and took the gun and as I grabbed the gun in my hand, the cops pulled up. So the cops see me with the gun and the cops grab me. I’m like, “Yo! It’s not my gun! I just grabbed it out of somebody’s hand!” I got arrested! But they let me go, because the owner came down and said, “He’s a bouncer.” I got arrested--thrown into the car, taken down to the station, but I was like, “You’ve gotta be kidding me!” I said, “I bounce here! I was just breaking up a fight!” But they let me go. It was kind of nerve wracking, because in New Jersey, they’re serious about that shit. It’s 3-5 just for possession of a gun. It’s crazy if it’s not licensed to you. But like I said, there was no “threat,” it wasn’t a stranger, I knew who the person was. The gun could have went off, but I didn’t feel like the dude was gonna shoot me. He pulled it out like he was gonna shoot something, but I just kind of reacted. The dude that he was beefing with was a dude I also knew. I was living with that dude. It was a whole cracked out story. But yeah, it’s a true story.

J: I heard that a bunch of mini baseball bats were snuck into a show in a guitar case? At the Trocadero, maybe?

S: Nah. We used to roll around with an Equalizer bag, which was a guitar bag, it was a soft case guitar bag that we’d have bats in, swords, weapons, and we’d bring it everywhere we went.

J: Just in case?

S: Well, yeah! Actually, what you're talking about is the Trocadero, there was a show that we played with SOD, and it was filled with mad fucking Nazis that day. And you know, I’m not gonna say no names, because most of those dudes I don’t even like anymore, so I won’t even elaborate on who they are, but one of the loudmouth mother fuckers that we used to roll with went and started a big ruckus with a couple white power dudes who were leaving the club. And the one dude was gigantic, I ain’t gonna front. He was way taller than me. He had Hitler on his chest! It was like Hitler standing in front of you, that’s how big this dude was. So this dude, like they always do, starts trouble, which—I don’t care, they’re white power dudes, they deserve to get beat up anyway. So, he starts something with this white power dude, but he isn’t the one to start the fight. It’s me, Big Kyle, I don’t know if Big Mark was there, you know, Jay Fury, the regular crew. So we go and confront these dudes, and Kyle is trying to unzip the Equalizer bag to get a weapon out, and he can’t do it. He gets so frustrated that he just crushes the dude with the whole bag! BOOM! [J laughs] So now, we start fucking these dudes up, I square up with the one dude by himself, I’m hitting this dude up against the fence. It’s like in a cartoon, the dude is bouncing off the fence right back into me: Boom! Boom! Boom! I’m just lighting the dude up. All of a sudden, the big skinhead dude pulls out a gun and starts shooting in the air. I didn’t know that was shooting in the air! I just heard gunshots. I start running into the parking lot like a chicken, like I’m dodging bullets! Oh, shit! He’s just shooting in the air, he backs up everybody off him, then one of their boys—there were three of them, there were two skinheads and one skinhead chick. They were all standing there talking shit, and no one wanted to go up against them anymore, cuz now we know he’s got a real gun. My man Asmel takes a bottle from the street and—they had to be at least 50 yards away, a good distance—he just throws this bottle in the air… Yo, I swear to god, this shit smashed the girl right in the face. BOOM! I was like, “Oh shit! Oh shit!” It was great. It smashed her hard. And we just laughed and just walked back down the street. It was great. Good times out there in Philly.

J: Yeah?

S: Even though I’m not really a big Philly fan, but…

J: No? You don’t like Philly?

S: Ehh… Philly’s weird, man. Honestly, you just can’t trust nobody out there. They’re dirty out there. They’ll switch up on you. I just feel like everybody’s scheming on you out there. It’s just weird. In the 80s, I got jumped out there, by the Wolf Pack or something, and… I just never really liked Philly, really.

J: Do you have any other white power stories you want to talk about?

S: Any white power? Yeah, we did one outside of Vintage Vinyl that was a really good one. It started inside with the same person that started the one in Philly, he goes up to the dude and tells him to take the rebel flag off his jacket. Or take his jacket off. And the skinhead is like, “Fuck you, I ain’t taking shit off.” So, the dude starts running his mouth—the white power dude. I’m like oh shit, this dude’s serious! Because sometimes, I’d just sit and watch the pitbulls do their work, you know what I mean? I didn’t have to. I’m watching, and this dude is standing his ground, so they go outside—now, there’s a Chinese buffet, right outside Vintage Vinyl in Woodbridge, and the dude comes out—some of us went outside and the one dude was kind of pushing him out the door. When they came out the door, they just started lighting mother fuckers up. That one dude wouldn’t go down real easy, so I just came running up on the dude. I swear to god, I hit this dude, BLAOW! This dude made a sound like I never heard before. He was like, [S makes otherworldly painful sound]! And dropped to the ground. I thought I had killed the dude. The people in the Chinese buffet window are looking out like, “Wow, a bunch of savages!” while they’re trying to eat their Chinese food. It was great, man. He just got laid out. Another fight--another white power dude in the Stone Pony, a white power dude who had beef with a dude we knew. I kept on telling this dude, I said, “When that dude comes back around, stop that mother fucker and start fighting with him!” And the dude--I guess he was kind of a little nervous, I don’t know, cuz white power dudes--I don’t want to say they’re tough, but they’ll fight, you know what I mean? So they stopped the dude, right? And I come up, and the dude doesn’t even know I’m standing behind him, and people are talking shit to him, and he’s like, “Blah blah blah.” Yo, I just throw this mother fucker in a full nelson, boom, and I run him right towards my crew, and they start lighting this dude up. Blaow, blaow, blaow, blaow! Somehow, he survived that attack. He runs outside, he tries to jump a fence and he gets snatched down, we start beating him again, gets back up and he runs. I run after him, I jump off this table and dive smash him. We beat the dude crazy! He just kind of disappeared. He never got knocked out, he just kept running, like a chicken with his head cut off. That was another one that we did at the Stone Pony. That was a good one. There was another one too, that was inside the bar. There were a lot of white power fights, man! We were fighting white power for a long time. Actually, me and my friend were talking about that fight not too long ago, because... it’s real funny at the end, because this big fight breaks out in the bar area, which is fenced in. Now, it’s everybody fighting, and somebody said it was a great fight because I was smiling the whole time, kind of like laughing. So we’re fighting, my friend Stone Pony Steve is fucking people up, everybody--it’s just crazy. There’s a dude in a wheelchair, right? No lie, this is not--I couldn’t make this up if I wanted to. This dude in a wheelchair--I’m not gonna say the dude that he hit, because he was part of another crew, and I don’t want to make it sound like they’re pussies. [S laughs] But, so this dude in a wheelchair stands up and crashes my man with a bottle. BLAOW! And lays him out. And says, “That’s enough! That’s enough!” And then he sits back down in his wheelchair. I was so mad at this dude that I felt like smashing him, just for the principle of the matter! [J laughs] It was funny, my man got laid out. Smashed hard. The dude smashed him hard with a bottle, laid him out, and the dude was supposedly a tough dude.

J: Do you have any other stories you want to share?

S: I don’t know, you gotta pick my brain, because they come and go sporadically.

J: Ok. Were there any that happened on tour?

S: On tour? Oh yeah, a lot of shit happened on tour. [S laughs] The first time I went on tour was--this one’s probably in the book, but everyone knows this one, or part of it. And actually, I saw the drummer of the band not too long ago. I apologized to him, you know, because I was a savage back then. Back then, I was fucking angry. And the first time I went to Europe, it was kind of pathetic. It wasn’t really a responsive crowd, I wasn’t having a good time. You know, I come from the East Coast, where fucking dudes go nuts, and we go to Europe and we’re playing with Integrity, a PC crowd that only was there to see Integrity. We’re using this band Deviate’s equipment and whatever, but what happened was... We were loudmouths. Like, we were just rowdy and didn’t give a fuck who you were or whatever. We just did us. So, something happened on the bus between Chico and the singer of Deviate--something about somebody was gonna smash Chico with an ashtray, and it kind of got squashed. But nobody ever wanted me to find these things out. “Don’t let Stickman find out, he’ll flip out!” [J laughs] So that happened, and then the dude went back to sleep, the singer, and they started talking on the bus. Now, from what I understood was that the band Deviate was trying to take their singer’s side, like he was fucking tough, “Yo, he from the streets of Brussels!” [J laughs] “He could probably take your singer in a fight!” And Jay and Chico are looking at these dudes like, “Are you guys serious?” So the whole thing was for me not to find out that that was said. So, this is how it all starts. We’re playing this club in Germany, and I’m fucking angry, nothing unusual. I don’t like none of these bands. I’m cool with Integrity, but they’re just not my scene. Me and Chico are playing foosball in this back room. I say to Chico, “Imagine if that pussy would’ve hit you with a freaking ash tray. That whole bus woulda got fucked up!” And then we start laughing--ha ha ha. He goes, “Yeah? You think that’s funny? They think the singer from Deviate could take you in a fight!” I was like, “....What?” [S and J laugh] He says, “Oh, shit.” That’s the first thing he said: “Oh, shit.” I said, “What do you mean, bro? What do you mean, he could take me in a fight?” He goes, “Aw, dude, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that.” I said, “Yo, it’s too late now, mother fucker!” He goes, “Aw, come on, man. You weren’t supposed to--come on, bro...” I said, “Nah, fuck that.” I go on the stage, right? Chris Rage is standing there, Mike Terry’s standing right here, and Jay’s standing right here. Deviate’s playing. I say to Jay Fury in his ear, “Yo, Jay--” I point right at the mother fucker while he’s singing, I say, “Yo, they think that mother fucker can take me in a fight.” Jay just looked at me with big eyes, like “oooooh, shit.” So at the end of the night, we play our set, Integrity plays their set, we got this big hallway area. The bass player from Deviate’s standing up, the drummer, and.... the guitar player are sitting down. I start--when I get angry, I start pacing. I get mad, I start talking shit. Integrity’s over standing on this side of them, these guys are standing here, my band is over there selling merch. I start looking at everybody. I’m like, “You mother fuckers think you can take me in a fight? You think you guys are tough? You think you’re tough?” I start pointing at them, I’m like, “You think you’re tough, mother fucker? You think you’re tough?” And the dude that was standing up, I said, “You think you’re tough?” He didn’t say nothing--BOW! I just punch--I just crushed him, I cut his eye, dude melted while I started going after the rest of the band. “I’ll fuck all you mother fuckers up!” Like a psycho. I kick the drummer. The one guitar player takes off, I take a bar stool, I throw it across the hallway of the club, I missed him--he’s over on the other side of the bar, running into another room or something, that--I don’t even know where the drummer went. Then, I started going after everybody, my own band. Not physically, just threatening. Manager, Integrity--like a psycho, foaming at the mouth. I said, “I’ll fuck all you mother fuckers up! None of you mother fuckers scare me! I’ll kill all you mother fuckers! Who wants some? Who wants it?” And then all of a sudden, as I turn, here comes the singer from Deviate down the hallway. I say, “And you mother fucker, you! You think you can take me?” I open hand smack this mother fucker. BOW! Immediately just drops. He just fell. Boom, he was out. Done. It was over. [S laughs]

J: What did everyone else do?

S: Now the band’s gonna leave, we were playing with their equipment, so now I have to come up with a quick way to regain their trust so they stay on the tour! [J laughs] Now I have to beg them, “I’m sorry, man. I got a little cranky.” But I got them to stay, they finished the tour. Later on, a couple days later, the singer from the band comes up to me, and he’s like, in his freaking Brussels voice, “You know the worst thing about this?” I’m like, “About what?” “There’s nothing I could do to you.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? There’s a lot of things you can do! Get me while I’m not looking, get me when I’m sleeping, man! What are you, stupid?!” I’m trying to give him ideas how to get me. That’s how dumb he was. [J and S laugh] Then, the next tour, at the same club--a different band, same thing. But not the whole band, just a member of the band. What happened was, we were on tour with Pro-Pain, we were getting a nice response. Better tour for us, definitely. But the opening band and the band after us thought we were being favored by the sound guy. So, we get through like... A quarter of the tour maybe, not even halfway, and somebody said something to Gary and Rob. They said something to the sound man, and it started a big fight. The sound man’s like, “Listen, these guys know how to play, they’re tight, they got a clean sound, they don’t use effects... I’m not doing anything.” Trying to justify himself. They weren’t trying to hear him. He got pissed off and left. The tour manager--I mean, the sound guy left. So now, the next day, we’re at the same club where I had the little issue with my--people from Deviate. [S laughs] I call them “people” now that I’ve apologized. [J laughs] The band Pissing Razors, one of the dudes is a sound guy. Gary from Pro-Pain comes up to me, he says, “Listen, the drummer from Pissing Razors is gonna be doing the sound.” I said, “He ain’t gonna be doing my sound!” He was like, “No?” I said, “Nah, we’re gonna go with the house guy. Those dudes are gonna favor their own band. I don’t even like those mother fuckers.” Gary’s like, “Alright. No problem.” So they do sound check for Pro-Pain, cuz they headlined, so everything’s set for them. We do our own sound check--No, I don’t think we even sound checked. I think he set up the whole sound for everything, and then when we went on, we’d get the house guy to do the adjustments to whatever. So, Pissing Razors plays, everything sounds good. We get onstage, it turns into a hot mess. We get on, monitor’s not working. We get into the middle of the first song, mic’s going in and out. I’m like, what the fuck, man? I look out across the stage, and the dude’s behind the fucking sound board. Yo, I fucking--right in the middle of a fucking song, I jump off the stage, run through the crowd, which parted like the Red Sea, and just start fucking flurrying on this dude. Blaow! Blaow! Blaow! Blaow! Just started throwing haymakers at the dude. I broke my thumb and everything. It was nuts. And we still finished the tour with the band, they broke it up, and it was pretty cool after that. So... I was nuts. I went right back onstage and played, and everything was fine once he was removed from behind the sound board. It was fucking... Very strange.

J: Yeah, that is weird.

S: Definitely. They hated us because we had a stage show, we had a little--I don’t want to say we had a big following, but we already had played out there. From the year before. We were on our second record. And these dudes--there are a lot of haters out there in music, I can tell you that. But, it is what it is.

J: Did you ever play on the West Coast?

S: Nah, I’ve never been to California with a band, never. I belong over there, with the gangs and shit. [J and S laugh] Nah. Never been over there. The furthest we ever got was like... The middle of the United States, and then, when we were on tour with VOD and Earth Crisis, our van broke down and we couldn’t finish the tour. It was really sad, too, because we were right in Indiana, and our record label, Victory Records, was right up the fucking road, and they wouldn’t do nothing for us.

J: Wow.

S: We called them, everything. They wouldn’t do anything. They’re jerkoffs. Fuck Victory Records. They owe me money I think, actually. I might have to try to get that. [J and S laugh] Get my bike fixed! I still heard they do the same shit, like still fucking with bands. Actually, I just heard, with All Out War, they just gave them some garbage ass CD to get out of a contract! I’m like, what?! I wish that mother fucker would try to say something to me about coming back with a record. I’ll fucking beat that dude’s head in. Tony Victory. Fuck that dude. Fuck Victory Records and all their emo ass bands. Fuck 'em all.

J: What was the Earth Crisis tour like? Was that a good tour?

S: Oh, yeah, it was great. Well, it’s kind of weird. Now--back then, it was cool, I used to chill with those guys. Not like, eating freaking vegetables and shit, [J laughs] but... Just like, converse with them. But when I just saw those mother fuckers at the Tsunami Fest, they didn’t say a fucking word to me!

J: Really?

S: It was weird. Yeah! Very strange. Actually, Karl looked right at me! I was like, alright. They don’t want to acknowledge me? I won’t acknowledge you either. Who the fuck are you? Those vegans and shit. Get the fuck out of here. Fucking stupid. Everybody--all the old school dudes, all the old school dudes are fucking wacked out. I think they’re really high on themselves, like they really accomplished something in life, playing hardcore. It makes no sense to me, but... I’m just me, I just hang out. I’m probably the only one, I didn’t really see any other dudes from bands really walking around that were like, “known” from back in the day. I didn’t see anybody chilling with the people, even selling their own merch.

J: They’re off in their dressing rooms?

S: Yeah! What the hell is that all about, man? I know one band wanted, like, mirrors and shit so they could look at themselves while they were onstage. Had to go out and buy mirrors for these freaking dudes to make sure their Nikes are looking fresh before they went onstage. I don’t make that shit up. I don’t want to put the band on blast, though. [S laughs] I could! But I won’t.

J: I think you told me before that when you guys were on that tour, you played Akron, didn’t you? [Editor’s Note: I’m originally from Akron. That’s the reason this was brought up.]

S: Akron, Ohio. Yeah, yeah. We played a club that was underwater, I think.

J: Yeah, I think I know the place you’re talking about. Maybe Ron’s Crossroads or something like that.

S: Yeah, it was right on the river.

J: Yeah. Do you remember that show?

S: Yeah, it was a pretty good show. I don’t think it was really overly packed, but we had a good response. I was with Earth Crisis and VOD. Yeah, yeah. That was alright over there.

J: I wish I could’ve been there.

S: Were you old enough? [S laughs]

J: No, what year was that?

S: I don’t know, it had to be like ‘98?

J: Yeah, I was probably like 11 or 12.

S: Really?! Wow, you were a youngin! [S and J laugh] How old’s Paul Bearer?

J: Paul Bearer is 42.

S: Wow, really? Me too!

J: Did you think he was older?

S: He looks older! [S laughs] I’m just saying. Not everyone can be as cock diesel and sexy as me, yo. [J laughs]

J: I think people would agree with you.

S: Yeah, definitely. You’d like to see me in my boxers, I think. [Editor’s Note: Stickman loves the story of Paul Bearer giving his Burning Time interview in his boxer briefs, and often references this.] Actually, I have a Paul Bearer story for you. [J: Tell me!] I’m gonna tell you because you’re big on that, and I’ll give you an exclusive on this one. When I was a kid, I used to go to L’Amour all the time. Like I’ve told you, before I got into hardcore, I crossed over from being metal. So when I crossed over, I crossed over punk style. So, I had a mohawk. And... This is gonna sound kind of odd, [S laughs] and, coming from me--and believe me, I’ve never been racist, I grew up around black people my whole life. I think I was just doing it because... Just for the shock value. But... I had a hanging swastika in my ear. So I’m at L’Amour, right? I’ve gotta be about 17 years old. At this time in my life, they called me Jersey. I might have even been 16, I know I was young. They used to call me Jersey, because I used to go to CBGB’s, and that’s how they used to know me. You know what I mean? “Where you from?” “Oh, Jersey.” So they started calling me Jersey. Thank god there were some people there that knew me from CBGB’s. They’re the only reason why I didn’t get stomped out. Earlier in the night, I think it was Ludichrist--Sheer Terror, Ludichrist, and a metal band. I don’t remember the metal band that was playing. It might have been Mercyful Fate or King Diamond or something. I was hanging out, and all of a sudden, somebody pokes me in that side of my ear, where I had the hanging swastika. So I turn around, it’s three skinheads. One of them was Paul Bearer. But I didn’t know that at the time. I just knew he was from the band, I had just seen him onstage. So at the end of the night, I guess they had waited for me or whatever. I come out of the front door, and the dude just hits me. BOOM! And they start stomping me a little bit. But people who had known me kind of saved me. “Yo, yo, Jersey’s cool! Jersey’s cool! Leave him alone!” And got me up, and I took off running to the fucking subway station, I was out. I weighed, like, a minute kid. I was standing there, anorexic at the time. [J laughs] But yeah, he punched me in the face! [S laughs] It was nice.

J: That’s funny, I never knew that.

S: No one does. Well, some people--some of my friends do. Some--my close friends. I don’t want to give him any bragging rights, you know what I mean? [S and J laugh] I always wanted to tell him, because we played with Sheer Terror a couple of times. I always wanted to tell him, I always wanted to be like, “Yo, you punched me in the face when I was a kid.”

J: I wish you would have.

S: Yeah, he probably would’ve laughed. But yeah, you got the exclusive on that one. I don’t even know if that one’s in the book. [J: Yeah?] Yeah. For my Sheer Terror loving friend.

J: Thank you!