It may come as a surprise to many that Rob Zombie, the seven-time Grammy-nominated musician known for songs like “Dragula” and “Living Dead Girl” and acclaimed filmmaker behind “House of 1,000 Corpses,” “The Devil’s Rejects,” along with two successful reinterpretations of the cult horror film franchise “Halloween,” doesn’t really celebrate that very holiday, even though it also happens to be his own wedding anniversary.
“Neither of us have even thought about it,” Zombie admitted during a recent phone interview, referring to his wife. “Probably somewhere around the 29th of October we’ll go, ‘Oh, crap, you know what? 10 years!’ We kind of always forget.”
Neither can be blamed, however, considering how much the Boogie Man has been up to lately. Last year, he was busy shooting “The Lords of Salem,” an upcoming horror movie about a coven of witches in Salem, Mass. that is slated to be released sometime this year.
“It is very different. I got together with my cinematographer and we talked about it for an endless amount of time before we started. Mostly it was just the approach stylistically. The other films I’ve shot for the most part, especially ‘Devil’s Rejects’ and ‘Halloween II,’ were very gritty. I shot them on Super 16; it was all handheld. It was supposed to feel really raw, but because of not wanting to repeat myself, I didn’t necessarily think that style would fit the movie I was making this time because it was a much more deliberately paced, slow burn of a movie,” Zombie described.
“It wasn’t this sort of in-your-face, violent movie, so we went for a more just stylized approach, art direction-wise and camera-wise, where the camera isn’t shaking and sort of flying around. Everything’s very symmetrical and composed and smooth and different.”
Currently, he is on a co-headlining tour with Megadeth, which will be making a stop at the Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain in Scranton on May 12. This marks the first time the heavy metal acts have toured together since the ‘90s, although this time will likely be a much more enjoyable experience for the hard rock singer.
“I guess both bands have run out of people to tour with. We both went down our list – on their list, the last person was Rob Zombie, and my list, I guess the last person was Megadeth. I said, ‘Let’s do it,’” he joked.
“Back in those few shows I did with Megadeth, that’s when I was in White Zombie, which was, you know, even at its best moments, never that fun, truthfully, and now it’s great, so I think right now, the band I have and everything we do and our show and the whole world around us is just a million times better than it ever was, so it’s all good.”
Unlike his first band, Zombie exudes excitement when he talks about the line-up of his spectacle-laden solo act.
“I have a band where everybody is a freak, essentially. It’s hard finding band members because you need many things from them. First off, the easiest thing is to find somebody who can play their instrument well. That’s the easiest thing because there’s a million great guitar players and a million great drummers wherever. But then you’ve got to find somebody who you can get along with and then you’ve got to find somebody who looks cool onstage and knows how to perform and then somebody who gets the vibe of what you’re doing,” he explained.
“Nobody has to put on an act to be part of the band. They’re all genuinely just a bunch of weirdoes. They’re all super talented, too, so on top of that, I get the best bass player, the best guitar player, and the best drummer I’ve ever had, so I’ve really hit the jackpot on this one. It really felt like pulling a slot machine – boom, boom boom.”
Riding those positives vibes, he plans to jump right back into the studio to record one his darkest and heaviest albums yet as a follow-up to the long-awaited “Hellbilly Deluxe 2.”
“I think I’m at a point in my career that a lot of people get at where we go out and play arenas, tour huge, make tons of money, and it doesn’t even matter if we ever even make a record. You’re sort of established. You’ve got enough songs and enough records through the pipeline that it doesn’t matter…It’s the best time to say…‘Let’s just make a (expletive) crazy record!’” he enthused.
“Not that we haven’t done that in the past, but in the past, it was more of a thought like, you know, you’re trying to get your video on MTV. You’re trying to get a song played on the radio. You’re trying to do these things because you’re sort of still building your career then, and I feel like I’m always building it, but a certain chunk of it now seems very solid… And it also seems like that weird thing, like right at the moment where you go, ‘We’re going to make a crazy, (expletive) record,’ that’s the record that becomes your big record.”
As when he was creating his first album, he now feels like he has the creative freedom to go down whatever dark path he chooses.
“There’s always demands put on you because once you’re on a record label, you’re selling records and they’re giving you money and you’re sort of part of the machine. There is an expectation to deliver. That’s just the reality of it all. And now I don’t feel that way anymore, so I feel like somehow, and this goes back to the guys in the band, it just seems like the perfect time to make the perfect record.”
With music, movies, animation, and television commercials under his belt and an upcoming web series on the “Nerdist” YouTube channel on the way, it seems his creativity knows no limits.
“I always talk about this. I haven’t made any attempts to do this yet, although I might at some point. I really think that ‘House of 1,000 Corpses’ would make for a great Broadway play, a musical, because it’s so ridiculous that I really think that it falls right perfectly somewhere in between ‘Hairspray’ and ‘Young Frankenstein’ and ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show.’ So that’s a goal for one day,” he said, noting the success of everything from Monty Python’s “Spamalot” to “Spider-Man.”
Zombie’s legacy, however, he leaves up to his macabre audience, as he honestly doesn’t care what he’s ultimately remembered for.
“It really doesn’t matter to me. One thing for sure is people remember – it’s amazing what people remember. That’s the funniest thing I was thinking as I was sitting in the kitchen eating and a Charlie Chaplin movie came on TV and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, silent movies right on TV,’ he recalled.
“It seems like nothing is ever forgotten, even obscure things. You see kids walking around wearing t-shirts of obscure punk rock bands that broke up 20 years ago that you can’t believe they ever even heard of. So, you know, whatever. Someday they build a drive-in theater on the moon, it’ll be good – they’ll show all my movies.”