Greg Sorrets: When Carnivore (Steele's first band on Roadrunner) split up, how long did it take Type O to form, and how did it come about?

Peter Steele: Carnivore had broke up in 88, and I have taken a test for the police department, got hired and cut all of my hair off. I was set to go into the Academy when I realized I would be locking up all of my family and all of my friends because they're all a bunch of criminals. So I figured maybe I should just stay with the Parks Department and do some more music. Ironically, it was Sal, (Type O's former drummer),who asked me to do a project with him and I had been friends with Josh and Kenny since childhood, hence Type O Negative was formed in August of 1988.

G.S.: How long did it take you to get signed?

P.S.: I have been signed to Roadrunner since 1985, because they still bound me to contract even after Carnivore broke up. So I've been dead for about 12 years now.

G.S.: So, I heard an interesting story about when you actually signed with Roadrunner.

P.S.: Let me hear what you heard.

G.S.: It was something about blood and semen.

P.S. It's true. I signed with blood and semen and that's why no one will shake my hand now.

G.S.: So, was it your blood and semen?

P.S.: Yeah, it was mine. I brought it in a little plastic bag. It stunk like hell when I opened the bag up. It smelled like a bag of shit because I had done it like two days before and it sort of blew up and got all...got all funny...like a science experiment. Next time we sign it's going to be in piss and shit, which I should have done the first time, because I really got myself in some shit with this.

G.S.: On Slow, Deep, And Hard and Origin Of The Feces, you guys seemed like a much angrier, heavier band. With Bloody Kisses, and now October Rust, you're still heavy but a lot more atmospheric. What has brought about the change?

P.S.: I think over these last five years, which is after Slow, Deep, And Hard, I've finally found myself as a person. When I wrote Slow, Deep And Hard, I had just failed suicide and I was really pissed off at myself, at the world, at everything. It was like psychotherapy for me [to go] three or four times a week to rehearse and scream my head off for two hours about the things that bothered me. Since I got that out of my system, and since my testosterone level has dropped a lot, now I'm less angry and I'm a kinder, gentler Peter Steele. Plus you catchmore flies with sugar than vinegar.

G.S.: You guys spent a good two years touring in support of Bloody Kisses, with everyone from Motley Crue to Pantera to Queensryche. There must be a few stories from stints like that.

P.S.: I really don't have too many stories because I look at touring as work. Where as you can make a party out of it if you want, that's not my goal. [It's] business before pleasure and between trying to find decent food to eat and trying to work out trying to stay out of trouble and also doing my job on stage, it doesn't really leave much time for the other things that are available. So I really don't have any stories.

G.S.: Was there any band that you particularly enjoyed touring with?

P.S.: Pantera was great. Simply because, and I say this in a very good way, they're like 13-year old boys trapped in men's bodies. They are constantly up all night. Life is a party for them. That was fun, but every band that we've toured with has definitely treated us with more respect than we deserved.

G.S.: I saw you guys in Vegas on the last date of the Pantera tour and the guys in Pantera were really attacking everyone in the band with super balls and silly string with the exception of you. Do you think people are intimidated by you?

P.S.: That's hard to answer. If they are, I don't know why they are, I'm not a violent person. Any problems I've had in the past with people I would rather try to talk my way out of it rather than start swinging. Honestly, I would rather just kick somebody's head in, but no one is worth going to jail for and since everyone thinks I'm rich now, the first thing they're going to do is try to sue me. They can have the $13 in my bank account though, and have a great time with it.

G.S.: Is your dream still to own a glass house in Iceland?

P.S.: Isolation. I was thinking about Iceland, but the cost of living there is really high so maybe I'll just find some place in Maine or Vermont where it's cold, because I love the cold weather.

G.S.: Who does most of the writing, and was October Rust predominately written on the road?

P.S.: I do all of the writing, and about 80% of it was written on the road. The problem with writing on the road is motivation. When you're sitting in the back of a tour bus with a Yamaha keyboard on your lap and you're looking out a window - it looks like a Martian landscape. You have no idea where you are and nobody even tells you. You ask the bus driver, "Where am I?" He just turns around and laughs. So I've got to try and think of songs and it's just really difficult sometimes to drag ideas out of myself and usually after too much coffee and speeding out - that's when I get these ideas. When I try to force myself, it does not happen. It's like being constipated: you have to be patient, you have to wait. You can't force it or else you'll hurt yourself.

G.S.: "Love You To Death" is one of my favorites from October Rust, can you tell us a little more about it?

P.S.: That will probably be our next video and single. To me, one of the most romantic things I can think of is to die with the person you love and that is really the essence of this song. No more, no less. There's no big long story or anything about it.

G.S.: How about "Green Man"? Is that about the earth and the cycle ofthe season?

P.S.: When I used to work for the Parks Department, I wore a green uniform and when I pulled into some of the playgrounds I maintained, all the kids used to say, "It's the green man." The song is actually about dealing with change, because when I left my job it was really hard to do because I loved it. But anyone who has ever made anything out of themselves has always had to take a huge chance and I did not want to clean up shit for the rest of my life. So instead, now I just write it.

G.S.: There was something in the bio, about the "Celtic Embodiment Of Nature."

P.S.: Well yeah, there's this character called "the green man" that's this mythological person who lived in the woods that was responsible for the changing of the seasons, and so there's some of that imagery thrown in there for no reason. It's just to confuse people. I don't think that songs really have to be about anything, like so many of those old Beatles songs - you don't know what the hell they were talking about. But yet, you'll be walking around the house singing their songs. "Strawberry Fields Forever" - what the fuck is that? It's just great. My songs have meaning, but they're so exaggerated. Meaning, I'll take, like a feeling or something, and since my life is so boring, that if I don't blow this one little incident up or this one fact up, then I'll be writing songs about what I had for breakfast and no one wants a Special K jingle on the next album.

G.S.: "Red Water (Christmas Mourning)"?

P.S.: Everybody seems to think it's about blood. It's not blood, it's red wine.

G.S.: How about the line, "My table's set for but seven, just last year I dined with eleven?"

P.S.: Well, my father passed away last year and when Christmas came I was sitting at the table and I was thinking about all the people that had died since I was a kid and, of course, I just start to think about them more around the holidays. The red wine really chased these ghosts away...very well.

G.S.: Did the idea for "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend" come from personal experience?

P.S.: Well, these things happen from time to time, which has prompted me to start writing my new book, which is called Why Good Things Happen To Bad People. Look for it.

G.S.: There is a track on October Rust titled "The Glorious Liberation Of The People's Technocratic Republic Of Vinnland By The Combined Forces Of The United Territories Of Europa." Your bio states this track is about your belief that the US should be over thrown.

P.S.: I think the country has no culture. I think that the height of culture in this country is MTV, McDonald's and Type O Negative. It's a pretty sad situation. Most Americans think that a house built in 1750 is an old beautiful house, while over in Europe a house built in 1750 is worthless because there are houses there from 750. There is no history here and no culture. I just wish that when the Vikings came here 1,000 years ago, they had stayed. In that case I would be speaking Icelandic now instead of English.

G.S.: Is that what your heritage is?

P.S.: Half Icelandic and half Russian.

G.S.: On "Wolf Moon (Including Zoanthropic Paranoia)" there are two very different ideas you can get when you read the lyrics.

P.S.: I'll tell you exactly what the song is about. It's about a man who transforms into a werewolf whenever he engages in oral sex with a menstruating woman. Are you going to ask me if that's based upon fact? I do have hairy palms.

G.S.: This record as a whole seems to be about love, lust, sex, death and spirituality. What does the record mean to you as the writer?

P.S.: The record is a celebration of the flesh. I'm not into spiritualism. I don't believe in life before birth or life after death. There is nothing. When you die there is just a beautiful black sleep. So, I like to live for the day and I like to seize the moment. I think that everything is OK as long as you're not hurting yourself and you're not hurting anyone around you, anything goes. So live and let live.

G.S.: Last year you were on an episode of "Jerry Springer" titled "Rock Groupies", or something like that. Do you have any strange groupies that follow you around wanting you to bite them on the neck, or anything?

P.S.: That happens constantly. I certainly don't want to bite people. Number one, because I don't know what I have and I don't want to have a lawsuit somewhere down the line because I ripped someone's neck apart.As far as having interesting groupies, I don't think that I take advantage of the situation as much as someone else could in my shoes.

G.S.: I have heard you drive a pretty interesting car when you're at home.

P.S.: Yes. I do. It's a 1985 Grand Prix that I took the gasoline engine out and I put diesel engine in. I took the tires off and put swamp tires on, cut the wheel wells out and welded the frame so the tires can stick out from the body a little bit. I painted the car flat black with yellow caution stripes, took the bumpers off and I welded on I-beams. I have two huge air compressor truck horns in there so when somebody gets in my way I let them know that the can opener is coming. I love to hit people. If someone cuts me off, being that I have nothing to lose, I win. Sometimes I'll just take my hands off the wheel and close my eyes and let the hand of God drive my car. The cops love my car though, they're oh so curious. I get pulled over, like, every 30 feet. When they come up to the car I have all my papers and a $50 bill ready. When I ask them why they're pulling me over they lie "You've got about a thousand violations on the car." But I have an uncle that was a cop and a cousin who was a cop so I have all their cards, besides I know how to talk to cops because I used to work for the city. Plus, when I left the parks department I refused to surrender my shield, so when they see this [showing me his shield], they get very sympathetic. Now most of the cops in Brooklyn know me, so they just wave.

G.S.: Someone told me a story about them asking your age and you started to say one thing before stopping and correcting yourself.

P.S.: That's a rumor. I was actually born in 1562 - I mean 1962. 1962, I think that was the Year Of The Slug.

G.S.: Have you read The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice?

P.S.: No, I haven't. I don't want to jump trends. I don't want to be tempted to play up this so-called vampire image that we didn't even come up with. This is something that the media stuck on us. I can't blame them though, because you have a band called Type O Negative, their first video is "Black No.1" and they look like four dead guys from Brooklyn.

G.S.: Are your teeth real though?

P.S.: Well, one is, because the other one got knocked out. You can't win every fight. He had a hammer and I didn't. What happened was I had pulled up to a red light and there was this car in front of me. This guy was looking for something under his seat and apparently he must have been driving a clutch because his foot must have went off the brake and he backed into me. He thought that I had hit him because he didn't feel himself roll. So when he came over to mouth off I leaned over to turn up my radio and drown him out. Then I thought he slapped me at first. So, he jumps in his car and I'm chasing him not realizing that he had just knocked a tooth out of my mouth and I have this big split in my lip. As I'm driving I'm sticking my tongue through the hole. It wasn't until I had stopped chasing him to look in the mirror to fix my hair and I'm like, "Oh fuck," and I have this big thing on my face. It started to hurt about a half hour later when the adrenaline rush [woreoff]. I picked the tooth off the floor and put it under my pillow, and no, I did not get a dollar from the tooth fairy.

G.S.: Do you hate the whole vampire thing the media has stuck on you? And do you believe in vampires?

P.S.: I don't hate it. I mean, I do like Goth music and I like the way Goth people dress, especially the women. But, I don't believe in vampires, or anything like that. If I cannot perceive something with my senses, it does not exist.

G.S.: Is Peter Steele a happy guy?