Much like his reputation has always indicated, Scott Ian of Anthrax is a wonderfully kind and composed person when you speak to him face-to-face. Calm and thoughtful, Ian can speak at length on any topic, giving down-to-earth answers that eschew hyperbolic grandstanding; he’s a real pleasure to speak to. mxdwn was fortunate enough to have a solid block of time with Ian at a private event for Jackson Guitars in Hollywood. Over the course of the thirty-minute conversation, Ian was thoughtful and reflective describing Anthrax’s legacy and accomplishments on the heels of the release of their livestream concert album, Anthrax XL. He spoke to the band’s choice not to include material from the John Bush-era of Anthrax’s history in Anthrax XL, a set otherwise featuring a solid retrospective on the band’s forty-plus-year career. He also enthusiastically discussed his time playing in Mr. Bungle’s recent reunion performing The Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny, explaining his interest to be a part of anything in the future the band would like him to join them on. Ian even indicated how one time, many years back, he somewhat jokingly invited Mike Patton to sing with Anthrax before Joey Belladonna rejoined the band.
mxdwn: Anthrax XL, comprised of the 40th-anniversary livestream concert done during the pandemic is coming out soon. Being one of the architects of a genre that a lot of people didn’t want to give a chance in the beginning—rock or heavy music whatever you want to call it—did it feel weird after all this time looking back at such a vast catalog of music and pulling on these things from so many different eras? Did putting together a set like that from so many different albums, so many different phases, did that feel weird?
Scott Ian: No, not really, because we’ve been consistently working the whole time so we’re always doing that. When we hit ten years it seemed like an eternity, even at twenty years, thirty years. So we’re always looking back at the catalog and those moments, “Alright, let’s try and find some songs we haven’t played in a long time.” Which, of course, gets easier to do the longer you’re around. There’s no way for me to put forty-one years into… there’s no sound bite for that.
I can give you a whole bunch of babble. Forty-one years doing anything. Forty-one years working at a hardware store. Forty-one years as a stockbroker. Forty-one years being a dentist. I don’t give a fuck what it is. Forty-one years doing anything is a long fucking time to be doing it, let alone a fucking metal band. And where four of us have been together thirty-something years out of those forty-one years. Me, Charlie and Frankie have been together almost that whole time. It’s crazy. Charlie joined the band in early ’83. Charlie’s going on, that’s thirty-nine [years], that’s crazy.
mxdwn: When you started Anthrax, when so much was so new, so many things were being pushed forward. A lot of people weren’t ready for a lot of those things that the bands in the early ‘80s had coming forth and rethinking what could be done. It must feel kind of surreal, when in the beginning you were just trying to do this thing, now here you are four decades later still doing it and seeing the impact that it’s had and all these different phases that have come behind it? That must be daunting coming to that moment?
Scott Ian: No, I don’t think so. It’s more a case of, I think for me, there’s still an excitement. There’s still so much excitement getting to do this. That we still do it, that we’re still a part of it. We get to call our own shots. Again, I think anything you do in life, if you get to make your own path and that’s how you get to make a living on this planet. Really, what you’re passionate about and love what you do, I mean that excitement never goes away.
mxdwn: Holy grail right?
Scott Ian: As a kid, I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted to do. I had a lot of dreams: being in a rock band, writing for Marvel Comics, I wanted to be a racecar driver, I wanted to play for the Yankees. Really, the idea of being in a successful band is no more far-fetched than playing for the Yankees. Either one or vice versa. My mom used to say it to me all the time, when I’d be laying on her couch thinking about music. She’d be on my ass about, “Get off the fucking couch and go get a job.” When I was 16, 17—and I had a job—“What the fuck are you doing?” I’m like, “I’m sitting here thinking about my music.” She’s like, “Who do you think you are? A million people want to [make music]?” “Yeah, but they’re not me and I’m not them. And I’m going to try,” I said. I could always go back to school because I had dropped out of college. I could always go back to school, there’s always something else. If I don’t try this, I’ll always regret it if I didn’t follow my passion. Of course that’s what I did. Eventually my mom got it. You know these days, whenever I think about it, and I try to contextualize it in any way, the weight of the last forty-one years of my life. It’s just exciting to think about it.
There are a million stories. There are experiences that I never in a million years could have had nor could my family have had because I play guitar in a metal band. The doors that it’s opened for me: I’ve written two books, a couple of comics, Anthrax got to be on “Married with Children”… how…. what the f… It’s super exciting and it still is. And I see my friends that have been in bands that have been around as long as us or almost as long, Metallica being obvious, going on to be not just to be the biggest metal band in the world, but one of the biggest bands in the world. It’s mind-blowing. They’re my bros. That’s like how some other bands in the ‘60s must have felt like in 1971 when suddenly Led Zeppelin was the biggest band on the planet. “I fucking hang out with those guys in the pub. They’re playing stadiums in America. How the fuck did that happen?” That’s how I feel about Metallica. Even though I do what I do too. I still feel like, I’ve known those guys since we all didn’t have money for a sandwich. You know what I mean?
mxdwn: Divine providence for sure.
Scott Ian: Look at ‘em! Look at those young kids go! Everyone, the Megadeth guys, Slayer, Exodus, all my bros from back then, Mercyful Fate. Everyone that we came up with in the early days, it’s just exciting. And if you ever really needed proof that what we were doing in the ‘80s mattered.
mxdwn: There you go.
Scott Ian: You know what I mean? We’re fucking still here. We’re still doing it. We’ve connected with generation after generation of humans all around this planet that love this sound that we make. That’s exciting, always.
mxdwn: I started listening to Anthrax in about 1990 after the band had already released a few albums. I was always a big fan of The Sound of White Noise. I was curious why no songs from The Sound of White Noise are on XL. Was that because Belladonna sang on them? Curious why you didn’t include anything from it?
Scott Ian: I don’t know. There’s no easy answer to that question. All the songs in a weird way are our children. Not really, because I have a son, but in a weird way… I guess in the way that if I’d had one hundred-something kids, I don’t know that I’d love all of them.
{all laughs}
That’s not to say that I don’t love the songs on the Bush era. I fucking love The Sound of White Noise. I love a lot of the songs on Stomp 442 and Volume 8 and I love We’ve Come For You All. I think it’s just a case of you get to that moment and you’re putting together this thing and you want to try and represent as the best you can and just want to… [pauses] find the easiest path between point A and point B. That’s what happened. That’s not to say we will never play Bush-era songs and I’m just going to leave it at that. [Editor’s note: since this interview took place just recently Anthrax played “Only” live for the first time since 2011]
mxdwn: Now, Mr. Bungle is my favorite band, always has been my favorite band. What I’m curious about, mostly the material you were playing with them was Raging Wrath of the Easter Bunny from the very beginning of their career which not a lot of people have heard.
Scott Ian: That’s the only material I played with them.
mxdwn: Exactly. They had self-titled, they had Disco Volante, and then California. Most people, unless you were a giant nerd like me and had bootlegs, nobody really knew that record. What was it like trying to crack something like that open that was at a very early part of their formulation? They evolved a lot after that. What was it like trying to put a show together like that with such incredibly technical material?
Scott Ian: I’ve said about that record and about the demo, the Raging Wrath demo: it’s the best thrash metal record from 1986 that nobody’s ever heard. If that record had come out on Metal Blade or Megaforce or whoever in 1986, Mr. Bungle would’ve been right there with everybody else, and maybe even ahead because, from a technical standpoint, the shit they were doing as players and songwriters, nonlinear structures and insane riffs and was far ahead of what anyone else was doing. That thrash metal that they were doing in ’86 is so far ahead of what any of us were doing. If you listen to the original demos, which of course Trey made me videos because you can’t make heads or tails out of them.
mxdwn: They’re rough recordings.
Scott Ian: It’s hard. It’s impossible. When Patton first called me and asked me if I wanted to do it. He said, “Just go on YouTube. Do you have that demo?” I said, “Yeah it’s on a fucking tape buried in storage somewhere. It probably won’t even play back, it’s been sitting in storage for thirty years.” He goes, “Well it’s on YouTube, you can find it.” So I go on YouTube and I go, “So listen, I can’t fucking learn it from this. I can’t even hear it. It sounds terrible.” And he writes back, “HAHAHAHA. I know.” So I reached out to Trey and I said, “Hey man, I’m going to need you to make videos of parts. I hope I’m not bugging you.”
He goes, “No, no. Of course. In a million years, you would never be able to hear what we’re doing. Even when I show it to you, you’re going to be like, ‘That’s what you’re doing?’” From a technical, from a theory, from a songwriting standpoint, what they were doing when they were writing that stuff in ‘85 and ‘86 is so far beyond anyone, I’m not talking about the ability to play fast, or downpick fast or play fast triplets. The way they were thinking about thrash metal is so different already. So that’s when people were like, “This is Bungle thrash metal and this has nothing to do with the three albums.” I’m like, “Oh no, it has everything to do with the self-titled record.” When you really dig into these songs, and of course, when I started learning something like “Sudden Death” where I change what I’m doing ninety-four times. One or two things repeat maybe once. It’s just seven and a half minutes and you’re going and you’re going and you’re going and you’re going and you’re going and it’s building and it’s building. Nothing like that existed in 1986 except for them, but nobody knew it.
mxdwn: Did you ever hear Trey’s band Secret Chiefs 3?
Scott Ian: Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
mxdwn: My favorite thing in music.
Scott Ian: Because of the lack of Bungle material, then you find out, “Oh wait, Trey has a band?”
They’re the most down-to-Earth, nicest guys you’ll ever meet. But they’re also the smartest guys you will ever meet and they know more about music than I could even hope to even learn or understand. When Trey starts talking about how, “Hey I’m a little busy this week but maybe we could do this next week? Because I’m doing these charts for Kronos Quartet.” And I’m like, “What are you talking about?” He goes, “I’m writing a symphony for Kronos Quartet.” He’s writing a forty-minute piece of music just for them. I go, “When you mean write? You’re talking about actually writing the notes? Like drawing them charts?” He goes, “Yeah, I gotta write it out for each player and each guy’s very specific in his needs.” I’m like, “I don’t understand. You’re not human.”
mxdwn: I got to know him a bit after a lot of years writing about Secret Chiefs 3 and given how incredible and intricate the music was, I expected someone far more out there. He’s just an incredibly nice and chill guy.
Scott Ian: Yeah, just the nicest guy.
mxdwn: It’s unbelievable to me the mind that guy has and the way he thinks about things.
Scott Ian: It’s not even just music. It’s electronics, so many things. The dude is literally a fucking genius.
mxdwn: I call them the undiscovered paradise of modern music. I say that if people really took the time to look there’s more happening in that band than anyone can ever dream would be possible.
Scott Ian: People have no idea how good Trevor is as a bass player and a songwriter. And we’re not even talking about Mike Patton.
{all laughs}
Trey sent me all the riffs and I would start learning them, so I quickly realize riff-wise it’s right in my wheelhouse. Actual riffs themselves are straight up. “We’re not going to do this if you and Lombardo don’t do it with us, because it’s your music that made us write this in the first place and throw Possessed in the mix too,” they said. But the combination of Anthrax, S.O.D. and Slayer and Possessed and that’s where you get the Raging Wrath. So a lot of it was right in my wheelhouse, just way faster than I had played in a really, really, really long time. So getting my chops back for that took a couple of weeks. I understood all the parts. It was the arrangements that you know, I’m used to arrangements: intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, solo, chorus, done. I’m used to linear songwriting, except for maybe “Eracist” was the closest thing to it.
mxdwn: Sure, that’s pretty straightforward relatively speaking, yeah.
Scott Ian: I said with “Sudden Death,” “Dude I don’t know how I’m ever going to remember this?”
mxdwn: It’s such a big song!
Scott Ian: It’s close to eight minutes and like nothing repeats. Maybe when I was in my 20s I could’ve, but like I have a child now. I can’t, it’s hard enough keeping up with him. I said, “How am I ever going to remember this live? I can’t have fucking pieces of paper on the ground.” He goes, “You’ll see. There’s a rhyme and a reason to it. And it actually all makes sense as you…” And he starts talking modes and scales. I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He goes, “You don’t have to. My suggestion is take it a minute and a half at a time.” And then I remembered, years ago I saw Fantomas at a festival in Europe. Buzz (Osbourne) was playing guitar. They played basically like a 45-minute song.
mxdwn: Delirium Cordia probably.
Scott Ian: Yeah. And I saw it many times throughout the night, where Buzz would clam and Mike would give him the look of death. Because Mike hears everything.
mxdwn: He really does!
Scott Ian: That’s the other thing. There’s no hiding.
mxdwn: There’s no getting away with it.
Scott Ian: Even when you’re playing 220 bpm and you’re ripping through changes, I could just kind of slip… no he hears everything. I was like, “I don’t ever want that look,” when I realized I’m going to be in the band. I remember I said to Buzz that night years ago. I said, “How the fuck do you get up there and remember that?” He’s like, “Obviously I don’t. But, I learned it two minutes at a time.” So Trey said the same thing, “Take it 90 seconds at a time and then just start piecing it together.” And that’s what I did. I would play 90 seconds for two days. Then I would play the next 90 seconds for two days. And then I would play three minutes. It took me two weeks. And still right now I could play along to that song backwards and forwards. It’s so ingrained in my… it’s somewhere in this vault of my brain because I really did do the work and I never got the look which was my goal.
mxdwn: Sorry if I’m keeping you late.
Scott Ian: No it’s all good. I will talk about Mr. Bungle all fucking day. It’s also for me, Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, Mike Patton, since I first heard Raging Wrath and OU818. Those tapes. I already loved him, and then he gets in Faith No More and I already liked Faith No More with what’s his name.
mxdwn: Chuck Mosley.
Scott Ian: Yeah. And then Patton gets in the band and they were my favorite band for years.
mxdwn: Me too.
Scott Ian: And then they put out [Mr.] Bungle in the ’90s right, the first one?
mxdwn: Yeah.
Scott Ian: Like anyone who else heard that record that understood it, “This is the greatest record ever made. There’s nothing better than this.” And then I saw them, they played the Marquee in NY with the masks and everything. Holy shit what a fucking show that was.
mxdwn: My mentor showed it to me when I was in high school when I was about fourteen and it changed my whole world. It basically changed the way I thought about what was possible with music and my expectations for music too. Let me end on this, has there been any talk about you being involved in anything past the tours and releases you’ve done with them so far? If they asked you to do Disco Volante material for example, would you be down for it?
Scott Ian: Of course. I would do anything. I have made it very clear to those guys that if they ever decide to do anything going forward, I would be thrilled to be a part of it. If they decided they were going to make a new record, if I could be a part of that, whether I was allowed to write or not. If it’s just their thing and they just need me on guitar. I’m fucking stoked. If they want me to be on anything, anything, I’d be happy to just be the guitar player and be a part of it, and if I could tour and play the old stuff with them, I’m a huge fan. It’s like fucking the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
When Patton texted me and asked me if I wanted to do Mr. Bungle. I was like, “You’re fucking kidding me?” He’s like, “I told you we would work together.” Because a million years ago, I had asked him just before Joey came back to Anthrax, I had said, “Hey, do you want to sing on the next Anthrax record?” We were drunk in a bar in Melbourne, Australia on a festival together. He was with Faith No More. He was like, “Oh, man. You don’t want me in your band. I’m a pain in the ass.” I was like, “No, no, no. I think we could deal with it.” He goes, “Yeah, but I got seventy-two projects and I could never commit.” I’m like, “I know, really. I’m asking but I’m not really asking.” He’s like, “Don’t worry, we’ll do something together someday.” So then when he hit me up, he goes, “Remember in Melbourne when I said we would work together?” I’m like, “Uh huh.” He goes, “Guess what?”
mxdwn: It’s happening!
Scott Ian: I still freak out about it. That I did it. I played shows. We made a fucking record. There are things on the table for the future, shows. Because you know our goal is to… we’re not going out for six months. But, to pop in and out of places and maybe at least, let people around the planet see it once. You know? Go to Australia and do a show. Go to Europe and play some festivals. One week, two weeks at a time. We’re all too busy to be able to commit to it as a real ongoing thing at this point. But there’s always room to go do one-offs. I’m in touch with Mike all the time. I’m in touch with Dave, Trey, Trevor, all of them, and Greg, who manages Mike. I talk to Greg all the time. We’ve really become bros, I’d like to think because of this. Even if ever nothing ever happened again, it would be one of the best things I’ve ever done.
Anthrax XL is available on Blu-ray, CD and digitally everywhere now.
Featured image by Raymond Flotat
Red carpet photo by Mauricio Alvarado
All other live photography by Marv Watson and Boston Lynn Schulz
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