Late Type O Negative frontman Peter Steele was the king of goth metal, but a run of bad luck and personal circumstances in the 2000s nearly brought him down.Three years before his death, in 2007, he sat down with Metal Hammer for a candid interview about bereavement, depression, and what would turn out to be Type O Negative’s final album, Dead Again.
Rumors that founding Type O Negative frontman and bassist Pete Steele had died rocked the heavy music world to its core on May 13, 2005. The only hint to the news’ authenticity came from an intriguing image uploaded on the official Type O Negative website: an illustrated tombstone reading ‘Peter Steele, 1962-2005’.
For anyone who knew Pete Steele or his music, the modest epitaph spoke everything. It simply said, ‘Free At Last’. It was a terribly fitting conclusion to a very bleak existence. Sure, Pete Steele was a musical genius whose characteristic baritone and gallows humour combined a language of love and loss with gothically-tinged, Sabbath-loving sounds to form one of the 90s’ most successful yet unique metal bands.
But Pete Steele’s life was also marked by personal tragedy, spells of extreme despair, and an attitude so devoid of optimism that all anyone could do was laugh it off. Not in jest, but with the understanding that you haven’t lost everything if you still have your sense of humour.
The news had some ominous overtones. Type O Negative’s autumn 2004 tour had just been canceled due to a medical exam that discovered various ‘anomalies’ in Steele’s health, according to a statement issued by the band’s management.
So it was reassuring when Type O drummer Johnny Kelley revealed in a February 2005 update that, “there really isn’t much to report other than he’s doing fine and his health is improving daily.”
However, it appeared that the sticksman spoke too soon, leaving the metal world with only Type O’s final album, 2003’s aptly titled Life Is Killing Me, to help make sense of the loss. It seemed to predict its creator’s purportedly grim demise with songs like I Don’t Wanna.
“Nah, that was all bullshit,” Steele says in a heavy, low-octave Brooklyn drawl. “The tour was canceled due to internal issues within the band. It would not be appropriate for me to participate due to my relationship with the boys.
That was not my fault, but someone had to come up with an excuse. Of course, being the band’s largest member, I was the biggest target, so I was getting emails like ‘I hope you get well’ and then when it was discovered I was still alive, it was ‘I hope you fucking die asshole.'”
According to Steele, the tombstone was a prank devised by keyboardist Josh Silver to announce the end of Type O’s relationship with longtime label Roadrunner Records and their subsequent signing to SPV (“They’ve always treated us fairly, but friendship doesn’t pay the bills,” he says of the departure from Roadrunner).
What’s the issue? Silver’s original concept was to represent four tombstones, one for each band member, dubbed ‘The Drab Four’.
Steele isn’t sure why only his tombstone was used, but not everyone was amused. Among them is a judge, whom Steele is legally required to meet on occasion due to what he characterizes as ‘legal concerns.’
“He happens to be a Type O Negative fan and he sent the cops to my house to see if I was dead or not,” adds Steele with a giggle.
“I told Josh, ‘Man, you have no clue what you’ve just done: you’ve outraged the New York State Supreme Court! I think that’s fucking funny too, but tell me if you’re going to do it again! The judge then says, ‘Do you think this is funny?’ “I had to plead the fifth,” he says, laughing.
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