Thanks for answering my questions and agreeing to being grilled,
Leo.
LD: No worries, Stuart, happy to have my head examined. It
might get messy though…
SRW: Okay, Leo, let’s start a little with you. Your bio says
you (in)famously were fired for being too scary as an actor. Are we talking
Boris Karloff scary or can’t act Keanu Reeves scary? Details, please.
LD: We’re talking the horrible love child of Freddy Krueger
and Richard III. I wore an old highwayman coat, noose round my neck, undertaker
hat and Alice Cooper make-up. Once the supervisor did a check on me as I
‘entertained’ the crowd in the Guy Fawkes exhibit. He said afterwards he had
genuine spine shivers. You see, you were supposed to make light of the horrors
of the museum and camp it up in a silly Monty Python way. I was having none of
that. My favorite saying was ‘wanna feel the caress of my noose?’ I pretended my neck was broken and I’d freak
‘em out before even entering the exhibit room where the audience were waiting
by slowly, slowly creaking the door open and then shuffling inside. You could
hear a pin drop. I remember one teenage girl huddled in a corner begging me not
to come towards her. They told me to tone it down and when I didn’t, they
sacked my ass.
SRW: Good times!
Leo, give everyone a brief synopsis of Lucifer Sam. And
make it rawk! (Puts out the sign of the horns).
LD: Cat O’Nine Tails, a mega successful rock band, are
flying over the Indian Ocean in their private jet on a world tour when they
suddenly drop out of air space completely. Then the jet reappears six months
later in exactly the same position. The band are back, but this time they’re
different. This time their music really is Killer…
SRW: Clearly, you know a little bit about the rock industry.
The writing in your novel is very assured and your descriptions of the music and
the industry read like an insider’s P.O.V. Am I onto something or are you just
brilliant with research?
LD: Been in a couple of bands but I was sacked from the
first one ‘cause I couldn’t play bass (sound familiar, Sid fans?) and the
second band I changed up to the front man. It was called Lucifer Sam… we
imploded messily before anything really happened for us. Apart from that, I
grew up following punk bands. That’s all the insider info I have. I remember
Animal from The Anti-Nowhere League loving a book I wrote years ago called Rags
for the Doctor Who series of original novels. He was in it described as a
complete monster, and the big bugger didn’t mind at all. He sent me a signed T
Shirt as a thank you. This time around I name drop the Cockney Rejects and
Micky Geggus in particular. Micky helps Kirk to find the ‘hero’ in his old
manor in the East End. ‘Manor’ means home streets to Cockneys, by the way, US
readers, not a country mansion!! He was pleased as punch to be in it too.
Though he hasn’t read it yet!
LD: My first band I wanted to call Lucifer Sam, but the
singer wanted it to be a punk covers band, so he invited a prog rock guitarist
to join. Makes sense, right? This moron wanted to play all the punk covers note
perfectly. Kinda missing the point of punk in the first place. He didn’t like
my nascent, clumsy fumblings with the bass so asked for me to be booted. I then
formed the proper Lucifer Sam with me as singer, a friend on drums, and two
drunks on guitar and bass. We had some great songs which are referenced in the
novel, but the guitarist and bass player got very pissed one night before
practice and ignited, threatening each other. The band was over. The members of the fictional Lucifer Sam are
nothing like the real ones. They’re a lot worse!
SRW: You name-drop a lotta fairly obscure bands (well, at
least obscure here in God-forsaken Kansas), such as The Damned, Motorhead (with
Lemmy, natch), and Hawkwind (Hawkwind, for crying out loud! I haven’t given
them a second thought since my weed-stoked high school days!), amongst many
others. Are these favorites? What is your favorite style of rock?
“Non-suckesque” is mine.
LD: Always loved the Damned since I was a kid, though I saw
them a year ago and they bored the pants off me. Real shame. They’d gotten old
and were just going through well rehearsed paces. Lemmy… what can I say about
Lemmy? I saw Motorhead many years back with the original trio when I was a
child. Stone Dead Forever still goose bumps me. It’s just the perfect dirty,
glorious rock song. I did a pilgrimage to The Rainbow in LA in February and sat
in Lemmy’s chair at the bar. Crazy night. The Rainbow is a wild, amazing place
where anything can happen…
SRW: Alright, let’s dig into the book. We all know the adage
about “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.” In your book, you’ve changed that
battle-cry a bit, I think, to “sex, violence, and rock ‘n roll.” You certainly
don’t skimp on any of the topics, making for a sobering, shocking, and, at
times, grotesque read. (Even the Detective-Sergeant in your book likes her sex
on the violent side.) I know it’s a horror book, first and foremost, but do you
view rock music as violent? I ask because in your prose, you’re always
“shredding” guitars, “beating” drums, “slashing” vocals…the list goes on.
LD: I grew up with punk in the early 80s and it was
incredibly violent. There were always fights. Nasty ones. I suppose that became
ingrained into me, into my outlook on live music. Even today I’ll go into a gig
expecting trouble. Luckily it doesn’t happen so much these days. I equate punk and some rock music with the
violence of slasher films in many ways. The stab of Jason’s machete is like a savage
guitar riff in my fiction I guess. Killing Joke were particularly manic back in
the day, their hypnotic layers of insane music letting loose all the dogs of
hell in my mind. Violence leaped from their records, setting all sorts of wild thoughts
free. So yes, all this influenced my take on how brutal music can be and how mesmerizing. I wanted to catch that giddy sense of threat and mayhem in my
prose.
SRW: Okay, time to play spot the band! Who is the satanic,
past their prime, primping and posing Cat o’ Nine Tails patterned after?
LD: Haha. Couldn’t possibly reveal that. Don’t want Grinning
Skull to get sued! Or me for that matter. Despite my piss take, I’m kinda fond
of their perseverance and some of their music. Of course, they might not be
based on anyone…. Obviously not Motorhead. The music Industry is a lot poorer
without Lemmy. Killed by Death indeed.
LD: Definitely my own invention, a stew of different
influences from Bauhaus and the Cramps to Lords of the New Church and early
Damned, all stirred in one big Voodoo Pot.
SRW: Is “Rock!” magazine meant to be a riff on Rolling Stone
or Spin? How about any of the staff?
LD: Never read them. Probably more based on crappy rags like
NME. Sounds was a whole lot better.
SRW: So, is anything off-limits with your writing? I mean, that groupie
scene was really, really gross. And disturbing (the nature of horror, I
know, but...c'mon!).
LD: I thought a lot about deleting that
scene, or at least toning it down. It goes horribly too far, but yet
seemed perfectly right, too! I knew it would be the scene that made or
broke the book. The one plus ultra if you like. It summed up the nature
of the transformed band in a way like no other I guess. The absence of
light in them, the void in their souls, the ugly dark they’d let in. My
big worry would be that it would be seen as gross for its own sake, and misogynistic. A risk I had to take to tell the tale as honestly as I
could. Some people will hate it. That chapter is my Make them Die
Slowly. No animals were killed in the making of this book. Groupies
though? Not so sure.
SRW: The further I dove into your nightmarish rock ‘n roll
world, another theme came into focus: a call for anarchy and upsetting the
status quo. Naturally, the satanic Cat of Nine Tails take things too far (it’s
horror, folks!), but you seem enamored with punk bands such as the Sex Pistols
and the Dead Boys, whose bleak outlook borders on violence for violence’s sake,
or at the very least, overturning authority. Even your two heroes, Kirk and
Ray, want to drastically change things. Are there deep-rooted issues we need to
discuss, Leo? Here, lay down on the sofa, Dr. West is on the clock…
LD: Hmmm, good question again, Stuart. Always hated real
violence, and the morons who dish it out mindlessly in the streets, pubs and schools.
The Sex Pistols made you feel violent, but I always preferred smashing things not people! I think Johnny Rotten
would agree with that. He was always a smart cookie. No fighter. I always
remember Captain Sensible of the Damned saying he’d much rather throw an egg
than a punch. Happy to go along with that. Egging authority figures seems a
good idea to me. Especially in Britain right now…
SRW: Yeesh, I feel your political pain.
The finale of the book is extraordinarily suspenseful.
I particularly loved the slow-burn dread of waiting for the huge-ass venue
concert to begin. You reminded me of why I abhor big arena concerts, capturing
that sense of claustrophobia and being ripped off while waiting to glimpse an
ant-sized view of rock heroes. Like your protagonist, Kirk, I’d much rather
watch a band play in a bar. Do you agree with this? C’mon, are you Kirk?
LD: Absolutely, 100
%. Got no time for big bands in big venues. Never did, never will. There’s zero
connection to the audience. I want to be close enough to spit on the buggers 😉 Filthy habit, lot of
that went on in the early days. I
dreamed of being someone like Kirk a long time ago I suppose. The dream never
came true, so I wrote about him instead.
SRW: Elvis Presley said “Rock and roll music, if you like it,
if you feel it, you can’t help move to it. Then there’s the Chuck Berry quote,
“If you want to release your aggression, get up and dance. That’s what rock and
roll is.” And finally, Pete Wentz said, “What would rock and roll be without
ambition, danger, craziness, and fun?” It seems like everyone wants to define
rock. In your book, we see both the destructive and transformative power of
rock and roll. Which camp do you tend to fall into, Leo?
LD: Well the Pistols had transformative music for sure, and
outwardly destructive too, though Lydon was always much cleverer than that. His
lyrics were insightful and provocative, while Steve Jones let loose Fall of
Empire riffs, so I guess I was hugely influenced by the excitement of their
approach. So to answer your question, both! Destructive AND transformative.
Destroying the oppressive institutions that surround us while wishing for
transformation... For something else, something better, which never comes
along.
SRW: What are you working on now? Where can interested
parties find more info?
LD: I have a literary agent over here in the UK who wants me
to concentrate on Dark Crime. He’s flogging a very dark book around (or is it a
dead horse?) to publishers at the moment. I’m keeping the
horror for Grinning Skull!
LD: Been a pleasure, Stuart. Loved hangin’! Feel the caress
of my noose…
