Writer: Chris Ahrens | Photography: Estevan Oriol

    Driving toward Verizon Wireless Amphitheater for a Rob Zombie gig, I am reminded that in more civilized times, a mere two decades ago, adult lions roamed here. The park was called Lion Country Safari and for a fee you could drive your car among them. And if memory serves, the parking lot I just entered was once paved with the dung of the king of beasts.

    Zombie is a top shelf shock rocker whom, judging by his lyrics, seems to enjoy the thrill of the hunt and the kill, much like the lions that once prowled the region. And while he plays the monster for his legions of fans, backstage he acts like the rest of us, if we were rock stars—concerned about sound quality, food and his job, which won’t begin for about four hours. But fans stand around in pods of five or more, chain-smoking, cranking metal, exchanging metallic stories and tips on tattooing, and hoping for a sighting of their hero.

    One woman finds instant celebrity among her peers after revealing she once paid a mere $400 to get into the front row of a Marilyn Manson concert where she actually made eye contact with the Antichrist Superstar himself. Everyone is impressed but the weekend biker/lawyer, who smokes with one hand, discusses a case with a client on his cell with the other, and seems to enjoy playing tough for his can-a-day-of-hairspray girlfriend who loudly and proudly proclaims she would pay twice that much for a close encounter with Zombie.

    There are some Rob Zombie look-alikes in the mostly friendly, increasingly large, and seemingly diverse crowd, and it hits me that the only obvious thing that unites them is the anti-color—black, something that creates a good camouflage against the asphalt.

    By the time I am driven backstage and introduced to the reason for this gathering, I shake hands unenthusiastically, thinking that the guy who introduced himself as Rob is another pretender to the throne. But no, this is really him. The real Rob Zombie has stood up, and he is quite different
from the trick-or-treat version. Or is he?

Risen Magazine: Emotionally, what do you try to communicate to your audience?
Rob Zombie: To me music has always been an escape. When I was a kid, life was boring. Where we lived was boring. Everything was boring and horrible and music was a way out of it, in my mind. For me it should be a larger-than-life experience. In that time, a record could make things better. When you come to the concert, I want it to be the record you picture in your mind exploding in front of you. So often you would love the record and go see the band, and you’d be totally let down by the whole thing. In fact it would ruin it sometimes, it would ruin the record; the band had become such a disappointment.

RM: The horror genre was dominated by theater until Alice Cooper, KISS, and Ozzy Osbourne turned it intomusical theater. You do that.
RZ: Yeah, rock music and horror movies were always linked in my mind. All the music I loved as a kid was very dark, whether it was Alice Cooper or KISS. Your brain kind of gets branded with whatever you see first and that’s what it was. It’s kind of the way you see things forever.

RM: Is a live performance more rewarding than doing a CD or directing a horror movie?
RZ: It’s not necessarily more rewarding, but rewarding in a different way. When you start a CD you have no music and you think, What are we gonna do? When it’s done you think, Wow, we did it again; I can’t believe we have another group of songs. A movie is that magnified because it’s such a long process and it involves so many people. It’s satisfying. Playing live is different, because you get other people to tell you what they think. Concerts are weird; there’s nothing else, except sports, where thousands of people are gonna scream their approval.

RM: Does it tweak your ego, having 20,000 people calling your name?
RZ: I don’t know, I think everyone reacts to it differently. I think it makes some people’s egos go berserk and they suddenly become obnoxious and horrible because they decide that they’re special. For me I think it’s the exact opposite at times. It’s a weird thing. Once you get success, you’re never quite sure how you got it. I mean you work for it, but when you get there, you’re like, Wow, it worked! But you’re always kind of paranoid about it going away. I think when people’s egos take over is when they get relaxed and start thinking, I’m so great, how could things ever go bad, because people love me and I’m so awesome. I never think like that; I’m too paranoid to think that way.

RM: Do you think if you would had been born a hundred years ago, you would be a circus performer?
RZ: Probably. I like that life for some reason. As a kid, I was exposed to that a bunch, because that’s what my grandparents and a lot of family members did. We would spend a lot of time on carnivals and traveling shows.

RM: Einstein said he thought ideas came from outside of himself, like you catch something that’s moving around out there. Where do you think ideas come from?
RZ: That’s a funny question. I don’t know; if I knew I would go there more often. I think ideas are always there for everybody, but they’re not always looking for them. I’m always looking for them. Like I could never look at anything and not subconsciously be searching for ideas. Even when we’re on the bus, I’ll be staring out the window and think, That’s a great location for a movie, or that reminds me of a location for a movie. Sometimes I’ll store it away in my brain and won’t do anything with it for years and years, bu