Interviews
STEEL PANTHER’s SATCHEL and STIX Talk ‘Heavy Metal Rules,’ Seka, Marilyn Chambers, and Aqua Net Hairspray [w/ Audio]
In a totally wild, off-the-wall interview, Satchel and Stix from Steel Panther discuss, well, a lot of things, including their new record Heavy Metal Rules in this comedic chat with Mike Bax from Heavy Montréal 2019.
An hour or so before their fantastic performance at Heavy Montréal on July 27th, Steel Panther was making their ways around the press tent doing a few interviews. PureGrainAudio pulled Satchel and Stix aside for a comical cht that took place while bands on three stages were destroying eardrums in every direction surrounding us. With an album entitled Heavy Metal Rules looming on the horizon, they both were eager to talk.
Given the nature of Steel Panther’s material and their over-the-top onstage personas, everyone doing press with the members of Steel Panther finished their interviews with tears in their eyes from laughing too much, myself included. An hour or so after this interview, Steel Panther debuted one of the songs from their new album (“All I Wanna Do Is Fuck (Myself Tonight)”) live for the crowd at Heavy Montréal. They wound up amongst the best performances of the whole weekend.
The audio for this interview is included here via SoundCloud. There is a bit of background noise; this interview was indeed recorded at the Heavy Montréal Festival amidst a melee of music, scurrying festival workers, and press types. It’s decent enough audio that we deemed it worthy of a listen and included it for listeners who’d like to hear Satchel and Stix answering questions in the real. Honestly, it’s almost a necessity to play the audio.
So, word on the street is that you’ve got another album coming out.
Stix: September 27th, Mike. It’s going to blow your dick up into your body.
Satchel: You know what’s cool? You’re going to have a great time trying to get your dick out of your body.
Stix: Retrieving it, yeah.
Satchel: While you listen to the album in its entirety over and over.
Stix: It’s called Heavy Metal Rules.
Satchel: It’s called Heavy Metal Rules. You know why?
Here’s the just-released music video for Steel Panther’s latest track “Always Gonna Be A Ho:”
Why?
Satchel: ‘Cause Heavy Metal Rules!
Stix: Yeah!
Heavy Metal does rule.
Stix: You know what? It’s so obvious. It’s taken us… We’ve been putting records out for a minute, it’s taken us so long to come to something so simple. It’s like, we’re all here (motions around Parc Jean-Drapeau) because “heavy metal rules.” right? I mean, really. And pussy.
And pussy.
Satchel: Pussy totally fucking rules. You know what? When you say heavy metal rules, basically, underneath that, it’s understood that pussy totally rules. But the reason that we play heavy metal, and why people listen to heavy metal, is because pussy is awesome. And pussy rules. And so, with heavy metal, we are able to enjoy all of the pussy that comes with it.
Stix: Underneath that heavy metal umbrella reigns the pussy. So if you put that fucking thing up (mimes putting an umbrella up) and it’s like there’s actual rain on the outside.
Satchel: Actually the truth is that under the pussy umbrella, is pretty much all of the things that you do in the world. Everything that we do is for the pussy.
Stix: That sounds so Hannibal Lecter. Making a vagina umbrella? Like sewing enough vaginas together to make an actual umbrella that will protect you from the rain.
Satchel: I don’t know about you, but everything that I do in my life is for pussy.
Stix: I think that’s why all the humans are here is because of the pussy. Right?
Satchel: But heavy metal does rule.
Stix: It does. No question.
Satchel: Heavy metal definitely rules! (Fist bumps with Stix.)
Steel Panther’s fifth studio album, Heavy Metal Rules, is due out on September 27th, 2019, via the band’s own label, Steel Panther Inc:
And you double entendre’d that. Because Heavy Metal Rules kind of has a thing where you can make some rules up. What are some “heavy metal rules?”
Stix: You know what? Heavy Metal Rules, there’s one rule Mike; There are no rules. That’s the rule!
Satchel: That’s the one rule we have to follow.
Stix: That’s the really irononic part.
Satchel: That’s the irony.
Irononic!
Stix: (laughs) It’s irononic.
Satchel: There’s one rule. It’s irononic. Because you have to follow that rule, and yet, what does that mean? There are no rules. It’s confusing as fuck. But you know what? Life is confusing. But if you remember one thing, life can be less confusing with Heavy Metal Rules. (Fist bumps with Stix, yielding a cool knocking noise.)
Stix: Damn it, dude.
That was a nice fist knock, man.
Stix: Yeah, he does that good. I can’t do it. This is mine; ready? (Fist bumps with Satchel, no-knock sound.) I can’t do it. I’ve never been able to do it!
Satchel: We all have our strengths and weaknesses.
If one wanted to pre-order Heavy Metal Rules, would they get anything special with it? Are you doing any per-order packages?
Satchel: I think there might be.
Stix: There ARE pre-order packages. And if you want for our interview, I can find out afterwards. Because we’ve got our guy here, who does our shit. I’d be happy to give you that. We have incentives. But I don’t know what they are. (You can pre-order the album on the band’s official website here.)
Satchel: There’s all kinds of cool shit that we’re doing. But I don’t know all of the details.
Stix: I think there’s signed test printings.
Satchel: Oh yeah. Vinyl. All kinds of shit.
Stix: There’s all kinds of crazy shit that we’re doing.
Images of Steel Panther at Heavy Montréal (Parc Jean-Drapeau, Montreal, Quebec) on July 27, 2019, by Mike Bax and Trevor Lamas:
Do you have input into that? Like glow in the dark panties or dildos or whatever?
Stix: Oh yeah, we do. Here’s the thing.
Satchel: My underpants actually glow in the dark. But that’s because I haven’t washed them in a while.
Stix: Yeah, and they are like nuclear hazards. Yeah. They’re filled with jizz, Mike. It’s not cool.
Satchel: Or is it?
Stix: It’s really cool.
How many songs are on Heavy Metal Rules?
Stix: Here’s the great part, Mike. Do you want to tell him, or do you want me to tell him?
Satchel: You tell him.
Stix: The amount of tracks is nine. The amount of songs is eight. Wait.
Satchel: The amount of tracks is ten. The number of songs is nine.
Stix: Nine actual songs. We wanted to take it back to the old-school, dude.
Satchel: We were thinking about it. Ok, in this day and age there’s a lot of fucking shit going on for people all of the time. When we were fucking younger, and heavy metal was really and truly the dominant force in music; you know; Van Halen One; Ozzy’s records; all that shit. All of those records back then, like 1984 by Van Halen, how many songs were on that?
Stix: Eight songs, man.
Satchel: There was eight fucking songs on that record. I don’t know about you, but when I get records that have fifteen or sixteen songs, it’s like, ok, it’s really hard to digest all of that in one sitting. So we were like, let’s give people TWO records in the next five years that have nine songs, rather than one album that has sixteen or seventeen songs on it.
Stix: Inevitably, out of the sixteen songs that are going to be on that record, you’re going to have shit that is not high, A-caliber shit. It was important for us from song one through to the last song, to have every song feel like it could be a single for us. It’s important for us to put the best shit out there instead of just going “well, let’s just fill some time because we need a bonus track for Japan.” We didn’t do that.
Satchel: Music is subjective too. So there’s going to be people that hate all the tracks, but that way they can listen to it, and the pain is over pretty quick as well.
Stix: Yeah. We’re gentle that way.
Featuring an appearance from the band Stone Sour, here’s the music video for “Wasted Too Much Time,” off Steel Panther’s previous album Lower The Bar:
What comes first; the guitars and the writing of the songs? Or the lyrics?
Satchel: Well you know what? For me, I like to think about what I’m going to write about. What’s the subject matter? You know, but soon after that is picked; like we’re going to write about an Asian hooker, for instance, the chorus is usually the first thing that comes. And then the songs usually write themselves pretty quickly after that. There’s got to be a hook there. A little something people are going to want to sing along to.
Stix: A little piece of trivia that a lot of people don’t know, I’m going to divulge something about Satchel that a lot of people don’t know.
Satchel: I’ve got a nine-inch penis.
Stix: No one knows that.
Satchel: A lot of people don’t know that.
Stix: No one knows that.
Satchel: A lot of people do know that.
Stix: Well, you say that, but they don’t KNOW it.
Satchel: Well that’s because a lot of people are unconscious when it happens.
Stix: Satchel tends to do a lot of writing in the shower.
Satchel: That’s why I know I have a nine-inch penis.
Stix: He’ll call me up, and he’ll be like, “Dude, I’m going to send you thing I just wrote in the shower; I’m going to demo it up.” So I always envision him naked.
Satchel: I’m always naked. I’m naked a lot.
Stix: Demoing and shit, and he sends it to me, and 9.3 times out of 10 I’m always like…
Satchel: Nine-point-three is the exact measurement of my penis, in inches, by the way.
Stix: Centimetres, dude.
Satchel: I thought it was inches.
Stix: It’s very European. (holds his fingers apart) It’s nine of this.
I think I saw that scene in American Beauty; The shower bit.
Satchel: Oh yeah, that could very well be. Was I in that movie? I don’t remember that.
Stix: No.
Another soon-to-be classic off of Heavy Metal Rules…:
Let’s talk hair product for a minute. What kind of product do you guys put in your hair?
Satchel: Oh God, well, I’ll tell you. I’ve got a new hair spray in my hair right now because we were looking around. It’s good shit.
Stix: It’s called “Got To Be,” right? It’s in a yellow can.
Satchel: You know, that’s like something that I’ve never used before.
Stix: It’s good.
Satchel: A lot of times we’ll go with Aqua Net. Because Aqua Net is the quintessential ‘80s hairspray. It always looks good, and it always smells good. The girls tend to love it. I’m pretty sure that they put male pheromones into it. Not just male humans but rhinoceri, horses, a lot of animals that have really big dicks. Because, I dunno, it gets the women very very horny.
Stix: You know what else? We’ve been using Sebastian. Sebastian hair spray.
Satchel: Sebastian Bach.
Stix: Sebastian Bach has a line of hairspray. He’s got luscious hair, Mike.
Satchel: Sebastian Bach has some great pheromones too. He gets a lot of girls very, very horny as well.
I was in the Waterloo crowd when Phil X played with you. Was that planned?
Satchel: Oh, you know what? It was not planned. But Phil X is awesome. And we love the guy. We’ve fucking partied with him a lot. A lot of people don’t know this, but Phil X is not just a great guitar player, but he can snort a tonne of cocaine on his own.
Stix: A very good dude. We like Phil. Rarely when we have someone up with us, and we’ve had many people jam with Steel Panther, it’s not planned. It’s not arranged ahead of time. People come to our shows; musicians, you know, and if they are there, we call them out, and we’re fucking professionals. We get ‘em up there, and we jam.
Satchel: A lot of things that have happened on our stage over the years, people think we plan this shit out. And occasionally, like very rarely, we’ve tried to plan shit out, and it’s almost always a cluster-fuck.
Stix: It’s hard to do.
Satchel: So we try not to plan shit out. And when we don’t plan shit, it almost always winds up way better anyways. So when people are there, and we see them, we’ll usually call them out, and then they’ll just get up, and we’ll have fun. That’s usually the best way to go about that shit. Because we’re so high, we can’t remember shit anyways.
Darren Eagles’ shots of Steel Panther (w/ Striker) @ Mavricks Music Hall (Barrie, Ontario) on June 14, 2019:
You’re attached to Metal Blade now? Is that what your album is coming out on? Or is it on another label?
Stix: Our album is coming out on Steel Panther Records. We are our label. This is the first record that we are releasing on our own; we are our own merch company; we run our own fucking ship. We do everything.
Satchel: We’re actually pimping out our own women as well. So if you want to…
Stix: No, no. Not legal here yet.
Satchel: Oh. Well, so, that’s under the table. We’ll do that, though.
Weed’s legal here now. Not the women.
Satchel: Oh yeah, cool, yeah.
Stix: We’re doing it ourselves man. We decided to fucking…
Satchel: Cash only. Cash only.
Stix: Fucking invest in ourselves and we’ve put it all on the fucking table. And we’re taking all the risk, and we’re going for it because we saw how…
Satchel: Heavy Metal Rules.
Stix: Heavy Metal Rules. We saw how record companies make a bunch of money from bands, and we’re like, “Why would we give that shit away?”
Satchel: Did you notice that our album title is actually the answer to many, many questions in life?
And shall be for years to come.
Satchel: Yeah!
Stix: And so shall it be. Yeah dude. I smell weed right now, Mike.
I smell weed right now too. It’s the sweet small of Canada.
Stix: Yeah!
It’s Cana-Bis-Da.
Stix: Cana-Bis-Da. I like it.
Keeping with the heavy metal rules theme, here’s the music video for “Death To All But Metal” off 2009’s Feel The Steel:
You’re favourite porno movie from back in the day?
Stix: Oh, dude.
Satchel: Wow. That’s a really good question.
Stix: I don’t know a lot of titles because I don’t get into the titles. But I know who my favourite porn star is.
Satchel: I like Stop, My Ass Is On Fire #13.
Stix: #13 was good. #12 was great!
Satchel: #12 was actually exceptional as well.
Stix: My favourite old-school porn star is Seka. She’s fucking bad-ass.
Satchel: Ok, there’s a movie called Up ‘n’ Coming with Marilyn Chambers.
Stix: Oh yeah. She’s hot.
Satchel: Oh fuck yeah.
She’s old school.
Stix: Oh yeah. She’s old school.
Satchel: Just my speed.
Stix: Do you know who Vanessa Del Rio is?
Is that her stage name?
Stix: No that’s her name. Go get it.
Satchel: Oh, she’s great.
Stix: Go get into that shit.
Satchel: She’s a lot younger than Marilyn Chambers. Marilyn Chambers is very old school. She’s had vaginal rejuvenation surgery though and she’s still kick-ass.
Stix: Tight as nails, boy.
Cherlie Steffens’ photos of Steel Panther @ House of Blues (Anaheim, California) on January 18, 2019:
Plans for the year? I know you are touring, and you are coming back here to Canada in the fall. How much touring do you plan on doing for this album from its release into next year?
Satchel: Here’s the thing. We’re perpetually on tour, so if we never release another record album after this, then this tour will last the rest of our lives.
Stix: Yeah.
Satchel: Until we die.
Stix: Yeah. We never stop, man.
Satchel: Which is pretty cool to think about. That could be six months, or that could be like 20 years.
Stix: We were born to rock. It’s not like we’re going to stop and start farms. We’re going to fucking rock. We’re going to farm bitches is what we’re going to do.
Satchel: (laughs) We’ll farm hair, dude. We’re always farming hair.
Stix: Fuck yeah.
Aside from Van Halen (who fucking rule) what is your ideal hair metal band from back in the day?
Stix: Oh, dude.
Satchel: Well there’s a lot of great, great bands.
Stix: You just took Van Halen off the table. I get it. I get it.
Satchel: Well Def Leppard was fucking rad. Whitesnake was pretty rad, and they looked great.
Stix: You know, they did. I loved RATT. RATT was bitchin’. They looked great.
Satchel: RATT was fucking badass.
Stix: And their videos were fuckin’ cool. When Warren DeMartini busts out of the ceiling onto the Thanksgiving table and starts rocking a solo, that’s bitchin’. I don’t know whose idea that was, but kudos.
Satchel: They probably all forgot because they were high.
Stix: Yeah. Goddamn. It was probably Blotzer.
Satchel: You know why they were high?
Stix: ‘Cause Heavy Metal Rules.
Satchel: EXACTLY! See? That’s always the fucking answer.
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