Remembering Peter Steele
Remembering Peter Steele
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Peter Steele, born Petrus T. Ratajczyk, stood a towering 6′7”, a looming presence accompanied by a sweep of long black hair and a booming baritone. That voice served him well in his chosen profession as vocalist, composer, lyricist, and bassist for the Brooklyn-based quartet Type O Negative.
This April marks the second anniversary of Peter Steele’s death from heart failure. He was 48.
I first saw Peter and Type O in concert on Halloween Night, 1999 in Boston. I had asked my friend and musician John if he wanted to come to the show with me. “What type of music?” he asked. “Sort of Goth-Metal,” I responded, but John’s eye roll interrupted me. “Not my thing,” he dismissed. “John, you have to see this band,” I assured him. After the show, John turned to me, dumbfounded. “Holy shit,” he said. “What a band.”
Indeed. Johnny had never seen anything like Type O Negative, because there is nothing like Type O Negative.
Luxuriant melodies embraced by soaring, doom-laden riffs, sitars and flutes dancing with layer upon layer of electric guitars, and underneath it all Peter’s bass, holding up the whole musical edifice, the heaviness belying a tender fragility. Like Peter himself.
A mass of contradictions, Peter was both intimidating and funny, both self-loathing and boastful. He was a devout Catholic who once sang a song - Black Sabbath - from Lucifer’s point of view; a Goth virtuoso who was also a man of the political right; a self professed “pro-Church, pro-family,” Metal musician who penned anti-abortion songs and railed against the welfare state in interviews, earning him the approbation of the music press, especially in Europe
Thanks to his oft-expressed right-of-center views, accusations of fascist loyalties dogged Peter and Type O for years. But Peter shrugged it off. “Because the music industry has become so Left,” he explained in a 2007 interview, “to say anything Right and you’re called a fascist, a Nazi.” Peter preferred to answer his critics in song, “We don’t care what you think!” he sang in the rip-roaring We Hate Everyone, denouncing “right-wing Commies” and “leftists Nazis” alike as cowardly hypocrites.
The other members of Type O, drummer Johnny Kelly, guitarist/vocalist Kenny Hickey and keyboardist/producer Josh Silver, grew up in the same outer-borough, working-class environs as Steele. And they had longstanding ties with one another: Kelly told me in an interview conducted last year that he first met Peter when, as a 16 year-old, he worked in the NYC studio where Peter’s old band Carnivore rehearsed. On the road as Type O Negative, the four men functioned as very different brothers, a musical family united in dysfunction and affection. Only a family, after all, could survive the two decades that spanned Type O’s career, an astonishing feat in a business which sees few bands survive two months.
For the uninitiated, I offer the following not-to-be-missed Type O Negative tracks:
Love You To Death – From the underrated 1996 album “October Rust,” this Goth ballad beckons with gorgeous piano and seduces with lush orchestration. Perfect for slow dancing with your lover in a half-lit hallway.
Dead Again – The title track from their last (and best) studio album, Dead Again begins, as many Type O songs do, deceptively: A slow dirge opens the proceedings, before suddenly morphing into an amalgam of punk and speed metal, a furious race that careens dangerously until the musicians retake control and bring it to a rousing and satisfying close that, like all outstanding musical feats, seems at once inevitable and surprising.
Christian Woman (Album Version)- The archetypal Type O song, from their breakout album “Bloody Kisses.” Exquisitely orchestrated, produced, and performed, Christian Woman is Steele at his lyrically most daring, as he chronicles the inner life of a woman who has confused spiritual grace with corporeal longing, and thus finds herself desiring her Lord and Savior in the most carnal way. “For her lust, she’ll burn in hell/her soul done medium-well,” Steele sings, with a typical wink, as when he helpfully reminds the women in the outro refrain, “Jesus Christ looks like me.” Don’t be fooled by the the touches of dark humor, though: The haunting acoustic mid-section drips with the ache of a forbidden longing. Blasphemous? Maybe. Beautiful? Definitely.
World Coming Down – Their best live number, this title track from their 1999 album comes on like a collapsing skyscraper. An ordeal that leaves one emotionally exhausted, a trial to be both endured and savored. Find here. You’re welcome.
Anesthesia – “Like a flash of light, in an endless night/Life is trapped between, two dark entities.” Perhaps their best song (certainly a band favorite), Anesthesia sits ensconced like a diamond in what is generally considered their weakest album, 2003’s “Life is Killing Me.” A soul in pain cries out for the anesthetic of the grave, amid luminous descending pianos and swirling guitars.
These Three Things - A multi-segment mini symphony from “Dead Again,” These Three Things is an anti-abortion polemic masquerading as a Doom Metal anthem. Peter’s lyrics have the focus of sustained faith, “Child torn from the womb unbaptized/there’s no question it’s infanticide.” The end is a glorious crescendo of hope and redemption, as Peter intones “All God’s people, gather ‘round/Through forgiveness, salvation is found.” A masterpiece.
Stay Out of My Dreams - Recorded for “World Coming Down” but inexplicably left off the record, this gem didn’t see the light of day until the 2000 compilation “Least Worst Of.” Here, the Drab Four come off like Zeppelin crossed with The Sisters of Mercy, propelled by some terrific riffing and solo work by Hickey. The lyrics are, as so often with Peter, both hilarious and heartbreaking – the narrator recounts a love lost but not forgotten, a “Staten Island Princess” with whom a “Coney Island high” was once shared. The end of the relationship seems to have had something to do with a certain familial resemblance. “With your straight black hair and emerald green eyes/Hippies pointing ‘that’s Pete’s sister in disguise’/Maybe you had uttered those words as a jest/I don’t mind the allegations of incest.” Creepy, cool, sexy, funny.
These tracks are merely a suggested starting point, but really, it’s all good. There are so many surprises; on the same album, songs appear which are radically different from one another, yet somehow hang as a cohesive whole. Similarly, sections within the songs themselves can be radically different, and yet somehow serve the same musical idea. In short, there’s something for everyone in Type O.
That kind of talent paid off – professionally, Peter Steele enjoyed no small measure of success, perhaps more than he expected (“Bloody Kisses” went Platinum). His personal life, however, was often subject to the vicissitudes which plague many artists: troubles with the law, substance abuse, mental health issues. But Peter’s earthly troubles are now over, and we can only hope that his soul in death has found the peace that eluded his mortal mind. Thankfully, his music yet lives, some of the most thrilling and original of the modern era. It will have to be enough.
There will never be anyone else quite like Peter Steele, never be another band quite like Type O Negative. R.I.P.