EDDIE TRUNK GETS GRILLED: ROB HALFORD OR BRUCE DICKINSON? BRITISH METAL OR U.S METAL? KISS IN THE 80’s OR THE 90’s?

Joe Daly of The Weeklings spoke to our very own Eddie Trunk. Portions of the interview appear below.

Q: Musicians, even the metal guys, can be colorful personalities to manage sometimes. Looking back over the past eleven seasons [of That Metal Show], are there any interviews or situations that you wish you might have handled differently?

ET: The one interview that I wish I had back was the Axl Rose interview, when we went to Miami and interviewed him. I only say that because people who don’t know the backstory behind that interview don’t realize all that went into getting it. It was a lot. It was waiting around, literally, for fifteen hours for that interview. And we never knew if we were ever going to get it. There was no promise made to us that we were going to get an interview, so we were prepared to some degree, but we weren’t prepared to wait until five in the morning to do an interview, and that’s exactly what it ended up being. We got to the arena at three o’clock the day before, and we walked out of the arena at around eight a.m. the next day. We got our interview, but as important as it was to have been the first—and all respect to Jimmy Kimmel, who I know got one—we were first to have gotten an interview with Axl on TV in God knows how long.

Q: I remember running into you in L.A. a few weeks after that and you still looked exhausted.

ET: We really put a lot into that and it took a hell of a long time to get it. To that end, by the time Axl came out and the interview happened, we were so sleep deprived, we were literally dozing off before he walked in. We had flights to catch. We thought we were going to do the interview at eight, get back to our rooms around eleven, sleep, wake up, get on the plane and go. We literally went from the venue to the airport, got on a plane and came home without sleeping.

So I’m not making excuses, but when you’re standing around that long in limbo, you have a completely different mindset going into that interview. You’re like, “OK, let’s get some time with this guy, and then we’ve gotta go.” There are much tougher questions that I could have asked. I think that the bigger part of that whole thing is that people just wanted to see the guy and hear him speak, because he’s so reclusive.

The whole thing was a weird thing. He didn’t know he was supposed to do an interview. His manager, he claims, didn’t tell him. We were there forever, so really it was a whole gray area going into it. Again, the most important thing was that we got it; people saw it, people heard it, most people liked it. That was the goal, to get him on the show, but we could have certainly done more with it if things had been different.

Q: It’s a surreal piece of television. His answers probably revealed more about himself than he intended.

ET: Listen, you have to realize, too, that you get a guy like that sitting there, you’ve waited all that time… You know that he can be volatile and you want to walk a tightrope because the last thing you want to do is, having sat there for fifteen hours with your crew, the first question out of your mouth is, “Dude, what’s wrong with you, man? Slash is the best! Are you crazy?” Which people, I think, expect.

I think there are certain elements that think the first question should be, “Put the original band back together!” How do you think that’s going to fly? Then the guy takes his microphone off and thirty seconds into it he walks out, and we’ve just spent fifteen hours for that. There’s got to be some tact. You’ve got to do what you can do to get into stuff without cutting the red wire and having somebody go crazy. So that’s a balancing act and I think that under the conditions, we all did a great job. Could it have been better? Yeah. So that’s one that I’d love to have back under different conditions.

Q: Still, don’t you think that the circumstances surrounding the interview created a level of suspense and unpredictability that you might not have achieved in a studio?

ET: What people don’t know also about that whole thing was that because we didn’t know if we were ever going to get an interview with him, before he even walked in, we interviewed everybody in Guns N’ Roses, including crew members, and we also interviewed everybody in Buckcherry, who were opening that show.

The reason we did that was because if Axl didn’t come out, we still needed to put an hour of TV on, so we were just going to cut it and it was going to become the Quest for Axl show, where we never really get him, but we talk to everybody around him.

And then, when he shows up at the very end, just when we were ready to call it a day, all of that stuff was cut out, and left out. I get a lot of people asking me about (current Guns N’ Roses guitarist) DJ Ashba sitting there in the Axl interview and not saying anything. That’s because Axl wanted him sitting there, and all respect to DJ, who’s a friend, but if you have Axl Rose for the first time on TV in twenty years, you’re not going to talk to DJ Ashba. And DJ knew that. But we had interviewed DJ before, and again, that stuff ended up online, so that’s kind of one of these surreal moments that I could probably write a book about that episode alone.

So to give a very long answer to your question, if I could go back and do a different kind of interview, I would probably go back and go for that.

Q: Switching gears a bit, it’s now time for you to take ten hard ones.

ET: Uh oh…

Q: I’m going to give you ten either/or questions and I’d like you to choose one and briefly explain why you made that choice. Rob Halford or Bruce Dickinson?

ET: Halford because he’s the metal god, simple as that. He came before Bruce, so maybe there wouldn’t have been a Bruce without a Halford, so I’ve got to go with Rob.

Q: British Metal or US Metal?

ET: Ugh… Gotta go British because to me, Black Sabbath is where heavy metal started, and they’re from England.

Q: Scorpions or Anvil?

ET: Scorpions. All respect to Anvil, but Scorpions have a much, much bigger catalog of songs.

Q: Here’s a movie question: Almost Famous or Rock Star?

ET: Almost Famous. I just think that it’s a better story and I think that from what I’ve heard, the original intent of Rock Star was originally to be based on the Judas Priest story, but it got turned a bit sideways, so I just think that Almost Famous was better done.

Q: KISS in the 80s or KISS in the 90s?

ET: I have to say 90s because in the 90s is when they reunited with the original band.

Q: In that same vein, metal today or metal ten years ago?

ET: I’m going to say metal now, because I think it’s further along, I think it’s grown and today, on the day that we’re talking, it was just announced that Black Sabbath have the number one album in America. So that’s pretty remarkable in 2013, so we’ve gotta go with now.

Q: Front row or backstage?

ET: Hmmm…Well, it depends what I’m looking to do! (laughing) If I’m looking to hang out, then backstage, but if I’m looking to see the show, front row. But I’ll tell you what, and here’s the secret that a lot of people don’t know about front row—front row is often a really bad seat. For the front row, the sound is usually really bad most of the time because you’re too close to the PA, where it’s almost behind you and you’re not hearing it right. Also, it’s hard to take in the whole show if the band has screens or production that you can’t see properly. So front row is not everything it’s cracked up to be, if you’ve ever been lucky enough to sit there. You’re better off being about fifteen rows back to really take in a full show.

Q: Radio or TV?

ET: Oh wow… Hmmm… (long pause) From an interviewer’s perspective, radio. Yeah, because I have so much more time. I love doing interviews and getting the stories from these bands. I love sitting for an hour straight and talking to an artist, and you simply can’t do that on television. From an impact standpoint, and a notoriety standpoint, without question television. But from a standpoint of doing interviews and getting into it with artists, radio. Plus radio is so much more immediate. Something I do on my radio show tomorrow night will be heard everywhere five seconds after I do it. TV, what I do there isn’t going to be seen or heard for a month after it’s done.

Q: Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis?

ET: Stallone. Because I like Rocky and Rambo a lot more than Die Hard…I should have said Willis because Willis is from New Jersey, but I’ve still got to go with Stallone.

Q: [Finally], Sabbath or Zeppelin?

Oh wow… Alright, I’m going to go with Zeppelin. Wow.

Yeah, I’m gonna go with Zeppelin, and here’s the simple answer—there wouldn’t have been a Sabbath without a Zeppelin. And they’ve said that themselves, and I’ve just read a recent interview with Sabbath for their new album and they were asked, “What were you listening to that shaped the band?” and one of the bands they mentioned was Zeppelin. You’ve got to pay respect to the elders. Both of their music holds up incredibly well, both bands have so much dynamic in their sound.

The big difference of course is that Zeppelin has always been one band; Sabbath, are we talking Dio? Are we talking Ian Gillan? Are we talking Tony Martin? You can go on and on? If you’re just talking about the Ozzy years, it’s a different thing too, but I just always defer to the bands that came before and that laid the foundation when questions like that come up, and that’s Zeppelin before Sabbath.

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