Former White Zombie bassist Sean Yseult recently put out a new book called “I’m In The Band” that features many great stories and photos of her time as the bassist for White Zombie. I reached out to Sean to do an interview and she was gracious enough to talk on the phone from her New Orleans home. We had a great time talking about Beavis and Butthead, touring with her heroes The Ramones and her thoughts on bands charging fans to meet them. We also talked about her current music projects and her new line of bass guitars coming out this year. This was a really special and fun interview for me and I hope you all enjoy this as much as I did. Enjoy!
Hey Sean, this is Don from The Great Southern Brainfart. How are you today?
[laughs] I’m good.
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Yeah, I usually get a chuckle when I say the name of my blog.
[laughs] The full title, yeah [laughs] . That’s great!
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Thanks for doing this.
Thank you so much. I’m always happy to do an interview.
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How’s New Orleans treating ya these days?
Oh great. I love it here. Ever since Hurricane Katrina it’s just gotten better and better to be honest.
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I was actually born and raised in Metairie. I saw many great old metal shows like Razor White, Lillian Axe and Kirk’s old band Victorian Blitz.
Oh wow, I never even heard of that one [laughs].
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Yeah, it was his Judas Priest/Iron Maiden cover band.
Wow. That’s awesome. I’ve heard people call Metairie “Metalrie” [laughs].
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Congratulations on the success of your first book “I’m In The Band.” How did the book tour go for you?
Thanks. Yeah, I’m still doing some stuff but so far it’s been going great. Every time I do an in store they sell out of books so I can’t complain [laughs]. It’s been a great turn out and a great experience.
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I was bummed you didn’t make it to Atlanta. Will you be doing any more signing dates?
Yeah, I’m still planning stuff. It’s funny with books. The life of promoting a book is kind of long so I think I’ll still be doing stuff for the next few months. I’m hoping to do a weekend where I’ll come to Atlanta and Athens. Right now I’ve got another New York weekend coming up and I’m trying to plan a Chicago/Detroit weekend and a Texas trip. There’s still some stuff coming up though. So far I’ve some stuff in New Orleans, North Carolina, New York and LA twice now. Hopefully I’ll spread out to few other cities after this.
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That would be great to meet you again. The last time I met you was many years ago when White Zombie opened for Anthrax here in Atlanta.
Oh wow! That was our big breakthrough tour. That was a big tour for us. That was right when Beavis and Butthead started playing us a lot on MTV [laughs]. That was a great tour for us.
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What inspired you to release “I’m In The Band” and why now?
It all stemmed from our White Zombie box set. Our management had called me up to try and find some old bootleg VHS tapes that I had to send them and get them converted to DVD for the box set and I had to go into storage and pull all these boxes out. I moved to New Orleans in 1996 as soon as we finished our last tour. We were taking a year off but we kind of knew we were breaking up also at that point. I was like, “I’m going to New Orleans for the year” [laughs]. I moved here and I just rented a furnished place in the French Quarter for a year and then when we did break up at the end of that year I had all my stuff sent here and got a house. I put all of our boxes in storage and I hadn’t looked at those things since 1996. I had to start digging through them for the box set and once I started digging through them it was amazing. I totally forgot that I had kept tour diaries every night on the back of the tour itineraries. They give you these tour itineraries and on the back page I’d write down everything that had happened that night. I found those and at least two full photo albums just filled with photos of the tours with Pantera. Tons of photos of backstage antics and craziness. It was just so much and it brought back so many good memories. I just thought, “I want to put this all in one place.” To be honest, I started off just making a book for myself and people started telling me that I needed to get it out there. That’s how it got started.
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White Zombie was a very visual group. Is this why you chose to do a more visual layout to the book as opposed to a text heavy biography?
Yeah, at first I thought I was just going to make this crazy coffee table book filled with photos and tour diaries and scraps and fliers. I wanted to make that way. I did go to school for design and photography. That’s where Rob (Zombie) and I met. We were both at Parsons. He was in illustration and I was in the graphic design program. I started off as a photo major so I took photos all the time. I took the first photos of the band and I kept taking just snapshots backstage and I just had so much stuff to work with. I wanted it to be this visual kind of coffee table book but as I started laying it out and writing a little bit, the people who were reading what I wrote said, “You have to write more!” [laughs]. The writing really came secondary but it did start out as just a visual coffee table book.
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There is so many cool things in this book. It’s really a great way for fans to see things that they never would’ve had the chance to see. It’s really quite a voyeuristic peek into the band’s life.
Yeah, a lot of people don’t know anything about our first seven years as a group. There’s a lot of stuff in there from the early days that’s pretty obscure unless you had all my boxes of stuff [laughs]. I’m pretty much the only one that photographed and documented that stuff back then.
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I really found some humor in the title. You were always referred to as “the chick in White Zombie.” How did you feel about being known like that? Most women can’t stand the word “chick”.
I’ve got no issues with that word. I know some women have all kinds of hang ups but I’m fine with the word chick and I don’t care about the word “broad” [laughs]. Some people are easily offended but I use those words and I don’t find them offensive. Whatever. I thought it was funny. That’s just what I was known as because that’s what Beavis and Butthead called me and every time I see people they say, “Hey, it’s the chick from White Zombie” [laughs]. It definitely isn’t derogatory.
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So are you a Beavis and Butthead fan at all?
Oh yeah! That shit was bad ass when it came out [laughs]. Beavis and Butthead gave a thumbs up to Iggy Pop, Butthole Surfers. We were keeping excellent company as far as I was concerned. That show was hilarious. The timing of it was just perfect.
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Now that I look back on it, it’s quite scary because it hits pretty close to home. That show was basically me and my friends sitting around watching Headbangers Ball on Saturday nights.
Really? [laughs] That’s funny! I thought that show was great. Mike Judge was pretty much a genius so.
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So I have to tell you. Back in 1992 when I was as senior in High School, I sent both you a letter asking you to my Senior Prom. Did you get it?
[laughs] Wow! See, I never got that. I always knew the record label was withholding mail from me [laughs]. I wish I had got that. That’s very sweet. I didn’t even get a chance to contemplate it. Sorry [laughs].
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You’ve toured with some pretty amazing acts in your time. Which ones stand out to you as being the coolest experience?
Probably the most fun and amazing experience was always touring with Pantera. We toured with them so often and they were just like family. Phil and Darrell are two of the funniest motherfuckers you’ll ever meet in your life [laughs] . They would constantly do anything to make you laugh. The whole band was such great guys and it was always so much fun with them. They would pull me up on stage to sing a chorus and Phil and Darrell would come no stage in goofy costumes trying to throw us off. There was always interaction between both bands and it was so much fun. I’d have to say that the most amazing experiences for me were getting to tour, actually we took these bands out as openers which was crazy for me because I worshiped both of these bands but was taking out The Ramones and The Cramps on tour. I have a holy trinity and it’s The Cramps, The Ramones and Motorhead. We never got to play with Motorhead but I used to see Lemmy all the time in Hollywood so that was fun. To tour with the Ramones was like a six week tour so we were hanging out with them day in and day out. They’d invite them to ride with them in the van. I got to ride from gig to gig with them and it was just amazing. Joey was so sweet and was always giving me gifts and they were just the greatest guys. For a band I grew up worshiping that was insane. And then we just did a few Halloween shows with The Cramps but that was amazing. I got to be good friends with them after that and I actually ended up being their bass player on their very last tour right before Lux (Interior; lead singer) died so that was special.
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In the book you say that towards the end of the co-headlining tour with Pantera that you had a feeling that you were going to go home and the break up. At what point did this start to look like a reality of happening?
That whole tour for the Astro Creep record, Rob wasn’t talking to any of us, he was traveling in his own tour bus and doing all the kind of lead singer things that lead singers do. That’s usually a good sign of the beginning of the end. We toured for Astro Creep for a year and a half and during the making of that record and the beginning of that tour we kind of know that that was probably going to be it [laughs]. It wasn’t like that summer all of sudden we realized we were breaking up. It was kind of a long thing.
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In all honesty, would you attribute the break of White Zombie to Rob catching a bad case of Lead Singers Disease?
[laughs] Yeah, it’s just a typical pattern. The singer figures he can go solo and they do and it saves them money. They’re not in a band anymore [laughs].
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I’m sure you get asked all the time about the “R” word. Is a White Zombie reunion something you would consider?
It would definitely be hard for me and J (Yuenger, former White Zombie guitarist). There’s definitely some hard feelings there with behavior that was going on that lasted for the whole Astro Creep record but I would consider it. The ball would definitely be in Rob’s court. He would have to actually start up some sort of dialog. He hasn’t spoken to any of us in ages so that’s his issue not ours [laughs].
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After White Zombie parted ways you moved to New Orleans in 1996. What about that city made you want to live there?
I love this city. Everything about it. The architecture, the culture, the food, the nightlife. It’s so exciting. Every time I came here I’d run into at least five people I knew. There would always be bands here making records or passing through on tour. It’s just always so much fun and you never have to plan anything. You just kind of show up and things just magically happen. It’s still like that here and I love it. You just wonder out and you might end up at a crawfish boil down the street [laughs]. You just never know what’s going to happen in this town and everyone is kind of in this festive mood. I’m a huge history buff and this is pretty much the oldest rural city in America. The architecture alone is amazing. I constantly go on bike rides and just study different houses every day. It’s great for me on a lot of levels.
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I agree about the history of that city. I love reading about it and I love those old cemeteries. Last time I was there I had to go to one and take some photos.
That’s funny! That’s what I’m doing later today actually [laughs]. I’m doing collaborative work with in artist in North Carolina where I grew up. He’s requesting photos of some cemeteries and I’ve done it some many times on so many different cameras and I just went through all my files and I can’t find them. I think it was back when I was shooting with real film and negatives [laughs]. I’m going to go out because I’ve got a high end digital camera and do another photo shoot today. The first time we came through here that’s the first thing I did was to go to a cemetery. I love the cemeteries here. Actually, my guitar company Schecter that did my coffin bass for me are going to do a limited edition bass and start making them this year. I’m looking into different New Orleans donations from the sale of the guitars and I’m looking into “Save Our Cemeteries” which I thought would be appropriate for the coffin bass [laughs].
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Well there’s no shortage of vampire bands around these days so I’m sure they’ll buy them all up.
[laughs] I’m excited. I’m actually working on a headstock design this week. I’m trying to make it look like a fleur-de-lis so we’ll see how that turns out.
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That’s cool that you’re still really into designing and art. I used to love those old hand drawn White Zombie fliers. They were so graphically awesome. In this day and age of computers and Photoshop, do you feel the magic has been taken away from the flier art form?
Things are much slicker than they used to be. You’re never going to have those fucked up, grainy old xeroxed fliers like you use to have. Back then we were trying to make them look nice and we were doing as good as we could back then [laughs]. Now it’s just different. I’m not going to say it’s better or worse. It’s just different. It’s interesting that the average joe who doesn’t have a design degree or whatever can get in there and do all these crazy things in Photoshop now. You definitely get some unusual results and I think it’s good. I think it’s great that everybody has access to make their own record or make their own artwork or whatever they want on their computer. Power to the people! [laughs]
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Obviously heavy metal is the kind of music you are mostly associated with. Are there any other kinds of music we’d be surprised to hear you were a fan of?
I like so many different kinds of music that would confuse just about anyone [laughs]. I love heavy music but I grew up in North Carolina and hearing bluegrass. I have a banjo and I’ve been playing since I was 12. I love bluegrass and I love classical. I grew up playing classical piano and violin. I love surf music. I do love different kinds of music. It’s not like one thing only for me.
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Besides the book keeping you busy, what are you currently working on musically?
I just started a band with some of my friends called Star and Dagger. We have a Star and Dagger Facebook page and you can download five free songs. We got together and recorded five songs out in Joshua Tree not too long ago and we’ve got about 10 more songs that we’re working on right now. We might actually get out and play some songs [laughs]. I’m also still playing locally with Rock City Morgue. I’ve been with them for eight years now.
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Oh I love Rock City Morgue! What a great band. I can’t wait to hear this Star and Dagger stuff!
Oh thanks! My friend Donna She Wolf plays guitar and this girl from New Orleans Von Hesseling is the singer and she’s just amazing. She’s got an incredible voice. There’s not a lot of female vocalists that I love but her voice is just perfect.
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If Hollywood was to make a movie about you, who would play you on the big screen?
Hm, wow. That’s tough [laughs]. Well, once I was waiting in line to see “Almost Famous” and somebody said, “Oh, you’re the girl in the movie!” so maybe Kate Hudson [laughs].
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If you could come back as a ghost (think Beetlejuice), who would you haunt, and annoy the fuck out of and why?
Oh wow. These are great questions but I gotta think for a minute [laughs]. That’s a tough one. I’m trying to think of who I’d want to annoy.
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It could be Rob if you wanted!
[laughs] No, I definitely don’t want to be meddling in his business [laughs]. I’m really not someone who likes to waste time messing with people but it would be fun to just be a ghost to float around and check shit out [laughs]. Go to some free rock shows. Scare some people who don’t believe in ghosts [laughs].
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I’d love to ask your opinion on something. It seems to be a trend lately for bands to charge a fee for their fans to meet them before or after shows. Even your former singer is guilty of this. What’s your opinion on that?
Yeah, I saw that. Oh I hate that. I think it’s disgusting. Is there no end to people being greedy? It’s so gross. We used to do meet and greets all the time and we didn’t charge people. You’d go outside by the tour bus and we’d sign stuff for like an hour or two and we’d meet the fans. Why would you want charge them? They already bought your tickets, maybe they bought a t-shirt. I just can’t believe that they’d do that. It’s like one step away from prostitution really. It’s like, “Pay to meet me.” and then what? [laughs] I think it’s unbelievable. I’ve seen some where you can sit down and have dinner with a band. What’s next? A bubble bath? [laughs] I just don’t get it and I think it’s really disgusting. It kinda reeks of some form or prostitution. It’s super lame.
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What does 2011 have in store for Sean Yseult?
I’ve been traveling all month doing promotion for the book and a I have a few more things planned in the next couple of months. I’m working on this design for the coffin bass and getting that in production soon. I’ve got a line of new stuff I’m doing with my design company and I’m working on new songs with my band Star and Dagger so I’m keeping busy. I’m really excited!
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Is there a place where folks can go to purchase some of your artwork/designs?
Yeah, if you go to my website http://www.seanyseult.com there’s a few different things you can click on. There’s a design link, a photography link, a music link. There’s a number of different things that I”m doing now. That’s a good place to check everything out. Some people are just wanting these scarves with my graphics on them that I’ve been doing for a while and those are over at http://www.yseultdesigns.com.
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Sean, thanks so much for doing this interview. You’re a really sweet person and this was a blast.
Awesome. It was very nice to talk to you Don! Take care.
For More Info On Sean Yseult:
Sean Yseult Official Website
Sean Yseult/White Zombie on Facebook
Star & Dagger on Facebook
Rock City Morgue