Joel McIver - Sinister Urge: The Life and Times of Rob Zombie

Copyright 2015 by Joel McIver

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2015 by Backbeat Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation
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Printed in the United States of America

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This book is dedicated to
Jeff Hanneman of Slayer

Contents

by Jeremy Wagner

Rob Zombie is who I want to be when I grow upa heavy metal musician who makes scary movies. Like Zombie, Im a horror-movie fanatic, and I love writing horror and making metal music. Zombies done all that and more. His many remarkable achievements both impress and entertain across the worlds of music, movies, animation, art, and elsewhere.

As a kid who once said he always wanted to be Alice Cooper, Steven Spielberg, Bela Lugosi, and Stan Lee, Rob has become all of his heroes in one unique and original package. A multi-platinum-selling musician, film director, screenwriter, and film producer, Zombie has come a long way since being a kid from Massachusetts who released his bands first album on their own record label.

Sometime in the 1990s, I first caught Rob when he made an appearance on MTVs Headbangers Ball , when it was hosted by Riki Rachtman. He was drawing and painting all this rad horror artwork on the Headbangers Ball set. I loved the art he was making, and not long after that episode, I discovered White Zombies heavy groove and horror-and-sex imagery.

Since then, Rob has gone solo and continued to crank out albums, movies, and cartoons. Im convinced that theres nothing that Rob cant do: his creativity has no bounds. Moreover, he holds horror in his heart and puts on the sickest live concert, with the sickest production youll ever see. I know, because Ive been fortunate enough to see it all, from backstage and the front row.

Rob Zombie inspires me, and this book will inspire you, dear reader. His story, in the hands of Joel McIver, is a genuine winan extremely compelling and fun ride which youll find is definitely worth the price of admission.

Jeremy Wagner

2015

Author and musician Jeremy Wagner has written lyrics and music for several albums with his acclaimed death metal band Broken Hope. He has published fiction through St. Martins Press and Perseus Books. Wagners novel The Armageddon Chord received a Hiram Award; it was a finalist for Emerging Novelists Novel of the Year, was recommended for a Bram Stoker Award for First Novel, and was reviewed in Publishers Weekly and Rolling Stone .

Nobody knows anything about me, which is kind of good. I keep it that way. Everybody thinks that they know everything, but they dont know anything, and thats the way to be. Rob Zombie to Aquarian Weekly, 2012

Hes right, of course. No one really knows anything about Rob Zombie.

Thats because Rob Zombie is, in spirit if not technically so, a concept rather than a man. Rob Zombie, the label, can be applied to a universe of music, films, and visuals that ranges from the surreal to the terrifying and back again.

Rob Zombie the man is Robert Cummings, a kid from Massachusetts who has spent his first half-century absorbing and then reproducing a garish combination of horror, theater, and performance art. Thats the person this book aims to portray. Im looking at the big picture, too, so if you want tour itineraries, awards lists, album reviews, guitar models, and so on, go visit the internet. Thats what its for. I want to know what the hell Rob Zombies art means.

This book doesnt dig into Robs personal life, other than when its necessary to do so in order to discuss his artistry. It doesnt seek to reveal his secrets or expose juicy stories. Frankly, theres enough juice in what this unique artist does on a professional basis. What this book does do is take a long and appreciative look at the work hes done over the last three decades and place it in context. Where does a man like Rob Zombie fit into the world in 2015? What is it about his dark, compelling art that reaches out to so many people, and what does that say about us?

Whether you appreciate Rob for his music, his films, oras I have strived to summarizehis overall aesthetic vision, youll enjoy this curious tale. At the end of it, you may not have learned much about the mans private life, because that is not the purpose of this book, but youll have gained a new perspective on what his worldview means for all of us. Rob is a modern everyman: a Goethe for the modern world. The fact that he chooses to express his talents through the medium of horror makes his story even more compelling.

You will note that Ive titled each chapter after a 1970s horror movie. In each case, the title is relevant to the content. I flatter myself that the man himself would appreciate this touch.

Joel McIver

2015

1.

(1965-84)

Its funny to think how life reflects art, just as much as the other way round.

Robert Bartleh Cummings, later Rob Zombie, the most renowned horror auteur of his generation, began his life as part of that horror-movie staple: the all-American family. The kind of family that you see at the start of all the best slasher films, whose contented daily routines occupy the opening scenes and set up the first act for some carnage courtesy of a demonic villain like Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees... or Michael Myers, star of this story a few chapters down the line.

Zombie, as well refer to him from this point on even though he remained Rob Cummings for another twenty years or so, was born on January 12, 1965, in the town of Haverhill in Massachusetts, the son of Robert, a furniture upholsterer, and Louise, a housewife. His younger brother Michael arrived in 1968. In an interview with the Boston Globe , the boys mother recalled them as being quiet, well-behaved fellows who enjoyed painting, drawing, science fiction, and cheesy TV programsin particular Star Trek . They were big Trekkie fans, said Louise, who drove her sons to Star Trek conventions in Philadelphia and New York. They were so much alike.

Later, when the elder and younger Cummings had morphed into the Devils own progeny as Rob Zombie and Spider One, Louise remembered the boys relatively sedate upbringing and chuckled, Im tired of people saying, What do they do for Thanksgiving, eat out of skulls? I used to kid people and tell them I was Satans mother. But now I dont tell so many people.

Haverhill doesnt sound like much fun, to hear the Cummings brothers talk about it. Its full of cemeteries. Its boring. When youre a kid, you dont realize it. Its only when you go back that you realize how bad it is, huffed the elder sibling. You walk down the streets at night, and no ones around. You could do anything you wanted, and no one would notice.

Education didnt go down too well either, apart from the occasional creative endeavor. It wasnt that the Cummings kids werent clever or artistic: Zombie eventually did well enough to join the National Honor Society, the organization for hardworking and/or dominant students that has chapters in many American schools. But in essence he was bored, rebellious, and irritated by social conventions, even becoming a vegetarian in his teens after watching a TV documentary about slaughterhouses. (Assuming this occurred at some point in the late 1970s or early 80s, youll agree that he was some way ahead of the trend.)