Brisbane’s pop-punk upstarts Two Times Shy are soaring lofty heights as they let loose their …
Stix Zadinia is an interesting guy – the persona, at least. I have no idea where he is when I call him at 8am in Brisbane; he pretends not to know either. I’m assuming Mexico City or Los Angeles, considering the upcoming shows Steel Panther have in those places in the next two weeks are the only commitments Stix has apart from doing blow.
“Every goddamn day I’m high on coke. It’s crazy,” he says to me, seconds after proclaiming his readiness for our interview by announcing his regal nudeness, like it was some kind of invitation. Obviously it wasn’t 8am where he was; then again, when you’re the drummer of self identified pussy magnets, human drug hoards and glam rock superstars, Steel Panther; it didn’t matter the time of day. The guy had a twenty-four hour reputation to uphold.
‘Cause, believe it or not, it was his recent stay in “rehab” for “alcohol addition” that pushed the release of Steel Panther’s fourth record, Lower The Bar, back by a month ‘til March 24th. “I was forced into rehab… some people got hurt. I found out the police will make you go to rehab even if you don’t want to,” Stix confesses when pressed about the real story. “All you have to do is kill one or two people and the authorities will get mad at you and try to get you to stop drinking and doing drugs.”
“It wasn’t like I tried to kill those people,” he rambles, legitimately convinced that I’m buying every word of this or this whole pathetic act Steel Panther have got so down-pat by now – eight years deep and four records in. “The car was just flying all over the place… I was trying to fast-forward the track on the CD player and I was getting a text at the same time and I was also Snapchatting with this smoking hot girl, and it was all just too much… but those people are dead now, I can’t fix that”
Wait, wait, wait – hold up just a minute. Not only is Steel Panther trying to convince impressionable youth and rock-introverts it’s real damn fucking cool to be some hybrid blend of a dick-tootin’ beer-guzzlin’ coke-slammin’ pussy-magnet, but now they’re answering telephone calls all ‘round the globe practically admitting to the delay of an album due to a run-of-the-mill case of DUI causing manslaughter. The sad irony is, the record doesn’t even need to be released no more, ‘cause the bar has well and truly been lowered, my friend.
“Nothing is a joke, we take everything seriously as fuck.”
[STIX]
“Nothing is a joke, we take everything seriously as fuck,” Stix affirms when pressured whether all of this is some kind of gag – just another bad joke (slash trope) that leaves an acrid taste of disappointment in the back of your mouth. “We all enjoy what we do. We love playing music, and we love to fuck bitches, and as long as we’re enjoying it we’re going to keep on putting on bitchin’ records and putting on great shows… I know I’m rambling, but that’s because I’m high on coke right now. And maybe that’s my point: as long as I’m high on coke there’s going to be bitchin’ Steel Panther records coming out.”
What Stix doesn’t realise is that his “bitchin’ records” aren’t actually that “bitchin’” at all. At least for anyone who has ever heard of, shit, I don’t know… Def Leppard, Twisted Sister, Motley Crue, Aerosmith, Whitesnake, Van Halen, or how about Guns and Fucking Roses. Not to say that Steel Panther are in the same class as any of those bands – see, they were the real deal, and if they weren’t then their whole get-up and swag sure was convincing enough to have us believe they were. Go home and ask your Daddy, he’ll tell you: there’s no way Eddie Van Halen would ever be riffing along to songs like Goin’ in the Backdoor, Pussy Ain’t Free or She’s Tight. He kept in classic with titles like Hot For Teacher, ‘cause he probably knew sex for sex sake is just smut – something Stix Zadina and Steel Panther are still trying to learn. (What’s that kid, still ain’t convinced? You wanna treat your ears to the ultimate in rock and roll pussy puns, then go and raid your parents old wax for Cherry Pie by Warrant, and then try and tell me how clever you think Steel Panther are.)
“We’ve got single coming out real soon called Poontang Boomerang,” he says when asked if there is anything new to expect on Lower The Bar. “We wrote it about Australia girls… Australian girls are so beautiful and just like a boomerang they keep coming back to you, even if you don’t want them to. You throw them away as hard as you can and then they wind up at the show the next night – it’s unbelievable.”
In a time before sexism, feminism and the general civil equalities of todays regiment were established as a societal norm, the original dick-tootin’ coke-slammin’ pussy-magnet was somewhat a cultural sensation. Now though, not so much, and this kind of dialogue isn’t cool anymore (especially now everyone knows for sure The Rolling Stones were sex creeps) but rather see for what it is: middle aged men dressing up in latex pretending to be something they weren’t.
When pressed about the obvious influence of glam rock gods before them, Stix doesn’t care. “You can always tell when a band stops getting along, like Aerosmith. You can tell at what point in their career they just went, ‘you know what? Fuck it. Let’s just get Diane Warren to write our songs’.”
Can someone tell Stix that Steel Panther wouldn’t be Steel Panther without bands like Aerosmith – a 4 time Grammy winning band with a fifteen-album back-catalogue. But, I mean, does Aerosmith really stack up that high next to the mountain of cocaine on Zadina’s coffee table?
C’mon, now – let’s be real. Steel Panther is a simple formula; four albums in and nothing has changed for Steel Panther, not even any kind of complexity in song writing or technical musicianship. “I don’t think I have what I would consider a formula,” Stix says, defending my allegations that maybe after eight years as Steel Panther, one of the premier “parody” bands in the world, the band might have some kind of a formula in place when it came to making rock music. “Nah, I just like to write about stuff that I dig, like pussy and getting high.”
“If you’re into Steel Panther you’re into the same shit that we are. You like rock and roll and you like partying,” he says, back peddling and revealing at least the blueprint of the entire not-so-complicated equation. “I like big choruses and hooking guitar riffs, that’s the main thing. I want to hear a big chorus and I want to hear lyrics that don’t make me worry about the world or the future. I want to escape I want to have fun and I think a lot of people do.”
Maybe it’s Steel Panther; maybe it’s ‘Murica; or maybe it’s the commercialised idea of the Super Bowl – but don’t it seem like a perfect fit that Steel Panther be the next band to perform the pedantically rehearsed and glamorously polished Super Bowl Half Time Show. Desperately perfect, in fact. “We’re already on it, man. Last I heard we were trying to get a hold of the right people,” Stix says, his self-assuredness so rancid I can smell it through the phone. “We would be the greatest band who has ever played it.”
On that note, and with no more questions, the interview ends. I thank Stix for his time, I know he has better things to be doing – shit, man; I know I do. Like drugs, or supermodels or talking to Justin-fucking-Beiber about how he does his hair in the morning.
“I appreciate your time, man,” he says, racking another line of blow up his nose. “Hopefully we’ll be down there soon. Let’s hook up and do some blow together.” Maybe, I say. For all I know he could be back in “rehab” by then, or too deep in pussy to even remember my name. I guess we’ll see. Maybe by then I’ll have finally been seduced by the Steel Panther charm, but the chances of that are as low as the bar they’ve on their new album.
Lower The Bar releases 24 March via Cobalt Records. Pre-orders are available here.
