Charlie Benante – the drummer with one of thrash metal legends, Anthrax – has recently been interviewed by the Iron City Rocks podcast. He spoke about a number of subjects including his work ethic as a writer and paid meet-and-greets, which are something a lot of popular artists have been doing in the recent years.
Charlie Banante (photo via: yahoo.com)
Here is our transcript of what he said:
“For me, I push it sometimes, but I only push it just to get motivated more. Then there’s times where I just want to zone out, whether it’s taking my daughter to a movie or taking her shopping and we’re just driving in a car, and she’s doing her thing and I’m doing my own thing, and then boom — something will just hit me, an idea or something. I’ll grab my phone and I’ll just hum it into the phone, and I’ll get home and play it back and transpose it from my wonderful humming style to guitar. I do like to keep thinking of all different things. My brain usually goes toward the Anthrax zone, and then sometimes it goes to a more mellower side of things. I have 40-something years of other tunes that will never be Anthrax material, but I would like to put them out somewhere at some point.”
“Usually on show days or days off, we would do signings at record stores. We don’t do those anymore, but we do do these things which are called meet-and-greets. A lot of bands do them now because you don’t sell records… It’s also what I feel is something for the fans who want to come and be a part of it and meet you and have a couple of minutes and get a picture. I kind of equate it to the whole record store [signing] thing, but it’s definitely different now to the way it once was. I just see what certain bands charge for their little packages, and I think that it’s a bit over what they really should charge. I think you shouldn’t bleed these kids. I’ve seen what these prices are, and I’m just like, ‘Dude, if you have ten people doing it at that price, why even play? Just go on tour and do meet-and-greets.'”
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