Anthrax mainman Scott Ian has discussed his love of superheroes and horror movies in an interview with Little Punk People.
And the guitarist also recalls how he thought he’d missed his chance to meet his hero Robert De Niro, only to finally get his wish thanks to drummer Charlie Benante.
Elliott Fullam from Little Punk People started off the interview with a question about superheroes.
Ian says: “As a kid growing up, my favourite superhero was always the Hulk. And I really love the way they’ve done the Hulk in The Avengers movie. I think Mark Ruffalo is great as Bruce Banner. I think they finally represent him correctly in The Avengers movies compared to the other Hulk movies that they made before.”
He also discusses the new season of The Walking Dead and says he “loved” the first episode. Anthrax were recently joined on stage by The Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus.
Asked which horror movie scared him most as a kid, Ian insists he never got scared, although he loves the genre.
“Horror doesn’t scare me, real life scares me,” he says. “My favourite horror movie of all time is John Carpenter’s The Thing.
“As much as I love horror, I never really got scared. I started as young because my mum was a horror fan. As a really young kid I would watch horror movies that came on Saturday and Sunday mornings on TV in New York on a thing called Chiller Theatre and Creature Feature. I loved them so much, but they never really scared me.”
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Ian also recalls a time he was faced with a table of his heroes – Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Martin Scorsese, Harvey Keitel – and was too scared to introduce himself to De Niro.
It was in the 1990s at the Independent Spirit Awards in the Roseland Ballroom in New York.
Ian says: “I was freaking out. I got to say hi to Joe Pesci and he was super nice, Harvey Keitel was super nice and I even got to say hello to Martin Scorsese.
“But De Niro never got up. He just sat all there by himself, totally unapproachable. Obviously not wanting to be bothered. Part of me was like, ‘Just go and say hello,’ but another part was like, ‘No way, he’ll just stare at me and I’ll start crying or something.’ He just seemed so intimidating to me.”
But he finally got to meet the iconic actor recently when Anthrax appeared on the Seth Meyers Show – where De Niro was also a guest. Charlie Benante approached the actor backstage and the whole band got to meet him.
Ian says: “He couldn’t have been nicer. Just smiling and engaging us in conversation and took photos with us. And I just thought about all those years ago, I shouldn’t have been scared in the 90s.
“Bottom line is, what’s gonna happen. Nobody’s gonna bite your head off. If someone’s a dick, what you gonna do?”
Anthrax have just wrapped up a North American tour in support of latest album For All Kings, which was released in February.
