He compared himself to an infamous dictator, and then all hell broke loose. From family
tragedies to substance abuse to the loss of furry friends,
this is the devastating true story of Type O Negative's Peter Steele.
Before Peter Steele gained fame with Type O Negative, he was in another metal band called
Carnivore. After they broke up, the members were forced to get regular jobs outside of music.
In his time between Carnivore and Type O Negative, Steele went to work for the New York City Parks
Department. According to Monte Conner, former vice president of A&R for Roadrunner Records,
this was actually the time that Steele was at his happiest. As he explained to Revolver Magazine,
Steele was still making music while working his day job, but he wasn't interested in touring.
He resisted for long enough that it became a source of conflict within Type O Negative,
even causing their drummer to leave the band. Ultimately,
Steele was convinced to go on tour, thus forcing him to quit a job that he loved.
Peter Steele is known as one of the most influential figures in gothic metal,
but he was also a perfectionist who was never fully happy with his own work. During one
particular 1998 interview, he became enraged at a critical review of Type O Negative's
first album. But in that same interview he also criticized the album himself, stating that he had
had to scramble to write the songs in a single evening and it was only supposed to be a demo.
Monte Conner, who first signed Type O Negative,
has described Steele and his bandmates as geniuses who created a masterpiece
with their 1993 album Bloody Kisses. But he also noted that Steele's perfectionism
was the most frustrating part of working with him. As he noted to Revolver Magazine,
"Certain people take different messages, you know,
from, they see things, and they think that that's the way it is, so…"
"Mm-hmm."
Type O Negative's lyrics could be controversial,
and the humor underneath the dark imagery was often misinterpreted. But it was one
of Peter Steele's offstage comments that led to the most controversy. During one interview,
Steele made a reference to a famous John Lennon quote that led to protests and
canceled concerts for Type O Negative, just as the original joke had done to the Beatles.
In the original interview, Lennon quipped that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus,
which set off a wave of protests in 1966. Then during a tour of Europe in the 90s,
Steele described Type O Negative as more popular in Germany than Adolf Hitler. The
comment was intended to be a joke, but it ended up being misinterpreted as a genuine
endorsement of fascism. There were protests, and the band's label received bomb threats.
Steele later admitted that he was anxious to go back to Europe after the experience,
but that it was important to him to set the record straight. As he put it during a 1998 interview,
"If it doesn't upset people, it's not rock music."
Despite the sarcastic humor in Steele's work, there was also genuine emotion in his songs,
much of which came from his tormented love life. For example,
the liner notes for the album Bloody Kisses include the message:
Steele attributed the darkest times in his life to the fallout from his failed
relationships. Many of the songs that he wrote for Type O Negative were about his
ex-girlfriends and former lovers. One of the band's most beloved songs, "Black No. 1," was
based on one of Steele's failed relationships, which he's admitted even made him suicidal.
"I think that I just seem to take it a bit harder,”
"Deeper."
"... than I should have."
Steele was very open about his suicide attempt, once describing it as "a symbolic death." He
also often spoke openly about his mental health struggles in general, which included experiences
with addiction, bipolar disorder, and depression. In an interview with the radio station KNAC,
he said that about one out of every three days was a good one for him, and he often only got out of
bed in the mornings to care for his five beloved cats. And in another interview, he declared,
During the production of one Type O Negative album, Steele was going through a hard
time and decided to go off his prescribed medication, which had a tremendous impact
on his writing. On his more depressive days, he would write extremely long somber songs,
while on his more manic days he would write what he referred to as "a frenzy of songs."
In February 1995, Peter Steele's father died, which the musician struggled to accept. He
didn't go to the funeral and waited more than four years to visit the grave. Losing
his father also led him to develop what he called "an obsession with death and loss."
His father's illness and passing inspired some of Steele's darkest and most personal work. The Type
O Negative song "Todd's Ship Gods," for example, is about the experience of visiting his dad's
grave for the first time. In interviews, Steele described how for months he continued to receive
medical bills in the mail, charging his family for tests and procedures that had ultimately failed to
help his father. This experience inspired the title track for the album Life Is Killing Me,
which has lyrics that are highly critical of doctors and the for-profit medical system.
"I just cannot believe how, how people treat each other. I just, it's unbelievable."
Peter Steele often used the things that made him the most emotional as inspiration for his work,
and that beating heart drew a lot of fans to Type O Negative's music. However,
using personal tragedy in this way also made it painful for Steele to perform them onstage
over and over again. In particular, the tracks "Everything Dies" and "Everyone I
Love is Dead" from the album World Coming Down directly referenced deaths in Steele's family,
including his father's. As his bandmate Josh Silver noted to Revolver Magazine,
And those aren't the only examples that describe tragedy in Steele's life. The
title track on Bloody Kisses, for example, is about the death of Steele's beloved cat Venus,
though the singer kept the lyrics intentionally vague. As he explained to Revolver,
Peter Steele's tragedies weren't just about the loss of his loved ones,
as he also had plenty of personal individual struggles, like his issues with alcohol and
cocaine. In a 2008 interview with Metal Hammer, he described them as part of a
pattern of self-destructive behavior that also included wearing provocative clothing to provoke
fights and putting signs outside his house encouraging intruders into his unlocked home.
Steele didn't start experimenting with drugs until he was 35 years old,
after Type O Negative had already found success. In an interview with Revolver,
he described how risky his drug use while touring was, as people were always offering him substances
and he couldn't guarantee that it was from a safe source. His bandmate Kenny Hickey noted
how Steele's addiction was accompanied by serious depression that stopped him from doing the things
he enjoyed and made his work despondent. As Steele put it to Blabbermouth in 2007,
"What do you want to be remembered as?"
"What do I want to be remembered as? Um, someone who has helped people through hard times."
After his father's death, Steele turned to drugs to cope. In the moment, it felt great
and he believed that he was immortal. But in reality, he was out of control. Soon enough,
his family decided to step in to help. But to Steele, it felt like a betrayal.
The singer didn't believe that his family was acting altruistically when they forced him into
treatment, and he also felt that they didn't have the right to take the choice away from
him. They took him from his home on Christmas Eve and brought him to a psychiatric facility
against his will. He then found himself in jail, and then rehab. The incident drove
a wedge between him and his family. As he put it in an interview with Artisan News Service,
While Peter Steele was at the height of his risky drug use, he learned that his longtime girlfriend
had cheated on him. He then assaulted her new boyfriend and ended up spending about
a month at the New York City prison complex Rikers Island. As he recalled to Metal Hammer,
Steele ultimately never had any trouble with his fellow inmates. Instead,
it was the total lack of privacy and the guards' complete control over him that made
his time at Rikers difficult. The worst part was that he wasn't allowed to make more than
a single eight-minute phone call per day, which was particularly difficult because he
was worried about his mother. As he put it in an interview with Artisan News Service,
Peter Steele's struggles with mental illness and coping with the aftermath
of his father's death lasted for years. But after Type O Negative's 2009 tour,
it seemed like things were looking up. He was sober and excited to make more music,
and he was hopeful about the future. But then suddenly he was gone.
One of Steele's beloved cats, Tito, was very sick, and his bandmates were concerned that he might
relapse. They attempted to get in touch with him, but they were only able to talk to his girlfriend,
who told them that Steele was sick with the flu. He died shortly after, of sepsis caused by
diverticulitis, on April 14, 2010, the same day that Tito passed. He was only 48. According to
a blog run by Steele's loved ones, the remainder of Steele's cats were adopted by his sister Pam.
"No matter what you do, you're gonna die anyway."