(White Zombie)
As bassist for White Zombie, Yseult infiltrated the boys club of metal and quickly shut up any detractors with her amazing presence, precision, and kick-ass work ethic. She reminisces about getting pranked by the dearly departed Dimebag Darrell and spotlights the importance of mental and physical wellness.
White Zombie toured with Pantera a lot, and those guys are like brothers to me, especially Dimebag Darrell. He was always harassing me like a little sister, and he used to call me Junior, which became my nickname for all of Pantera. He was the best big brother you could have, and I was probably a couple years older than him! Not only was he the coolest guy in the world and my big bro, but he loved pulling pranks. Most bands, when you’re on tour together, reserve the last day of the show for the pranks. For us, touring with Danzig and the Ramones, it wasn’t easy to prank the bands I grew up worshipping. But we did it anyway. It’s tricky, because you don’t really want to fuck with Danzig. We covered the Ramones in silly string on stage, which was so silly and sophomoric. We definitely got the impression that Joey and Johnny were not into it.
Pranking was a daily affair for Dimebag, and the pranks were always amazingly creative, bizarre, and hilarious. He’d do something to the bus or walk onstage during our show like he was a janitor. You couldn’t stop him. He especially liked to mess with me. One night he gave one of his roadies a ten-dollar bill and told him to go to the bank to get ten dollars’ worth of pennies. I always wore these short and wide engineer boots with leggings. Halfway through our set, Darrell came out and poured all these pennies down my boots, during this intricate moment when I was standing still and doing some head spinning with my hair. I looked down, and he looked up smiling, pouring these pennies into my boots.
When he was done, it felt like it weighed a million pounds. I could barely move for the rest of the show. It was truly embarrassing, because it was in front of at least 10,000 people, and I’m known as someone that runs around onstage and puts on a show. The audience saw the whole thing, so they knew there was good reason that I couldn’t move. I got off stage, and Darrell was waiting for me. He said, “Junior, did ya feel a little weighed down out there?”
He’d also dare people to do anything, especially his roadies. I had lime-green hair at one point, and he said, “Junior, I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you cut off one of your locks.” I cut it off, made a hundred bucks, and they gave it to their bus driver, who braided it into his hair. He walked around for days with this long, lime-green lock of hair attached to his head.
The craziest gig for me was back in the late eighties on one of our first tours. We were setting up our own shows, sleeping in a van, or on people’s floors. We found these kids that wanted to set up a show. They had a really badass band called Doom Snake Cult, which is still one of the coolest band names ever. We drove out there and the two kids were like the stoner versions of Beavis and Butthead. They drove us out to Parumph, Nevada, in the middle of the desert. Our lodging was their trailer. They had set up the show outdoors, in a drainage ditch, where the locals go to shoot off their guns.
There we were in the desert with all these crazies who were hopped up on speed and shooting guns. To the guys’ credit, they had gotten some gear and rigged up a PA system. We were just surrounded by sand, in this long ditch, wondering who was going to show up. Including us, Doom Snake Cult, and a few of their friends, there might have been fifteen people at that show. Everyone besides us was on acid, and they made a bonfire in front of us while we were playing. When the acid really kicked in, the kids started picking up the flaming logs and throwing them at each other, while these guns were firing all around us.
Over the years, I’ve had numerous people come up to me saying they were at that gig. Well, if you were actually one of the five people, great. Otherwise, no…you weren’t. It was kind of like a weekend at Hunter Thompson’s, and later in life, when we were selling out arenas, I looked fondly back on that gig. Everything becomes routine when you start playing sports arenas. It’s all just concrete, with no real charm. You can’t just walk outside and go to a cool restaurant or bar. It was so much different being in the van and actually hanging with bands. I’m not knocking selling out arenas, but it was a much different adventure before that happened.
On the first day of our tour with the Ramones, I was so excited that I got ready early so I could watch them. We were somewhere in North Dakota, and I went running up the stairs of the arena to get to the side stage. It was pitch black, and one of my legs fell through a hole in the stage. Someone had built it incorrectly and left out a board. My leg went straight through the stage, and my other leg snapped backwards, tearing my knee up.
It took me about two years to recover from that because we never stopped touring. I had to play the same night it happened, and I could barely stand. The worst thing for me is not being able to put on a good show. I got through it, but I don’t remember how. I just wrapped it in an Ace bandage and went on. Somebody had called a “rock doctor” to bring me a couple painkillers, but it still hurt like hell. Throughout the tour, I kept seeing all these different doctors and getting larger leg braces. If you look up an old clip of us on David Letterman, I have a brace running from my ankle all the way up to my hip.
There’s a whole team of people depending on you, and this is how touring musicians and athletes get hooked on painkillers and drugs. So much money is lost if the show or tour is cancelled. God forbid you get sick, as the show must always go on. Luckily, I didn’t get hooked, because I’ve seen too much of that. We started out kind of straight-edge, and I have that mentality. I’ve never been dependent on drugs, but I had to take something. The rock doctors would show up, give me some Vicodin, and I’d take it. I don’t really know if rock docs exist anymore, but they did back then. I never had a prescription, but if they showed up, I’d take one. None of it was handled very well.
I finally got surgery on my knee, but then I didn’t have time to properly recover or go through physical therapy. I was right back on the road and was a mess for another couple of years. I’m still friends with Phil Anselmo from Pantera, and we talk about these old war stories all the time. He was in horrible pain for so long from performing, but he was the lead man, and the show had to go on. That’s how this shit happens. It wasn’t a surprise to hear about Tom Petty or Prince because I know about the road and the toll it takes on your body.