In a new interview with Fred Minnick, Anthrax’s Scott Ian talked about booze, Motley Crue’s drummer Tommy Lee and others.
Talking about drinking vodka, the guitarist said:
“I don’t think there’s a spirit or a drink that I hate. I like certain ones better than others but I don’t have one that I’m like, ‘Oh no, I hate that, I can’t drink it.’
“I could actually say the one I never drink is vodka. I have in my life, of course, but I never drink it. I don’t think I’ve had vodka in years just because of what is it – it just takes on the flavor of whatever. Who cares about drinking straight vodka!
“I don’t need to just shoot vodka and I don’t really drink very sweet drinks or anything like that. I used to sometimes have a dry vodka-martini but that was when I was off the gin. And then when I got back in the gin, I never had a vodka-martini again.
“So I never drink vodka. That would be like 12 on my list to go to. If you walked into someplace and they literally had a beer and a bottle of vodka, I’d go beer first. But if they didn’t have any beer left, I guess then I’d have no choice.”
Adding on Tommy Lee’s insane thing he did on a plane, Ian said:
“I’ve been in private planes a few times, and I’ve got a really quick story for you. This was in the late 2000s – I don’t remember specifically which year but VH1 used to do this thing called ‘The Rock Honors,’ and it was kind of their version of the Hall of Fame.
“So they would have the bands that were getting inducted, and then they would have people play to pay tribute to the band that was being inducted. So when KISS was being inducted into the ‘VH1 Rock Honors,’ they put together a supergroup to play before KISS was going to play.
“So it was me, and Rob Zombie, and Tommy Lee, and Slash, and Ace Frehley – which is really weird because we had Ace Frehley in the group that was paying tribute to KISS – and Gilby Clark from Guns N’ Roses. So when we were flying to Vegas because that’s where this whole thing was being shot, they flew us on a private jet.
“And we get on this little jet at Van Nuys Airport, and Tommy, who’s obviously flown on private jets many times in his life – he immediately, as soon as we get up in the air, he says, ‘Hey, should we ask the pilot if he wants to do some tricks?’ And everyone’s just kind of like, ‘Uh, OK…?’
“So he bangs on the little door and the pilot opens the door, and Tommy’s like, ‘Hey man, you think we could do some tricks like do the weightless thing, and whatever?’ And the pilot’s like, ‘Alright, let me call into air traffic control.’ Because he has to call in and let them know that we’re gonna go off the flight plan and go out over the desert so he could f*ck around, basically.
“And he gets the OK, so he’s like, ‘We’re going to do a real steep climb, and then when we get to the top of the parabolic arch and go back down, you’re going to feel weightless for maybe about five seconds.’ And I’ve known about this because they have that thing in Houston at NASA where they train the astronauts.
“It’s called the ‘vomit comet’ because they take them up and everyone throws up. And I’m totally into this- at this point, I’m like, ‘Weightless? I’m in!’ So he does it so all of a sudden – we’re climbing, and you’re thrown back in your seat, you’re going practically straight up, and you get to the top of this arch, and I didn’t take my seat belt off but I loosened it a whole bunch, and suddenly I’m floating in my seat, which is amazing!
“Tommy Lee is not even sitting down, he’s in the aisle of the plane with a vodka-cranberry – he’s floating in midair, and he didn’t even spill his drink. I would go on record as saying it’s the most rock-star moment I have ever seen in my life! It was insane!
“And then he starts yelling at the pilot, he’s like, ‘Let’s go upside down, let’s do a barrel roll!’ We did the weightless thing like four times and that was amazing, it was really cool! But I’m like, ‘Barrel roll? Yeah, I don’t know…’ And then the pilot said, ‘We can’t do that in this plane because a blah, blah, blah…” It was a bunch of technical jargon that I couldn’t repeat.
“So we couldn’t do it on that plane, and then we got back on our flight path, and we headed to Vegas. I don’t know that I’ve been on a private jet since – I’m also not a big fan of those really either. I don’t know why – seemingly they should be safer than a giant airplane with a whole bunch of people on it but I don’t know.”