Speed Round Burton C. Bell Fear Factory

Fear Factory's frontman, Burton C. Bell

Lamb of God / Fear Factory Children of Bodom Throwdown HOB 11/09/04 Interviewer: Karma E. Omowale

Click here to access Burton's interview this is an excerpt of the original interview

Karma: [smiles] Here's the Speed Round of Questions.

Burton: [voice elevates and smiles] Alright! Speed Round!

Karma: What's your mantra?

Burton: My mantra is live life to the fullest everyday!

Karma: Spiritual or religious?

Burton: Spiritual

Karma: Favorite quote?

Burton: [shakes head and begins to laugh] Oh man!!  [we both laugh]  It's from a movie, and it's the first thing I could think of, "If you can only see what I see from your eyes"

Karma: Wow!  Which movie is that from?

Burton: Bladerunner

Karma: If they made a movie about your life, who would you like to see play your role?

Burton: Me!  [we both share a guffaw]  Because I'm so psychotic, I don't think anybody else could figure it out!

Karma: Which CD’s/Movies did you bring on tour this go round?

Burton: I didn't bring any on this tour and I've actually picked some CD's up on this tour.

Karma: What did you pick up?

Burton: Past 2 days, I've bought 4 CD's.  I bought the Best of John Coltrane, Train by John Coltrane, which is a remastered CD-Rom kind of thing.  I bought The Mob Rules by Black Sabbath and I bought The Clientele.  And as a gift, a friend of mine bought me the new version of Dawn of the Dead.

Karma: Nice eclectic mix

Burton: I've got a little bit of everything going on right there.

Karma: Top 5 favorite movies?

Burton: All right, these are the first that come to mind, I have a lot: Raising Arizona, Bladerunner, Alien, Pi, and Nosferatu.

Karma: Top 5 ALL time favorite albums

Burton: And again these are the first ones that come to mind, I have a very wide record collection but the first ones that come to mind are: U2 Boy and The Joshua Tree, New Model Army Thunder and Consolation, Cult Love and [points to t-shirt and beams] Godflesh's first album [Streetcleaner]. 

Karma: Awesome choices!  What's your favorite color?

Burton: Blue

Karma: What's underneath your bed?

Burton: My desk, it's kind of a loft bed

Karma: Fill in the blank, I feel like _____________ tonight.

Burton: I feel like I'm going to rock the house!!  [laughs]

Karma: There you go!!  What's your best memory?

Burton: There are so many but the first thing that popped to mind was losing my virginity!  [laughs mischievously]That was  a beautiful day!

Karma: [laughs hysterically] Introvert, extrovert, or ambivert?

Burton: What's an ambivert?

Karma: A combination of both

Burton: I think I'm a combination of both because I'm a very private person but I do go on stage.

Karma: Favorite instrument to hear?

Burton: I don't know, [smiles] I love the sound of a bassoon.  I love a french horn.  I guess it really depends on the moment.

Karma: What’s your favorite smell?

Burton: Wow!!  I love the smell of nature after your thunderstorm.

Karma: How would your worst enemy describe you?

Burton: Evasive

Karma: Live or dead: If you could interview 3 people, who would they be?

Burton: Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, and Elvis Presley

Karma: Biggest pet peeve?

Burton: Ohh, ignorance!

Karma: Is your glass half empty or full?

Burton: It's always half full

Karma: What's was your favorite childhood memory?

Burton: As a kid getting run over by 3 motorcycles.  [we break out in hysterical laughter]

Karma: Oh no!

Burton: When I was 5 years old, no 4 by 3 dirt bikes.  We were playing chicken and I won, I got run over. 

Karma: [falls over with laughter]

Burton: And I got hit [as he starts to clap his hands] boom, boom, boom!

Karma: Nicknames your friends would give to you on the fly?

Burton: Oh I ain't telling you.  [we both die laughing]

Karma: What color are your kitchen plates?

Burton: Blue

Karma: Same as your favorite color

Burton: [smiles] exactly

Karma: What was your most embarrassing moment on stage?

Burton: Oh, oh!  I landed flat on my ass in front of 80,000 people!

Karma: Where was that?

Burton: In Holland

Karma: Really?

Burton: At a festival

Karma: But you recovered.

Burton: I recovered [laughs]

Karma: What are the ringtone(s) on your cellphone?

Burton: There are a few: I have "The Funeral March", I have the "Alfred Hitchcock Theme", I have the Halloween Theme, I have Tubular Bells, and I have "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly", that one's my favorite and "Don't Fear The Reaper"

Karma: Okay

Burton: There's a theme going there!

Karma: I see!  [laughs] How about the first car you ever owned?

Burton: It was a Datsun F10 1977 5-Speed.  Front wheel drive, it was a hatch back.

Karma: What color?

Burton: It was white

Karma: I was expecting you to say blue.

Burton: [laughs] No, it was a hand me down

Karma: How about your first job?

Burton: It was in a restaurant in Northern Virginia I was basically a line cook in a seafood restaurant.

Karma: What's your favorite household chore?

Burton: [snickers] I like sweeping

Karma: You do?

Burton: There's a certain Zen to it

Karma: I can see that, you are cleaning out the old.

Burton: Exactly!  [smiles]

Karma: If you could travel the spans of time: which era would you visit?

Burton: Pfft, man!  I would visit the time when…oh there are so many different times…so many times that were annoying and so many very interesting times too.  I think I'd like to go back to New York in the late 1800's, I'd like to go back to that age.

Karma: What's your favorite comfort food?

Burton: Little Debbie's Oatmeal Crème Pies

Karma: Oh that's awesome!

Burton: [laughs]

Karma: What would be the Soundtrack of Your Life be?

Burton: It would be a score, very moody.  There are a lot of songs from Billy Idol to U2.  [laughs]

Karma: There are a lot to choose from

Burton: Yeah, there are so many different songs.  I have a wide collection

Karma: Toast: burnt or barely toasted?

Burton: Toast, I don't even like toast [laughs]

Karma: Okay so neither?  [laughs]

Burton: Not really!  Well see I don't usually eat toast, I eat English muffins, slightly toasted.  Okay, so I'll have to say slightly toasted because it keeps the flavor.

Karma: Herbivore, omnivore, or carnivore?

Burton: I'm an omnivore.

Karma: If you could commission a band to cover a song of yours who would it be, which song and which band would do it?

Burton: I would commission Ministry to do "Self Bias Resistor".  I think it could be done really cool!

Karma: That would be cool!  When you were a kid, did you envision yourself doing this?

Burton: Yes!  [chuckles]

Karma: Awesome!  That's very awesome!!

Burton: I told you, I'm living a dream!  This is what I always dreamed of.

Karma: What's your favorite day of the week?

Burton: When you're on the road and in a band, days don't really matter but I happen to like Tuesdays.  Tuesdays are a good date night because it's not amateur night.  Amateur night is Friday or Saturday night.  On date night, things are never crowded: restaurants, movie theaters.  It's like pre-mid week and everybody's just busy working, like I said, it's just the perfect date night.

Karma: What’s the first thing you do when you get home from touring?

Burton: Shower!  [we both laugh hysterically]  It's necessary!

Karma: What were your thoughts on the Elections?

Burton: [countenance becomes stone cold] I was stunned and disappointed in the Democratic party and I'm disappointed in Kerry for giving up so quickly before all the votes were counted.  I sent in an absentee ballot and my vote not counted.

Karma: You're kidding!  That's horrible!

Burton: [nods] Because he conceded before all of that could be done.  I'm just stunned!

Karma: Yeah, like a lot of America is [and the rest of the free world now that I sit back and think about it].

Burton: I'm just stunned!

Karma: Whom would you ask these questions of?

Burton: Well, I'd probably like to ask Henry Rollins or something!  [laughs]

Karma: He would be a lot of fun! Well thank you Burton, this has been a complete pleasure!

Burton: It was mine!