If you grew up in the early days of metal, there were no books about the genre. After Ian Christe wrote Sound of the Beast in 2003, he was still surprised at the lack of good books about underground music written or found anywhere. Undeterred, he founded Bazillion Points Publishing in Brooklyn, NY in 2008 and has helped put out the most authoritative books on thrash, black metal, death metal, prog, metal, glam and hardcore punk ever. Also he has put out other books that examined the cultural and political impact of metal on society, giving our community the respect few mainstream publishers ever would dare to. Ian is also well known as an authority on metal, often interviewed for documentaries, and for his own Sirius XM Radio shows. With Bazillion Points celebrating five years of existence, we chatted with him to get the inside story.
Congrats on five years of Bazillion Points! How did you become the “smallest, but heaviest publishing company about metal”?
Basically, I wanted to put out books I wanted to read myself that satisfied my deep curiosity. Things like the origins of Hellhammer, or how hardcore punk emerged, week by week in the mid-west and, then in California. How black metal emerged month after month by compiling the Slayer Mag fanzines and the writings by John “Metalion” Kristiansen. All of these various books are things I had a pretty deep curiosity for. No shortage of energy to demand to know what happened. How do all these things that we take for granted emerged out of nothing? I wasn’t buying the very first Black Flag seven inch in 1979. I just got very very lucky to have had experience putting together books, and getting in touch with all of these very authoritative people. As each year went on, I felt really lucky. With Swedish Metal, Only Death is Real and Metalion; there is really very little more to say about extreme metal origins. I guess our work it done here! (laughs) And then working on the Touch and Go book and now with We Got Power, we went really deep with hardcore punk. And then with Murder In the Front Row, incredibly to go really deep with Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, and Exodus thanks to Brian Lew and Harald Oimoen we got. Year after year, I just feel incredibly fortunate to connect with people who have had amazing life experiences, and in some cases, hundreds of photos.
Do you think in some part Bazillion Points has helped the current wave of underground music books become popular?
Yes I do! Sound of the Beast was really the first of its kind. The closest thing really was Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt, which was by the same publisher. At least Harper Collins had a little bit of a grudging acceptance that a heavy metal book could work. It was insane that I was able to do Sound of the Beast in 2003, after metal had been around for over thirty something years and no one had done a comprehensive history. It’s insane that people hadn’t jumped on that. I’m sure writers wanted to. The publishing world just wrote off metal books, and wrote off metal fans, thinking these people don’t read. Even after Sound of the Beast took off and was a success, even me, recommending other books to that publisher, they just didn’t want to know anything about that. Born out of frustration, necessity was the mother of invention, and I started Bazillion Points. Nowadays it seems like Guns`N Roses has generated ten books in the last five years. One of our first books was Andy McCoy’s book. It was a simple little book which gave a history of Hanoi Rocks, who were hugely influential on Guns `N Roses. Guns `N Roses owes them almost everything and Mötley Crüe really owes them a lot, and took a lot away from them. I don’t know that I’d have the guts to put out an Andy McCoy book today, just because there are so many books, people from different bands covering the similar territory. So I’m really glad that at the beginning, something like that, which seems kind of marginal, was able to happen like that. Because Andy McCoy is really a national treasure of Finland. An insane storyteller. That book stands out from most of our books. Most of our books are big, genre defining books that kind of capture a time and a place. Like early thrash metal San Francisco, or early hardcore punk L.A., or like early black metal Norway. Or early death metal Stockholm. It was more than just the discography. It wasn’t just about what they were doing and what they looked like. A lot of times people set out to do one thing, and ended up doing another. It’s kind of amazing!
When Sound of the Beast came out, I recall it being both praised and maligned. Knowing that, what was the jump like for you from journalist, to author, to now editor?
Honestly, it’s hard for me to separate myself in a purely professional way. It’s hard for me to not jump in and start finessing the text. Now I actually lay out most of the books. I do try to impose order on it and keep things simple. But I have learned to the most important thing: really, they always know best. There are things, like if I am sitting with someone’s finished book for two or three months and I have strong opinions about what should be changed, and the author is complete against that, I have a new instinct that says they know best. Tom Gabriel Fischer created so much with Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, so obviously he knows what he is doing. It has happened at least once with almost every book. Something has come up and I have learned to sit back and say ‘whatever the logic is behind these writers’ desire to do things this way, they know what they are doing.’ Currently I am working on an early grunge book from when Seattle rock was really young and energetic. Pre-tragedy, almost turbo charged hard rock. This is a photo-journal of Nirvana, Mudhoney, and Tad in 1989. The author is Bruce Pavitt was the founder of Sub-Pop Records. And before they had a record label, they had a zine for eight years before and we are, next year, releasing an anthology of those zines. If something comes up that isn’t important to me, unless it’s just a technical thing, about how a book gets made, I’m gonna leave it to somebody like that. Sub-Pop and Grunge really turned that entire city around, going from a redneck backwater that became the promised land of Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo and Starbucks and everything else. As far as Sound of the Beast itself, I was in my twenties when I started writing it. There was definitely a lot of times when enthusiasm over-powered hard thinking, but that is what it took to get it done. It’s very easy to look back on it and in hindsight, say there are things missing; I don’t think there are a lot of huge missteps. The oversights, like the lack of prog metal and the lack of Swedish death metal, now I can go let Jeff Wagner write a book, and Daniel Ekeroth write his book. And that is my apology to the world on that. If you thought Sound of the Beast was light on Swedish death metal, there is now a 450 page book, that I helped bring to life.
How does a book come to life at Bazillion Points, from start to finish?
There’s been a lot of good fortune. We don’t get book proposals through the front door. We do, but I don’t think it’s ever led to a book. I’m pretty sure it hasn’t. It’s always people we knew. Initially, I reached out to people like Annie “Morbid Chef” Giroux, who did Hellbent for Cooking. She had kind of done a demo version in her awesome fanzine, Morbid Tales Fanzine. And I reached out to Daniel Ekeroth, because Swedish Death Metal was a self-published book that he did a few thousand copies of himself, that we revamped. The Andy McCoy book was already out, but only in Finnish. Oh it was such a crime. And all I had to do was find a Finnish translator. Not such an easy task actually. A year before we did We Got Power, the hardcore punk book, Dave Markey had got in touch with me. He had gotten the Touch and Go book and called me. I had actually seen his band Painted Willie, open for Black Flag twenty five years ago. It was one day, from twenty five years to the day of that gig, of him calling. There is an element of very good fortune where I keep my mind open and my imagination running about what I want to see become real.
What else is on the horizon as far as book releases?
This year has been kind of quiet, but it has been very very busy. Next year we will be releasing that anthology of all of the Sub Pop books from 1980- 1988. A huge book called Heavy Metal Movies, by Mike McPadden. Some of that stuff is up at HeavyMetalMovies.com. That was originally supposed to be the 666 most metallic movies of all time, but once he finished, he did more than double that amount and he got up over 1400 films. It’s really every Viking barbarian, concert film, witchcraft, slasher or band appearance movie ever made. It’s a pretty tight list and it’s amazing how it fits together. We released a DVD a couple of years ago, a documentary about The Mellotron. Such a weird instrument that used magnetic strips of music that allowed one musician to play flutes or strings. Those are the next four books, Experiencing Nirvana, the Sub-Pop book, Heavy Metal Movies, and Mellodrama.
Keith (Keefy) Chachkes