John Bush Takes Us Inside Anthrax's 1990's Era | Exclusive Interview [0:00-5:00]

Thank you for listening. This is a Legends podcast by All Day Vinyl, and I'm your host Scott Dudelson. After you finish this episode, please subscribe, rate, and check us out on Instagram and YouTube at All Day Vinyl. Today I'm excited to speak with a heavy metal legend. My guest began his career as a founding member lead singer of Armored Saint, and then from 1992 to 2005, fronted one of the most influential metal bands of all time, Anthrax. As singer of Anthrax, he recorded four albums of original material, and later this year my guest will be performing a handful of live shows, celebrating his work with the band, and I'm excited to speak with them today about these concerts and his career with Anthrax. Pleased to introduce to you, John Bush. What's up, Scott? So John, thank you so much. How are you, man? Amazing, man. So let's start and talk about the upcoming shows. This is the first time I'm assuming since you left Anthrax in 2005 that you've had an opportunity to really dig back into this catalog. Yeah, that's accurate. I came back after I left the band officially around March, April of 2005. The last tour I did was in South America, and then I left for a while, and then I left, and the plan was to be gone, and they were going to continue on without me. Then I came back and I did some few shows because they were in a bind where they needed a replacement for a couple of different reasons, and I came back and did a show outside of London in Nebworth, in England, and also in Tokyo, which was the great show there, and then a festival there as well, and then Nebworth was a festival, and then we also did a few shows in Australia, the Soundways Festival, and so then I kind of came back in and did like another ten shows, but I was never really planning on coming back, it was just kind of to help out the band, those shows were already booked, and that's it. So that, I guess, efficiently the last time I played a lot of these songs was probably some of their neighborhood of like, I think those shows are maybe 09, maybe? No, maybe sooner, 07, I don't know, somewhere around there, but it's been a long time since I've played a lot of this material, so I'm learning it again, I'm relearning it. Is it coming back quickly, when you hear it, is it bringing back memories? It is, it's cool, I'm stoked in the fact that I actually remember the song is a lot of them. There's some deep tracks, obviously, that I have to work a little harder with, lyrically and memorizing stuff, but for the most part, it's actually pretty awesome, I think, stuff's coming back real quickly to me, so it's really going to be the deeper tracks that are ones that I'm going to probably struggle with to remember, but the hits, if you will, those are pretty easy. Yeah, the hits of the ones you've got to play, how do you decide with the deep catalog, what you're choosing? I think it'll be fun to play some songs that are just kind of ones that you aren't expecting. I think that's important for me to do that, and I want to do that, so I'm taking a record by record and going, okay, these were videos tracks, so these are obvious songs that took play, like only in Room for One More, those are pretty popular songs from that record, including Black Lodge, which is a song that is a really cool tune, but we never really played it live very much, F at all, so it's going to be really cool to play that song live, which Angelo Bala de Mente was the guy who wrote a bunch of the music on that. We're going to talk all about that song, that's one of my favorites on the album. My introduction to anthrax was that era, and it was Beavis and Butthead, who loved anthrax. Yes, as a matter of fact, my wife and I have been watching all the Beavis and Buttheads from 22-23, I guess were the more recent ones that came out, and they're hilarious. We've been spending the last couple of weeks just watching them all, because I never really watched those. Of course, I know they're all the ones, and it's cool, because those are the ones, some of them were Beavis and Butthead, or older men, and it's hilarious, but yeah, my judge was helpful for anthrax for sure, and we ended up doing a thing in the studio with my judge on that Beavis and Butthead record, where we did a little clip where we were talking to them and telling stories, and to be in the studio with my judge watching him do those voices was quite amazing. That's incredible, was that on the soundtrack that had the Beastie Boys cover? That's true. That's it. Looking down the barrel of the gun song, and it was cool. It was a million record, selling a million-selling record, and I have a platinum record at home before it. Yeah, I think that's a cultural thing. I think that was the introduction for a lot of people to anthrax. Yeah, it's funny, because anthrax is known in the 80s. They're always good now.