Stix Zadinia On Dildos, Getting Arrested, Cavity Searches & Being A Dud Root

How ridiculously awesome is the name Stix Zadinia! We're wondering whether Steel Panther's drummer thought up any other rad names that nearly made the cut. "Well, you know, I once thought a cool name for a drummer would be Tommy Tom Tom Thompson." Brilliant! Has no one already snapped that one up? "They might after this interview," the drummer laughs.

Steel Panther's last release was Live From Lexxi's Mom's Garage, an acoustic CD/DVD taped before a live audience in LA and starring Bobbie Brown (famous from Warrant's Cherry Pie video) as bassist Lexxi Foxx's 'Mom'. So who cleaned up the garage after the shoot? "Oh, Lexxi's mom," Zadinia claims. "I left. I'm like, 'I'm not cleaning this mess up!' But, you know, she's a pretty fantastic lady and she's just very generous with all her stuff." Did any of the band members get lucky with Lexxi's Mom after the gig, then? "Yeah, well, when I say 'stuff' I mean specifically her vagina. You know, we've all been there at one point or another." Surely not Lexxi though, right? "No, I don't think so. I don't think so," Zadinia ponders. "But you know what? I can't say for sure." Maybe Foxx wants to keep that in the vault. "Yeah," Zadinia laughs. "It's kinda weird." 

"When I say 'stuff' I mean specifically her vagina. You know, we've all been there at one point or another."

On what made Steel Panther decide to record an acoustic live album, Zadinia explains, "Well, two things: one) it'd been a minute since we released and we wanted to get something out to our fans that they could, you know, enjoy. And we'd never done an acoustic record before, so to do an unplugged record, like, it was a cool experience and I'd say we were able to hold the fans over. And we start actually recording a brand new record in May so, yeah! We're very, very excited about the songs that are going on it."

During Live From Lexxi's Mom's Garage, Zadinia comes out from behind his drum kit to tickle the ivories for Weenie Ride and it turns out he's quite the pianist! If he cloned himself, Zadinia could be a one-man band of sorts. "Ah, if I was gonna do that, I would probably clone myself three times so there'd be four of me and then I would be the world's first long-haired barbershop quartet," Zadinia fantasises. "It would awesome! We would all wear: instead of those, like, suits - that bullshit that they wear - I would wear all spandex. All four of us would just sing heavy metal songs."

Sometimes the scene in a Steel Panther crowd is akin to Girls Gone Wild, so we ask Zadinia to reflect on some of the sexual behaviour he's witnessed from the stage over the years. "Okay, so I've seen two separate dudes get blowjobs. I've seen two girls go down on each other several times." Really? "Oh, yeah, I'm not kidding; I'm not making this up to seem like this interview is super-cool. For real!" Whereabouts in the world did these incidents occur? "Ah, it was once in Vegas - actually, two times in Vegas - once in Los Angeles and once in San Diego!" So always in the States, then? "Well, yeah, you know what? Let me think, let me think, let me think. Yeah, actually, I can't think of - oh! You know what? When we were in Germany - we were in Cologne, Germany and a girl got up and proceeded to get naked, and she had a dildo and she fucked herself on the stage with a dildo. You know what? The police were called to that show and they showed up, and they came in, and we had to stop the show. And then they said, 'If this happens - if there's one more incident of this happening again tonight, you will get arrested.' So that was pretty nuts. Oh! I have another 'arrested' story. Do ya wanna hear that?

"We were in Russia, right? We were in St Petersburg, Russia and we were about to go on and, you know, we didn't really think too much of it because we just do what we do and we figure if they want - you know, if a promoter brings us out to do a show they know what they're getting. So it's just five minutes before we go on, the promoter comes up to us and goes, 'Oh, by the way, you cannot reference Vladimir Putin, you cannot reference homosexuality and you cannot mention the band...' - remember the band Pussy Riot? Those girls? The ones that got arrested? - 'You cannot say a word about Pussy Riot. If you mention one or two or three of these things you will go to jail and the promoter will go to jail'." When asked whether that was like waving a red flag at four bulls, Zadinia offers, "You know what? It was waving a red flag at four bulls who really didn't wanna go to jail in Russia [laughs]. So we didn't - when you're in Russia, you have to play by Russian rule. In America, we probably would've just been like, 'Fuck you!' But when you're a stranger in a strange land? You don't wanna mess with that."

"I would probably clone myself three times so there'd be four of me and then I would be the world's first long-haired barbershop quartet."

So did any of Steel Panther's band members slip up and get arrested? "No, I was just saying - oh! I'll tell you an actually getting arrested story. Did not get arrested in Russia, but - I'll be totally honest with ya - that was one of the scariest shows I've ever done, 'cause, you know, the type of show that we do, we would normally talk about all that stuff. And to go out there and go, 'Okay' - you know, and you start down a path and then you have to go, 'Okay, wait. What am I saying? Wait. What? Oh my god!' It was scary." Surely there would have been some questionable lyrical content that the Russians could've pulled them up on, though? "I don't know that they paid too much attention to the lyrics. But for the speaking parts in between the songs, that's what they were most concerned about."

Back to the actually getting arrested story. "I got arrested in Phoenix, Arizona at the airport comin' home from a gig, because my drum tech put marijuana in my drum stick bag," he laughs, "and I didn't know about it. Yep, that was awful!" Did they conduct a cavity search? "No, they didn't. Not for that, no. But later that night there were several cavity searches 'cause we played in Los Angeles."

Obviously Steel Panther get laid a lot, so we're interested to find out about the worst sex Zadinia has ever had in his life. "Well, I'm sure the very first time that I did it I was not good; I was 15 and I was on a cruise ship and she was 24, and she thought I was 18 - I totally lied. Um, and I don't think I was super-awesome at it. I think I was probably - yeah, I mean, let's face it: I was not outstanding the first time." Did the unlucky object of Zadinia's affections ever find out he was a minor? "She did," the drummer confesses, "and this is back in the days before internet, back in the day before all that stuff, right? And we wrote letters! We actually wrote letters back and forth... This is so weird to talk about, 'cause I remember it, like, so she'd written me a letter and then I had written her back, she wrote me back, I wrote her back, like, she wrote me a third letter and then on the letter responding to her third letter I told 'er. And, I never got another letter." When told she was probably concerned that she would get arrested or something, Zadinia agrees, "I know! And she was a school teacher; I'm sure she was very familiar with rules." What an entertaining story! It calls to mind that Van Halen song, Hot For Teacher. Zadinia laughs, "I know, it kinda does. Every word of it is true." Is the drummer sure he didn't have a conversation with Lee Roth at one point from which the Van Halen singer potentially stole this idea? "You know what? He probably did, that sonofabitch," Zadinia plays along. "He's a nut."