Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: MetalDays 2013 / Tolmin / Slovenia
Interview date: 22.07.2013
The American band Pentagram got going back in the early seventies of the last century and is considered one of the pioneers of doom metal. The one constant in this band with a turbulent history is its central figure, the eccentric vocalist Bobby Liebling, who is also to blame for both the band’s recognition and its obscurity. Early in their career, Pentagram were constantly on the brink of success, always just one step away from signing a big deal with a major label. But despite their burning desire, every hope for the band drained away because of Bobby. He fell into the bottomless pit of drug abuse as a kid – thanks to his excessive drugging he showed up late to rehearsals, skipped gigs, and fell out with countless band members, producers, label reps… and Pentagram, despite quality studio releases, sank deeper and deeper into oblivion. That lasted until 2011, when the excellent documentary Last Days Here saw the light of day, following the band’s resurgence and Bobby’s (successful?) battle with drugs. This year, for the first time in their long history, Pentagram stopped by the MetalDays festival in Tolmin, where they lived up to their legendary name with a fantastic show. Before the gig I sat down with Bobby for this interview, though I’d hardly call it an interview in the classic sense, since years of drug abuse have left their mark. Bobby falls into a stream of thought and rattles off everything you didn’t ask him about. But Bobby is Bobby.
Over the last few years, Bobby Liebling has toured the world with a reactivated Pentagram, and this summer’s tour brought him to Slovenia for the first time in the band’s history, where they played as Monday’s headliner on the second stage at Metaldays. I welcomed Bobby an hour or two before their set and asked him how life on tour is treating him.
Thanks a lot. Yesterday we had a day off, which we spent in Vienna. I think that was yesterday – on tour the days blur together fast. But tomorrow at nine in the evening I’ll already be home with my wife, even though she’s banned me from coming near her. We had a nasty verbal fight, I’d never hit her, but she got seriously scared of me and went to court for a restraining order. She and my son are all I’ve got, my parents won’t be around much longer, my dad is 93 and my mom is 82. At that age you just go, nothing has to be wrong with you, you just don’t wake up anymore. They’ve been married for 62 years! But like I said, my son and my wife are all I’ve got, she’s my best friend, my soul mate, and she’s only 27. And drop-dead gorgeous.
Hallie Liebling also plays an important, visible role in the documentary about Pentagram and Bobby Liebling, Last Days Here, where the unlikely couple, a kind of doom metal Sid and Nancy, meet. Bobby never forgets to mention it.
Hallie is even more beautiful now than when the film was shot, she’s become a real woman, and she’s lost her »baby fat« (laughs). For God’s sake, my mother-in-law is six years younger than me and hates my guts. She’s just waiting for me to drive off some bridge or something. But she doesn’t realize that Hallie found me, and I wasn’t easy to find, since my phone number hasn’t been in the phone book for thirty years. I got sick of constant calls from assorted hacks who want an interview but forget about the time difference and call me at three in the morning.
Bobby has been on stage since the early seventies, and the rock ‘n’ roll world isn’t the same as it was.
I used to be dead drunk all night long, but these days if I sit down in a chair or lie down on the couch at nine in the evening, I’m out in a second. If it were up to me I’d already be in bed, but I’ve still got a show to play, and even though I don’t want to, it’s all I know how to do and it’s how I support my family. On top of that, thanks to the economic crisis the pay today is total crap. In the seventies I got 100 grand for three quarters of an hour, now you’re happy if you get 5 thousand dollars for an hour. And I have to pay 12 people on top of that. Bullshit. But I have to work. What are you left with at the end if you’re in the rock ‘n’ roll business? Social security? No. A pension? No. Health? No. Healthy teeth? No. What are you left with in the end? You’re retired, broke, sick, and everybody forgets you, and the next young, hungry lion is up. Bobby Lieblieng? Who’s that again?
It’s largely in the genes, and the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, since Bobby’s three-year-old son is already following in his dad’s footsteps.
Well, I’ve got just the right profession for it – my son walks around the house with a little plastic microphone, singing. And when he sits down he starts banging on things with drumsticks.
Gonna be a drummer?
No way! Drummers are total lunatics. Every drummer I ever met was completely scrambled. I swear to God. Obviously it’s some genetic or medical defect, all drummers are goddamn nuts. Over the years I’ve had maybe five, six different drummers in the band and yeah, they were all crazy. If Bobby Jr. wants to be a singer, he’ll have to take it seriously and he won’t be allowed to quit his day job. Not like his daddy, who played around with the nearly impossible. Look at the age I finally quit drugs and got serious!
Liebling got acquainted with drugs in his tender youth, and the first item in »Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll« wasn’t foreign to him either – as a high-school hippie he especially loved to work his charms on cheerleaders.
I started doing drugs at seven, and by twelve I was already dealing cocaine and heroin. I lost my virginity at twelve to some twenty-year-old bar dancer. Today that’s pedophilia, but back then it was pussy and I was getting laid. Yeah! (laughs) That’s what the song Prayer For An Exit Before the Dead End is about: »Causin’ notches conquered crotches / Finally saw was just hell on earth.« Before I met my wife, I’d been with 1,600 women. That’s a lot of chicks. I’d say. I used to be crazy about cheerleaders, I took down all the school jocks’ girlfriends. The next day I’d walk up to her boyfriend in the hallway and tell him his girlfriend gives insanely good head. And run like hell (laughs). I did it on purpose. I was pretty brave, since I’m not a big guy, but I was a fast runner, and besides, the jocks had nothing on their necks but watermelons on steroids.
The almost forgotten and obscure Pentagram were put back on the map by the excellent documentary Last Days Here, though Liebling had been announcing his comeback even earlier.
I wouldn’t call it a comeback, more like a beginning, one that started back in 2009 when we started playing again. Before that year, in my whole life, up to the age of 55, I’d seen five countries. I’ll turn 60 in December and in the last four years I’ve played in 40 countries, Slovenia included!
For decades, Bobby Lieblieng’s life revolved solely around drugs; he lived in his parents’ basement and did nothing all day but smoke crack. It was Hallie who pulled him out of the pit.
When my wife told me she loved me (she was 21, I was 53), but that she couldn’t watch me like that. Back then I was on huge amounts of methadone and smoking 500, 1000 dollars’ worth of crack a day. I’d been on crack for 27 years, I’d been through 32 methadone clinics and 35 detox centers. I walked out of all of them, I got high in bathrooms, crack was secretly delivered to me at night, I smoked crack instead of cigarettes. For my wife I quit drugs without detox, without hospitals, programs, counseling, or 12 steps. And if you’re wondering what withdrawal crises are like, I’m your guy.
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