Lizzy Borden hurt that his band lumped w/ unsuccessful ones in ‘The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2’

Lizzy Borden hurt that his band lumped w/ unsuccessful ones in ‘The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2’

Shock rocker Lizzy Borden was recently interviewed by Marcelo Vieira for Marcelo Vieira Music.

Lizzy Borden appeared in the infamous documentary The Decline of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years, which was released back on June 17, 1988.

Wikipedia provides the following synopsis in part for the documentary: “The film chronicles the heavy metal club scene in Los Angeles during the 1987-88 time period, with an emphasis placed on the glam metal subgenre. While many established artists such as Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Mustaine, and Paul Stanley are featured in interviews, members of several unsigned L.A. club bands are also given a share of the spotlight, including London and Odin, and Detroit’s Seduce. The film also features interviews with members of Poison, Tuff, Vixen, Faster Pussycat, and W.A.S.P.. Many of the struggling, unsigned acts appear convinced that worldwide stardom awaits them, and most appear to have no backup plan in place should this success fail to materialize.”

Vieira opined that the documentary did not assist the bands that were featured in it to which Lizzy Borden replied (as translated from Portuguese to English by Marcelo Vieira with slight edits):

“For me, when we were filming it, I don’t think the director knew what angle she was going to take because… We became good friends. She did a lot of other stuff with me. I was actually going to be featured in the movie a lot more, but the more she got [artists like] Ozzy and KISS and [Alice] Cooper, all these big names, I ended up on the editing floor, which I was fine with. We had to do that. That’s the way it works. But before they got those names, a lot of the movie was about me and my band and what we were doing. So, I thought we were making a different movie. With all the talks we’ve done, and everything we shot, the movie that I had in my head while we were filming…

I was in shock in the night of…. We did a news conference at Capitol Records and the news asked questions. They asked me my thoughts on the movie, and I see the director looking at me like, ‘Ssshhh, ssshhh’ because I hadn’t seen the final cut and then right after that, we had the premiere. Now sitting in my seat, she comes over to me and she says ‘Hey, this is not the movie that you thought it was. I had to cut you out [of] a lot of it.’ [I replied] ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine.’ But she had to tell me, and once the film came on, it was like, ‘This is so different from the movie I thought we were going to do.’

I don’t know how many favors it did to those bands. For me, I think it was 50/50. It hurt me to be part of those bands that were not successful. They kind of put us into that category even though we were doing amazing things around the world and some of those bands never got out of Hollywood. Why are we lumped with these people? We are actually doing things, and the other side, like I said, I toured all over the world and that movie, people love it for whatever reason, and they don’t look at it as negative. I’ve haven’t seen it since the opening night so I don’t remember. It was 1987. I don’t look to it like it hurt me too much, but there were parts when they put us in the same category as some of these bands. and they didn’t do that with Megadeth. And so I thought, ‘How can you not do that with Megadeth?’ So whatever.”

You can read the interview with Lizzy Borden in the Portuguese language at Marcelo Vieira Music‘s website.