Klayton
Klayton, born Scott Albert, is an industrial rock musician, who has performed under a variety of stage names over his career, and is best known as being the frontman for his latest project, Celldweller.
"THE most important thing to keep in mind while making a record is always, always, always be sure you check the sheets before sleeping in someone else’s bed. When I was making the first Celldweller disc I was piss broke and I had to sleep wherever I could find a place to. Someone offered a place for me to stay one night and I was so exhausted I crashed without doing a thorough inspection of the sheets. Unfortunately for me, I woke up the next morning to discover I had been sleeping in his accumulated dried-up ejaculate deposits. Apparently he had been unloading his nutsac on the sheets and just leaving it there. Needless to say, we had a new respect and bond for each other after that incident. Oh, and I never slept in his bed again, regardless of how tired I was."
"'Unlikely' (Stay With Me)'s original constructions were created only on my laptop with Pro Tools Free and some soft synths while I was in the middle of nowhere for a few days visiting family."
"I wasn't going to change the lyrics just because they were afraid certain types of stores or people with certain religious beliefs 'wouldn't like it.'"
"I remember taking a girl to a movie and they happened to play the Spiderman 2 trailer before the main feature. The look of shock when she heard 'Switchback' was priceless – I got to be a stud for 15 seconds."
"I can’t say (publicly releasing demos) affected my work but it’s certainly a view into my world I would have never been willing to share a few years ago. I hated my demos and wouldn’t let them out of my grasp. I think I finally stopped caring as much, because again the fans responded overwhelmingly when I mentioned the idea. So I did it right from the start of the Wish Upon A Blackstar chapters & the deluxe content has outsold just the standard 2 track release by a huge amount."
"Is nu metal dead yet? Thank god."
"I was beat up a lot as a kid and I had no friends, and I think one of the only things I could relate to as a kid was probably music."
"...the label I was signed to at the time went into bankruptcy and there were all kinds of legal battles between the label and all of the artists, including me. That basically tied me up for a year and a half where I couldn’t release a new album or anything, and I couldn’t really continue forward as Circle of Dust. It was around then that Criss Angel had approached me to work with him on some music. At that point I decided I was going to end Circle of Dust, work with Criss and we had our own project together, Angeldust, for the next six years. From there Celldweller was the most obvious next step for me because I had changed musically over time and I wanted something completely fresh."
"Tommy (Victor of the band Prong) didn't rip off my sound. I asked him to do some stuff for me for the Argyle Park project. He and I worked on what he would actually do. We decided vocals on one song and guitar on another. He actually wrote the riff to 'Doomsayer'. A few months later, he told me he wanted to use the riff for the upcoming Prong CD. No problem."
"Boys and girls, pull down your pants and make sure you’ve got a healthy set of balls, you’re going to need them (to get started in the music business)."
"I spent much of my childhood alone, and found my friends in books, detailing fictional stories I could relate to and characters I wish I could be. I don’t have as much time to read anymore and it is the one thing I lament. A great book can inspire and educate, and these things ultimately flow back into my art."
"I love being the underdog and possessing some semblance of control over my own future. It feels really good to be able to drop my pants to my ankles and spread my a** cheeks nice and wide to the industry holier-than-thous that told me I couldn’t and wouldn’t succeed. Stare into my brown-eye, buddies!"
"I grew up very sheltered. I wasn't even allowed to listen to the radio, nevermind buy a Black Sabbath record."
"None of the songs from SVH 01 were from the new album sessions with the exception of 'Narrow Escape.' That track began its life as a chorus for what ended up being 'Birthright.' It didn’t work for vocals, so I put it aside then came back to it later and finished it off for SVH 01."
"One main reason I did this interview is because I think any fans (or former fans after the interview?) deserve to know the answers to some questions they've been asking for the last few years. I did in fact make a conscious decision some time back to disassociate myself from the 'Christian' scene, whatever that is."
"Listening to a band stand there and just play back a CD, song for song doesn't do a thing for me. My mind is a complicated mess, so I need more stimuli to keep it from falling asleep."
"If someone is treating me like a rock star, I don’t know how to deal with it so I try to avoid contact. It’s not that I hate anyone or I am antisocial. I’m just shy, how about that? That’s an easy word. I’m shy."
"Two weeks after I signed and secured the deal, the company that owns Flying Tart fired Alex Parker and is completely dissolving the label by year end. (It gets even worse...) I had to laugh. What a pathetic way to go out. I'm so irate about the situation that words can't describe..."
"There's always the outside chance I'll buy a $10 Casio keyboard off eBay and write the whole (next Celldweller) CD with that."
"I grew up as a teenager listening to a really lot of heavy stuff. I was definitely a Slayer kid and Testament and the harder metal. I was definitely not a glam rocker."