Interview
Interview
Stage Times: Black Veil Brides
From awkward silences in football stadiums to headlining Wembley, Andy Biersack walks us through his most memorable performances
The product of five Midwestern teenagers with dreams of rock stardom, Black Veil Brides have spent the last 15 years forging a movement like no other.
Inspired by the glory days of glam metal and the tales of rock ‘n’ roll legends, since their formation they’ve been on mission to unite the outcasts of the world. With their striking black makeup, body paint, and larger than life onstage theatrics inspiring a fervent following, vocalist Andy Biersack has become the face of a revolution, encouraging anyone who listens to his band to stand up for themselves and embrace what makes them unique.
Their live shows have become a place where community thrives, and few other bands can boast such a feeling of family, but over the last decade Biersack has noticed a similar movement blossoming. This time though, it was taking place across the other side of the Atlantic.
“I’m not much of an avid listener of new music,” he admits.
“I mostly listen to the new releases from the bands that I grew up with, and my wife’s music and demos, but one day back in 2015 I happened upon a Creeper song called ‘VCR’. As soon as I heard it, I was like, ‘Holy shit, I think this band might have been made for me!”
Setting his sights on joining forces with the Southampton gothic trailblazers, the pandemic halted plans for a while, but now – it’s happening. With Creeper’s platform growing exponentially over the last few years, and the UK still serving as a second home for Biersack and his bandmates, the two bands are set to unite for a one-off co-headline show, taking place at the OVO Arena Wembley on 30 October.
“We knew that when we got to do something together, it had to be a big, special event,” Biersack nods.
“My wife is an obsessive Creeper fan, and we’re so in awe of what they do. To be able to watch them play on that big stage, just as fans, is going to be exciting. I’m going to have to get ready super early that night to make sure I’m not rushing last minute after their set!”
With the Devil’s Night celebration set to be the spookiest show of 2024, Black Veil Brides have come a long way since first hitting the road over fifteen years ago. From getting stranded in Chicago to conquering the hallowed grounds of Donington, we sat down with Biersack to reflect on the live antics that have paved the road to Wembley.
The gig that made you want to play music
A lot of the millennial age group were introduced to rock music by our parents. Their generation had so many rock stars, like the monoliths of Aerosmith, KISS, and Motley Crüe. Because of that, the initial shows for me were large scale arena shows with all the pyrotechnics and everything else. However, the members of the bands were, by and large, stationary. They weren’t really doing a lot, and that didn’t connect with me so much. That all changed for me when I first went to the Warped Tour, which was a huge thing in the States. I remember the first time that I saw AFI live there, and the energy was unlike anything I’d ever seen. I loved the giant rock shows I grew up going to with my dad, but there I was watching a couple of people on stage with no grand theatricality, apart from Davey [Havok, AFI vocalist] looking like he was in a Tim Burton movie. It was 130 degrees outside, and they did not stop moving for the entire show. It changed everything for me, because I immediately realised that you don’t have to blow up the sun to put on a good show. You can just be an incredible performer and entertainer, and to this day, that’s what the Black Veil Brides show is. We’re all constantly moving around the stage, and that’s thanks to seeing AFI all those years ago.
The first
It’s a little bit dicey because Black Veil Brides, in the initial stages, was just 16-year-old me and a rotating cast of characters. In theory then, the first Black Veil Brides gig was a high school battle of the bands where we played Social Distortion covers, and we lost! We came second, but I don’t think the band that won ever went on to do anything…
The first gig that the professional version of the band played though was in Cleveland, Ohio, at a place called Peabody’s. It’s now a parking lot, but it was one of those places where there were six different scaled venues within the building. There was the club, the theatre, and then the bigger scaled shows. We were booked in a 20-person bar, and we drove there in one of the member’s cars, doing our own makeup in the back seat. We walked into the venue and, unbeknownst to us, a lot of people in Cleveland had found out about the band. We had an overflow, and you couldn’t fit another person in there with a shoehorn. I’ll never forget looking at Jake [Pitts, guitarist] – who was new to the band at the time – and giving him the wide-eyed look of bewilderment. We were wondering what we had gotten ourselves into, and we were off to the races from there.
Photo by Barry Brecheisen/WireImage
The smallest
It was on the same tour, which was our first national tour of the US. As it turned out, every night was not like Cleveland. Most nights you’d play for the other bands that were playing that night, and that was it. There’s a thing that used to be popular in the early MySpace era, where you would do show swaps. You’d write to somebody on MySpace who was in a local band in whatever city you wanted to play, and you would say, ‘Hey, I have an in with a club here. Could you get us a show at a club there?’. On that tour, I had facilitated a show swap in Chicago, which is a six-hour drive from where I’m from. We got in the van and drove up there, and the guy had talked a big game about how big the show was going to be. We got there, and it was the basement of a hookah lounge. We had two fans show up who knew about us from MySpace, but that was it. There were three hookah smokers, and a guy who had a cardboard box full of loose change and a banjo. He had brought a projector, and he projected old Hanna-Barbera cartoons onto the wall whilst hitting the box of change with his foot as a makeshift snare drum. The two fans that showed up felt so bad that we had come all that way, and they asked us if we would stay and play their birthday party the next day. They promised there’d be more people there!
That’s a rude awakening to the world of touring after the Cleveland show…
Oh yeah, it showed us what it’s like out there for a touring band! Unfortunately, the story ends with us getting in a huge car accident. This is in the era before any of us had cell phones, so the van got totalled, and we got stuck in Chicago. There were members of the band who were over 18, and they didn’t tell those of us who were under 18 that they were going to get bus tickets and leave us. We had to sleep in a park overnight, and our parents were all so worried and freaking out. We were left in the park, and my parents had to come and save us the next day. Turns out if you want to be a musician, you’ve really got to want this!
The biggest
We’ve played so many huge festivals, but the first couple of Download Festivals that we played were special. Growing up in the States, my dad worked next to a magazine shop that would get imported magazines. He would pick up various UK rock magazines for me, because they always covered the bands that I liked. I remember seeing Download talked about all the time, and it looked insane. Donington itself has its own history too, and as a kid I had a VHS tape of AC/DC playing at Donington. The first time we played there, it was at such an important time for us. We had this sudden fervour in the UK that we didn’t really have anywhere else in the world. For whatever reason, the UK audience took to us right away. We were put in this position where we were playing in front of all these people before we even knew what the f*ck we were doing! We couldn’t play very well, and we were full of piss and vinegar. Our skill level and our lack of being sober made for difficult shows, but it was so exciting to not only be in front of all those people, but to see so many people who were excited to see us. That has continued anytime we play that festival, and it’s such a special thing. It was the first time that there was a mass of people singing our songs back to us and not just flipping us off.
The weirdest
It’s sometimes hard for people to understand that the US is so big. If you live outside the US, you could tour for the whole year and not play in the same city. Because of that, you end up in some weird places, and you play some weird as hell shows. Once, we were playing at a bowling alley, and our gear stopped working three songs in. We needed to be on stage for a certain amount of time to get paid, or we wouldn’t be able to make it to the next city. I asked our tour manager how much time I needed to kill, and I just sat down and started telling jokes. I sat there for an hour telling stories and jokes while people were bowling in the background.
It’s funny because often when something gets popular and you don’t know the history of it, you presume it got popular overnight. When we started getting popular, people would act as if we were some sort of industry plant because they hadn’t heard of us before. Suddenly, we were on the cover of magazines, so they thought we must have been planted here. I would always laugh, because I’m from a working-class family in Ohio. We were the furthest thing from industry plants! People would say that we were created by Hot Topic to sell T-shirts, but the whole time I was sleeping in my car. When we put out Wretched And Divine, we were suddenly internationally known, but we were all poor as shit. That speaks to those early shows, because we were just trying to get by. You make it work, and you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.
The worst
There are two, and they were on the same tour. The first one was when we opened for Motley Crüe at Bayern Munich’s soccer stadium in Germany, and it’s nothing to do with Motley Crüe. They were lovely to us, and it was a great experience on that level, but we had built it up in our heads that it was going to be an incredible experience for us. We were going on stage in front of all these people, but we were so young that we didn’t really understand how that stuff worked. I was 21 years old at the time, and I had no life experience. In my mind, we were going to step out onstage to a soccer stadium full of people who were going to love what we do immediately. It was terrible because around 10% of the total audience were there when we were playing, and 100% of that 10% absolutely hated us. We would finish a song, and there was just silence, not even booing.
There’s nothing more awkward than being the lead singer, finishing a heavy rock song, and seeing everyone dead silent and staring at you with contempt. You become so self-conscious that the only choice is just to roll into the next song. We got to a point where there was no stoppage, and we basically played a medley of our songs because I didn’t have the balls to stop and face the audience between them. It’s a comedic sadness, the internet might say it was a ‘womp, womp’ moment.
The second show was from that same tour, but it was the worst for more personal reasons. I woke up one of the mornings on that run, and my grandfather had died overnight. He was the first family member that I had experienced passing away, and we had to go on stage a couple hours after that. That was very hard for me.
The best
We play so many shows every year, and so many of them are awesome. I’m going to be a little bit of a shit though and say that I’m anticipating the Wembley show will be the best show yet. On an emotional level, it’s a culmination of a very cool thing, because it took a long time for us to find our audience. There was one place in the world that said yes to us before anywhere else, and that was the UK. We were struggling it out in the US trying to find people that believed in us, but we came over to the UK and opened for the Murderdolls. Within a few months, we were on the cover of magazines and being lauded as the next big thing. That changed our whole career.
We owe the UK audience so much, and to be able to go into the largest room that we’ve ever headlined in that country is so special. It’s a bonus that we get to do it with a band like Creeper that has such a kinship with us musically too, and that we’re great friends with. It’ll be such a cool show, but on a gratitude level, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to say, ‘We’re going to headline Wembley Arena’. I know that people are going to show up and sing along with us, and we plan on giving them the best show we possibly can.
Black Veil Brides & Creeper: DEVILS NIGHT comes to Wembley Arena on 30 October. Find tickets here
Photo credit: Ollie Millington/Redferns via Getty Images
