So you finally fired Joey or did he left by himself?
We had just signed to Elektra which was huge for us, finally we were on the biggest record label in the world, they gave us all the money in the world that we need and we just didn't see, the way heavy metal was at that given point in time, that Joey's voice would fit. That boy can sing Journey, that boy can sing Bad Company, that boy can sing opera, he's feeling confined having to sing 7000 words in one line of a song where he can't utilize his voice properly, so he's feeling contricted as well as I was a little bit. At the same time the band's trying to show him you have to sing this, here's the music, we're finished now Joey, here's the melody line we hum for you and here's the words. Joey's not so educated schoolwise, so it's a difficult process, very lengthy difficult process. It was just clashing all the time to the point where we just.. In this band majority rules, three people vote, we can do anything we want, any three people, it's a band, it's the way it always was, we learned that from Van Halen, split up all the money even, majority rules on everything. So, majority rules, not my vote, was to let Joey go, I vote the other way. Same for John Bush, "Get John Bush in the band!". I voted no.
You never liked him too much then?
A few things. One, I think we didn't try enough singers. Two, it was a preconceived notion of some people in this band that because he had turned Metallica down in the early days, he'd be the golden boy and he had the golden voice, and the direction that the music was going to in that time period, a lot of Seattle grunge just kinda ending and fizzling out, no one wanted to hear someone who could sing. Anthrax music was getting heavier or aggressive even, it was just what we had in us, it was just a changing of the guard that I was not happy with at all. John is a great guy personally, killer guy, but as far as my music, fuck no. I write dynamic, he has to be able to sing.
