Slipknot bassist Allesando Venturella discussed not liking Nirvana in a new Defender of the Riff interview.
So by 11, you’re already learning musical theory, and you’re already getting work done with piano, and then it’s 11 when you switched to classical?
“Yeah, pretty much. And then in secondary school, I started noticing there were little groups, and everyone had their little pockets of stuff that they listened to.
“And I think I stumbled across people that were listening to metal from the older years and stuff. I always looked older than the age that I was, so I always hung around with people that were three or four years older than me.
“So I got into heavy metal around 13 or 14, listening to Guns N’ Roses, I know it’s not heavy metal but it led to other things, it was a stepping stone.”
‘Appetite for Destruction’ is everybody’s gateway drug, let’s be real.
“For me, I think it was ‘Use Your illusion 2’. There’s some serious work going on in that record.”
Big tunes on that. I like ‘2’ better than ‘Illusion 1.’
“Yeah, for sure. So I think ‘Appetite’ actually came afterward for me just because no one was like, ‘Oh, you got to listen to this one now!’ There was none of that when you were like 13 or 14.
“It was like, ‘Here’s a fucking bunch of shit, listen to it.’ It was like a process of elimination of what you want to listen to and agree on, so my brain went that way.”
Was music always extracurricular or were you playing in a band as well at school and doing everything that went with it?
“Funny story – I wasn’t really into Nirvana at all but they were small little bands growing up at the school. When I went to this bunch, they were into Nirvana and stuff like that, and I was like, ‘OK, I can get into this.’
“And I think we did a school show and I was, ‘Oh, OK, yeah, I know these songs, no worries about it.’ And I think we did ‘Teen Spirit’ and then ‘Come as You Are’ but I played the same solo in both songs because I just wasn’t really into it.
“I just thought the same solo would fit twice and it did actually, so that was kind of funny.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his remarks.
