Interview: Satchel of Steel Panther Takes 'Balls Out' Approach to Gear, Strippers and New Album

Grunge might have killed '80s hair metal, but it couldn't destroy Steel Panther, the raunchiest glam rockers to emerge from the Sunset Strip. No genre convention is safe from the improv troupe, which topped the Billboard Comedy Albums Chart three times with its 2009 debut album, Feel the Steel.

Bassist Lexxi Foxx, drummer Stix Zadinia, singer Michael Starr and guitarist Satchel are a PMRC nightmare, filling concerts and interviews with every filthy ad-lib that comes to mind. A living love letter to a decade whose ridiculousness will never grow old, Steel Panther gets away with hysterical satire like "Asian Hooker" and "Community Property," thanks to musical chops that perfectly match their comedic timing.

The band's latest recording takes on weighty topics like the deep meaning of commitment for the song "Why Don't You Trust Me" and explains why love is the best medicine on "It Won't Suck Itself," which features Nickback's Chad Kroeger and Extreme's Nuno Bettencourt. Balls Out was primarily recorded at Clear Lake Audio Studios in Burbank, California. It was a convenient location for the band since it's near Foxx's mother's house.

We celebrated by partying and having sex with some girls. It's kind of what we normally do, but we just did it just a little bit more than normal. Our whole life is like a celebration because we don't really have real jobs, 'cuz we make most of our money hanging out with strippers and stuff. Strippers make a lot of money, don't know if you know that, but guys give them money all the time, so basically we just hang out with strippers and borrow money from them. It's killer 'cuz it's been working out for us for like 25 years straight and we haven't really had to work normal jobs. People ask me the definition of success; well, that's success — when you don't have to basically have a real job, you're successful. I think that's pretty much the whole point of the Occupy Wall Street thing, isn't it?

They loved it. I was amazed. They understood that Americans, as well as the rest of the world — it's kind of like it's a universal subject. I don't know anybody at any age really, young or old, who doesn't love to fuck Asian hookers. If there was life from another planet, extra-terrestrials landed here on our planet, the first thing I would give them would be an Asian hooker. That would be the best gift you could give an alien from another planet. Everybody loves Asian hookers. I mean, what kid wouldn't want to wake up on Christmas morning and find an Asian hooker in its stocking? Anybody would.

I had sex with a lot of girls when I went to Japan, but most of those were groupies. Which doesn't really count as a hooker. [Unless] you're paying for it, it's a groupie. That's pretty much the whole difference. You could be a slut, but most of the girls we find are groupies 'cuz they're at our shows, so they're definitely there to screw the band. It's very rare that I could find a slut that isn't a groupie. Most groupies are sluts; not all sluts are groupies. Some hookers are groupies and sluts, and some sluts are hookers, but not all hookers are sluts. Understand?

Yes. A groupie will fuck guys in the audience if she can't get into the band's spandex, but they're aiming for band cock first and foremost. Some of those girls are gold-diggin' whores, which is a song on our new record, and the gold-diggin' whores are lookin' for anybody with money. Now some girls who are groupies are gold-diggin' whores and that's why they try to get guys like Keith Urban or rich rock stars. Like Bon Jovi's got a lot of money. Some gold-diggin' whores go after him, but a lot of the groupies out there are just looking' for band cock to say that they slept with somebody in the band, and then a lot of them fall short and they end up fuckin' the roadies or they fuck somebody in the audience who has a Steel Panther shirt on. That's just how it works.

There was some pressure because the first album was so fuckin' awesome that we knew there was gonna be people that didn't think that we'd be able to make another album as awesome, because it was so fuckin' good, and then there were some people that hated the shit out of our first record and expected our second record to suck, just because they hated our first record. I think we're gonna be able to please both camps, because our second record is fucking awesome.

But the same people that hated our first record, those people are stupid, so they're gonna think that our second record sucks. But we expect that from stupid people because stupid people don't know shit when they hear it. So even though our second record is totally bitchin' and just as bitchin' as our first record, those stupid people that hated our first record are gonna hate our second record. But the people that loved our first record are gonna realize that our second record is just as genius as our first record.

I play Kramer guitars, which are bitchin'. And they're totally heavy metal. Their guitars have six strings. I know a lot of kids these days are playing seven-string guitars and shit. But if you can't get the tone you need out of six strings then you need to fucking put the guitar away and pick up like a harp or a fuckin' bassoon or something, because the guitar is a fucking six-string beast. You should be able to make a guitar sound bitchin' with six strings.

I understand some guys, the seven-string guys, they're tuning low and shit. If you're trying to hit these really low notes, tell the bass player to hit it, because he's got really, really low notes on his instrument. A lot of these guys don't understand that and a lot of kids these days, bass players are hard to find now, because there's a stigma attached to it. If you're playing bass everybody knows that you're probably not smart enough to play guitar. Guys are shying away from that. There's not that many smart bass players out there, so a lot of these guys are picking up guitar because they don't wanna be a bass player, and understandably so. Guitar players get way more pussy than their bass players do.

There's always been a rivalry between Floyd Rose and Kahler, for instance. But to me, the design of the Floyd Rose is just superior to any other whammy bar ... the experience of the Floyd Rose and how well it stays in tune, you will never play another whammy bar. They haven't changed the design in frickin' 35 years. It's the best bridge tremolo system made. Any they're not even payin' me to say that. It's just bitchin'. It's always looked bitchin' and it's always worked perfectly, so I've never had a problem with it. They should hire me to endorse them. That's how much I like their shit. But they don't need to. You know why? 'Cuz they make great shit, kind of like Apple. I'm tryin' to get an iPhone endorsement right now and they keep tellin' me to fuck off, which is really not very nice.

Believe it or not, it was the cleanest song we had. Most of the other ones are pretty filthy. And [the record company was] like, "Well, we gotta figure out something to play on the radio. You guys are filthy." That was the one that was kind of the cleanest song. Plus it really rocks and I don't know anything about radio. I'm an old guy, and I'm pretty bitter and jaded, and people who listen to the radio these days, there's not a whole lot of stuff on the radio that's good, so even getting on the radio is like, it's just strange.

Stuff that gets played on the radio, it's very political. I'm amazed that we're able to get on any radio stations. We sort of threw out that whole thing years ago and went, "You know what? Let's write songs that we really like and let fans spread the word," and that's the secret of our success. It certainly hasn't been radio or anything else. But that song has been getting played in certain markets and chicks seem to dig it. I mean, I've been getting laid even more than normal. Which is a lot.

Well, Michael's 56 years old, and he's our lead singer and I love him, but I'd be very surprised if he could screw two girls in a row and keep an erection. Because he's not a spring chicken anymore. He's had two hip replacements and 18 liposuction surgeries, and if he can even get an erection at all at this point I'd be surprised. For him to say, "Yeah, I screwed 17 girls in a row," nobody's gonna believe that. But we're talking about Viagra maybe endorsing the band, so, if that happens, you know, you pop 10 or 12 Viagra and you can party for quite some time. Really, really do it for quite a while.

On this album, we really tried not to grow as artists. Because our first record was so good and we figured, "If we grow, we might get worse, so let's try not to grow our artistry or our songwriting, and we'll just try to stagnate in our bitchin-ness. Instead of a second record, a sophomore effort, let's do a second debut record." So it's more like, instead of a sophomore effort, it's the second first record. And it's like the same, but different.

Most of us in the band, the longest relationships we've had have been like, one to two weeks. But girls have a tendency to, when you come home at 6, 7 in the morning, and you have lipstick all over your crotch, they tend to question you like you've been cheating on them, and that's happened to all of us. Girls tend to be jealous and they tend to control who you talk to and who you put your penis into, and that can be a big hassle when you're in a band. 'Cuz there's a lot of girls out there, and when we have sex with girls, as a band, that's not just, "Hey, I'm having sex with this girl because I want to have sex with her," that's also promoting the band. We are promoting the band, and if a girl is with us in the band, they have to understand that, you know? This is self-promotion. You ever heard the song "Community Property" on our first record?

Well, it was not easy to do. He is a very busy guy. We asked if he would write a song with us and after we gave him $25,000 he was like totally into it. So we gave him a bunch of money, and then we went and hung out with him. We went to his house in Vancouver. He's got a mansion. He's got a hockey rink in his house. Amazing. I'm not kidding. A real hockey rink. He was down there playing hockey and we were like, "Holy shit." But we wrote a song with him, and it was bitchin'. He's got a bitchin' studio and he's got like an engineer, and he's got like six different girlfriends in his house. And they all live in different parts of the house and each one of the girlfriends doesn't know that the other one exists. That's how big his house is. He keeps them locked in different parts of the house. It's crazy. So we wrote a song with him and it was fun.

Actually, he's the only one who plays lead guitar on that song, and he was awesome. Nuno is an awesome guitar player, so there is no out-shredding Nuno Bettencourt. I would love to out-shred Nuno Bettencourt but I'm older than him. I've got arthritis, so it's not easy to shred like that for me. But the cool thing is I look just as good as Nuno Bettencourt and that's the only thing that matters to me. And I think Nuno knows that. He knows that I'm hot. It's probably not easy for him to deal with. I sense a little bit of jealousy sometimes from Nuno 'cuz he knows I'm hot. But he's good looking', don't get me wrong. He might be able to outshine me but he can't outshine me with like hotness.

I think he does know, actually. I don't think he's heard it yet but he will hear it, 'cuz we know some people that know Tiger and I know a guy that's gonna put the CD in Tiger's locker. The guy's on the PGA tour. He's gonna put the CD in Tiger's locker and make sure that Tiger hears the song. So I think Tiger's gonna be stoked, because who wouldn't want a bitchin' song written about how many girls he's had sex with? We're promoting Tiger. He should be happy. He needs promotion now.

Well, first of all I love Charlie Sheen, and he parties hard. We mention him on the new record. We sing about him in the song "Tomorrow Night." He's bad-ass but he's just not good-looking' enough to be in the band anymore because his teeth are fucked up now. I party as hard as the next guy but you gotta make sure that even as you party you don't let your face get fucked up, because now he looks like he's fucked up. He's trailer park Charlie Sheen. If I was gonna be gay for a night I wouldn't fuck Charlie Sheen, I would pick somebody else. And that's not good. And if you're not good-lookin' enough to make a guy wanna go gay then you're not good-lookin' enough to be in Steel Panther. That's the rule of thumb.

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