Petrus Thomas Ratajczyk, professionally known as Peter Steele, was an American musician, singer, and songwriter. He was best known as the lead vocalist, bassist and composer of the gothic metal band Type O Negative. Before forming Type O Negative, Pete had created the metal group Fallout and the thrash band Carnivore.
Pete was known for his vampiric appearance, 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m) stature, rich bass vocals, and a dark, often self-deprecating sense of humor. His lyrics have been described as "often intensely personal, dealing with subjects including love, loss and addiction.
I was fine, until I was born. And it's been downhill ever since.
☉Pete was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to a Catholic family.
☉Pete's father was of Polish and Russian descent and his mother of Scottish-Irish, Norwegian, and Icelandic ancestry.
☉Pete had 5 older sisters.
☉His father fought in WW2.
☉Pete's key musical influences were Black Sabbath and The Beatles.
☉Pete started taking guitar lessons at age 12, before moving on to bass six months later.
☉Pete was naturally left-handed, but he played right-handed bass guitars throughout his career. This came about when one of his earliest bands, Aggression, for which Pete played left-handed rhythm guitar, threatened to kick him out unless he switched to bass guitar. As a left-handed bass guitar proved to be too expensive at the time, Pete purchased a right-handed bass and taught himself to play it.
☉Pete worked for the NYC Parks and Recreation, where he drove vehicles including garbage trucks and steamrollers, up until he began touring with ToN in the summer of 1994
☉Pete admitted to suffering from stage fright, which he overcame by drinking alcohol before shows, and by drinking red wine when on stage.
Something red and dry. It doesn't really matter what brand or where it's from, so long as it's tasty ... gets me a little buzzed and makes me forget how many people I'm attempting to entertain.
☉Pete enjoyed reading books on the subject of science.
☉He he had an interest in European culture, architecture and civil engineering
☉Pete liked working on his cars, including a heavily modified 1985 Pontiac Grand Prix he customized himself.
☉He loved cats and had several of his own. Bloody Kisses, album's title track had in fact been written about the death of a family cat called Venus he had owned for 17 years. (click play to listen)
☉Pete was bipolar and received occasional psychiatric treatment for his depressive episodes.
I've always been a very depressed person, but that's only one side of me, you know. It makes me feel better when I can express my depression, my anger, my frustration through music ... sonic therapy.
☉In 2007, Pete revealed that he began identifying himself as Roman Catholic in recent years, after decades of self-professed atheism.
There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realize my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what's after it. And then you start hoping there is a God. For me, it's a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can't believe that people like Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.
☉Pete is also known as The Green Man because when he worked for the Parks Department, he wore a green uniform and rode a green garbage truck, people called him that as well as Type O fans. His eyes were green, green was also his favorite color and is the reason for the theme color of the band.
☉In a 2009 interview, Pete told that he is now finally sober and ready to settle down. He talked about really wanting to start a family and have children. He passed away 6 months later at the age of 48.
My goal is isolation. I really don't like people too much.
Success is defined by two things: One is how many people hate you. The second is if you had sex with Madonna. I'm only halfway there, but a lot of people hate me.
We were trying to get away from that, you know, sexual thing because now we're old, fat, and impotent, so it doesn't really work too well anymore. So now we have to talk about the other things in life, which are drugs, depression and Halloween.
If it doesn't upset people, it's not rock music. It has to upset the church, it has to upset your parents, it has to upset the school system.
People ask me, 'Are you a born-again Christian?' and I say, 'No, I am a dead-again Christian.
I was born 23 and a half inches long. My mother said it was like giving birth to a pumpkin.
I would love to have kids. But it would have to be with a tall woman. I don't want to have to put her on a milk crate to fuck her from behind.
So, I simply switched over to wine because it was not carbonated.
I hate the human race. Of course, therefore, I hate myself the most, because I am the least of the human race.
It's a funny thing, when you talk to God, you're religious, but when he talks to you, you're a psychopath.
We live to avoid death, we exist to avoid unexistence
I'm the product of 6 million years of evolution? Come on, man. I crawled out of a swamp yesterday.
I just like being a social experiment sometimes. I really should not be allowed in public. But I just go out into the public just to see people's reaction.
with youtube links!
with Type O Negative
with Fallout. They only released a couple of singles. I linked one of them
with Carnivore
