By Martin Popoff
Was anything out of your comfort zone?
"No, actually it wasn't. It really wasn't. I wrote like 23, 25 songs and the best 11 made it, so they're all my favorites. If anything, they are a lot more challenging because there's definitely more singing done on these. There are some really great melodies, a couple of really beautiful tracks."
The singing is something that began as a trial by fire. The trial's now over and Tommy's won. Look for Tommy to be standing up there microphone in face, guitar in hands. "Yes, and that's for pretty much all the songs," notes Lee without trepidation. "It's definitely a guitar band. We like it heavy. Pretty much all the time. It is hard to do, though. I had a conversation with Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters. Here's a drummer from Nirvana who goes and plays guitar and sings. And his band was rehearsing right next to mine. And this is when I was really nervous about all this, before I headed out on the Methods Of Mayhem tour. I said 'Man, Dave, did you just have a f**king anxiety attack and thought you were going to f**king die?' And he said, 'Bro, I'm telling you, I know exactly how you feel. I felt exactly the same way. The only thing I can tell you is that you'll get through it, you'll make some mistakes, but you will get through it and at some point you'll become very OK with it all.' And he was right. I made mistakes, I had the anxiety attack (laughs) and I got through it man, I definitely got through it. And now, I'm not so freaked out about it. It's still difficult, you know. Playing the drums, you can pretty much play the shit out of the drums and if you are to make a mistake, it's not so noticeable. But you play the wrong guitar chord and sing out of key, woooo! It's bad! So there's really no room for error."
Tommy had this to say about lyrical themes. "I always try to stay with truth, experience, events that are all real, because I have a hard time writing about fantasy (laughs)."
TOMMY LEE - Mayhem, No Method Page 3