Phil Anselmo appeared on Eddie Trunk‘s ‘Trunk Nation‘ radio show today and addressed some concerns he had previously kept silent on in the wake of his infamous usage of racist gestures/phrases at the ‘Dimebash‘ event this past January. Anselmo has apologized repeatedly for his actions in the months since and also spoke at length about it in an interview with Decibel.
When pressed to comment about the incident in this latest chat, Anselmo reaffirmed that his actions were a result of hecklers in the audience calling him racist at the event and that his reactions were a drunken response to them. He was also pressed to reply to the artists who publicly called him out for his actions, in particular commenting on Machine Head‘s Robb Flynn and Anthrax‘s Scott Ian—the latter of whom suggested he donate to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Speaking on Flynn, he reluctantly offered:
“Everybody in my camp, everybody around us, everyone of us. Anybody who has ever watched Robert over the years knows that he watches me and watches me and watches me. And sits in a corner, watches me. And then we get onstage together… You know what, it all comes down to and straight up, he wants to ride the coattails, he wants to ride the coattails.
He started off a song and I told him to stop—and I told him to stop, I hadn’t even announced the song, so he took that as a slight… And I said something like ‘you don’t know me’ which once again is my sense of humor and I know it hurt it his little ego or whatever, which you know, sorry for you brother, but I’m not sorry.
So he made an eleven minute video; some dude who knows nothing about me except Pantera and this and that. And I’m a believer in freedom of speech whether you are joking around or not, whatever. This whole I’m a racist thing is… it’s infuriating because it’s false, absolutely false. And I’d like to turn around and say ‘hey what have you done to better your community Robert? If you’re going to call me out on this supposed heinous act. What have you done? What have you done?’
I know what I’ve done, I know what I’ve done for the inner city kids in Detroit when the Kronk Boxing Gym was getting closed down. I forked over thousands of dollars that I most certainly did not have to make sure those kids got fed, clothed and a place to sleep. Because it was run by the last father figure I had in my goddamn life: a black man named Emanuel Steward, rest in peace. Who used to call me before every fight that he would call on HBO and say ‘whatchu think Phil?’ And he would ask me my opinion of what I thought the outcome would be…
He then went on to speak out of his culturally diverse upbringing in the South and went on to continue:
“‘Look at how virtuous I am’, and that’s where little Robert comes in. Look at me, what, living in California? You’re going to compare that shit, compate [it] to living in the south? You’re out of your fucking mind.”
“He had ulterior motives and then you’ve got Scott Ian, who, the day after it happened, he wrote me some e-mail and ‘Phil, what I saw was ugly and this that and the other,’ so says the guy who wrote a record called ‘Speak English Or Die.’ If that record were to come out this year or last year, fuckin’ forget it. Think he’d get pounced on? You’re damn right he would and he knows it.
‘Virtue! Virtue! Virtue signal…’ or if you’re really sorry, donate to this Nazi hunter Jewish cause or whatever. I did it in an hour. Did you ever hear about that story? Of course you didn’t. You know why? It doesn’t make good headlines. I donated that hour if not that goddamn second.”
Interestingly, it doesn’t appear to have been made public that Anselmo donated to the aforementioned charity until this chat. That said, the interview is a very revealing and impassioned conversation with Anselmo that deserves to be seen. He begins to discuss the topics mentioned above around 20 minutes in.
