Betsy Bitch interview
By Ray Van Horn, Jr.
In 2016, I was working on a personal project where I sought to cast a long-deserved spotlight upon the ladies who have fashioned their own brand upon the heavy metal scene. While today’s metal leagues have duly become more gender-unified, it was a far tougher battle for women playing heavy music during the 1970s and Eighties. Pioneers such as Wendy O. Williams, Lee Aaron, Girlschool, The Runaways, Doro Pesch, Ann Boleyn, Darby Mills and Vixen all paid the dues for future female metal and hard rock performers to follow. It was the rabble-rousing Betsy “Bitch” Weiss whose sadomasochistic staginess turned the genre (alongside the late Williams, a metal-punk priestess forever in her own class) on its unwitting ear.
The first act housing a female performer to be signed by Metal Blade Records, the Bitch band quickly became lashed through the crosshairs of Tipper Gore’s infamous Parental Music Resource Center (PMRC) from their brash releases, the Damnation Alley EP from 1982, Be My Slave in ’83 and 1987’s The Bitch is Back.
I had the pleasure in 2016 of sitting with Betsy Bitch to get her reminiscences about her gatecrashing music and how her boundary-bashing ways opened doors for future ladies of metal. It’s my honor to give Betsy this long-overdue presentation of our spirited conversation, and I thank the Metal Hall of Fame for lending me this forum.
RAY VAN HORN, JR.: What was that magical album that blew you away and led you to get involved in heavy metal?
BETSY BITCH: Alice Cooper was a major influence when I first heard Love it to Death. That’s when I knew that’s what I wanted to do, to be a front person, a first-rate character, to play onstage and back it up with some great music. Also Cheap Trick, when I first heard the first self-titled Cheap Trick album. That was a major vocal inspiration for me. Alice for the performance, but Robin Zander definitely for vocals. All of that resulted in me knowing that women could get up there and do it just as well as men, if not better. That’s what got me into music and then the metal thing came afterwards. When we were first starting out in the Eighties, there were people getting together to form a band like David Carruthers (Bitch band guitarist). They were pretty much into hard rock and metal, the NWOBHM. The metal just came along after the decision to be in a band.
RVH: Tell me about David and you gaining the attention of Brian Slagel and Metal Blade, who have championed Bitch over the years. It had to have felt great, getting such consideration when women were all but blown off completely in metal and punk music in the early Eighties.
BB: It was definitely a male-dominated scene. We did have to push harder in order to be taken seriously as a female-fronted act. A lot of the metal fans are mostly male, so we definitely had to back it up with some talent and good music, which I think Bitch did.
Brian was good friends with David, our guitar player, before he started the band. David was an avid record collector, especially the NWOBHM, picture discs and whatnot. Brian had a store then called Oz Records and so David knew him from Oz. He was giving Brian a lot of business, and they struck up a friendship. That was about the time David was starting Bitch, so it was all just synonymous.
This was when Brian was running his label out of his garage, and he was anxious to release the Metal Massacre album, which was his first release for Metal Blade.
RVH: I’m sure you had to be thinking “Really?” that you and Bitch had to fight harder against all the male glam bands in the L.A. hard rock scene when you had a perfectly capable woman leading a much heavier band!
BB: I guess it was sort of specialized because of a female fronting a metal band. Before that, there was usually just all male bands. We were just doing something different, and we also had the image too, the S&M. Songs like “Be My Slave,” “Live for the Whip,” and all that. We were not quite as topical, shall we say.
The glam thing sort of came along after the metal scene in the late Eighties, but it was definitely a boys’ club. I felt privileged to be accepted into it and I felt like one of the guys.
RVH: I’ve been told so many stories about the flier wars on Sunset back in the day amongst those same male glam and power metal bands. Was it even harder being female and trying to nudge your way through the flier wars and what’s now considered “street teaming?”
BB: It was just a big party on the street. At Sunset Strip, you didn’t necessarily have to go into a club; you could just walk up and down the street and see bands handing out fliers, doing P.R. It was great. I enjoyed every minute of it and I’m glad I participated in it.
RVH: How much harder was it, do you feel, trying to expose Bitch outside of the L.A. scene? I remember learning about the band through Hit Parader way back when. On the east coast, we had to buddy up with pen pals and the tape trading scene back then. I remember vividly when I got a cassette sent to me of Be My Slave from a Cali pen pal, it was such a huge deal to me and my metal crew. Interestingly, a few months later, Metal Blade Records had become such a big deal that Be My Slave finally showed up in our malls and record stores.
BB: It wasn’t too hard because we had the albums out and they were distributed internationally, so we got a lot more exposure there than the L.A. fans did, because our music was being released to a wider audience. Yeah, we were based in L.A., but we got a lot of European fans off of that album. We didn’t really get to Europe until 2003, but before that, we got a lot of international exposure because of Metal Massacre and the Bitch albums.
RVH: Long before Genitorturers and Lords of Acid, the Bitch band had the domination act going onstage. Different genres, of course, but one begets the other, I would say. I know that whole theatrical gig is behind you, but what do you feel was most compelling about it that carried forth into the electro-industrial/hard dance underground?
BB: I think the image, the S&M, the leather and studs, “Be My Slave,” “Live for the Whip,” all that, and the fact it got the attention from the PMRC. It was just great press for us. That really got people’s attention, though it really wasn’t my idea; it was David’s, as he was the band’s founder. It was more his idea to have an image to go along with the music so you’re not just playing at people. There’s something visual to take with them. That definitely got a lot attention and a lot of press.
RVH: How would you describe one of the best Bitch shows back in the day and a night where things just went in the wrong direction?
BB: A really great night would be having the place packed and everybody being against the stage, the headbangers and all the people holding up our albums, shouting my name and having a good set musically. That’s always a plus. Another thing that was great was during the day at 11:30 in the morning, the Bang Your Head Festival. That was amazing walking out to like 15,000 people there at the time. We’d never played Europe before and that went great. That was a real high.
I guess there have been a couple of gigs where things haven’t gone right, like when I couldn’t sing. That’s always a nightmare. It actually just happened to me not too long ago! I have recurring dreams about getting up onstage and not being able to sing. That, and between getting to the gig and realizing I don’t have my backstage clothes and makeup with me. I always wake up in a cold sweat when I dream about that!
There’s been those nights where I couldn’t sing, my boob popped out once onstage and somebody got it on video. I got pulled into the audience and the roadies had to come and rescue me. There’s been pros and cons to playing gigs! For the most part though, things go well and playing live is one of the best things about being in a band.
RVH: Naturally the Betsy Bitch persona back then stirred the imagination of what backstage life was like for those without a VIP pass. Take me backstage during the Eighties heyday.
BB: Before the show, there was a lot of primping and preening and getting ready, and “get the hell out of my way!” or “I need the mirror!” It was me trying to find a place to get naked amongst a bunch of guys so I can have my privacy. Afterwards, we spent more time walking around the club after the show than in the dressing room. You would get dressed, mop your brow and get out there, talk to the fans—for the most part.
RVH: I have to “go there,” drifting back to the PMRC, of course. Even back then, I called “He’s Gone” and “Live for the Whip” Tipper Gore nightmare songs. First off, take me into the songwriting sessions for the Damnation Alley EP and then lead me to when Bitch became a PMRC poster child, so to speak.
BB: They (the PMRC) weren’t crazy about what was going on, or with anybody else in that genre, either. They were finding nasty lyrics in Twisted Sister, Judas Priest and WASP, and all of a sudden there this album cover with a girl on it in S&M gear, whips and chains. It was exactly the thing they were trying to warn children about. Tipper gave us some great press! She took Be My Slave with her everywhere she went to speak about the PMRC. That like a Barbie doll she carried around, our album with me on it. She held it up during the conventional meeting. There’s actually a publicity photo of her in correlation with the PMRC, holding up our album cover—and only ours. It’s the only one she’s got in her hands. It made kids want to buy it more!
RVH: Given your “Betsy Bitch” persona, the word “bitch” probably falls off you like dandruff. Still, there has to be a taboo word or two that would set you off if hearing it as a professional musician?
BB: I’m not crazy about the “c” word and what it refers to. I can’t even say it. That kinda pisses me off.
RVH: I can imagine you’ve been asked for some freaky stuff from your fans over the years. What are some the weirdest?
BB: There are just a lot of people who have no idea that I’m in a band. They thought I was just a professional dominatrix. Back then, I used to get fan mail with stamps on it. They thought I was just a professional dominatrix and they wanted to come over and they wanted to make an appointment with me, to come over and hang from the chandelier while I whip their asses with cat o’nine tails. They had no clue there was music involved.
RVH: The tables-turning sexual empowerment that Bitch provided up until the Betsy album when you changed musical directions had to feel like the ultimate form of freedom. Is that something you still feel today?
BB: Yeah, and I have fun singing them. I can change up the lyrics and it’s all done with a sense of humor. There’s nothing too daunting or threatening about it. I actually let people know it’s all in fun onstage. It’s still great fun interpreting the lyrics and breaking out the whip onstage. I have a ball with it.
RVH: In your opinion, has the metal scene changed to the good for women or does misogyny still rule?
BB: I think there are lot of women doing it these days. There’s a lot of hard rocking women out there right now, like Halestorm and Lita Ford’s still doing it. Now that the market’s opened up a lot for women in hard rock and heavy metal, it’s for the good as far as opening the door for more women to be out there doing it. It’s definitely still male dominated, but there’s nothing wrong with that, either. I like that too.
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Ray Van Horn, Jr. is the author of Bringing in the Creeps, Behind the Shadows, Coming of Rage and Revolution Calling. Ray is a contributing writer for The Metal Hall of Fame and he has covered music and film for outlets such as Blabbermouth, AMP, Pit, Dee Snider’s House of Hair, Music Dish, DVD Review, Horror News.net, Fangoria Musick, Hails & Horns, Metal Maniacs, Noisecreep and many others. Ray was an NHL game analyst for The Hockey Nut. Ray was a runner-up finalist in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine’s “Mysterious Photograph” contest. His work has appeared in Rue Morgue, Eternal Haunted Summer, Punk Noir, Atomic Flyswatter, Horror Tree, Cyber Age Adventures, Flash in a Flash, The Rubbertop Review, Story Bytes, Quantum Muse and New Noise, plus the anthologies Dread Mondays, Horror A-Z: X, Axes of Evil and Axes of Evil II.
