The Weird World of Rob ZombieLists about the heavy metal musician and horror filmmaker behind White Zombie, the 'Halloween' remakes, the Firefly family, and plenty of other dark and shocking things.
Updated January 3, 2020 33.7k votes 7k voters 597.8k views
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Vote up the most surprising facts about Rob Zombie.
Who is Rob Zombie? Most everyone knows him as the growling singer behind numerous horror rock records, both as a solo artist and in his first band White Zombie, as well as the writer and director of terror films like the trippy House of 1000 Corpses and its grittier sequel The Devil's Rejects, as well as the two most recent installments in the Halloween franchise, and both The Lords of Salem and the 2016 film 31. Â
But these are merely surface-level Rob Zombie facts. How did he come to be the horror Renaissance man he is today? Other than the works for which he's best known, what else has he done? What about projects that never made it off the ground? Â
Take a brief tour of the Rob Zombie biography below, and learn a thing or two about the man behind the legend.
His First Job Was As A Gofer For 'Pee-Wee's Playhouse'
Photo: CBS
Zombie originally revealed this tidbit in an interview with Jimmy Fallon, and elaborated on his duties in Westword magazine:
It was a cool job to have. But I was probably nineteen years old. It was everything from delivering stuff to doing little crap work around the set. I don't even know if I was a P.A. Whatever is just below a P.A. I'm not even sure it counts as below a P.A., but that was my job. Lowest rung on the ladder -- that would be [the title I give myself for that job].
It was cool, and I liked it. Besides being a fan of Pee Wee Herman, Phil Hartman was on the show. William Marshall, Blacula, was the King of Cartoons. There were all kinds of people I really liked on the show. So it was pretty exciting.
It's true. The ad debuted back in 2011 and was part of an "alternative" campaign to add a bit of humor - and possibly controversy - to the detergent brand. Zombie stated he tried to make something less overtly "scary" or horrific, and aim for a lighter, "Tim Burton" feel.
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He Made A Voice Cameo In 'Guardians Of The Galaxy'
Photo: Marvel
He doesn't appear on screen, but Zombie provided the voice of the computer Ravager navigator system.
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He Attributed Much Of White Zombie's Success To 'Beavis and Butt-Head'
In 1992, Zombie's first band, White Zombie, had a break-out hit with "Thunderkiss '65." However, if it hadn't been for the MTV series Beavis and Butt-Head, the song, its album - La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1 - and the group itself might have fallen into absolute obscurity. He told Entertainment Weekly in 1993:
The record immediately started picking up in markets where we never played, like Wyoming and Missouri-places where Beavis and Butt-Head was the only thing happening, where it’s just cows. It always seemed we needed something to give the album a kick in the butt, and I guess this was the thing.
As a result, Zombie befriended series creator Mike Judge and contributed an animated hallucination sequence in the feature film Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.
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His First 45 Was The Jackson 5's "Dancing Machine"
In this interview with Graham Hartmann of Loudwire, Zombie plays a round of "Wikipedia: Fact or Fiction," in which Hartmann goes through facts presented on Rob Zombie's Wikipedia page to sleuth what is real and what is totally made up. Hartmann notes that the page states the first record Zombie ever bought was an Alice Cooper release.
Zombie notes that this is technically true, as Cooper's was the first album he bought; however, the first record - a 45 RPM, 7-inch single - was the Jackson 5's "Dancing Machine," which he purchased sometime in kindergarten and played repeatedly, much to the annoyance of his parents.
In 2016, Zombie met up with BABYMETAL, a Japanese pop-metal group comprised of three pre-teen girls. He posted a snapshot of himself with the girls, stating his admiration for their touring vigor, and saying they have "more energy than 90 percent of the bands we play with."
This actually angered many of his fans, who don't consider BABYMETAL hard enough to merit Zombie's approval. One fan said the group was "a shameful embarrassment to anything metal."
Zombie's response? "Hey, they are nice kids out on the road touring. What are you doing besides being a grumpy old f*ck?"
It's true. The ad debuted back in 2011 and was part of an "alternative" campaign to add a bit of humor - and possibly controversy - to the detergent brand. Zombie stated he tried to make something less overtly "scary" or horrific, and aim for a lighter, "Tim Burton" feel.
