Legendary Rock Interviews recently conducted an interview with ex-OVERKILL drummer and filmmaker Rat Skates. In the interview Rat talks about his movies, his music, and his “Do It Yourself” ethic. Excerpts from the interview are below:

Legendary Rock Interviews: You are a pretty well-rounded guy, you write, you make movies but you are of course known as the drummer for Overkill. What got you into music or what is your earliest musical memory?

Rat Skates: “My earliest memories period are about music (laughs). That’s really the earliest things burned into my memory as far as my childhood goes just things I heard or playing things I had heard. I am a pretty hyperactive guy (laughs) so when I started out on guitar it was just difficult for me. I didn’t have the patience; I didn’t have the longest fingers in the world so my hands wouldn’t really reach around to the frets. I was always running around like a little psycho tapping on everything so drumming just seemed to be the right fit. I really didn’t have to CHOOSE drums as much as drums chose ME. That’s the best way to describe it.”

Legendary Rock Interviews: A lot of bands now talk to us and say that they think it’s easier than ever for a band to get attention and market themselves and in a way I sort of agree and disagree. There are avenues that are open now with the internet that were never available when you were spray painting logos and making your own T-shirts and demo tapes. On the other hand, I think it’s so much harder for a band to stand out amongst the sea of other bands.

Rat Skates: “You made a really good point that I really agree with. I go into a lot of detail about that whole DIY thing in Born In The Basement in regards to us in Overkill but also with Jerry Only and his band THE MISFITS. He was doing a lot of the same things that I was as far as stapling things onto telephone poles and putting stickers onto tollbooths and all that. First of all we were young and we didn’t care. I just knew that this rock thing was all I wanted to do and I have gotta figure out a way. If I have to use magic markers and rubber stamps and stencils and whatever then so be it. Now, the thing is setting up your bands profile on countless websites and putting your stuff on iTunes and all that, it’s easier for everyone and all the tools of doing it are standardized but the main thing is exactly what you are saying John, the playing field is soooo much more crowded. Consequently, everyone is doing that and using those tools so as a result its way, way harder to ‘get noticed’. There are fantastic points to this new internet age but still to this day my own thinking is still DIY, as in, what can I do myself. Maybe I’m a little bit of a control freak or whatever but I still try to always cover the bases of what can I do hands on. It is crowded but I think the new ways are awfully handy and what else are you gonna do? Sit around on the couch and wait for some label to give you a contract and a record deal? That isn’t going to happen and you’re just going to miss everything entirely so yes I think all new bands should utilize Anything that’s out there really.”

Legendary Rock Interviews: For those unaware…. how much of a hand did you have in the actual day-to-day goings on with the band? How much did things go according to plan?

Rat Skates: “Really everything that happened in Overkill right up until I left the band in 1987 was exactly as D.D and I had envisioned. The other guys that joined the band kind of joined into what we were doing and what we were going for. We knew we had a mission, it was clear-cut and we were the directors. We weren’t dictators because a dictatorship implies that there was resistance or a lot of the group doesn’t like what you were doing , which wasn’t the case. Danny Spitz did leave the band because he didn’t wanna do the horror show and the makeup and theatrics and all that to be honest, so he split. It was our thing, D.D. and mine, and having he and I doing it together really was a blessing I gotta say. It’s a very rare thing that two people can be that compatible for so many years and work together and share the same vision. We didn’t even have to open our mouths to know that we were on the same page and doing things the way we wanted it was just magic. We did have a hand in all of that and we did control a lot of our own destiny but the farther along you go in your career and the more you start dealing with management and record companies the more you lose that control. All of a sudden you get other knuckleheads in there who you’re paying money to and they’re making bad decisions and don’t understand the color green you want used in your logo (laughs). It was really simple and yet unbelievable things that you would start to lose control over. Really frustrating."

Read the entire interview here.