This was the last interview that we did with Sterling. It was the Part 3 of a lengthy article and the culmination of several hours of conversation (see Part 1 and Part 2). This last installment is much shorter than the previous offerings, but it was kind of the wrap up to all that we had spoken about. At the end of the article read what he have as the rules for a very cool contest with an absolute one of a kind prize. This has been cool to do with Sterling and to watch him on a journey that he has put much thought, many tears and plenty of questions into. C.S. Lewis once said that, “Faith is never doubt free.” That statement has been one of those lines that has been a cornerstone in my life and a great equalizer in so many areas. Thanks again to Sterling for being so honest and filling in the blanks about where he has been, what he has been doing, and for shedding some light on Veil of Ashes and so much that they encountered.
I know it’s kind of personal, but coming through the holidays and around this time of year, how are you coping with the loss of your girlfriend?
It’s still a bummer, it doesn’t really bother me as much as it used to…but every now and then I just kind of feel like, “Oh crap,” but what are you gonna do ya know? I’m going to be 49 in January and my prospects aren’t looking too good at this point, especially when I’m working a job to just pay the bills.
Tell me again how long it has been.
It was two years ago October 1st…
I know a lot of people get kind of down around the holidays anyway, and I was just wondering how you deal with this season and how you get through it.
Well, I’ve said before… I wouldn’t say I’m morose, but like when I was a kid I was so shy and introverted that I wouldn’t talk to people. My mom would make me go up to a clerk in the grocery store and ask where items were, just to get me to talk to somebody. Basically it was rock ‘n roll that took me out of that. I’m still a little depressive, but that’s just my nature though.
For other people that are reading and possibly going through the same thing, how do you deal with something as dramatic as losing a loved one, or losing a loved one to suicide?
You just get through it… I mean I told you I lost my girlfriend, then about a month later I lost my job, then I had to move out of where I was living and I moved back in with my family. I basically didn’t leave my room for the next four to six months. I went out and did stuff every once in awhile, but basically stayed at home.
Was it good to have your family around?
Yeah, but we’re the kind of family that doesn’t really talk about stuff or talk stuff out. We like each other, we love each other and my Mom was there for me, but she knows I’m not much of a talker. When it comes to really emotional stuff I usually will keep it pretty much close to the vest. I can’t say that I had any mind shattering revelations on how I got through it or anything like that, it was just one foot in front of the other man.
With Veil, if you had to go back and do it over again, would you change anything?
That’s a good question… I would change some of my attitudes.
How?
Well sometimes I had a bad attitude about things. A lot of the times after shows me and my girlfriend and my roadie were loading up my truck with gear and getting everything together… everyone called me “dad” you know, I was always trying to corral the kittens. Not so much because I was a control freak, but because I wanted things done, and I would get pretty upset when people would disappear when we were supposed to be doing sound check, just stuff like that.
Another thing is that I wouldn’t have gotten rid of Lance Harris, the first guitarist. There were just some personality conflicts there, but I wouldn’t have done it that way now. Also, the songs are pretty good but I think I would have taken a little more time on some of the arrangements I think.
In regards to you and searching out your faith, where are you in that journey?
Well I’m thinking of going back to church possibly and probably if I do that will go to something with a little more structure like a Lutheran church, I think that would be good for me.
I know last time we talked you thought you were headed away from Agnosticism, still feel that way?
Yeah, yeah I feel I’ve definitely moved away from that. I still have questions and I still wonder whether someone else’s religion or faith is wrong just because it’s not Christianity, and I don’t like to see people get pushed aside because of their beliefs. You can’t do that to people, it is what they believe, especially for people who live in other countries and cultures. You can’t downgrade people’s beliefs simply because you don’t agree with them, all that does it put a wedge between people.
Is there anything else that you want to talk about, anything that you want to add?
There are probably some things you could ask me that you are probably wondering about, you want to take a shot in the dark and ask, go ahead.
Is there something you want to say?
Well, one thing that people don’t know… while we were recording Mr. Sunshine one of the things that helped put an end to Veil of Ashes was that my girlfriend and I had broken up. She had been talking to other guys in the band and kind of the last person to know was me… and that was really hard. After that happened Jeremy killed himself and after his death everyone in the band kind of moved out to different parts of the Bay Area. There was a lot of conflict, not conflict in the band, but conflict towards the band and I could really see in a lot of different ways things starting to fall apart.
What happened to Jeremy?
Okay, Jeremy Hawley… First all, Phil Meads is one of the most incredible drummers I’ve ever worked with, he was Veil‘s original drummer. He could take the beats so close to being outside of the time signatures and bring it back in, he was the Keith Moon of Christian rock as far as I’m concerned. Jeremy was a great drummer. He was a kid, he was 20 when he joined the band and he was a very depressed kid. He grew up in a Christian family but was sexually abused by a relative. When that happened to him they took him to a Christian psychologist, or therapist, and basically all he was told was that he needed to get right with God that there was nothing wrong with him… bad advice. So he was carrying all that around with him and no one really knew about it. I was the last one to see him alive. We were at a club together that was having a “goth night” and we left there and drove back over to his house across the bay where we were just watching Bauhaus and Tones on Tail videos, and then after a while I left. I guess what happened was that a few weeks before we had played a showcase for Hollywood Records, and Jeremy’s girlfriend had come up from college on break to see him. They were supposed to be getting married and she basically told him she had decided she wasn’t going to marry him, he was just an immature musician and she really just cut him up. I didn’t even know about that… but after I got back home I gave him a call and he had left this really weird answer on the machine. I told Sean to keep calling him until I got back down there, and by the time I made it back, Jeremy’s dad told me that he had hung himself. It was really hard.
So at that point things were really starting to unwind to a degree?
You know I said before I am a little depressive, and prior to the band ever getting together I had been engaged to a different girl that had broken up with me and I lived through a tough depression for about a year. I never realized how much a person can hurt physically from depression. So after 1992 when everything was falling apart I got depressed again and started doing drugs again. I hadn’t done any drugs since I had been about 18 or 19 years old, but I started smoking crack. It just felt like the sky was lead, nothing was going up and everything around me was falling apart and dying.
I was smoking crack for about 6 months and realized I really had a problem because I couldn’t stop. I was making about $1000 a week working construction but I was barely paying my rent, putting a little gas in the car, maybe eating, and spending everything else on crack. After about 6 months of that I talked to Sean and he basically said, “Okay, we won’t say anything to the band about this, but you need to get your sh*t together.” That was all we ever said about it…we probably should have talked and followed up on it but we didn’t. Then a week before Christmas in ‘92 I got busted by the cops in Oakland trying to score and ended up spending a week in Oakland city jail with 84 other guys in the same big cell. It was like a boarding room.
After all that I went through drug court and an intensive drug program in California and I got clean. It was rough though, because after that I was basically on suspension or kicked out of the band for six months until I got my stuff together, but the thing was that while we were recording Mr. Sunshine I was doing drugs. That had a lot to do with killing the band too, probably more than anyone will admit. I did get out of it and get clean, it batted me around a couple more times through the years, but I’m alright, I made it through it.
Wow, that’s a lot that has gone on and a lot that has happened. Is there anything else you would like to add?
I want to thank everyone who likes Veil so much. Still hearing to this day how people took us into their hearts is really gratifying. It’s like a little band that meant something to a lot of people and touched their lives in some way, and that is still going on today which is unbelievable, but very cool.
This is the original artwork for the Veil of Ashes “The Young and the Reckless”
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