Remembering Peter Steele

Peter Steele 1962-2010

This week Peter Steele, best known as the voice and frontman of Type O Negative died, reportedly of heart failure. When I was in high school, I was quite the obsessed Type O fan, and I have great memories of seeing them at many of my first live concert experiences. They used to tour pretty relentlessly around here, so 16 year-old me would drive to New London or Northampton or wherever to see them - even on a school night! I was heavily into the music, and Steele's self-deprecating banter and doomy stage voice won me over again and again. I even attempted, ever so briefly, to play guitar in a Type O Negative cover band - like I'm sure the late 90s world was missing one of those. I actually was not quite musically up to playing with a band at all, but hey, that was a fun experiment...

Many years later I met all the guys from Type O, and the other three are quite the conventional, genial dudes who have pretty normal lives and families. I only met Mr. Steele briefly, and he was really quite the Stranger. While Type O definitely did a lot of things tongue-in-cheek, this man was not faking his eccentricity at the core. But in the midst of a rowdy, late era release party he was very polite and gracious and seemed willing to indulge whatever fan compulsions (by then I really didn't have any, beyond a howdy and handshake).

My condolences go out the Type O family who are personally affected by this, including my friend D.

Here is a piece of "fan art" I made in high school. I put a Type O spin on a completely unrelated collage assignment.