Andy Biersack should have been a week into this year’s Warped Tour experience with his Cincinnati-born/Los Angeles-based Glam/Hard Rock troupe, Black Veil Brides. Instead, when we spoke he was nursing three broken ribs, although he’d healed enough to rejoin the traveling madness.
“I look up to people like Stiv Bators and the most clumsy, terrible stage performers,” Biersack says from an Los Angeles hotel. “I don’t exactly have grace on stage. We were playing a release show at a big mall complex in Los Angeles and I climbed up this marble pillar to the top.
My intention was to jump back onto the stage, but being that I wear cowboy boots that have almost no traction, and I’m on a marble pillar, I started to slip, then I thought I could push myself onto the stage and instead I heaved myself onto the edge of the stage, which smashed my ribs.”
Biersack’s resilience in managing a 15-foot rib-cracking stage dive was developed during a less-than-idyllic Cincinnati childhood. Born and raised in Delhi, Biersack was outwardly artistic, eccentrically dressed and mercilessly bullied as a teen. But it merely strengthened his resolve.
“I was the furthest thing from accepted in society, and it spurred me to create the band,” Biersack says. “We sing about life experiences; I learned internal strength growing up (in Cincinnati). Instead of bowing down to detractors who told me I couldn’t be what I wanted to be or called me ‘fag’ for how I dressed, it made me tougher.”
Biersack’s musical aspirations started as a pre-teen; he availed himself of CityBeat’s “Musicians’ Exchange” ads but received no responses. “It’s not CityBeat’s fault,” Biersack jokingly clarifies. “I was a 12-year-old who wanted to start a Horror/Punk band in Cincinnati. There’s not much call for that.”
Black Veil Brides perform at the Vans Warped Tour stop at Riverbend this Tuesday. Go here to read Brian Baker's full interview.
