Yes, actually I was pretty amazed by the amount of stuff my parents put up with while I was living in their house. They had experienced all that before with older brothers and sisters, so it was fairly strict. The fear-of-God thing was pretty set and I blindly followed it until I reached a certain age. Then I just began questioning my belief system.

But I don't think anybody with any self-respect would admit to being Goth

I was always interested in music, I felt it was time to do it, coming out of the punk scene [1979]. I thought it was ideal that anyone could just put together a group and make it work. Then, of course, it became a little more detailed after starting it and realizing that it was something serious, not just a one-off situation. I had to put a lot more into it. Also I did it to get a lot of things out of my system, things that had been put there while I was growing up in my family. A sort of exorcizing of demons.

Yes, actually I was pretty amazed by the amount of stuff my parents put up with while I was living in their house. They had experienced all that before with older brothers and sisters, so it was fairly strict. The fear-of-God thing was pretty set and I blindly followed it until I reached a certain age. Then I just began questioning my belief system.

I think I began getting really influenced by that whole punk scene around the age of 13 or 14-I went through that whole thing like the shaved head. I was always interested in what people called "the darker side," whatever that was, and the kind of look that you would see in the old horror films. So I let that become more of my persona.