VOLUME host Scott Ian: ‘I’m totally going to blow my image’

You know Scott Ian. You know his face. You know his band Anthrax. And you know he really, really loves metal! But if you think that is all there is to this heavy metal icon, you’d be dead wrong. He is about to let people behind the goatee to see an entirely different side of him with Never Meet Your Heroes, on SiriusXM’s latest channel, VOLUME.

Once a week, Ian will sit down with people he admires to try to buck the adage from which the show takes its name. But if you’re imagining other tattooed, bearded middle-aged rockers talking shop about metal, you’re a little off the mark.

“I’m going to totally blow my image,” the Anthrax frontman admits. “Yeah, I’m an avid reader. … I binge watch a lot of TV since that became something really fun to do because TV’s gotten so good. Obviously, I’m a music fan, I think that almost goes without saying. So yeah, there’s a lot of stuff I nerd out about.”

The self-described horror movie nerd even hosts a video podcast highlighting great TV and movie makeup and special effects. But with Never Meet Your Heroes, he says, “people are going to get to see how truly nerdy I am about so many different things.”

Although this is his first talk show, it won’t be his first time on the other side of the interview (his portfolio already includes interviews with artists like Gene Simmons) or his first time talking about music rather than playing it (he embarked on a spoken-word storytelling tour a few years ago).

As for his dream guests?

“If I had my way, and I could book anyone I wanted: Stephen King or [AC/DC’s] Angus Young. They could both come in together because I’m pretty sure Stephen king is an AC/DC fan.Those two guys are the guys I’d want to sit down with. They’ve been the most constant in my life when it comes to music and when it comes to books. …It would take me about 20 minutes of just trying to not throw up before I’d even be able to ask a question, but once we got past that, then I think we’d get on really well.”

No word yet on whether King or Young will make an appearance on Never Meet Your Heroes, but we can reveal that fellow metal artists Corey Taylor of Slipknot and Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains will be his first guests.

Partially, yes, the idea of this show is for me to get to…sit in a room with somebody that I respect, that I’m a fan of, somebody I’ve enjoyed — writers, artists, musicians, athletes, whoever I’m a fan of. Someone I’d really love to sit in a room with and pick their brains,” Ian explained.And just really try and answer questions that I’ve had my whole life for these people.”

Ian is equally excited about the opportunity to be part of SiriusXM’s new venture into talk radio all about music: “If I could have invented the perfect scenario … to have an outlet to spew a whole bunch of stuff that I like to talk about, this is perfect.”

Never Meet Your Heroes airs weekly on VOLUME (Ch. 106).

For a free 30-day trial, check out http://www.siriusxm.com/freetrial/blog.