Were these people from any news organisations in particular?
Maybe. But I get the impression that most of them functioned independently, and according to different rules. They had one boss in common, however: money. You take a picture and sell it to whoever pays the most.
You had your calm life, you were respected in your niche all over the world, and you could afford to buy food; what did you need all this for?
I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted to date a girl. That’s all. I had no idea that I was heading straight into a wasp’s nest.
And if you had known, would you have still taken that step?
Cronos from Venom, one of my childhood idols, when asked if he would change anything in his life, answered with his innate subtlety: ‘No fucking way.’ Taking bricks out of a standing building is risky, because you have no guarantee that it won’t fall apart. And, equally, you can never be sure that a little change or a different decision made in a given situation won’t make you sit with your old, fat wife, babysitting spoilt brats instead of giving an interview.
Of course, Cronos put it slightly differently, but that was the essence. And I think in a similar manner. That’s my nature. I appreciate the nasty situations in life that I sometimes get embroiled in. My illness, for example. At one point, some of my friends and colleagues said that my sickness was a result of actions taken in the previous year of my life. My quite stormy relationship, all that media witch-hunt, moving to Warsaw, new people … all these things generated quite a lot of stress. My body just couldn’t handle it, and this manifested itself with a cancer.
I didn’t comment on that then. And I will not do it now.
Why did you move to Warsaw?
I wanted to be close to the person I loved.
One of your previous girlfriends, Zuza, lived in Warsaw too, didn’t she?
The situation and circumstances were different. I wasn’t ready for such a step then. Besides, Zuza liked coming to Gdańsk. I treated Warsaw more like a place from which I could go to other places in the world and where I could party from time to time. One day in Warsaw has more to offer than a month in Gdańsk. But at that time I really liked the somewhat provincial character of Gdańsk. It allowed me to rest and regenerate. Living by the beach, everyday exercise by the seashore—it was difficult to say goodbye to these things.
A year and a half passes, you meet a new girl, and just like that you run away from this idyll. Why?
Dorota showed up at the moment of my life when my routine and discipline had started to wear me down. I felt a bit like a robot in Gdańsk. I am an inherently restless soul. I can’t choose one road and drive on it for my whole life. My life needs its own dynamics. Sometimes I need stabilisation, other times to run wild. This is my natural cycle. A new relationship was an impulse for change. I packed my most important stuff—some clothes, a few records, a guitar—then I got in the car and drove to Warsaw. I left my friends, my family, my house behind me. Practically everything.
Did you suggest the move to Dorota?
I declared my feelings and said I’d like to live with her. Of course we had spoken about that before, but with no particular plan in mind, so I just waited for a clear sign from her. It didn’t come, so I went all in on my own volition. And she said yes.
How did the band react?
Inferno—with his typical brand of fatalism—prophesied an apocalypse. I tried to calm him down—told him it was not the other side of the world, and that I could always get in the car and be in Gdańsk in four hours. I also reminded him that there were bands where the lead vocalist lived in the States and the guitarist in England and they managed to work it out. And it turned out that I was right. After I moved, we functioned like we did before—maybe even better.
Wasn’t it frustrating for the guys that you became a household name in Poland almost overnight?
I was always on the front line and they were always more in the background. You know, it’s like how Malcolm Young of AC/DC was always jealous of his brother, Angus, because the latter is always in the spotlight. I don’t think there is as much rivalry between us as that. Besides, we all know where our place is. That’s what our characters are like. Zbyszek pushing forward to the cameras is the last thing I can imagine.
And what did they think of Dorota?
I think they just saw an attractive girl that I was dating. Even if they didn’t like something about her, they certainly never told me. But I do feel stupid to this day because of one thing. Right after I started dating Dorota, Behemoth set off on an eight week US tour. Our relationship was fresh; I was still working on it, so I spent a lot of time on the phone. We still didn’t know each other too well, so we often fought. There was quite a lot of stress and frustration involved. I was tense and nervous. I would get onstage in such a state and let off steam on the guys. The whole band had to keep away from me. It wasn’t nice—for the guys or for me.
What about your fans? Did they mind their idol dating a pop starlet?
Watch what you’re saying! Dorota was a star, not a starlet. I live according to an old maxim I heard a long time ago: ‘If you want to steal, steal millions; if you want to love, love the queens!’
My friends’ reactions varied, but I didn’t encounter any open hostility. Just jokes. There was one particular email from a guy who said that when he saw me on the cover of a magazine with Dorota, he burned all our albums. The metal world is quite rigid and conservative in some ways, but if they could accept that the metal god, Rob Halford, is gay, why would they be concerned about me?
There were various comments on the internet, too, correct?
Right—various. Some people criticised, others wrote that if Lemmy of Motörhead screwed Britney Spears, they’d be ecstatic for a month. Let’s be serious: I’m not going to lose sleep over that kind of criticism. Most Behemoth fans are smart people. They don’t care who I am dating, or what magazines my pictures are published in.
But there are people who claim that tabloid covers are not the right place for a serious musician.
I am not going to be anyone’s hostage. And it’s not just about my life but also about music. When I create, I’m not wondering about what people are expecting. If I did, I would feel like a whore, not a musician, for sure.
You’re not the first guy to leave the black metal cave.
I’m glad you noticed.
Satyricon opens the skiing world championships; former Gorgoroth leader Gaahl patronises fashion shows …
Yes, because black metal, first and foremost, means individualism. It also promotes freedom from limitations.
Financial limitations, too? Surely that’s placing high social status ahead of your basic ideals?
I flush all that bullshit about ideals down the shitter. Just look at human evolution. We lived in caves, and then we left them. We passed through the forest to get to the sea. We wanted to explore what was beyond the water, so we built ships. Everything was subordinate to expansion, because expansion, motored by curiosity, is rooted deep inside our nature. We’ve always wanted to go further and further, and my life is a reflection of this evolution. And so is my music. It’s based on crossing, transgression, and constant development. Why would conquest translate to whoring out?
Maybe the direction of the conquest is wrong?
Behemoth is an extreme band and it always will be, but why can’t we have photo shoots with the best photographers—people who normally deal with fashion? Why can’t we have a video made by Patric Ullaeu, who makes clips for Madonna or Lady Gaga? Why should this book not be available in every mainstream shop?
Do you get pissed when people pick on you for these things?
A little. But it pushes me even farther. I keep quoting Russell: ‘Every great idea starts out as blasphemy.’ If there is resistance, it means that the direction is right. I want to share what I do, so I share. I am curious about the world and I want to absorb it. I have no fear of it. I look at everything like a little boy, with my eyes wide open.
Sometimes I wonder, sometimes I scratch my head. But I do get into awkward situations. Sometimes I act first and then I think. Sometimes I get burned and sometimes I have an amazing experience. As Lemmy says, ‘Pleasure is to play, it makes no difference what you say.’ What’s important is the very process of experiencing the world.
You can experience many things.
It doesn’t matter, because experiencing is neither good nor bad. Sometimes it brings laughter, sometimes tears; sometimes sickness, sometimes money.
Right, money …
My life is not about the next deposit in my bank account, but about the everyday load of experiences. They make me rich. I am thirty-six years old and I think I’ve experienced quite a lot. But the world always has something to offer. It’s endless.
Of course, everything is relative. Money is energy. I like money, and I like having money. I know how to get it, but I never treat it as the sole aim. In the context of all this media confusion about my meeting with Dorota, the question of money is unsupported. Back then, as now, the main source of my income was the band. Even when I was in Rome, I didn’t have to do as Romans did, and I didn’t have to brag. If I really cared about these things, I wouldn’t be driving a Honda.
Didn’t Dorota sneer at you for that?
She did, she did! She thought it was embarrassing to drive a Honda.
But it’s a real Lucifer’s chariot! It shines with blackness.
I didn’t get what she was on about. Having a car that was worth more than $50,000? I do understand that something may fit or not fit someone, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with the amount of money you paid for it. I was fucking pissed by that opinion.
Did you run from the paparazzi in the Honda?
One day we were driving through Sopot. The traffic was quite heavy. Suddenly, we noticed that there was a sporty BMW behind us. It was these guys from Warsaw who looked like mafia again. They had come to Sopot to take our pictures. I remember that the driver was some ugly, fat guy with an especially nasty face. In theory, their car was a cheetah and mine a donkey. And that was when Dorota started deriding me: ‘You want to lose them in this piece of junk? Look what they’re driving!’
I kept my cool, even though anger was boiling inside me. If you could draw up this scenario in a comic book, you would see a little cloud over my head with skulls, grenades, bombs, and rifles in it. So I made a few breakneck manoeuvres, accompanied by Dorota’s yells of, ‘Kurwa! What the fuck are you doing?’
I managed to overtake a few cars and turn into a small alley, then I ran a red light and went the wrong way. It all happened in about a minute, but, importantly, the BMW was gone. It turned out that you could run away from a bunch of jerks even if you were in a Skoda. If you’ve got balls, you can travel around the world on a donkey.
And it was on this donkey that you entered Warsaw?
It was a zoo—a strange world. But I liked that jungle. Warsaw had a lot to offer. You can feel that it’s a real metropolis—one that can unabashedly shake hands with Berlin, Moscow, or Prague. I am a city guy, so it kept me flowing, at least at the beginning.
Didn’t you miss the sea breeze?
I had to start a lot of things from scratch. I had no beaten tracks. I started exercising in Mokotów Field. I tried to create a substitute for the closed world that I had built in Gdańsk.
I understood how important the rhythm of life was for me. I had to rebuild it, maybe even create it all over again.
Did you miss your friends?
Very much so. At the beginning, my social life was rather limited. I lived on planet Doda. Around me there was Doda’s entourage, which consisted of various people. I found common language with most of them, though. I met a lot of valuable people. It was fresh, but …
She was always in the centre?
Yes, everything revolved around her. I didn’t stake my position in our relationship and today I think that was a mistake.
Dorota, just like me, is very expansive. Sometimes, in her expansiveness, she could be very aggressive and possessive. Let’s just say that she defends her world. I lived a year and a half at her place and not even once—I repeat: not even once—did I play an album from my collection in her company. I listened to my music in my car and on my headphones and when I exercised. And that was when I was back on planet Satan.
I guess, somewhere deep inside, I felt that Dorota would never understand my world. I don’t think she even tried too hard.
Was she at least interested in it?
She hardly ever asked about my life. I was the one who asked questions. I wanted to understand her reality.
And what is she like in her everyday life?
I think she’s quite pragmatic. She likes to take and have fun. She doesn’t analyse too much. But listen, I wouldn’t like to publicly vivisect her personality. Let’s just say that I just hoped that some things would sink in eventually.
Love is one thing, but the consequences of your relationship were also visible elsewhere. You became a celebrity.
That world was strange for me. Sure, I did show up at a few parties, but I always kept my distance. I wasn’t drawn to people from glossy magazines. I didn’t act, I didn’t change the clothes I wore; I didn’t try to fit in. I didn’t grin at everybody, and I didn’t have a gleaming smile fixed on my face.
And how did other celebrities react to you?
I didn’t feel excluded or pushed into the margins, if that’s what you mean. These people, in general, turned out to be nice and friendly. I don’t know how sincere it was, but I just think they found me interesting. But there’s no doubting that I was like a meteorite that had fallen into the middle of their little village.
Or like a savage at the royal court?
No, I wasn’t looked down upon at all. Rinke Rooyens, the head of the Rochstar production company, came up to me during one of the parties. He introduced himself and we started talking. He was the kind of guy who had no prejudice whatsoever; he was very empathic and communicative. After a few years we managed not only to make a TV programme together, but we also became true friends. The other day, the TV presenter Krzysztof Ibisz came up to me and introduced himself, too. There were also others. It was all very positive.
And you didn’t want to wipe their fake smiles from their faces?
I don’t treat people that way. If someone is kind to me, I try to respond in the same way. In my head, this whole world of celebrities honestly wasn’t a big factor. We were doing our best with my band; we played tour after tour. That’s where my people and my environment were. I came back to Warsaw not for the parties but for my woman.
And did you feel more like ‘Doda’s boyfriend’ or the leader of the most famous metal band in Poland?
It’s a stereotype that metal music is a niche, and that only the chosen ones hear about it. These people knew me before I started dating Dorota. I met Kuba Wojewódzki, Czeslaw Mozil, and Maciej Malelczuk long before my face started appearing in tabloids. They knew me as Nergal, not as Doda’s boyfriend.
Behemoth is not on the radio, but it was difficult to ignore the numbers of records we were selling. After all, Behemoth is the first and only Polish band to have appeared twice on the American Billboard chart. We won awards, and Evangelion ruled the Polish charts for three weeks! Even the officials of Gdańsk awarded me a prize for being a Young Culture Creator.
So, people like the renowned vocal coach Ela Zapendowska came to you and said, ‘Mr Darski, your latest record is fantastic, but in the fourth song, around the fortieth second, you seem to struggle with the high F-sharp.’ Is that how it went?
I don’t know if these people liked our music, and to be honest, I didn’t really care. I didn’t have any complexes. They knew who I was, and it was hard for them to undermine the musical status of my band.
Everybody’s nice, smiling, friendly—are you trying to tell us that this is what this world looks like?
It had its dark sides, too. It was very showy and plastic fr
om the outside.
What was underneath?
Nothing. That’s the point. Some time ago, I read a great essay by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. It was about today’s forms of communication, which he called ‘tweeting’, leaving no place for real relations. And that’s what this world looked like. It was shallow. It lived under the dictum of media that described it. Gossip, slander, little wars, secret photos—all of that was in the foreground.
The media has its targets, however.
Yes, because the tempo of our lives is getting faster. Colour and flash is what matters now, and there is less and less actual content. On the cover of a magazine, the word ‘BETRAYAL’ has to scream out with capital letters, because, usually, a photo takes up the whole page. Then, at the very end, in fine print, there are just a few words. We buy this because tricks like that grab our attention, but it’s just like fast food. We devour it, but there’s no value in it whatsoever.
You didn’t enjoy this glitz?
I was including myself in that analysis to some extent, too. Sometimes I do swallow news without a blink; I get excited like a kid, but shortly afterward, I realise how superficial all of this is. But I do learn with each day. I recognise the concept of ‘tweeting’ more every day. This amazing desire that some people have to accentuate their presence for the sake of it: ‘Attention! I’m here! Look! I shaved my legs! Wow! My breast fell out of my bra! That’s my ride! My dog smokes marijuana!’
Big fucking deal! It’s all bullshit. And by that, I don’t mean that the only valuable thing in the world is watching Bergman or Fellini movies or reading the encyclopaedia. We’d go crazy on that path, too. Small things are also important; we can’t escape from the prose of life. But it’s all about balance.
You’re not exactly being innovative in saying there’s no balance in the glossy media.
Balance in the whole world is quite shaky nowadays. We focus on trivial things, and they become the determinants of quality. There were moments when I bought into this illusion, too.
Confessions Of A Heretic: The Sacred And The Profane: Behemoth And Beyond Page 12