"It's an ode to a Goth girl who was so into herself that she once held a mirror over my face so she could see herself climax." Sex, vampires and black lipstick: the story of Type O Negative's goth metal anthem, Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)

Black No.1 (Little Miss Scare-All) is one of Type O Negative’s most enduring songs for good reason. It mixes all their best ingredients – sex, love, despair and biting, sarcastic humour – into a single irresistible goth metal anthem. On the face of it, the song takes a tongue-in-cheek poke at a certain gothic stereotype. The Black No. 1 of the title refers to a popular hair dye and, in between references to Lily Munster and Nosferatu, the lyrics contain the classic couplet, ‘You wanna go out cause it's raining and blowing/ You can't go out cause your roots are showing.’

Beneath the jokes, though, lay a real and seemingly toxic relationship. ‘This entire opus is respectfully dedicated to all those who have loved unconditionally only to have their hearts unanesthetically ripped out,’ wrote late frontman Peter Steele in the original liner notes to Type O’s 1993 album Bloody Kisses, on which Black No.1 was a centrepiece.

Drummer Sal Abruscato said that the lyrics for the song, as well as the album’s other big hit Christian Woman, were “totally derived from hanging out in [New York clubs] the Pyramid and the Limelight, looking at these girls all done up in black with the mascara and the clothes”.

“[Peter] was infatuated with dating these kinds of girls,” he added. “I’m not sure how much he was making fun of them, though — I think it was more an admiration of their beauty.”

In an interview that originally appeared in a 2009 CD reissue of Bloody Kisses, Peter told journalist J. Bennett: “It’s about the girl I fucking slashed my wrists over. She was the ultimate goth girl, and I was poking fun at her because she was in love with herself.”

In another interview, with M.K. Ultra magazine, he commented: “It’s an ode to a Goth girl who was so into herself that she once held a mirror over my face so she could see herself climax.”

Paradise Lost guitarist Greg Mackintosh told us that he had a romantic encounter with the same woman during her “on-off” relationship with Peter Steele. He was then dispatched to interview the 6’8” Type O frontman for MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball. Greg recalled: “He turns to me and says ‘Ah, Mr. Mackintosh… I believe we need to talk about Black No. 1.' I was like, ‘Oh crap’… It turned out he was winding me up but he could definitely loom over you and I thought he was going to kick off about me kissing the girl! We talked about it and laughed."

In the Bloody Kisses reissue, Peter, who also worked for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, said of the song’s origins: “I wrote it while I was driving a fucking garbage truck. I was waiting in line for three hours to dump 40 cubic yards of human waste at the Hamilton Avenue Marine Transfer Station, and I wrote the song in my head. I’m not kidding you…I actually lost the original lyrics to that song, so I had to rewrite them.”

The album version of Black No.1 (Little Miss Scare-All) was an 11-minute-plus epic in three distinct parts, complete with rumbling baritone vocals, eerie atmospherics, holler-along hooks and Addams Family fingersnaps. It was also trimmed down to less than 5 minutes for the single release.

“I had no problem with it. I always knew that if we wanted to have any success we’d have to edit our 11-minute songs down,” Sal told Revolver. “You have to compromise sometimes if you want any kind of exposure. We could’ve stuck to our guns and had no songs on the radio, but then the record wouldn’t have done as well, obviously. So, I think doing that was a key move.”

Indeed, the success of Black No. 1 helped propel Type O Negative from the obscurity of their hardcore roots and a pretty non-existent goth-metal scene to the mainstream spotlight of MTV and prominent Ozzfest appearances, with Bloody Kisses eventually going Platinum in the process. It was helped along the way by a brooding video that cast Peter Steele in the vampiric role he was born for and also emphasised his size as he wielded an upright double bass like a standard guitar.

Director Parris Mayhew told Songfacts it was influenced by Anne Rice’s Interview With The Vampire. “The vampire is sitting recessed very far back in the shadows, and it is only when this vampire leans into the light that there's this primal fear with just the sight of the vampire. I remember that being such a striking image to me, so I pitched that to Pete,” he recalls.

“After I delivered the video, Pete called me immediately and left a voicemail, and it was pure gratitude. He said, ‘I would have made this video funny, out of insecurity. I would have gone out of my way to hide behind the joke and try to make the video stupid. You just showed me as what you see, and I'm so proud of what I see that I can't even tell you’.”

Whether you want to embrace the darkness or smirk along with the cynical humour, Type O Negative served up both - and nowhere better than on Black No. 1.

Type O Negative - Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare -All) [HD Remaster] [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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