ASKING ALEXANDRIA guitarist and co-founder Ben Bruce recently appeared on “Side Jams With Bryan Reesman” to discuss his newfound love for cooking and embracing fatherhood. Beyond enjoying cooking all kinds of meat, he revealed that he had a dream of having a food truck, but that it probably wouldn’t go the way he’d like.
“I’ve always wanted a food truck,” Ben said. “I feel like I’ve just had this idea in my head forever, which, once I tell you the name of it, you’ll realize very quickly why it can’t happen. Because I’ll be getting all kinds of the wrong people queuing up for it. But I would love to have a food truck just with a British flag painted on the side. [We have] something in England — a fast food, quick snack called a sausage roll. And basically, it’s just a puff pastry wrapped around sausage meat. So me having the background I have in music, I would love to have a food truck with the British flag paint on the side, and I want it to be called Sex, Drugs And Sausage Rolls. We’ll sell all kinds of pastry snacks and stuff. My wife was just like, ‘Yeah, you know who’s going to be queuing up outside your food truck at two o’clock in the morning when they’re drunk coming from the pub.’ And I won’t have sex or drugs. I’ll just have the sausage rolls. And I don’t think it will be as quite as successful.”
Now a father of four who has appreciated time off with his family, Ben also looked back at the early days of ASKING ALEXANDRIA and regretted one big aspect of them.
“Everyone’s young at some point, and everyone has to be young and dumb, or you don’t learn, you don’t grow,” he said. “If you’re not making mistakes and being stupid, how do you learn how to become smart and grow as a human being? There were a lot of fun times. The only thing I definitely do regret is just getting so sucked into… or not even getting sucked in… allowing myself to be pushed into and therefore getting sucked into the rock ‘n roll lifestyle. People used to write [things] like, ‘ASKING ALEXANDRIA, the heroes of rock and roll. They’re just like MÖTLEY CRÜE.’ And when you’re young, it felt like an honor. So it was encouraged and it was pushed. People were like, ‘Well, if you don’t behave this way, you’re not rock and roll, and you’ll be forgotten and you won’t be successful.’ The one thing I truly regret is allowing myself to be put in that place, because it led to very real drug addictions and alcohol addictions. And it led to a very dark time in my life and the guys’ lives. That’s not fun. Unfortunately, some people don’t learn. And they continue down that path until they’re until their lives are gone and ended. You know, they’ve spent their whole lives controlled by substances and stuff like that. But fortunately for me, I was able to learn and move on from it. My wife and my kids opened my eyes to what’s really important in life, you know?”
This past January, ASKING ALEXANDRIA released a new EP titled “Never Gonna Learn” via Better Noise Music. In addition to the title track, the project included a new collaboration with Maria Brink from IN THIS MOMENT.
ASKING ALEXANDRIA closed out 2021 by celebrating its first-ever No. 1 at U.S. active rock radio with hit single “Alone Again”, taken from the band’s seventh full-length studio album “See What’s On The Inside”. The song had the biggest first streaming day and week in the group’s history and was a fitting first offering from its latest album. “See What’s On The Inside” made a top 10 Spotify debut in both the U.S. and the U.K. upon release.
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