Aleister Black describes his difficult childhood

“I was 13 years old when my dad got a complete emotional breakdown. My dad had a very interesting and very tricky childhood and he carried that into our family life and my dad got into depression for five years. Growing up for me, my dad was the Terminator. A lot of fear came from my dad and my dad never meant to, that’s first and foremost. It was very difficult and I get that, but once I understood why he was the way he was and I say was because he’s no longer that way: it started getting better. Once I understood the dynamics of what made my dad work the way he did and the anger issues that my father dealt with and for some reason it got easier for me and my dad did a 180 and became a completely different person. I often reference my dad as my best friend and my worst enemy. I love my dad very much and he is a fantastic human being, but it took him awhile to get there, which is OK. He got there. My dad is a lovable, social, funny, intelligent, smart, creative guy. He was just dealt a really bad bucket growing up and I think having kids kind of put him face to face with that, especially when we got older and got more emotional. My dad couldn’t handle it because my dad was brought up to not feel. My dad was brought up in a manner which I don’t feel comfortable talking about, but he grew up in a manner where he was told for a long period of time, ‘Men are here to work; women are here to give birth. That’s it. Men don’t cry. Men don’t hug. Men are not involved.’ He was programmed to do one thing. He already rebelled against that system. He ran away from home when he was 15 because he couldn’t deal with it. He couldn’t deal with what his parent’s wanted. I often say my character has references to the devil and it’s more in the sense of paradise lost where you see everything from the perspective of the devil and there’s a poem…the baseline of the poem is when the devil fell from earth, what did he do? Did he create a new kingdom of fire and brimstone? Did he rebel against paradise? Did he become evil? Did he do all these things? Yes, but the first thing he did was cry because he lost his dad and a lot of people forget that there’s a redeeming quality. There’s a story and I find the story behind all these things very interesting and I feel Aleister Black is a certain way because of how I went through life and I implemented that into my character. There’s something tragic about Aleister Black. There was something tragic about Tommy End, but Tommy End was more, ‘F the system and I’m fighting against the system,’ but not necessarily mature enough to understand why he was fighting the system. Aleister Black understands why he fights the system and I base that off how my dad grew up and I base that off referencing the devil in the sense of we all see him as this evil guy, ‘My God he does this and all that,’ but he was someone’s son at one point.”

source: Chasing Glory podcast