Access All Areas

by Scott Ian

  We barreled into the O’Farrell and did some damage. To our livers.

  James, Lars, and Kirk were surprised by how much us Anthrax guys were drinking. They knew us as a bunch of practically sober dudes—compared to them, anyway. Back in the eighties, when some called them Alcoholica, we were Soberthrax, the kings of beer nursing. Things had changed since the eighties, and at this point in 1994 I was in my living-in-NYC-out-all-night-drinking mode and was proud of it. We were tearing it up hard at the O’Farrell, the strippers coming in a distant second to the booze-soaked revelry. At some point during this drinking melee Kirk told me he had to split. He was dealing with the end of a relationship, breaking up with his girlfriend, and he had to go home to have “the talk.” He was really bummed to have to leave us—we hadn’t all been together like this in a long time. We all tried to convince him not to go, but I could tell this was weighing on him; he wasn’t his usual happy self. We all drunkenly hugged him goodnight and Kirk left and we got back to the business at hand, which was trying to drink all the booze at the O’Farrell. At around 3 a.m. everyone stumbled out onto O’Farrell Street laughing and yelling and not wanting the night to end. Someone had the idea that we should jam—if we only had instruments and a place to go and play, it’d be so rad. Our Anthrax gear was all packed up, so that wasn’t going to work. James and Lars didn’t live in the city and it’d be too far to drive, so that wasn’t going to work either. But we kept on it, our drunken grip on jamming not letting go. The hive-mind had taken over. Then someone else said, “Hey, Kirk has a studio in his house and he lives in the city!” (I’m not putting someone in italics because I don’t want to name names—I’ll name every name. I don’t remember who initially floated the idea of jamming or mentioned that Kirk had a studio. It may have been me. If it was, I own it.) And then Mark said, “I know the code to the alarm to get in,” and that was it. We were going to Kirk’s house. There was a lot of yelling and wild-eyed smiling and someone shouted, “Let’s get beer to bring with us!” And if I remember correctly, we bought beer from the strip club to go.

  Somewhere in the way back of my brain a warning light was going off. I remembered Kirk telling me why he had to leave earlier, what he had to deal with, and I thought maybe it wasn’t a good idea for all of us drunks to show up at his house expecting to play really loud music, so I told everybody why Kirk left, but it didn’t make a dent in our mission to make metal.

  On the way to Kirk’s house Frankie decided to make room for more booze and released a torrent of puke all over the floor of the backseat of Lars’s Range Rover. Then he emptied more on the inside of the door, puking into the door handle and cup holder. Finally he was able to open the window and vomit out of the car all the rest of the way to Kirk’s. Lars seemed quite amused by the whole mess, almost like he was happy that things were getting so nuts, and he was busting Frankie’s balls about being a lightweight. Compared to those guys, we all were.

  We got to Kirk’s house in Pacific Heights, and we all got very quiet for a second. It was the middle of the night, and we were all standing in the middle of the street, mansions looming over us from every direction. This was some covert shit we were about to do, and we were very serious about it, earnest in the way only the really intoxicated can be.

  Mark would lead the way, as he had the keys to the kingdom, and we would stealthily follow until we were in the safety of Kirk’s studio, where we could fire up the amps and bash out some shitty Sabbath.

  And then all of us were clumsily walking up Kirk’s steep driveway and around the back of the house, giggling like little kids and loudly shushing each other, which caused us to laugh even harder. Mark was opening the door and we were walking into Kirk’s house, down the steps to the basement and down a hallway and into his studio jam room. Someone (yep, someone again) locked the door behind us, and within seconds of us walking into the studio we were plugging in guitars and amps and cracking open beers and it was on. Had Kirk heard us come in? None of us cared. We launched into playing Sabbath and Maiden and Priest and Motörhead really, really loud and, mind you, not very well. We kept trading instruments, like we were having a competition to see who could play the worst, which made it all the more fun. James was playing drums and Charlie was playing guitar and we were all in drunken metal heaven. We decided to trade instruments again, and I got on the drums and we were plowing our way through some song, probably something Sabbath, when I happened to look up and see Kirk’s face frantically staring at me through the porthole window in the door to the studio. I could see that he was trying to open the door, but we had locked it from the inside. He kept looking down toward the doorknob on his side of the door and then back up through the window, where only I could see him because everyone else had their backs to the door. I pretended I didn’t see him. I didn’t want to stop playing—it was just too much fun. He was getting even more frenzied now; I could see the panic in his eyes, and he was shaking his head back and forth for us to stop. I kept pounding out a beat, and James and Charlie and Frankie were playing away, laughing and headbanging. Kirk started making the universal sign for “cut” by dragging his index finger across his throat. He desperately wanted us to stop playing, and I continued to ignore him for another minute or two and then finally I looked up at him with a smiley look of, Oh hey, buddy, I didn’t see you out there, and I stopped drumming. That caused the other guys to stop playing, and when they looked over at me to see why I stopped I pointed over to the door where Kirk was now angrily staring at us and banging on the door yelling, “OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW! OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR!”

  We opened the door. Someone, whomever was closest to it, opened it, and Kirk came screaming into the room, “HOW DARE YOU?! HOW DARE YOU?! HOW DARE YOU DO THIS? YOU BROKE INTO MY HOUSE?! THIS IS A VIOLATION, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES! HOW DARE YOU?!?!?! THIS IS NOT FUCKING COOL!!!”

  Silence.

  Just seconds earlier the cacophony of noise we were making was deafening, and now there was complete silence in the wake of Kirk screaming at us. I got up from behind the drums, banging into them as I stood up, making a loud noise, and that set Kirk off again. “COME ON, GUYS! WHAT THE FUCK? DID YOU THINK IT WAS OKAY TO BREAK INTO MY HOUSE? DID YOU?!”

  No one replied. We were all just standing around like a bunch of delinquents who had been sent to the principal’s office, heads lowered, glancing at each other and trying not to laugh. Yes, we were that much a bunch of assholes. Here is our friend, our brother, completely flipping out, absolutely furious at us for this stunt we have pulled, and all we can do is stand there and try not to giggle. None of us had ever seen or heard Kirk like this. Never. And when he was yelling at us, repeating, “HOW DARE YOU!” his voice would get higher. I had my head down, staring at my sneakers as he rightfully berated us, and I saw James’s face, wide-eyed with surprise and on the verge of cracking up, and that made me start laughing, but I held it in, trying not to let Kirk see. Lars was trying to keep it together, giving serious looks to anyone who was smiling but then almost losing it himself. It was a really uncomfortably hilarious scene, awkward, to say the least.

  Kirk had started to ramp down and, with that calming, was able to see we were not taking things very seriously. “You guys think this is funny?” he said quietly with a disappointed tone like your dad would. “You think it’s funny to break into my house and do this? You think it’s okay to violate the sanctity of my house? It shows no respect for me, just complete disrespect. I’m upstairs dealing with personal issues, and you guys break in here and just start playing like it’s okay to do that? I could feel the vibrations all the way upstairs. I thought someone had really broken in, and I walk into this? This is my house. Just no fucking respect.”

  We all started to apologize: “Sorry, man. We’re really sorry. Shit. Sorry, bro. We respect you…”

  Kirk just stared at us all standing there, heads down, shuffling our feet, just wanting this to be over, and he said, “Get out of my house. Now. Get out.”

  We all started
to move toward the door, mumbling more lame apologies—“Sorry, dude. We didn’t mean to. Bro, we’re really sorry…”

  And Kirk just repeated, “Get out.”

  Shell-shocked for the moment from the chastising we had received, we walked silently in a line out of the studio, down the hallway, back up the steps, out the door, and down Kirk’s steep driveway, and as soon as we were in the street and the moment of gravitas wore off, the tension broke by Charlie saying, “He just yelled at us,” and we all started cracking up—so much for respecting the sanctity of his house. We were all standing in the middle of the street out in front of his house, reenacting the scene over and over, taking turns as Kirk yelling. We couldn’t get enough—the whole scenario was so ridiculous and, in the moment, drunk at 5 a.m., hilarious.

  The frivolity eventually died down, and we started to talk about what to do next: we weren’t going to stand in the middle of the street until sunrise—we needed a plan. There were still bars open if we wanted to go that route. Then our drunk hive-mind kicked in again, and we got it into our heads that we needed to apologize to Kirk again. Yes! That’s what we needed to do! We had majorly disrespected our bro and we had to say we were sorry!

  Oh boy.

  We all thought this was a great idea, but no one wanted to be the one to walk up to Kirk’s front door and ring the bell. We were scared! Lars said he would go but Frankie had to come with him. Frankie said he would, and the two of them walked up the steps to Kirk’s front door, leaving the rest of us out in the street, anxiously watching. Lars and Frankie got to the door and pushed the button on the intercom. No answer. They started knocking on Kirk’s massive wood door framed in glass. No answer. They kept ringing his intercom, calling his name—“Kirk! Kirk! HEY KIRK!”—getting louder and louder, knocking harder and harder, and then CRACK. “What the hell was that?” I said, looking around at everyone else. “Shit, what was that?”

  We had heard a really loud cracking sound, and then Lars hissed down to us, “Frankie kicked the door.”

  Oh shit.

  And as if on cue, there was Kirk leaning out a second-story window above the front door yelling, “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY DOOR? WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU GUYS DOING?”

  Lars and Frankie were both nervously answering at the same time, “We were trying to get you on the intercom. We wanted to say we were sorry again. You weren’t answering. Uhh, I kicked the door.”

  Kirk said, “I didn’t answer because it’s FIVE O’CLOCK IN THE FUCKING MORNING! WOULD YOU GUYS JUST GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE?!” And then he disappeared from the window. Lars and Frankie started to turn to come back down the steps, and then we heard Kirk yelling from inside the house, “YOU BROKE MY DOOR! YOU FUCKING BROKE MY DOOR!” Lars and Frankie scrambled down the steps, and we all started running, the whole mess of us piling into Lars’s car to get the hell out of there. Better to deal with a pukey car than facing the wrath of Kirk again. As we were pulling away I turned and could see Kirk out on the landing in front of his door looking at it.

  Stunned by this last development we decided that the evening’s festivities were done and us Anthrax guys would go back to our hotel. The topic of conversation turned to why did Frankie kick the door? Nobody had an answer—it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing and that was that, our amazing night ended with a CRACK. We had committed vandalism and a home invasion—two felonies. Not bad for a night out. The sun was coming up as we said our good-byes and I hit my bed hard, asleep on impact, goodnight…

  …and then the wake-up call that our tour manager had so responsibly set for our rooms shocked me awake and the night before came hurtling back at me like a thirty-gallon Hefty bag filled with tomatoes and milk dropped from the fiftieth floor of a high-rise onto the roof of a building forty-four stories below, BOOM!

  (I may or may not have witnessed that happen once.)

  I had to call Kirk. I was feeling intense guilt for what we had done to him, and I had to apologize. I hoped he’d even talk to me. I wouldn’t have blamed him if he never spoke to me again. I ran down to the lobby and grabbed a coffee to clear my head (the epic hangover hadn’t kicked in yet) and then called him. Kirk answered, and I dove right into my apology. I was truly sorry. I felt terrible about what we had done, and I hoped I could make it up to him somehow.

  He thanked me and then said, “Man, I’m sorry too. I’m sorry for yelling at you guys. I was dealing with breaking up with my girlfriend, and that was going really shitty, and then I could hear you guys playing, and all I wanted to do was get away from her and come jam with you guys and have fun, but she went nuts, yelling about how could I let my friends take advantage of me, blah blah blah, and I just wanted to be in that room with you guys. Anyway, we’re broken up now, so at least that’s done.”

  Wow. I was shocked. I had no idea he was feeling that way. He really acted the part of the violated homeowner really well. I apologized again, and he said it really was unnecessary, no worries. He’d already spoken to Lars and James, and everything was fine. I thanked him for being so cool and such a good friend. Kirk really is the best. I told him how the whole plan went down, how when he was yelling at us we were trying so hard not to just fall down laughing. He knew—he was trying not to laugh as well. We were laughing on the phone talking about it, and then he brought up his door. It really was broken. There was a big crack in the glass part that framed the wood. He had a guy coming to look at it to give him an estimate to fix it. The door was imported from Italy, and it was expensive. I apologized again; even though I hadn’t actually kicked the door, I was definitely an accomplice. Kirk wasn’t bothered at all; he’d get it fixed. I jokingly said, “You should send the bill to Frankie.”

  Kirk said, “That’s a great idea! What a great wind-up that would be! I’ll do it.”

  I told Charlie and John what was happening so we’d all be in on it and really make Frankie believe he was going to have to pay.

  Charlie, John, and I set it up so Frankie would “overhear” us talking about the bill for the door. We were hanging in the dressing room a few days after the San Francisco incident, and I mentioned how I had spoken to Kirk that day and he was getting the estimate to fix his door and how the door was a very expensive one-of-a-kind handmade door from Italy and only a few people in the United States could even work on it. Frankie was starting to sweat. Then Charlie would pick up the thread and say he spoke to Kirk, who told him he was sending the bill over to our management to pay for the repairs. The parts had to be imported, and it was going to be pricey. Frankie was starting to freak. This all led up to Frankie talking to Kirk, who told him he expected Frankie to pay for the repair, as it was only fair, and that he’d fax the bill over. Frankie agreed—he really didn’t have a choice. He was bummed out about what he did and scared over what he was going to be on the hook for. The next day Kirk faxed a repair invoice for $16,000. Frankie was flipping out! Sixteen grand to fix the door! We were all laughing about the great wind-up and at the same time commiserating with him; he was really losing it over having to pay that much money for a drunken mistake. He started making arrangements to get Kirk the money. Kirk let Frankie sweat it for a few days, sending gentle reminders about the money, and when Frankie had reached his apex of frustration and stress Kirk, being the nice guy he is, let him off the hook. To say Frankie was relieved would’ve been the understatement of the decade. That’s when we should’ve had Lars send over the bill to clean his car.

  A LESSON IN VIOLENCE ENGLISH

  It was a beautiful southern California day, and I was driving (speeding) on the Pacific Coast Highway, cranking Slayer’s Reign in Blood album in my car, yelling along with Tom Araya on the middle bridge of “Angel of Death” (as one does):

  Seas of blood, bury life, smell your death as it burns deep inside of you.

  Abacinate, eyes that bleed, praying for the end of your wide awake nightmare.

  Yep, just yelling along like I have since 1986 when I first bought Reign in Blood and listened on headphones in my tiny r
oom in my mom’s apartment. Just yelling along like I have at the countless Slayer shows I have seen over the last thirty years, whether I was in the mosh pit or stagediving or from the safety of my dressing room backstage when we’ve been on tour together, always just yelling along. So after all this time I have been singing along with Slayer it was quite something to realize that I had no idea what Tom was saying. Seriously, I had to stop the car, pull over, and scan back on my phone to hear the word again. How could there be a word in that bridge that I have been yelling for thirty years and have no idea what it means?

  The word is abacinate.

  Abacinate? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve yelled that word. Abacinate! What the fuck does abacinate mean?

  If only there were a device…

  I Googled abacinate.

  abacinate: To blind by holding a red-hot metal rod or plate before the eyes.

  Pleasant.

  Leave it to Jeff Hanneman to go the extra mile lyrically for “Angel of Death,” to actually do the research and come up with a verb that gives us a brutal window into the horrors of Auschwitz that he so eloquently describes in his vivid prose.

  Jeff, sly wordsmith that he was, actually hints at the definition in the lyric because the line after the word abacinate is “Eyes that bleed.”

  I had never heard of it before, and I consider myself to be very well versed in the ways of torture (I read a lot of horror). It was Jeff’s lyric that caused me to look up abacinate and learn something new and horrible! And now you know it too! Thanks, Professor Ian.