by Scott Ian
I had to crawl under this pile of garbage they had built. They had put a piece of carpet on the ground for me to lay on and piled up all this crap, leaving a tunnel-like space I would use to crawl in and out of. I was the Oscar-the-Grouch walker. The set guy helping me get into my position told me that he got into the garbage house himself to make sure it was okay. It was just a bit cramped and damp—oh, and there were spiders. He had felt something on his leg while he was in there, and when he got out he realized a spider was crawling up his leg inside his pants. I hate spiders. I was already nervous about my scene, and now I had to worry about spiders biting me? I shook it off—walkers don’t have arachnophobia, and it was time for me to get into my garbage lair. I crawled in and got into position with my head down and hands pulled in out of sight. The set guy covered up the space in front of me with more garbage, and Greg peeked in and asked, “Are you okay?”
My garbage house filled with spiders. Courtesy Scott Ian.
“Hell yeah, never better,” I replied.
“You look great in there! You’re going to do great,” he said, smiling at me. Then Greg gave me direction one last time: “I know it’s hard for you to see out from under there, but look for Andrew’s leg, and as soon as you see his boot near you, reach out and grab his pants as fast and hard as you can and don’t let go—make him yank his leg out of your hand. Cool?”
I said to Greg, “I got it. Let’s do it.” I was laying there in that dark, wet, and cold space singularly focused on what I had to do, my environment helping me get into a weird place in my mind where I could believe I was a walker. I was able to shut out all the nerves and excitement of actually being in this world I’d watched for so many years and just concentrate on the job at hand: to try to eat Rick and Carl.
Greg yelled, “Action,” and I could hear Rick say, “Get ready” to Carl, and then I could hear the sounds of them fighting and I was set, coiled and ready to strike. Rick’s leg came into my small field of vision through the garbage, and I thrust forward as fast as I could, grabbing onto his pants and boot as hard as I could. I could feel him yank his leg once, twice, and then on the third try he ripped his leg out of my grasp. I could feel a hot flash of pain from one of my fingers, but I ignored it. I crawled part way out of the hole and kept reaching and growling at Rick and Carl, my single-minded desire to reach them and satiate my appetite for human flesh.
Greg yelled, “Cut,” and he walked onto the set, making slight adjustments, giving some direction to Andrew and Chandler. My middle finger on my Rick-grabbing hand was hurting, and I saw that part of my fingernail had been torn off when he pulled his leg away. I was really holding on tight. It was bleeding a bit, and the set guy noticed and asked if I wanted to see the first aid person.
“No, I’m okay. No worries,” and in a terrible John Cleese accent I said, “It’s just a flesh wound!” Like the Black Knight, I wasn’t going to let a tiny little injury mess up my day. Greg came over to me and asked me how I was.
“Fucking great. Do I get to do it again?” I replied, smiling through my walker makeup.
He laughed and said, “Yes, we’ll do a few takes and then your close-up. Great job. Oh, you don’t have to make any noise, they’ll dub in the walker sounds later.” I wanted to do my own growls though, as making the sounds helped me feel like a walker, but they weren’t going to use them, so I just did them much quieter on the next take. We did two more takes of the same thing, and then it was time for me to die.
About to break a nail. Courtesy Scott Ian.
Months earlier, when Greg told me I could be a walker on the show, I asked him if I could bite Carl. Yes, I know, it doesn’t happen in the comic, but so what? The show had taken its own path many times, differing from what was done in the comic. Why not let me be the walker that takes him down? I would be a hero to all the undead. That one bite would get me into the zombie hall of fame, for sure. Greg just smiled at me as if to say, Okay, idiot, like that would ever happen in a million years. And then he said, “I’ll figure out a good death for you.”
Greg had me crawl further out of my crap pile and had the visual effects (VFX) guy come onto the set to tell me what I needed to do to die like a real Walking Dead walker. The plan was for Chandler to slam a “steel” pole (it was rubber) through my head. To do that, my head would need to be in the exact right position to make the effect line up and look great. The VFX guy had a frame, like a template on his screen, and he could see the shot and was able to position my head perfectly so it would match up with Chandler’s strike. It was easy when the guy was telling me, “Move left, head up a bit—that’s it, don’t move, you’re perfect.”
I was going to have to physically get back to the exact position he framed on my own. Greg explained how to move my head up toward the pole strike, hold it for a second, and then drop quickly to the ground. He had me practice resetting to the position I was in when I was reaching for Andrew and Chandler, and then while Andrew was giving Chandler the steel pole I’d get my upper body and head in position for the pole strike. I didn’t have any marks to go by, just feel and hope that I’d line my head up with Chandler’s hit. The assistant director yelled, “Quiet on the set!” and in that moment before Greg would yell, “Action!” I was shitting my pants. All my nerves came sizzling back, and all I could think of was that I was going to get this move wrong over and over again and would hold up the whole shoot. I felt like my anxiety was showing through my makeup: Scott Ian as “The Neurotic Walker.” Had they ever fired a walker mid-scene? I wondered. How the hell was I supposed to get my head in the exact position? I’d never done anything like this before, and then through this whirlpool of stress flooding my brain I heard Greg yell, “Action!” and a switch flipped, and I instantly started growling and clawing at the air in front of me, trying to free myself from my garbage prison so I could get my teeth into some human sushi. Behind my walker façade I heard Carl say his line, “Dad?” asking Rick for the pole so he could dispatch the walker. I watched Rick hand the pole to Carl and made my move into position, hoping for the best. Carl struck downward with the pole, stopping short of my head, and I raised my head upward to meet the pole as directed, holding for a beat and then dropping lifeless. I lay there on the ground as still as I could. I heard someone cheer and then clap from back where Greg watched the scene on a monitor.
Greg yelled, “Cut,” and I barely raised my head, not wanting to move too much out of position for the next take.
The set guy came over to me and asked, “Did you hear that cheer after you got killed?”
I quietly said, “Yeah, I did. What’s up?”
He told me it was the visual effects guy who cheered and clapped because I hit my mark exactly. The set guy said, “That guy never does that,” and he smiled at me and said, “Nice work.”
Greg and the VFX guy came over, and the VFX guy said, “You nailed it. The digital pole is going to line up perfectly with your head—good work.”
Greg asked me what I thought, and I was all business: “I’m ready to do it again, whatever you need.”
A good death. Courtesy Scott Ian.
Greg said, “You’re done. You nailed it—you’re dead. I told you I’d give you a good death.” Greg helped me up and said, “Good work, buddy! You’re a natural!” We hugged and then he went back to work.
I just stood there for a minute in a daze as everyone on set buzzed around me, doing their thing, getting ready for the next shot. I was ecstatic about being a part of the show and doing a good job, and I was sad to be done. It went by so fast—so much foreplay and then bang, finished. A production assistant came over and asked if I wanted to go get the makeup taken off, but I still had stuff to do for the Bloodworks episode, so at least I could keep the makeup on for a little while longer. I wasn’t ready to let go of my walker.
I did some on-camera interview segments for Bloodworks and then did a photo shoot with Andrew and Chandler. They were both very cool, and it turns out Andrew is a Motörhead fan, so I told
him my Lemmy pants-full-of-poo-fighting-a-Nazi drinking story (as told in my book I’m the Man). They both got a kick out of that tale. Greg had a short break after I was done with Andrew and Chandler, and we got to take some pictures and talk for a few minutes. I must’ve thanked Greg a hundred times for making the whole thing happen for me. It was truly one of the coolest experiences of my life, and he’s the man who enabled it. Greg had to get back to directing, and I was taken to the catering tent for lunch. I noticed that all the actors playing walkers ate with their makeup on, so I did the same. I was one of them now.
Happier times with Chandler and Andrew. Courtesy Scott Ian.
I flew home the next day and spent the next few weeks looking at my pictures from the set. Until we got the green light from AMC we were under strict orders to keep quiet. It was hard for me to not talk about it—I was bursting. I wanted to shout it out in the street: “I got to be a walker on The Walking Dead, motherfuckers!!!” I’d hear from Greg every few weeks, telling me the scene looked great and that I was going to be very happy. Jack was busy cutting together the Bloodworks episode, so it would be ready for whenever AMC said we could air it. Finally they did. The Walking Dead would air season five, episode twelve, now titled “Remember,” on March 1, 2015.
I watched the episode with my wife at home and waited nervously for my scene. At thirty-four minutes and eleven seconds into the show I made my cable television debut as a walker. The ratings say 14.43 million people watched the episode in the United States, up a million viewers from the week before. You’re welcome.
The whole scene from when I grab Rick’s pants to getting impaled is only twenty seconds, but for me it’s a lifelong dream realized.
And Greg gave me a great death.
Afterword
Our Bloodworks/The Walking Dead episode quickly became the most-watched episode we’d ever done. It was huge. Go check it out at Nerdist.com.
On the episode of Talking Dead that aired that night they showed a picture of my walker in the “In Memoriam” segment and named it “Steel Pole Head Walker.”
The nerd-me loves that I am on The Walking Dead IMDB page for this episode as an “uncredited walker.”
Okay, I just looked at the clock on my laptop and saw that it is now 12:49 a.m. on March 1, 2017. It’s two years to the day when my episode aired, and I am finishing this story. That is a trip!
It’s been two years, and I still get asked almost every day in interviews or by people who recognize me in the street: “What was it like to be on The Walking Dead?” And I always answer, “It was the best ever.”
My Belushi ghost-hunting partner Greg Nicotero. Thank you for making this possible! Courtesy Scott Ian.
THAT’S NOT A ROCK
RING. RING. RRRRIIIINNNNGGGG.
The phone was ringing way too early in the morning after a late-night recording session.
“Who the hell,” I mumbled as I rolled over to answer. “Hello. Hello?”
Click.
Fucking hell.
I rolled back over to go back to sleep and
RING. RRRRRRRRING.
“Fuck it,” I thought. I let the machine get it and closed my eyes to go back to sleep.
“Hey Scott. It’s Bryan. Don’t come to the studio today. There was a flood. All right, talk to you later.”
Click.
Now I was awake.
It was January 1993, and we were in Los Angeles recording Sound of White Noise at Eldorado Studios with Dave Jerden producing. The caller was our engineer, Bryan Carlstrom (RIP).
A flood? It had been raining a lot, every day for two weeks straight. But a flood? In the studio? Did the two-inch masters get damaged? Is our album ruined? What about my guitars? I was in the middle of tracking my rhythm guitars at this point and had guitars on stands all over the studio. Fuck.
Bryan didn’t give any details in his message, so I grabbed the phone and called right back. Bryan answered, and even before I could ask a question he told me the tapes were okay. That was a relief. The idea of having to retrack all the drums and most of my guitars was a nightmare. Then he told me all my guitars were fine. They were all in the live room, and the flood was only in the control room, specifically right over the board. The ceiling had collapsed at some point overnight, and dry wall, acoustic tiling crap, and a whole lot of water slammed down into the console. It was fried.
“Holy crap” was all I could muster. “What are we going to do?”
We were only about 25 percent done with what was quite an important record for us—our first with John Bush on vocals—and we couldn’t just stop everything and remain in some holding pattern, waiting to finish. It’d blow all the vibe and momentum we had been building over the previous months.
“Dave has been on the phone all morning trying to find another studio with time available. We’re hoping to get your gear out of here today and over to another spot so we can fire up and start getting tones in another room tomorrow,” Bryan said confidently. We were in Los Angeles, where there’s no shortage of great rooms. “So what happened? Do you know why it flooded?” I asked. “No idea yet. I’ll keep you posted,” he replied.
I went back to bed. It felt like a snow day at school. On the upside: an unexpected day off!
I got a call later that day from Dave, and he told me we were all set to go at the legendary Cherokee Studios in Hollywood the next day. I was really excited, as they had made some great records there, from David Bowie to Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson.
I told Dave I was really sorry and that I couldn’t believe what had happened at Eldorado and couldn’t imagine what a hassle it was going to be to get that control room cleaned up and the board fixed. Dave was one of the owners of the studio, and it was on him. He told me he couldn’t understand why the ceiling would’ve flooded like that, so he climbed up onto the roof of the studio to take a look. The building was an old two story that had a four-foot-high wall around the roof. Dave saw that the roof had basically turned into a lake. It had filled with water, at least three feet deep. It hadn’t all caved in into the control room, just a portion below. He was lucky: if the whole thing had gone to shit, the studio would’ve been destroyed along with our record and gear.
He got some hip-wader boots and gloves and walked out across the roof toward one of the corners where there was a drain. He reached into the drain and started pulling out all kinds of crap—leaves and twigs, garbage, and so on—and then his hand touched something solid and hard like a rock. He figured he’d found the reason the drain clogged and all the water backed up. He pulled at the rock, dislodging it from the drain, and when he pulled it out from the water he saw that it wasn’t a rock.
It was a skull. A dog’s skull.
Dave was very confused. A dog’s skull? How the fuck did that get into the drain? Did a dog get left on the roof at some point and die there? If so where were the rest of the bones? And how the hell would a dog have gotten left on the roof? Did some nut-job walking past the studio on Sunset Boulevard throw a dog’s skull up onto the roof, where it eventually made its way into the drain? There were a lot of freaks hanging around that area of Sunset back then. Did someone sacrifice a dog in some weird ritual? So many questions and no answers. It was a real mystery.
Dave and I were talking about this, going over all these scenarios, when I remembered that he had produced the Jane’s Addiction record Ritual de lo Habitual and had told me that some vocals had been recorded at Eldorado. The song “Been Caught Stealing” is on that record, and there’s a dog barking in the background in the intro to the song. I had asked Dave about the dog barking weeks earlier and how they recorded that, and he told me that the barking dog ran into the studio while they were recording and they decided to keep it on the track.
A disturbing light bulb went off in my brain. Did Jane’s Addiction kill that dog? Was that the Ritual de lo Habitual?
“Dave, is that the dog from ‘Been Caught Stealing’?”
Dave didn’t answer right away, an
d I thought, Holy crap, it is that dog! Jesus. What the fuck is up with that? I had heard those guys were weird, but this was fucking crazy shit.
Then Dave started laughing. Is he fucking with me? I thought. Dave was a great ballbuster.
Finally Dave said, “No, Scott, it’s not. I wish I could say it was. What a story that would be! Anyway, the skull is not big enough to have been that dog.”
And that was that.
We finished the record and the rest is history.
Except for that skull.
ALL-IN
Part Two
I woke up on Friday, April 15, 2011, smiling. I had a lot to smile about. It was Pearl’s birthday, and she was just about seven months pregnant and doing great. We had plans to celebrate that evening with friends. I kissed Pearl good morning and serenaded her with a pre-coffee-gravel-voiced rendition of “Happy Birthday.” It was a beautiful Los Angeles day, and I got out of bed to make coffee. I wasn’t on tour at the time—Anthrax was still working on the Worship Music album—so my daily schedule was very relaxed: breakfast and then sign on to Ultimate Bet to play some poker before going on a hike with Pearl, running errands, and so on. At this point I had been playing online professionally for Ultimate Bet for three years, and poker had become a major part of my life.
When I was home I’d play online thirty to forty hours a week, multitabling $100 and $200 no-limit hold ’em Sit & Go Turbos (six seated tournaments where the blinds go up very quickly). Those tournaments were my specialty, and I’d play up to ten tables at a time. If I was touring, I’d play sixty to seventy hours a week. Poker had become a great way to kill time on tour and was very lucrative. Playing online had become an ATM for me, and I had just signed a new two-year deal with Ultimate Bet to continue being one of their pros. That meant they pay me to play poker on their site, they pay for my tournament buy-ins, and I get to keep the winnings. Yes, you read that right: I wasn’t playing with my own money. It was pretty much the best job ever. Until it wasn’t.