Slayer 66 & 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years, A Metal Band Biography. From Birth to Reborn, Including Slaytanic Profiles, a New History of the Thrash Kings' Early Days, Reign in Blood Tours, a European Invasion, the Palladium Riot, the Seat Cushion Chaos Concert, the Whole Diabolical Discography, Newly Unearthed Details From Dave Lombardo's Turbulent History With the Band, Artwork and Some Photos You’ve Probably Never Seen Before, Jeff Hanneman’s Hard Times, the Big Four’s Big Year, Lombardo’s Final Exit, the Top 11 Hanneman Tributes, the Mosh Memorial Service, Untold Stories, Updates, Relevant Digressions, and More Scenes From the Abyss
By D.X. Ferris
Click here to skip all the wordy stuff and just start reading the metal part.
6623 Press
Akron
November 2013
6623 Press
www.6623Press.com
www.SlayerBio.com
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www.dxferris.com
Text copyright © 2013 D.X. Ferris
All Rights Reserved
“Slayer 66 2/3…” and 6623 Press are not affiliated with Bloomsbury,
Bloomsbury Academic, the 33 1/3 series, or Continuum.
Cover photo by and copyright © Harald Oimoen: Slayer at Ruthie’s Inn, Berkeley, CA, 1984. Previously unpublished. Black and white.
Original sketchbook images and December 1982 flyer by & © Albert Cuellar (unless otherwise noted), reprinted with permission.
“Slayer Killing It” early photos by & © Harald Oimoen, reprinted with permission.
Live at the Ritz 1986 photos by & © Georges Sulmers, reprinted with permission.
Kerry King 2009 photo by & © Johnny Angell Multimedia/Photography/Music Production, online at ClevelandFrequency.com and soundcloud.com/ohno216
Dave Lombardo 2007 Download photo by & © Ester Segarra, reprinted with permission. www.e-segarra.com.
Jeff Hanneman 2009 photo by & © Amy Weiser Photography, reprinted with permission. www.AmyWeiser.com.
Slayer Brazil 2011 photo. Courtesy of Guilherme Nozawa, reprinted with permission. www.gbnozawa.com.
Jon Dette 2013 photo by & © Cameron Edney, reprinted with permission. www.Facebook.com/WickedPixPhotography
Gary Holt 2013 and Hanneman backdrop photos by & © Sean Benedict, reprinted with permission. www.IronCityRocks.com
Slayer 2013 lineup photo by & © Tim Tronckoe, reprinted with permission. www.TimTronckoe.com
Cleveland Scene articles reprinted with permission. www.CleveScene.com
Physical edition:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ferris, D.X.
Slayer 66 & 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years, A Metal Band Biography / Ferris, D.X.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-0-615-92030-6 (pbk..: alk. Paper)
ISBN-10: 0615920306 1. Slayer (Musical group). 2. Rock Musicians—United States.
3. Heavy metal (Musical genre) 4. Thrash metal (Musical genre)
5. Crossover (Musical genre) I. Title
OVERTURE
In darkness, Slayer forms. A Friday night, 1982. Tom Araya is the oldest of the young men at a raging party in a doomed neighborhood. If the police show up, he’s the one who will be in the most trouble. Jeff Hanneman is passed out on the stairs. Kerry King is home, practicing guitar. Dave Lombardo is out with his girlfriend and future wife. And so it will remain for decades. Details evaporate, but the legend grows.
Summer 1983, a newspaper ad self-declares Slayer “THE HEAVIEST, FASTEST, AND LOUDEST BAND IN THE UNITED STATES!” It’s a bold statement, but the group’s imminent debut LP will make good on the boast.
January 1984, Slayer head north, to the Bay Area. They take the stage dressed like sadomasochist vampires. They head home in denim.
April 1985. Promoting an album called Hell Awaits that features raging songs like “Necrophiliac,” Slayer hit the road, supporting black metal icons Venom, playing sets that, with increasing frequency, drive fans into a blood frenzy. Later, they take the show to Europe. The trek looks like it will be a disaster, but…
October 1986. Improbably, Slayer sign to major-label rap stronghold Def Jam records. Under the wing of producer, impresario, and hip-hop wunderkind Rick Rubin, they release Reign in Blood, one of the definitive statements from the thrash metal movement.
December 1986. Drummer Dave Lombardo’s status is rapidly rising in the metal world, but he quits the band. He’s ready for a fight, literally. Instead, they let him walk.
March 1987. Lombardo returns.
August 1988. Promoting the South of Heaven album, Slayer dismantle America, staging concerts that are widely remembered as riots. King, once a de facto straight-edge kid, is now half of a team of hard-drinking guitarists known as “the Drunk Brothers” with Hanneman. On tour, King throws up on his partner in crime, who thinks it’s hilarious.
January 1989. After a massive album and short tour, Slayer disappear for over a year.
October 1990. The group return with a hat trick: their third consecutive classic album, Seasons in the Abyss. Tom Araya, the band’s frontman, cements his role in the band’s lyrical voice.
Summer 1991. The Clash of the Titans tour teams three of the Big Four thrash bands. Somehow, no backstage violence ensues.
August 1992. After a heated confrontation, Dave Lombardo and the group part ways again. Drummer Paul Bostaph is added immediately and stays.
Spring 1995. Guitarist Jeff Hanneman is playing hurt. He can’t make it through entire sets. He regularly sits out a song, and Slayer play as a trio.
Spring 1996. A lawsuit against the band and its lyrics tests the limits of free speech.
May 1996. Slayer acknowledge their roots in hardcore punk with a covers album, agitating plenty involved, from fans to songwriters. Drummer Paul Bostaph leaves and misses much of the fray, but returns in short order, displacing replacement drummer Jon Dette.
Not much to talk about in 1997, and it’s better that way.
The divisive Diabolus in Musica arrives in 1998. Metal has seen better years.
Slayer continue to work hard in 1999 and 2000.
God Hates Us All arrives on 9/11/2001, with King firmly holding the reins.
December 2001: Bostaph exits in a haze. Lombardo returns as a special guest star for an already-scheduled tour. He sticks around over a decade.
In 2004, Lombardo has officially rejoined the group, and the band celebrates by not only performing their acknowledged classic, Reign in Blood, but filming a performance of it.
2007: Slayer, the undisputed kings of old-school thrash, win a Grammy.
2008: The band win another.
2009: Slayer’s classic lineup release the band’s tenth original full-length album, World Painted Blood. Things are looking up. But offstage, all is chaos and attrition.
2010: Slayer join their compatriots in the Big Four thrash bands in a worldwide stadium tour.
2011: Hanneman takes ill under shadowy circumstances. Exodus guitarist and metal hero Gary Holt steps in as an ongoing substitute for the group’s co-founder.
2013: Slayer’s personal apocalypse: For the third time, Lombardo and the band part ways, and the split is uglier than ever. Then Hanneman passes away, shocking the metal world. Slayer regroup with the help of one former drummer, before settling on another. And the saga continues.
Parts of Slayer’s story have been told before, but the band’s personalities and motives remain mysterious. Guitarist Kerry King, with a life-sized demon face tattooed on the back of his shaved head
. Singer-bassist Tom Araya, a faithful Catholic with a library of books about serial killers. The late guitarist Jeff Hanneman, the poet of the group, and also the president of its Obnoxious Asshole Club. And drummer Dave Lombardo, Slayer’s most acclaimed musician, his contributions always discounted by the rest of the band, always the victim — or so it seemed to outsiders.
Over the course of 32 years, time and circumstances bury incidents, cast illusions, and leave crucial episodes untold. Looking for some new answers? Read on.
AWESOME PHOTOGRAPHS IN SLAYER 66 2/3: THE JEFF & DAVE YEARS ARE MADE POSSIBLE BY GENEROUS UNDERWRITERS LIKE…
Also by D.X. Ferris
33 1/3: Slayer’s Reign in Blood
(paperback, Kindle, iTunes iBook, Audible.com audiobook)
The Oral History of Alternative Press
Coming Soon From D.X. Ferris and Friends
Get on The Bus: Ill Shit That Went Down on the Way to School
Webcomic Compilation Books Coming Soon from D.X. Ferris
Suburban Metal Dad: Year One
Suburban Metal Dad: Compendium Two
Coming Eventually From D.X. Ferris
Are You There, Mike Ness? It’s Me, Ferris.
That’s a Rap: 15 Quality Rap-Rock Bands That Ruled an Underrated Genre
Goodnight, Spartacus: A Suburban Metal Dad Bedtime Story
Goodnight, Metal: A Suburban Metal Dad Bedtime Story
Praise for 33 1/3’s Slayer: Reign in Blood
One of Noisecreep’s Top Ten Heavy Metal Books:
“Thrash expert and journalist D.X. Ferris does all the necessary footwork needed for a project like this… If you think you knew everything about Slayer already, one quick glance through [the] Reign in Blood edition of the 33 1/3 series will put you in your place.”
— Carlos Ramirez
The Merciless Book of Metal Lists, a Heavy Metal Reading List top-ten pick:
“Great.”
— Howie Abrams & Sacha Jenkins
"A short, intense, meticulous history of Reign In Blood and really, the whole band... The result is a damn perfect look at this one album."
— Martin Popoff, senior editor of Brave Words & Bloody Knuckles, author of Rush: The Illustrated History and The Collector’s Guide to Heavy Metal series
“Ferris' book is as powerful and refreshing as Reign in Blood itself. His writing takes us behind the scenes of the making of a classic metal album and sheds unholy light on a band that has been criminally neglected by the mainstream media."
— Tom Kapinos, creator & executive producer of Californication
"Ferris's recent 33 1/3 book devoted to Reign In Blood is excellent."
— Joel McIver, author of Slayer biography The Bloody Reign of Slayer
“The Mini Encyclopedia of Slayer.”
— Amazon reviewer AVNut
“Reign in Blood is notable for its brutality, but as the defining manifesto of thrash metal, it is transcendent for its purity. To love rock & roll is to love subcultures, and D.X. Ferris has explained, in stunning detail, how one subculture was defined and galvanized by that single album, and why that definition will never need to be written again."
— David Giffels, co-author of We Are Devo!: Are We Not Men? and author of All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House
“It is not scholarly.” — some tool on the internet
"Declares Ferris, 'I wanted to present the story in a way that's compelling to both rabid Slayer fans and to NPR listeners who love pop music but have never lost a shoe in a mosh pit' — and he largely succeeds."
— Dave Segal, OC Weekly
"Ferris has written an academic and thought-provoking book while at the same time presenting it as a general reader. Ferris does not give in to the tendency of 'dumbing down' metal; instead, he puts forth a very well argued statement that Slayer's Reign In Blood is a classic album and should be treated as such."
— Laura Kowalewski and Andrew Carpenter, Ballet Deviare dance company
"If you don't learn something from this book, then you are a liar."
— Sage Francis
“This book is the manual for why the thrash metal movement began, why it thrived, and what was the ultimate in thrash metal recordings, Slayer's Reign In Blood.”
— William C. Frable, Graphic Violence
"D.X. Ferris breaks it all down person-by-person and track-by-track to separate fact from fiction, retracing the origins, occasional pitfalls and eventual triumph that brought forth in his words, 'the greatest heavy metal album ever.'... The book untangles a number of assumptions related to the band that should surprise even longtime fans.... The book provides not only a good introduction to the band, but capably answers on all fronts regarding the album in question.... Ferris pens a clean and even story; flashes his bona fides outright and is passionate enough about the work to sustain that fervor through to the end."
— Todd DePalma, The Left Hand Path
Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years…
Table of Contents
(click to jump to the chapter)
Methodology and Review of Slaytanic Literature
1. F.N.S.
2. The Story So Far…, or, What We’re Looking at Here
3. Postmortem: Jeff Hanneman Made the Difference
4. Aggressive Perfectionist
5. Metalstorm: Meet Slayer
6. Thrash Incubator
7. Slayer Takes the Scene
8. Sign on the Axe and Show No Mercy: The Metal Blade Deal
9. Metal Moonlighting: Kerry King Joins Megadeth
10. Haunting the Chapel and the Lombardo Learning Curve
11. Slamming to Slayer: Metal Enters the Pit
Gallery 1: Slayer Killing It, Photos by Harald Oimoen
12. Undead Live & Live Undead
Gallery 2: Previously Unreleased Live Undead Draft Art
13. Hell Awaits, and Hell Arrives
14. Hell Hits the Road
15. Reign in Blood, Long Story Short
16. Touring Blood
17. Blood in America, or, Love Def Style
18. Blood on the Road
Gallery 3: Slayer 1986 and 2009
19. The First One of the Gang to Bail. And the New Guy.
20. S.L.A.Y.E.R. vs. W.A.S.P.
21. On and On, South of Heaven
22. The Cushion Chaos Concert
23. Priest and Puke
24. Seasons in the Abyss
25. Gazing Back Into the Abyss: The Tom Album
26. Clashes of the Titans
27. Lombardo Out. Again.
28. Disorder and Divine Intervention
29. Hanneman’s World of Hurt
30. Divine Litigation
31. Hotly Disputed Attitude
32. Bostaph’s Back (I of II)
33. Slayer’s Experimental Moment
34. Diabolus in Musica
35. God Hates Us All
36. Drums in the Deep: Lombardo’s Interim
37. Return of the Drum King
38. Raining Theatre Blood
39. 6/6/06
40. Manson Tour 1: Louder Than Hell
41. Big Winners
42. World Painted Blood
43. Big Four, Big Year
44. The Big Four’s Really Big Shows
45. American Carnage
46. Necrotizing Fasciitis
47. Now Entering the Lineup: Gary Holt of Exodus
48. Slayer Without Hanneman
49. The Big Four, Part II
50. New Year, No Album
51. Slayer XI: Embryonic Recording
52. ”Dave’s Not Here” (III)
53. Postmortem II
54. Interlude I: A Moment of Noise
55. Interlude II: 11 Top Memorial Tributes to Hanneman
56. Interlude III: Six Things Hanneman Hated. And Six He Liked.
57. The Mosh Memorial
58. On the Outside
Gallery 3: Slayer Lineup, Late 2013
; 59. Reborn: The Saga Continues
Appendix A: Slayer Concert Counts by Year
Appendix B: Slayer Songwriting Credits
Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. Page 1