Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography.

by Ferris, D. X.

  A passing truck stopped to help the stranded young men. Without a chain or tow attachment, the vehicle couldn’t push the Camaro out of the cold muck. The good Samaritans headed off into the darkness, promising they’d send a tow truck.

  Frustrated and impatient in the cold night, the Slayer crew kept gunning the car until it broke free. Once the car was back on the road, then they realized the full depth of their plight: Stuck in the Montana blackness with no visible road signs, they didn’t know which way to go. They examined the highway. Because they had skidded on ice, no telling skid marks were visible. Nobody could figure out which direction they came from — or which one they wanted to follow. After some failed forensic analysis, they picked a direction. It was the right one. They were intact and Canada-bound, where Maroushka awaited.

  Misfortune averted, the unprepared troupe bumbled their way through customs and entered the Great White North.

  Slayer’s first foreign shows were a three-night stand in Winnipeg. The venue was Wellington’s, a subterranean club below a sketchy hotel that rented rooms by the hour.

  When the Slaytanic caravan pulled into Winnipeg, they were late and unaware. The band were under the impression they were playing a three-night stand from Monday through Wednesday. When they arrived, they learned they were a day late for a four-night stand.

  The staff weren’t happy, but that kind of miscommunication wasn’t rare in an age without cell phones, internet, fax machines, or phone cards. The band loaded into the basement. Carrying a drum case, Goodman fumbled his way into his life’s work. Heading down the stairs, he dropped the reinforced box, and it clanged down the entryway.

  “In my head, it’s either Tom or Kerry,” recalled Goodman. “One of the guys from the band picks up the drum and looks up the stairs and me and says, ‘Why don’t we carry the gear and you go figure out who’s paying us?”

  And Slayer had a tour guide; given his lack of experience, Goodman refuses to refer to himself as a “tour manager” at that stage in his career.

  As the band set up, the venue presented its unique logistic challenges: Strippers in the basement alternated upstairs and downstairs shows on the hour. Downstairs, the girls danced on a tiny stage that double as groups’ drum riser.

  Slayer unloaded to a near-empty club with a couple drunk patrons and dancers. Over the week, the crowds picked up, produced around 50 people a night. Not all of them were there for Slayer, but not all came for the girls, either. Early in the week in Manitoba, the locals took whatever entertainment they could get.

  They had even more entertainment options upstairs, at the hotel. Whether patrons and their guests stayed for an hour or a night, they checked in with Maroushka, an old woman who punched the time clock at the front desk. Over the days, she took a liking to the boys. The old woman eventually revealed a number tattooed on her forearm from a concentration camp. One pressing of Hell Awaits had a photo montage with a picture of Hanneman pointing at the time clock. The elderly timekeeper is immortalized at the end of the thanks list in Hell Awaits, with a cryptic “Maroushka lives in our brains!!”

  A local band called Sinister Witch opened the shows. San Francisco hardcore band Verbal Abuse were in town; the bands crossed paths, and Slayer got them on the bill for the third show. Later, Slayer would further reward the American band with a songwriting credit.

  November saw a spot at New York City’s legendary L’Amour (capacity around 1,500) and smaller shows booked at venues like the Flint, Michigan Ukrainian Hall and the forgotten Cheaters in Cleveland. In first week of November, between shows in Philadelphia and Baltimore. Caught a Loudness show at L’Amour. The band and some local fans took a road trip to see Mercyful Fate. Between New York state shows, the band recorded Live Undead in early November 1984.

  (The release date is commonly listed is November 1984, even on Metal Blade’s website, though the disc wasn’t released until March 1985. The Best of Metal Blade Volume 1 credits list the album as “recorded November 1984.” And Goodman firmly remembers the date as November 1984, in New York.)

  The credits claim Live Undead was recorded in “New York City” during the Show No Mercy tour, but no location is listed. Slayer’s first documented New York gig was Halloween 1984, at the Valley Stream Theater. Live Undead was recorded at a small promotional event at Tiki Recording in Glen Cove, a Long Island North Shore studio where a dozen or so WBAB contest winners gathered to meet the band and watch them play. The label had a list of the attendees and planned to list them in the credits, but that idea never made it to fruition.

  Live Undead gives the impression Slayer are absolutely slaying in a packed club. In McIver’s full-scale Slayer biography, engineer Metoyer implies the crowd noise is dramatically enhanced, perhaps to remedy a deficiency in the master recordings12-3. The big EP squeezed seven songs into 23 minutes.

  By the time Live Undead was released, Slayer’s sound had already made another quantum leap: The band recorded its second full-length album, Hell Awaits, in September. But for now, they were still primarily promoting their debut album, a killer EP, and a new live disc. Concerts were much like an expanded edition of Live Undead, with a little taste of Hell:

  1. “Hell Awaits”

  2. “Aggressive Perfector”

  3. “Metalstorm/Face the Slayer”

  4. “Necrophiliac”

  5. “Crionics”

  6. “The Final Command”

  7. “Captor of Sin”

  8. “Chemical Warfare”

  9. “Fight Till Death”

  10. “The Antichrist”

  11. “Black Magic”

  12. “Die by the Sword”

  Encore:

  13. “Evil Has No Boundaries”

  14. “Haunting the Chapel”

  15. “Show No Mercy”

  A brief December agenda wrapped a run of shows in Texas, then returned to L’Amour for a two-night stand, followed by a New Year’s Eve show in Ruthie’s in Berkeley, the city they had played as an emerging new band almost exactly a year before.

  The definitive record of this period is Live Undead, a big live EP released in March 1985 (though the release date is commonly identified as November 1984, even on Metal Blade’s website). On the live disc, Slayer’s sound is evolving into its own malevolent presence. As with Slayer’s early music, the cover picture has some artistic debts, but artist Albert Cuellar delivered a rough classic.

  Gallery 2: Previously Unreleased Live Undead Draft Art

  Live Undead cover artist Albert Cuellar entered a meeting with Slayer with these spooks already sketched. Slayer quickly rejected them and began explaining their concept for the picture disc’s artwork. All original Cuellar sketch art is from his 11” x 14” hardback sketchbook and reproduced courtesy of Cuellar. The top-center stick-person diagram is a bleed through the other side of the page.

  Seated at Tom Araya’s kitchen table, Jeff Hanneman took Cuellar’s marker and drew this basic diagram for the Live Undead art. Stick figures by Hanneman; thin incidental lines are part of a different image by Cuellar.

  Live Undead begins to take form. Cuellar drew this early sketch at the first pitch meeting at Araya’s house. Note the stencil typeface for the word “live,” which was ultimately rejected. Reproduced courtesy of Cuellar.

  Shambling to life: Cuellar drew this larger sketch at Araya’s house.

  Cuellar won the artwork assignment. He drew this first draft of the Live Undead art at home, but the band rejected it because the zombie didn’t look like the band.

  More of Cuellar’s rejected demons from Live Undead pitch. Drawn before the brainstorming session.

  Cuellar’s minotaurs, rejected for Live Undead art. Drawn before the brainstorming session.

  Cuellar’s rejected classical-style art for Live Undead. Drawn before the brainstorming session.

  Hanneman nixed Cuellar’s proposed variations on Slayer’s pentagram logo. On right, note the faded S-shaped sword handle. Sketches by Cuellar, drawn before the Live U
ndead brainstorming session.

  Cuellar — pronounced “KWAY-ar” — was an integral part of the Museum of Modern Art’s third-most-popular exhibition of all time, a show that ranked behind Picasso and Matisse. The multi-discipline creator collaborated with Tim Burton, turning the Hollywood director’s sketches into gravity-defying, three-dimensional sculptures. Cuellar’s first collaboration with Burton was a turn as the uncredited art director on 1994’s Ed Wood. In subsequent years, Cuellar developed a résumé working with other California artists including Sublime and Dr. Dre. He was the wardrobe stylist on the video for Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” A decade before that bumpin’ clip, he broke into the rock world working for Slayer.

  Cuellar knew the Araya family from the Chester W. Nimitz school, then a junior high, where he was two years behind Tom Araya. When Tom graduated, Cuellar fell in with John Araya, Tom’s younger brother. Cuellar became a regular at the Araya house. With tan skin and long black hair, he was frequently mistaken for another Araya boy. For a time, he worked at the shoe department at the Cudahy K-Mart, where he made friends with Lombardo.

  After high school, Cuellar married young and went to work. He wanted to be an artist, and knew he couldn’t be picky about jobs. When Slayer had an opening for a graphic artist, Cuellar was working at an art supply store. He wasn’t a metalhead, but Slayer’s music seemed like a worthy application of his talents.

  Cuellar’s first work for the group was a flyer for a 1982 Christmastime party held by Charlie the Rocker, a young superfan fan from South Gate, by the intersection of Liberty St. and San Miguel Avenue, near Araya, King, and Lombardo’s homes. Mimeographed on yellow letter-sized paper, the art looked cool, but the promotion backfired. Police shut down the rowdy bash before Slayer could play.

  A year later, John Araya told Cuellar his brother’s band needed a cover artist. Cuellar had the inside track. Not only had he been to the Araya house and shared meals. Not only had he worked with Lombardo. But he had another sterling reference: He and Tom had taken art class from the same teacher. John had showed his older brother Cuellar’s artwork over the years. And Tom, in John’s words, “tripped on it.”

  Cuellar sketched some morbid pictures and sent them to the band via John. Slayer liked what they saw. Back at home after a swing through the country, the band set up a meeting with Cuellar.

  The artist wanted to make a good impression. So he bought a hardbound 11” x 14” sketchbook filled with blank white pages. In that age, books like that were hard to come by, so he was sure it would convey an image of professionalism. He penciled some elaborate sketches on the first few pages, hoping to convince the band to take a new direction with its visual approach.

  Cuellar knew Tom liked his work. He was on good terms with Dave. But that wasn’t enough. Heading into the meeting, he had one goal: convince the decision maker. And, at this stage in the band’s evolving dynamic, that was Hanneman. Recalled Cuellar: “Jeff was the guy.”

  The aspiring artist brought the hardback notebook and some art supplies to the Araya house. He sat through practice in the garage. The sweaty band finished their set and reconvened in the kitchen.

  Sitting around the Arayas’ kitchen table, the players described what they wanted. Cuellar showed them what he had already worked up: He thought classical Michelangelo-style imagery would be a good start; later, he could incorporate demonic lighting or eerie details. Slayer didn’t want it.

  Cuellar tried pitching a new Slayer logo, starting with a sword that had a capital S as part of its handle. They didn’t like it. He showed an alternate presentation for the swords-pentagram logo, a 3-D rendition of the logo turned on its side. But the band — Jeff in particular — was adamant about its branding and imagery even then: The logo had to be consistent.

  The band already had the title Live Undead, and they needed the artwork to match it. In the end, the art concept and layout came from the band: They wanted a graveyard. They wanted upside-down crosses. They wanted zombies. The Live Undead project was conceived as a 12” vinyl picture-disc. Hanneman took Cuellar’s marking pen, leaned in, and provided the roughest of sketches for the design he envisioned. He drew the cover in stick figures: inside a circle, himself at the 9 o’clock position on the left, Lombardo at noon, King on the right, Araya at the bottom.

  They kicked around the idea of presenting the “Live” part of Live Undead in stenciled capital letters, which was a common convention in metal art at the time. But the band quickly decided against it.

  The album cover would take some work, but the first meeting ended with another iconic Slayer image set in stone. After his diagram, Hanneman had another idea for a different graphic.

  Deep and slow, Hanneman said, “I want a skull with a German helmet on it. I want it to say ‘Wehrmacht’ on the side.”

  Cuellar thought of Weird War Tales, a DC anthology comic that told supernatural tales from World War II, presenting monthly images of ghouls, mutants and shape-shifters in Nazi garb. He sketched three variations of a wild-eyed skull in a Third Reich battle helmet, two adorned with the Slayer pentagram.

  Hanneman liked them. Cuellar sketched a more refined — but still rough — version of the left-profile and let Hanneman keep the page. Cuellar assumed he’d have a chance to develop the Wehrmacht skeleton further. But the next time he saw the picture, it was a year later, exactly as he had drawn it, on a fan club recruitment flyer inside Hell Awaits. (In future years, other artists created more detailed, elaborate versions of the Slaytanic skull for band merchandise.)

  By meeting’s end, the musicians and the illustrator were on the same page. Cuellar got the assignment.

  Working in a little studio in his Alhambra apartment, Cuellar penciled a first draft of the Live Undead cover. Half-finished, the early version was a monstrous sketch of a wide-mouthed zombie slouching in the darkness, bones exposed, as another followed behind him, lurking out of an open crypt.

  Albert pondered Slayer’s suggested scene and decided the darkness was a problem: If it were midnight, then realistically, how could the image be anything but darkness? A solution occurred to him: A full moon would light the cemetery. Cuellar penciled in an exposed ribcage and some decaying flesh, with an incomplete swath of black night behind the zombie’s shoulders, like oversized wings.

  Cuellar presented that rough draft to the band. The unfinished sketch was dynamic and ambitious, but the anonymous zombie wasn’t what they wanted. Slayer wanted the creatures on their album cover to be them. The band collected a series of live photos that captured the players in stage gear. And Cuellar went back to work.

  In subsequent drafts, Cuellar’s next brood of undead had the right details: the leather costumes, the tattoo from Araya’s right arm, the long hair — the hairspray, apparently, had been applied in enough volume that it outlasted their flesh.

  A couple meetings later, Cuellar had it down. Drawn in pencil and ink, the final Live Undead illustration depicts the band as zombies, apparently buried and resurrected in their stage gear, playing a midnight gig in a misty cemetery, under a full moon. The red SLAYER logo and a bloody LIVE UNDEAD were added on a vinyl overlay so the letters would pop and not desecrate the original. It’s wicked and inspired.

  Artist, blogger, and metal-art historian Dennis Dread identified Cueller’s inspiration in 2011: Key elements of the cover are based on a pictures by Bernie Wrightson, a horror-oriented illustrator best known for his work on the graphic-fiction magazine Heavy Metal, the original run of DC comic Swamp Thing, and the cover of Meat Loaf’s Dead Ringer.

  For Live Undead’s central Araya zombie, notes Dread, “Cuellar very conservatively referenced the central image from this very early panel by the master of macabre himself, [Bernie] Wrightson! This drawing originally appeared in an EC horror spoof called Ghastly Horror Comix in 1969, but it was reprinted and made more widely available in the 1980 Wrightson collection The Mutants…. It's a perfectly archetypal zombie… Wrightson himself was aping the great comic artist Graham �
�Ghastly’ Ingels when he drew this for an underground fanzine in the late 60's.”12-4

  Zombie Hanneman shambles onto the scene, guitar in hand, looking like Eddie from Iron Maiden. King stands, soloing, behind a tombstone bearing the Slayer pentagram.

  Dread also identifies an analogue for the drummer image in The Mutants: a silhouette of a long-haired man-beast standing on the edge of an abyss, shaking his fists at the sky. Cuellar kept the torso, removed its legs, copied the outline, and added some drumsticks. Then he drew an intricately detailed, decomposing Undead Lombardo. The late Lombardo’s torso is floating in the mist, the power of darkness keeping it in the air. The drummer wasn’t satisfied with his zombie avatar.

  “He didn’t like that at all,” recalled Cuellar. “He felt that it was too skeleton-y.”