I'm the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax

by Scott Ian

  Scott was always so supportive of us and the kind of metal that Anthrax and Metallica and a whole generation of new metal bands were playing. There was no bitterness or sour grapes. It was exciting. We were forging through uncharted musical territory, and it was a brave new world for everyone. When it came time for our first US tour, Scott was very helpful. I’ll never forget asking him if I could borrow his Rockman (an analog device you could plug your guitar into and play into headphones) because I did not have a practice amp. It was the eve of the Metallica/Raven Kill ’Em All for One tour, and he said, “Sure!” I still have it somewhere, thirty-plus years later, and I still mean to get it back to him sometime. The fact that he was so willing to help all the time was not lost on me.

  When we were recording Ride the Lightning, Scott came to London to do press for Anthrax’s first album, Fistful of Metal. One particularly crazy night with Cliff and Scott culminated with Cliff unable to get off the floor and onto his bed, and Scott and I laughing and trying to help the poor guy. But he was just too tall and skinny, and that’s what made it sooo hilarious! Then Scott turned around and grabbed a teapot full of water and poured it into a rented Marshall amp I was using, laughing and screaming, “Oh, it’s tea time!” That set the precedent for decades of similar behavior, which we still kind of engage in today.

  Scott often came to see us during the Master of Puppets tour. We saw Ozzy backstage for the first time, and we were both in total awe of him. Anthrax came out on tour with us in Europe that fall, which was really fun—until the Cliff tragedy.

  I’ll never forget how upset Scott reacted when he heard the news. I’ll never forget how he, Frankie, and Charlie roamed the streets of Copenhagen with James ’til about 3 a.m. I was thankful they were giving him support when I could not. I was totally incapacitated with grief and in too much of a state of shock to even leave my bed, let alone my room. When Scott came to the funeral, I insisted he stay at my place, which was actually my mom’s house.

  Scott has always been there for me, emotionally as well as physically.

  He has turned me on to so many cool things over the years, and I like to think I’ve done the same for him. He was always a kind of cultural barometer for me. I would ask him what new comics were worth checking out. I turned him on to certain books, and we always had a shared love for musical equipment. It was Scott who told me about this really cool company that made great, quality guitars; they were called ESP. He hooked me up with their people in New York, and the next thing I knew I was in the warehouse grabbing bolt-on necks and saying to the ESP guy, “No, this is too thin. No, this is too wide.” So I have Scott to thank for our twenty-seven-year relationship with ESP.

  But really, if I were to try and chronicle all the amazing and not-so-amazing times I have shared with Scott, it would take another book. Our friendship spans three decades and counting, and we’ve had an amazing time throughout. Scott’s birthday is on New Year’s Eve, so I’ve had the pleasure of spending many New Year’s/birthday celebrations with him. It’s funny how those celebrations always became adventures more than anything. You can come to your own conclusions on those while I roll out a couple more anecdotes.

  We have matching tattoos…don’t jump to conclusions. We decided to get them one night after watching a Van Halen rehearsal show in LA. We were so blown away by the band and by hanging out drinking Jack Daniels with David Lee Roth that we both came to the conclusion that the best way to immortalize that particular evening was to get matching tattoos. And everyone who was with us that night got the same tattoo. No, it’s not “VH.” It’s something more symbolic that shows his commitment to his friends and events that are important to him.

  I’ll close with one not-so-amazing time I shared with Scott, just to put our friendship into perspective. Three years ago, Scott and I were in Hawaii with our lovely wives, Pearl and Lani. We were enjoying downtime until we learned that a massive tsunami had hit Japan and that all of Hawaii was under a tsunami warning. I’ll never forget how pale Scott’s face went when he heard the news. My wife and I explained to him that tsunamis from the west have a tendency to lose all their destructive force once they get close to the islands, but that didn’t stop him from staying up all night staring out his window in anticipation of imminent destruction, preparing to evacuate his pregnant wife at the first sign of peril. By the time the tsunami hit Hawaii, it was barely a foot tall. The next day we congratulated Scott and Pearl for living through their first tsunami! (By the way, tsunami warnings are a fact of life in Hawaii. I have experienced four of them.)

  The most important thing I’ve learned about Scott is that he’s an amazing human being. Sure, he has fallen for some of the same trappings we all fell for in our younger years and later learned to circumvent. But while we have both changed in our own ways over the decades, the core elements that made us friends exist to this day. I still consider Scott one of my closest and dearest friends. What we experienced as friends separately and collectively has informed us and shaped us into who we are today.

  He’s sharp, funny, amusing, lovingly sarcastic, loyal, charming, and a great schemer in the best possible way. He’s flexible, a great musician with great instincts, and he’s a man of wealth and taste. He’s also engaging, has a vivid imagination, is a natural leader, has a dark side that I admire, and looks great on all those TV shows. In addition, he has an amazing ability to locate free stuff, and he is an excellent poker player, somewhat of a media whore, serious about his food and drink. I consider Scott a visionary, an honorary San Franciscan, a fighter when he needs to be, a great riffy guitar player, a fellow drinker of Fernet-­Branca, a great father and husband, a fellow lover of horror movies, and an overall celebrator of life and art, with a sense of New York awareness that has never faded, even though he’s been on the West Coast for twenty-plus years.

  He’s my pal.

  I’d take a bullet for this guy. Probably more than one…

  This is his story, written by “The Man” himself.

  Preface

  If I was sober, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. But I was as wasted as I’d been since my eighteenth birthday when I got stupid drunk on countless glasses of Popov vodka and orange juice, and let’s just say my judgment was irreparably impaired. I had been a New York Yankees fan since I was eleven years old. My dad took me to my first game in 1972, and I’ve followed the team religiously through the years, even when they sucked. So when I had the chance to break into their spring-training park, Legends Field in Tampa, Florida, and take the on-deck circle as a souvenir, I was too tempted to resist.

  I flew into Tampa on August 18, 1997, for a guitar show at Thoroughbred Music. There was a lot of time to kill between appointments, so I got really drunk with Zakk Wylde and then hung out with my friend Ed, who was putting me up while I was in Florida. He was sober and I was with him, my friend Angela, and her sister Heather, both of whom I had known since the late eighties. They were the only girls that came to Anthrax shows back then. We drove past the ball park at two in the morning, and I shouted, “Oh my God, Legends Field! I read in the paper that there’s a Thurman Munson monument here. I have to go see it. He’s my favorite Yankee of all time!”

  We were at a red light so I started to get out of the car. “Whoa, whoa,” my buddy Ed said. “We’ll go tomorrow when it’s open to the public. We’ll walk around and you can see it then.”

  In my ego-fueled haze, that wasn’t going to fly. I could see the monument from the window. If it could have spoken, it would have called my name and invited me over. Ed knew I was out-of-my-mind drunk, so he clicked the door-lock button in the front, which locked the whole car. It was probably a good move for him, but I’ve never taken no for an answer. When I was a kid and my mom told me I couldn’t do something, I either talked my way into doing it or I simply ignored her. When every label on the planet told us Anthrax wasn’t a marketable band, I told them all to fuck themselves. When everyone said the ba
nd was done because grunge and alternative rock had wiped out metal, we found a way to persevere. The word “no” just isn’t in my vocabulary, which is why as a teenager I earned the nickname Scott “NOT” Ian.

  On the ride back from Legends Field, I plotted how we were going to get back to the stadium to check out the monument. I decided that when we got to Ed’s we’d get Heather to take us back to the park. She didn’t drink either, but she was more adventurous than Ed.

  By the time we got to Ed’s it was well past 2:30 a.m., and he went right to bed. I convinced Heather, who wasn’t doing anything anyway, to take us back to Legends Field without Ed knowing. She saw how much I wanted to go, so she agreed to drive us back there. She parked her car by a fence outside the stadium and stayed there, while Angela and I hopped the gate and walked into the grounds. I went right to the monument. It was bathed in silvery moonlight that made Munson look like a deity. He had a private audience and looked way cooler than he would have by day with the regular sunlight and a bunch of gawking tourists with cameras. I was sure Munson would have been honored that one of his biggest fans had gone out of his way to share such a personal moment with a hero and a friend. Of course, I was also drunk. I took some pictures then convinced Angela to come with me to check out the stadium.

  We went in and walked down the aisles to the lush, green, grassy field. I stood at home plate and pictured myself in a pinstriped uniform with a bat in my hands, facing down Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer. I could almost see the ball leave his calloused hand and zip toward home plate. I swung and connected. The ball rocketed past first baseman Eddie Murray and into the outfield. I took off, for real. I ran around the bases and slid into second. Safe!

  I ran around the field, shouted, “This is amazing!” and urged Angela to join me running the bases. We went from base to base laughing like kids, and there was no one there to stop us. I circled third base and slid headfirst into home plate. It took me a minute to recover from that brilliant move. I slowly got up and brushed myself off and then I saw the on-deck circle. It was made of thick, heavy rubber and had a big Yankee logo on it—the bat with the hat. I thought it would look amazing in our studio in Yonkers right in front of all my amps, and I could record all my guitar parts standing on it, showing off my Yankee pride.

  “I gotta have this thing!” I slurred, not even thinking how I would get this two-hundred-pound piece of rubber into the airport and on a plane back to New York. I picked up one side of it, but it was so heavy I could only lift it halfway off the ground. I tried to roll it up. The grass was wet and I was slipping and falling down. After a few minutes of wrestling with the thing, my arms were tired, so I gave up and put it back where it was.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. We walked back out and in the distance I saw cop lights flashing where Heather was parked waiting for us. I was so wasted I didn’t think we did anything wrong. What did we do? We ran around the bases a little bit. We didn’t break anything. I didn’t actually steal anything.

  It didn’t once occur to me that maybe we should go a different way, hop a different fence, and get the fuck out of there. So we walked straight out the front. The gate we had hopped was open. There were golf carts, security guards, and three cop cars there. Heather was sitting on a curb. We came walking out and I waved to her and said, “Hi!” with a big smile on my face. A cop grabbed me, slammed me over the hood of a car, arms behind my back, and handcuffed me. Another grabbed Angela and cuffed her. I was in shock. I said, “What the hell?!?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” snapped the cop.

  “What did I do?” I protested. “I didn’t do anything.”

  They threw me down on the curb and said, “Yeah? How about breaking and entering, asshole? How about burglary?”

  “Burglary? What burglary? I didn’t take anything.”

  Then one of the cops told me they had a video of my inept attempt to steal the on-deck circle.

  I was still buzzing with liquid courage, so I said, “Yeah, but I didn’t! I left it there! I’ll write you a check, I’ll get you money. Tell me how much it costs. I’ll give you whatever it costs right now, and you can still keep the on-deck circle!”

  The cops laughed and walked away. I sat there cuffed and totally confused. I looked at Angela and she just said, “Fuck, we’re in real trouble.”

  They didn’t arrest Heather because she never went into the park. They told her to go home. She said she’d wake up Ed and they’d get us a lawyer. Then she took off.

  Angela and I were sitting there helpless when one of the cops walked over to me and said, “Hey, aren’t you the guy from Anthrax?”

  “Yeah, yeah I am!” It’s sometimes kind of a bummer to be recognized in public. This was a godsend.

  “What’s going on, dude?” he said.

  I told him I was an insane Yankees fan and I got stupid drunk and wanted to see the stadium because I heard there was a Thurman Munson monument in it. Then one thing led to another and I decided to run the bases. “Is there anything you can do to get me out of this? I’ve never been arrested in my life.”

  He told me he’d see what he could do. He talked to the other cops. One of the cars left. I thought that was a good sign. The Anthrax cop was talking to the Legends Field security guys. Twenty minutes later the Legends guys took off in their golf cart. “Yes!! Go, Anthrax cop!” I figured he had gotten us out of this mess and I’d send him a bunch of band merchandise to thank him. Then the security guys came back. The good cop walked over to me and said, “Alright, I have good news and bad news. What do you want first?”

  “The bad news?”

  “I talked to my fellow officers and they were all fine with me driving you back to your friend’s house. They truthfully don’t give a shit. It’s less paperwork for them. I told them you were a guy in a band.”

  “That’s bad news? I can go?”

  “No,” he explained. “Because the Legends Field head security guy said, ‘We have to call management. We can’t just let this go.’”

  Here’s the bad news. They called the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, who lived in Tampa. It was five in the morning, and if you know anything about Steinbrenner, you know he had a reputation for being a fucking hard-ass. He wasn’t called the General, Der Fuhrer, and the Kaiser for nothing. My heart fell. I fucked with the wrong dude. They told Steinbrenner I was a guitarist in a popular band and I was just pulling a prank, and the former Yankees owner said, “I don’t give a fuck who he is. He’s going to jail.”

  I said to the Anthrax cop, who I was rapidly losing faith in, “Okay, what’s the good news? Can you just drop us off somewhere and we’ll sort it out later?”

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “It’s on the books. I’ll get in big trouble. They called the cops. They filed a report. You’re under arrest.”

  Up to that point it had been like a bad dream, and suddenly, as the alcohol was wearing off, reality was starting to set in. So far, there hadn’t been any good news. Then the cop filled me in on my good fortune. He was supposed to drive me downtown and put me in a cell with thirty deviants—from murderers to rapists. He was basically saying, “You and this pretty young girl will be in a jail cell with hardcore criminals, and you’ll probably end up getting fucked up the ass if you’re lucky.”

  “Look, I’m not going to take you downtown,” he said. That was the good news. He drove us to some small town out in the boonies of Hillsborough County twenty-five minutes away that was basically a big drunk tank where people were sleeping off DUIs. The place looked like a high school cafeteria with tables and chairs and a few harmless-­looking dudes passed out. They booked us and, as much better as it probably was than city jail, it sucked. Once you’re in the system, you lose all your humanity. The people who work there don’t give a fuck about you or your story, and rightly so. Maybe if they were Anthrax fans, they might have cared, but none of the people I talked to knew who Anthrax were.
To them I was just another troublemaker. The cop who dropped us off wished us good luck and left.

  I sat there for a while then they brought me into the office, fingerprinted me, and took my mug shot. They told me to strip and gave me an orange jumpsuit that said Hillsborough County Jail on the back. Angela had one, too, and from that point on we were there to be ignored.

  “When do I get a phone call? How do I post bail? What do I do?” I asked. Nothing. I didn’t know what to do and no one would talk to me. Finally, one lady was nice enough to say, “You’ll get your phone call.”

  She told me there was a phone in the jail that inmates can use anytime they want as long as the call was collect. I thanked her for helping me. I swore to her that I had never been arrested and I wasn’t an asshole. I just wanted to get back home. But she’d already said all she was going to say to me. She acted like she had broken the rules by even telling me that much.

  The thing is, they hear that shit all day long. They’re numb to it. I started to think about Angela. I was bummed that I brought her into this situation. She could give a fuck about Thurman Munson, and now she was in jail because I was an idiot. I kept saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She was totally cool about it. “Hey, I didn’t have to go,” she said. “I chose to run around like a jackass, too.”

  By that time it was 6:30 a.m. and I decided to call my dad. Before he even heard my voice, a recording came on that said, “You are being called by an inmate in a correctional facility. Do you accept the charges?” I could tell that threw him a little. He said, “Hello?”

  “Dad, it’s me . . .”

  “Scott?!?”

  Then the voice came back that said, “Do you accept the charges?” Dad took the call, and I explained to him that I was in jail in Tampa. I told him that I had to get a lawyer to fill out a stack of paperwork and file for bail and it had to be done by 11 a.m. or I’d be stuck in jail another day.