by Scott Ian
I think about what happened to Dime every time we play a show. The few times that kids have made it up onto the stage, no matter how friendly the scenario, the first thing I think is, “Dude, you should not be on this fucking stage. You should know better.” Everything changed after Dime was killed. The stage became off limits for everyone but musicians. I don’t give a fuck how much fun you’re having. Stay the fuck off the stage.
Charlie was the one who brought up Dime’s death before we decided to reunite with Joey and Spitz. We questioned whether Pantera would ever have gotten back together if Dime hadn’t been killed, and I absolutely believe at some point they would have. Then we talked about all the newer fans who had never seen us play with Joey and Danny.
“Look, we’re all still here,” Charlie said. “Not a lot of bands can say that anymore. And we’re being offered this chance to relive history. This opportunity may not last forever.”
It wasn’t the best-case scenario, and maybe we were rationalizing because we certainly weren’t dealing out of strength, we were dealing out of desperation. It was either do this and piss some people off really badly or break up. The choice was pretty clear.
Once we made peace with our decision, we tried to make it a triumphant comeback. In the beginning it almost was. Danny and Joey were both excited to play in Anthrax again. And Frankie came back. He wasn’t going to miss this! There was a lot of interest. We were selling out shows and playing bigger venues than we had in a long time. The Download Festival in England booked us for the slot right before Black Sabbath and Velvet Revolver. And the press was out of control. Everything was perfect, everything was sick. It all happened too fast. The first time the five of us were back in a room together, we were sitting in this loft in downtown New York with Danny and Joey and Juliya from Fuse, doing an interview for the DVD that was scheduled to be shot at our first show in Sayreville, New Jersey.
There was no preparation, no get-together before the interview, no time to hang out and catch up, no time to talk about the past and what we wanted out of this moving forward, no time to reconnect as friends. Nope. We jumped in headfirst and didn’t even look to see if the pool was full. The first month was fun. It was cool to be that band again, and we played those old songs better than we did in the eighties. But it didn’t take long for all the old shit to start surfacing again, mostly with Danny, who had been out of the business for a long time and had no clue how things ran anymore.
He thought we’d still be able to ship tons of gear all over the world. I told him that’s not how it works anymore. The gear companies we endorse can get us gear in every city. I said, “We don’t spend a dime to ship stuff so we can put the money in our pockets.”
He didn’t get that and wanted to use his whole giant rig everywhere we went. That was the least of our hassles. The tour was a fucking nightmare from the first day of the second month, and we were out for eighteen months. We were right back where we were in 1990. Anthrax was a total schism. Frankie, Charlie, and I were on one side and Joey and Danny were on the other.
The biggest blowup was in Milwaukee, where the digital console took a shit thirty seconds before we walked onstage. The monitor man rebooted it, and all the settings that were made at sound check were erased. All the sounds were coming out of the wrong monitors, and for some reason Danny’s guitar came up through everything louder than an F-111 taking off. Before that, nobody had Danny’s guitar anywhere in their mix. Frankie lost his fucking mind. He kicked all the sound monitor wedges off the stage. His face was red, his teeth were clenched, and I could tell he was going to go postal after the show even though the monitor man had the mix fixed by the fourth song. To add salt to the laceration, Frankie found out that Danny had turned down the bass in the monitor wedges because he couldn’t hear his guitar.
For ten minutes straight, Frankie laid into Spitz. The dressing room door was closed, but you could hear it from down the hall. “Who the fuck are you?!? Who do you think you are? You’re not even fucking human!!!” It was brutal, personal, and nonstop. Frankie was ranting and kicking tables over, and Danny just stood there unable to get a word in. The rest of us hid and laughed. Still want to be in a band?
Chapter 30
My Kingdom for
a Singer
The reunion tour was pretty depressing. It helped us financially and cleared up our business problems. We delivered Alive 2: The DVD, the greatest hits CD, and DVD Anthrology: No Hit Wonders 1985–1991 to Sanctuary. They put them out but failed to properly promote them. Go figure. At least we were out of our contract. Everyone assumed we’d do a record with the Among the Living lineup when we got back home, but there was no way we could move forward as that band because we were all at each other’s throats. It was 2006, and I was thinking that, unless we could somehow miraculously get John Bush to come back, this really was the end of Anthrax.
I was angry because this was the reunion tour everyone had been waiting for and everyone loved it but us. I had wanted so much for it to work and for us to part as great friends again. We parted ways alright, but we were more like feuding college roommates.
I can’t put all the blame on Joey and Danny. It would be very easy to point the finger and say they were difficult and wanted everything their way, so it didn’t work out. I could say that we were the ones fighting to keep Anthrax alive all those years, and those guys weren’t. So when they came back they should have listened to us. The truth is, you could very easily argue their side: “Look what you did to Anthrax over all those years while we were sitting at home. Maybe if we weren’t pushed out of the band, Anthrax would never have been in this position in the first place. Maybe you should listen to our ideas.”
I couldn’t see that in 2006, but I can see it now, having had some time to reflect on the situation. I talked a lot of shit in the press because I was so frustrated and I could only see one side of the picture. I said we couldn’t move forward because Joey didn’t want to and kept putting up obstacles. That was true to some extent. We told Joey and Danny we wanted to make a record, and Joey kept coming back with more and more demands, mostly about firing managers and cleaning house. It turned out he was right about all of that, as we ended up having issues with all the people he had a problem with. A lot of journalists reported that Joey didn’t come back right away because he wanted too much money. That wasn’t true. He wanted his share of the cut, and we had always had a five-way split. He never asked for more than that.
Ultimately, the decision not to work on a new album with Joey came from us not being on the same page. We were set in our ways and weren’t willing to budge. I certainly was curious about what a new Anthrax record would sound like with Joey, but my curiosity was outweighed by my ego and my inability to give up any kind of control. Funny how things happen for a reason. In reality, that would’ve been the wrong time for that record to happen. Maybe somehow we all sensed that?
Still, we were hamstrung without a singer. In our sweetest pipe dreams, John Bush would have come back and made a new album with us, now that we had new managers and had cleared the decks of some bad business deals. We hoped he would realize we did what we needed to do for the sake of the band, and now we could move on like we were simply following up We’ve Come for You All. But we knew that wasn’t going to happen. John was hurt that we did the reunion tour with Joey, and he’s a very prideful guy. The last thing he was going to do was forgive us for dicking him over and jump right back in.
In addition to the emotional chasm, he was in a different place in his life. He had young children and didn’t want to be on tour all the time. He wasn’t ready to drop everything this time just because we asked him to. He didn’t want to do what was best for the band; his priority was his family. Once it was clear we weren’t doing a record with Joey and Danny or John, the band dissolved down to two men standing. At the end of 2006, Charlie and I got together in the room at his house in Chicago and started writing new material. We
were pissed about what had happened, so we naturally wrote some really fast, aggressive stuff with crushing double-bass beats and really crunchy stop-start riffs. It felt good and we knew we were on to something. When we had a batch of solid songs, we tried working with a vocalist who had been recommended to us, but that didn’t work out. For more information, feel free to check out Wikipedia, as accurate or inaccurate as it may be.
During that time, we called Frankie and said, “Hey man, shit’s happening. We want you in on this.” The first thing he did was insist on being a part of the writing process. I told him we had already written five songs we were really happy with, but the rest of it, who knows? Frankie jumped back in and helped rework the stuff we had already written. Frankie was back, but again there was an uncomfortable amount of fighting and arguing, mostly over melody ideas for the vocals. That’s actually where Frankie has always shined, writing-wise. He’s great at coming up with melodies. But a lot of times Charlie would come up with something different, and it would be a better fit for the song. Frankie would say, “Well, who are you to say it’s a better fit? Of course you like yours more, you wrote it. But mine is better.” I would try to use both of their ideas, plugging in my lyrics to their melodies, sometimes adding my melody ideas as well, and when that worked we would get the best of all worlds and the songs would benefit. When it didn’t work and one person’s idea was clearly better, well, then we’d get back to that fucking age-old argument of who knows what Anthrax really is. When that happens, Charlie and I always say, “Look, we know what’s right.” That wouldn’t end the fight—far from it—but we would just move forward, and usually the best ideas would be so obvious they’d make themselves undeniable.
We tried to move forward as a band just like we had done after we fired Neil Turbin and were working on writing Spreading the Disease without a singer. But the idea of not being able to make it work out with John or even Joey hung over our heads. We didn’t want to find someone else. We wanted Anthrax, and Anthrax have only ever had two singers that mattered.
Around the time we were trying to figure out how to keep the band going, I started copromoting an acoustic rock lounge night at this New York club, Retox. I was working with my friend Mike Diamond, who was a big club promoter. We decided to have a showcase one night a week. Whenever anyone I knew would be in New York, I would fly in and we’d do acoustic sets. I booked a diverse variety of artists, including Cypress Hill, Sebastian Bach, Whitfield Crane, Bo Bice from American Idol, and Corey Taylor from Slipknot and Stone Sour.
The night Corey came in, we had dinner before we went to the club. It was me, Corey, Frankie, and Pearl just hanging out. Corey asked us what we were going to do about our singer situation, and we told him we didn’t know, but we had a bunch of new songs that were really great.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
We laughed. We figured he was joking. He was already in two successful bands, and it didn’t seem realistic for him to sing for Anthrax as well.
“I’m serious!” he said, voice tinged with excitement. “It would be a fucking honor to sing with you guys, and you already know I’ve been into you since I was a kid. I would be thrilled to write songs with you and be a part of your history.”
We talked seriously about how we could make it work. We agreed to send him what we had already written, and he would start writing vocals after his current tour with Stone Sour was over. He had a large window of time before he had to start working with Slipknot again. He figured he could take at least a year to make the record with us and tour. It seemed like an amazing solution to a serious problem. Frankie was into the idea right away and I was sold.
That night at the club was incredible. We played a bunch of cover songs with Corey and had a blast. I woke up the next day remembering the conversation about Corey singing for us, and I just chalked it up to booze and fun; I really didn’t take it seriously. Stone Sour played Roseland Ballroom the next night, and we were backstage. I walked into the dressing room, and Corey’s manager, Cory Brennan, said, “Hey man, congratulations on your new singer.”
“What? Huh? Uh, he told you about that?” I said.
“Yeah, he told me immediately,” Brennan said. “I already called the rest of Slipknot and Roadrunner Records, and it’s a go. It’s on. He has the approval.”
I gave Corey a big hug. I told Frankie and Charlie and they were stoked. We sent Corey preliminary arrangements for six songs. He loved them and told us he had ideas for vocals. We put together a schedule based on when his tour was going to end. Corey was going to put his parts together for a couple weeks after the tour ended and then drive to Chicago to spend three weeks at Charlie’s, and we would work out the songs. I thought it would be a good idea to keep our plans to ourselves for a little while, but Corey went online and spilled the beans. He didn’t even call me and tell me he was going public with the news, which was fine. He was just that excited. We started telling interviewers it was happening, and everyone was congratulating us. It seemed like a new chapter was about to begin and it was gonna be a good one.
I flew to Chicago to start working with Taylor Thrax July 9, 2007, after spending a few days in London to see Metallica at Wembley Stadium. To say I was on an adrenaline high would be an understatement. I was so inspired to get back in the room and write the greatest Anthrax record of our career. When I landed at O’Hare airport, I turned my phone on and it was filled with messages. I saw our agent (and my good friend), Mike Monterulo, had called, so I called him back from inside the terminal, and he said, “Did you talk to anyone?”
“No, I just got off the plane.”
“Corey’s not coming,” he said. The words didn’t exactly sink in.
“Well, I’m already in Chicago. So, I’ll just stick around here, and if he can’t come for a few days, that’s fine. I’m not flying home and then coming back again.”
“No, he’s not coming, period. He can’t do it.”
Corey’s label, Roadrunner, had put the kibosh on the whole thing at the eleventh hour. They had looked at their release schedule for the upcoming year, and some major project they thought they were going to have—I think it was a Nickelback record—wasn’t going to come in when they expected it. And now they weren’t going to get a Slipknot album, either. The label heads looked at their bottom line and decided they couldn’t allow Corey to take a year off from Slipknot. The band members had already taken advances for the record, and the label threatened to take back that money if he worked with Anthrax. Corey asked them why they waited until the day before he was leaving for Chicago to work with us to drop this bomb on him, and their answer was, “We didn’t think you were actually going to do it.” Corey let them have it, but he was between a rock and a hard place, and the music business is, to quote Hunter S. Thompson, “a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” Had Corey not caved, it would have financially affected all nine members of the band, and he couldn’t and wouldn’t make that call. He was pissed but he had no choice. It sucked for us, and it sucked for Corey as well because not only was he looking forward to working with us, he had already written songs and was 100 percent ready to go.
Standing there in O’Hare, I felt like I had been punched in the stomach. It was like a scene in a movie where a character is moving in real time and everything else is zipping by. I felt nauseated, disoriented, devastated. For a second it seemed like someone had sucked all of the air out of me, and nothing we did could possibly go right again.
I stumbled over to the American Airlines desk and said, “I need a flight to LA, the first one out.”
The woman at the counter looked at my itinerary in the computer and said, “You’re not supposed to fly back to LA for three weeks.”
“I know, but I need to get home immediately.” Clearly, she heard the pain in my voice and made it happen. I was empty, over,
finished, gone, done. I got on the plane, downed a couple of Maker’s Marks, and passed out.
One day I’ll get to hear what Corey wrote for us. He told me he has all the lyrics in a book at home. I told him recently that we can get together and play the songs, a private concert for just the two of us. As crazy as all of that was, in the end it’s better that it didn’t happen. Of course in the moment I couldn’t see or know that, but three years later when Joey rejoined, it all made sense. After the Corey Taylor fiasco, I had to get away from Anthrax for a little while. I wasn’t ready to let it go, but I definitely needed a break. Pearl was starting to launch her solo career after having performed as a backup singer with her dad for a number of years. She put together a group with the guys from Mother Superior, Jim Wilson and Markus Blake—who both played in the Rollins Band from 1999 to 2003—and started writing songs. I was the rhythm guitarist because I had an inside connection—and because Anthrax were in a state of flux. I worked with Pearl from 2007 all the way through 2010. She recorded an EP, which she sold at shows, and she did a whole bunch of tours, two opening for her dad in the States and two more with him in Europe. I was multitasking the whole time, driving the van, selling merch, acting as the tour manager, being the travel agent. I wore many hats, which was a blast because I was getting to be out on the road with my wife and taking a backseat to her and watching her shine. I got to play rhythm guitar and live out my Malcolm Young fantasies, just being this guy who hangs out in the back with the rhythm section.
Obviously, we weren’t playing metal, and it was far removed from anything I’ve done in Anthrax, but it was right in my wheelhouse because I grew up on seventies music. That’s how I learned to play guitar. So getting to play songs like “Rock Child,” “Love Pyre,” “Nobody,” and the Tina Turner cover “Nutbush City Limits” was great. It was hugely liberating to be able to get onstage and just play and hold a big fucking “A” chord sometimes. I didn’t have to do all the right hand palm-muting and super-fast down-picking, which I call “fascist guitar playing.” In the context of Anthrax, that’s my style. It’s extremely tight, there’s no room for improvisation. It is what it is, and there’s no fucking around—the fucking train is running on time. Whereas with Pearl I was able to sit back, do these big rock chords, and have a blast.