by Scott Ian
Before Pearl released her debut album Little Immaculate White Fox, I got her a tour opening for Velvet Revolver on their last run of dates in the UK. I e-mailed Slash and said, “Hey man, Pearl’s making this great fucking rock record. I can’t think of a better band for her to open for than you guys.”
He asked me to send him the record, and two days after he got it, he e-mailed me back saying, “Tell your agent to expect a call.” Sure enough, two days after that, their agent called our agent and offered Pearl the UK run of the Velvet Revolver tour. It was so cool of Slash to make that happen. He even got us enough money to make it viable, and we earned bonus cash by selling merch and copies of the EP. The shows were amazing. Pearl played to a sold-out Brixton Academy in front of 5,500 people. The audience didn’t know who she was. They were there to see Velvet Revolver. Maybe some people saw me and said, “Hey, I recognize that guy,” but the crowds didn’t know her music. And by the second song she fucking owned it.
During the set she would invite the crowd to come to the merch stand and say hi after the show. And every night there would be as many as two hundred kids there, and they would all buy the EP. These were seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds saying, “I’ve never heard of you, but you were fucking awesome!”
She proved that she belonged where she was. It wasn’t like she had some sense of entitlement, “Oh, I’m someone’s daughter and I’m gonna be a singer, too!” She worked her ass off, and it was really inspiring to get to see her do that every night—even in front of her dad’s crowd, which in a sense is a built-in audience. But even then she had to win them over. They might have known who she was, but they were there to see Meat Loaf and weren’t going to go crazy just because his daughter’s band was opening. The audience would usually be quiet and polite for two or three songs, and then she would just get them fucking revved up, so by the time her forty-five minutes were over, people were on their feet clapping. She’s a great, great front woman.
We worked on Little Immaculate White Fox after she got off tour, and it came out in January 2010. Ted Nugent guested on the song “Check Out Charlie.” He e-mailed over his tracks for that, but Alice in Chains guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell came into the studio to record the solo for “Anything,” which was awesome. I’ve always loved Alice in Chains ever since we played with them on the Clash of the Titans tour. They got spat at and pelted with coins and bottles of piss, and they totally stood their ground. Jerry is an extremely talented musician and an amazing songwriter. We didn’t have to give him any direction. He just sat down, listened to the song, and came up with these guitar lines that were very David Gilmour-esque, which is exactly what we were looking for.
Almost eleven months after Pearl’s album came out, the side project I put together with Fall Out Boy guitarist Joe Trohman, the Damned Things, released its record, Ironiclast, which was criminally overlooked and which I’m still extremely proud of.
I met Joe in 2008 through a mutual friend, David Karon, who worked with both of us at Washburn Guitars. David and I were good friends and hung out all the time. He was sure that Joe and I would get along even though we played very different music, so he introduced us and we hit it off. I’m old enough to be his dad, but he wasn’t just some douchey kid from a band. Joe is a serious musician, great guitar player, super smart, and funny, and we were into a lot of the same shit. We became fast friends.
Whenever I was in Chicago or Joe was in LA, we’d get together and hang. I even went to see Fall Out Boy a couple of times just to check out what he was doing. One night he was in LA for the day, and he asked me if I’d be into jamming. Fall Out Boy were leaving to go to Japan the next day, and were spending the night at the Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood. He asked me to come over if I wasn’t doing anything and to bring a guitar so we could jam. I figured he’d want to do some Thin Lizzy covers because we’d talk about them all the time—but he told me he had some riffs he had written that he wanted to show me.
I brought an acoustic, and after a couple of beers he played me the riffs he had talked about; they were really good and doomy in a way vaguely like Down or Kyuss.
“Are those for Fall Out Boy?” I asked.
“No, they’re way too heavy for Fall Out Boy. Why don’t we use them and write some songs together?”
I thought that was a cool idea, since Anthrax were kind of in limbo. I told Joe I’d learn the riffs and start coming up with new ideas while he was in Japan. I was in Chicago soon after Joe returned, and we started getting together to work on songs. We had both come up with some ideas, and before we knew it we had three or four song skeletons. They were dark and moody like the first riffs he showed me, and two of them, “Ironiclast” and “Grave Robber,” eventually made it onto the Damned Things album, but they had different names at the time. Those songs are pretty representative of what we were doing at the beginning, and they convinced me that we could actually make a record together.
Joe called Fall Out Boy drummer Andy Hurley, who’s a total metalhead. Before he joined Fall Out Boy, Andy only played thrash metal and hardcore, and he’s a great drummer. We rehearsed in this crappy basement at Johnny K’s studio building in Chicago; he let us use the place for cheap. We had a bunch of gear down there, and we went down to rehearse and write. Our buddy from Washburn, David, was playing bass, and we were rehearsing these songs.
We had five solid ideas together, but we didn’t have a singer. It was a common dilemma for me. One night we were driving around Chicago listening to Every Time I Die, and Joe and I both agreed, “If we could get Keith Buckley to sing for us, that would rule.”
“I know him,” Joe said. “Let me text him right now.”
Joe told him he was our first choice for a singer for our new band and asked him if he had time and was interested. Keith was flattered that we thought of him and asked us to send him some songs right away. We found out after the fact that Keith really didn’t think it was ever going to happen so he may as well just say yes. At the time we thought we would call the band Methuselah; that didn’t stick. Keith listened to our demos and wrote back to tell us that he loved the songs, he was in, and he’d start writing immediately.
Not long after, we were all in New York at a bar across the street from Irving Plaza with Pearl, Joe’s girlfriend, Marie, and Rob Caggiano, who was back in Anthrax. I felt like it would be great to have Rob in the new band. It made sense for us to have three guitarists because the music we were writing had all these Thin Lizzy-esque guitar parts.
“We need Rob in this band,” I said to Joe when Caggiano stepped out to go to the bathroom. “Imagine the harmony possibilities. We’d be able to do everything live, and you guys get along great. His playing, writing, and production skills would be a real asset.”
Joe agreed, so when Rob got back I asked him if he wanted to be in Methuselah. Back then, he jokingly referred to it as Mejewselah since Joe and I were Jewish. Rob was surprised I asked him, but he was also stoked. He liked the songs we were writing and wanted to be a part of it. When the band started to get serious and the songs were really coming together, we realized that David, the one who had introduced us, wasn’t the right bass player and there was no way he was going to be able to track the record and tour with us. He just couldn’t keep up. It really sucked.
The band started out as a goofy project between a bunch of friends, and all of a sudden it became serious and one of the founders no longer cut it. Joe told him, and David was understandably upset. I didn’t talk to him for a couple of years. I’ve reconnected with him since, but our relationship was definitely strained for a while.
Mejewselah was rechristened The Damned Things by Keith, taking the name from a lyric from the song “Black Betty.” We were having fun and the songs seemed to be writing themselves. We’d listen to something like “We’ve Got a Situation,” and Rob would say, “Hmm, it doesn’t have a chorus.” So I’d pick up a guitar and say, “What about this,” and
play a riff off the top of my head, and it would be perfect. Joe had really stepped it up as well, writing the bulk of the music and coming up with killer riffs for songs like “Handbook for the Recently Deceased” and “A Great Reckoning.” Even though The Damned Things’ songs gelled easily, the record took longer to make than anyone expected, mainly because Joe and Rob were meticulous about everything. We experimented with tons of gear and tones and sounds on Ironiclast because they wanted to be sure all of the ideas worked as well as possible.
Fall Out Boy’s label, Island Def Jam, had the right of first refusal on the album, and they wanted it. Then they completely dropped the ball, as we knew they would. But we had no choice, which fucking sucked. We thought we had a fighting chance because Bob McLynn from Crush Management, who manages Fall Out Boy, took on The Damned Things as well, and he knew all these people at Island Def Jam. We figured he’d motivate them to love the record and promote it properly. But once again, as it is with record companies, the guy who was running the label for a while, L. A. Reid, left and someone else was hired. Or maybe it was vice versa. I can’t keep track of all these executive shifts. I just know all kinds of shit was happening on a corporate level, and budgets were frozen. The word of the day became no. No, we can’t do that; no, we can’t do this. Maybe one out of fifty things they said they’d do actually came to fruition.
Fans of Fall Out Boy, Anthrax, and Every Time I Die who had read about the project were interested at first, but a lot of people didn’t even know there was a record out. We figured we had a platinum album with four strong radio hits. They sure sounded like radio hits to me. But when Ironiclast came out in 2010, Island did nothing. If we had someone on the team who was really behind it, we could have sold a million copies based on the pedigree and the quality of the music we wrote. Fuck, we gave them such a no-brainer, and they found a way to screw it up. At the worst, I figured we’d sell at least 100,000 records, and we didn’t sell half that.
That being the case, touring for The Damned Things was great. We got to experience the excitement of being a new band starting out. The fact that we were all already friends made it that much better, because under normal circumstances, with our bands’ schedules, I would never get to hang out with Keith that much. Now, we got to travel the world together and really become friends. We did a Jägermeister tour, a headline run in the US, festivals in Europe, a US tour with Volbeat, the Soundwave Festival in Australia, and the reaction was really good. If we had the time after all the touring to write more songs and go back into the studio to record another record, I think we could have broken the band. But we only had a certain window before everyone had to go back to their day jobs.
We’d all still like to do a follow-up to Ironiclast one day, but who knows when that could happen because you’re dealing with guys in four active bands. Fall Out Boy are doing really well right now, and Anthrax are coming off our biggest album since Sound of White Noise. Even if we could write a new The Damned Things record in the next year or so, when would we be able to tour it? It’s not like we could ever spend a year traveling around the world. It would have to be three weeks here, four weeks there, every once in a while. That’s possible, but who knows? The one thing I do know is it wouldn’t be on Island.
Chapter 31
Belladonna and
the Big 4
For a while, I was double-shifting between The Damned Things and Anthrax. In 2009, when Anthrax were still in the writing phase for Worship Music, we were invited to do a bunch of Sonisphere shows in Europe. We couldn’t believe we were going to lose our opportunity. We thought about who we might be able to get to sing with us, and we figured why not at least ask John Bush to fly out to England with us and do this one show August 1 in Knebworth. I had been in touch with John the whole time he was out of the band. I’d see him here and there, so it wasn’t like we had this ugly rift. We figured the worst he could do was say no. Charlie and I got on the phone with him and asked him if he would play Sonisphere with us.
“I can’t leave today to go . . .”
“No, no,” I interrupted. “We’re blowing off a couple weeks of shows. We’re hoping to just go over and play Knebworth; it’s such a historic place. We just wanted to put it out there and see if you might be interested.”
John paused, which I took as a good sign. He asked if he could have the weekend to think about it. We told him that was fine. Then he called us back on Monday and told us he would do it. The hope, of course, was he’d have such a good time and realize how much he missed being in the band that he’d rejoin. I wasn’t expecting it, but that would have been ideal. We flew to England and rehearsed the day before the show at a studio in London. It was like no time had passed. It felt awesome and the show was incredible.
There was so much emotion in the air when we hit the stage. Pearl was standing on the side crying. I was so overcome after the show that I was dizzy and had to sit down in the dressing room. I almost passed out, and I hadn’t even smoked any weed. Everyone in the band was euphoric, and we were hoping John felt the same way. Maybe we were kidding ourselves, but we honestly felt like that experience might be enough to show him that he needed to be back in Anthrax.
I tried exerting my magical powers of persuasion. “Don’t you want to be doing this again?” I asked, trying to be gentle, not pushy. “Your kids are a little older now. We can tour less, and you can bring the family on the road when you want to.”
He wasn’t into it. He loved playing the show, but he wasn’t ready to be back in the band. Early the next year we asked him if he would play the Soundwave Festival shows in Australia with us, and to our surprise he said he would. That’s when we started talking more seriously to him about doing a record. Worship Music was almost finished. The preliminary guide vocals were done, so we told John we were going to send him the music.
“I don’t really know about making an album,” he responded. “Doing shows once in a while is one thing, but recording an album is a huge commitment. I’m not there. I’m not ready to do that.”
We sent him MP3s of stuff we had done anyway, and I said, “Just give it a listen and let us know what you think.”
Soon after, he came back to me and said, “This is really good. But what if we can’t top We’ve Come for You All?”
“I’m telling you, with the songs we have, we’re going to top We’ve Come for You All.”
I thought John was actually going to come back. My guarded optimism was taking off its jacket. “Yeah, I really like it. Do you want to start writing to it?”
“Well, I have some stuff I’m really happy with lyrically and melodically, but I’ll scrap the whole thing if you want to start from scratch.”
“No, if you like your ideas, I’ll listen to them.”
It seemed like everything was slowly moving forward. It was all about baby steps. We were reeling him in. Eventually he wouldn’t be able to help himself. He’s John fucking Bush. We felt like it was in his blood to do this. We played five huge festival shows in Australia, and they were amazing. John sang with the enthusiasm and aggression of a gifted kid who had just joined his first band, and we were at the top of our game. When we flew back home, however, there was a lot of tension and irritability. It was time to shit or get off the pot.
Finally, John said he would do it. He asked us to send him all the music we had, and he was ready to formulate a plan with us to make it happen contractually. Our manager was Mark Adelman from CAM, part of Irving Azoff’s empire. He was the guy who got Dave Ellefson back into Megadeth. He was insanely confident, and we trusted that he’d be able to seal the deal with John. We set a meeting at Adelman’s office in LA. It was me, John, Charlie, and Frankie. Everyone was under the impression that we were going to walk out of the meeting with John Bush back in Anthrax. Then we would finish Worship Music and take Anthrax back to the top of the metal heap. We all sat down and in no time we were shooting the shit and busting one anothe
r’s balls like we’ve always done. Mark started talking about an eighteen-month plan during which the record would come out and we would play all these headline tours in big places. We were all listening intently when John spoke up.
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but I can’t do this.”
The room went dead silent. I had spoken to John on the phone the night before, and he was still in. Sixteen hours later and the world was upside down again.
“I can’t do this,” he repeated.
“We all came to this meeting to make plans,” I said. “You said you were back in. You said you wanted to do this.”
“I know,” he said. “But I spent last night really, really thinking about it, and the reality of it hit me. I can’t be the guy you want me to be. If it was just going out and playing shows every couple of months, big festivals, etc., etc., then fine. I’d love to play shit like that every once in a while. But you guys need a singer who’s going to go out and work.”
He knew we needed to play 150 shows or more to support our next record, and he couldn’t do that. He didn’t want to be away from his children for that long. He said his heart wouldn’t be in the right place, and we needed someone who was 100 percent there and wanted to be on the road.