by Scott Ian
“I’m just not that guy anymore,” he added. “I wouldn’t be happy. I have no animosity about anything that happened in the past. I love you guys. The shows we just did were fucking awesome, but I can’t do this unless you tell me we’re only going to do thirty shows next year. And if you tell me that, I’ll know you’re lying.”
We were stupefied, speechless. We looked around the room at John, at each other, at the ground. We were so close . . .
After way too long, Mark asked if anyone had any ideas. I said I wasn’t going to audition a new singer we didn’t know. And that was when Charlie suggested bringing back Joey. Frankie, Mark, and even Bush agreed that made the most sense and it was a great idea. It was weird to have John’s blessings, since bringing Joey back in the band for the reunion tour was the wedge that drove Bush out and caused such bad blood.
“Remember what happened at the end of the reunion tour? How do we know Joey would even want to come back? We didn’t exactly make things easy for him. How is this possibly going to work?”
From that point, the discussion was on the table, and it was the upcoming Big 4 tour that made the idea of Joey coming back make all the sense in the world. The chance to be part of a celebration of the birth and longevity of thrash metal with some of our best friends and the singer who was with us when it was all happening was definitely appealing. I decided that if Joey wanted to try again I was all in.
I was on tour with Pearl, just after the release of Little Immaculate White Fox, and we were playing New York at the Studio at Webster Hall. Frankie was in town, and Charlie happened to be in New York as well, so we asked Joey if he would come down from upstate and meet with us. Charlie called him and told him about the Big 4 shows we had coming up. He told Joey that he really wanted him to play the concerts with us since he was a big part of the evolution of thrash as well. Joey agreed to meet us in the city, and they all came to the Pearl show.
It was good to see Joey, and we all went out for coffee the next day. It was probably the shortest business meeting ever. I said, “We want you back, we want to be a band again,” and Charlie added, “Is everyone on the same page? Do we all want to do this and move forward as a band? Can we finish Worship Music together, whatever it takes?”
Everyone, including Joey, gave an enthusiastic yes.
“All I ever wanted to do was be in the band,” Joey said. “Let’s do it again.”
It was as simple as that. I can pinpoint April 29, 2010, as the day everything turned back around for Anthrax. The ship was back on its proper course. Or, to use a reference from Greek mythology, instead of us pushing this giant boulder up a hill like Sisyphus, it started to roll downhill for the first time in a long time.
The Big 4 shows played a major role in reintegrating Joey into Anthrax. We were celebrating the legacy of thrash with Metallica, the band that first brought it to the masses. It was only natural that we had Joey playing those concerts, since he was the singer for Anthrax when we were indisputably one of the four bands that created thrash metal. We had done our share of shows over the years with Slayer and Megadeth, but there was always this idea that it would be awesome to get the Big 4 together for a tour. We all waited for Metallica to come up with the same idea, but they never even came close. There were never any talks between them and the other bands before it happened. The first time I got an inkling that the Big 4 tour might actually happen was when Charlie and I got invited to Metallica’s Hall of Fame induction in Cleveland on April 5, 2009. We were at the bar at the aftershow party, and Lars came up to the two of us. We congratulated him and hung out for a little while shooting the shit, and then, kind of in passing but out of the blue, he said, “What would you guys think about doing Big 4 shows?”
“Huh? What do you mean?” I said. I didn’t even register what he was talking about because it was so far from what we were discussing and the possibility had never been mentioned before. He repeated, “What’dya think about doing Big 4 shows?”
Again it was like, “What? Big what?”
“You know, Big 4 shows—us, you guys, Slayer, and Megadeth.”
When we understood what he was saying, Charlie and I both said, “Yeah, of course! That would be fucking awesome! But that’s never gonna happen. When are we gonna do that? That’s what you guys wanna do?”
Lars didn’t answer that question. He just shrugged, smiled, and left the idea hanging in the air.
Cut to late 2009, and we started to hear rumors. There were rumblings in the music community, and then we finally got an official call from Metallica’s management asking us what our availability was for these certain dates in the summer of 2010. They were putting together the Big 4 shows and wanted to make sure everyone was going to be around. That’s when it actually became a reality. Before that it was all speculation. The whole period leading up to those shows was super exciting, knowing that this was going to happen for the first time ever. The concerts went on sale really early. The public knew they were happening, and it blew their minds. All these shows were far away—Poland, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania. People were chomping at the bit, waiting for Metallica to book some Big 4 shows in the States and the rest of Europe. The excitement was electric. Holy crap! The Big 4’s coming. Metallica hired a team to film the fourth show, in Sofia, Bulgaria, and simulcast it in theaters across the world. And then they released it on DVD. There was definitely a lot of planning that went into these concerts.
The first show was in Warsaw, Poland, and Metallica invited all the bands to a party the night before at an Italian restaurant. Then we got word that wives, girlfriends, and tour managers had to wait until three hours into the party to attend. We all thought, “Huh?” We all know each other’s wives, so it seemed weird they would make the party this exclusive event. But they really just wanted the guys in the bands to be able to hang out, catch up, and feel the vibe of what was about to happen without any distractions.
That night we all showed up at this restaurant—seventeen dudes in the four bands—and I gotta hand it to Metallica. Everything they do is planned with such military precision. The way their business is run and operated takes every contingency into account before making any decision. Looking back, this was the right thing to do. The vibe was so cool and special. All of the band dudes who had been there since 1981 were starting to hang out with each other again, and it was amazing to look around the room and see the conversations that were going on. Dave Mustaine and Kirk Hammett were hanging out and talking. I had certainly never seen that before. I knew Metallica when Dave was in the band, and then I was there when Dave was out of Metallica and Kirk came in, but I never saw the two of them in the same room together, let alone hugging, smiling, and talking. There were no distractions and it was a great reintroduction for a lot of people. Then later on, when everyone’s wives, girlfriends, and friends came in, it turned into a big party.
It was a great idea for Metallica to put the dinner together the way they did because it broke the ice between all of us. Going into the show the next day, everyone was comfortable. There were no awkward moments, we were all happy to be there. That set the tone for the whole tour, and at that point we all knew the Big 4 shows were going to be incredible because we all really wanted to be there.
Joey Belladonna was as excited as the rest of us to play those shows. He was on fire, performing better than ever, singing with more range, clarity, and confidence than I’d heard from him in a long time. Performing with Joey in the summer of 2010 and on the fall 2010 Jäger tour with Slayer and Megadeth helped solidify our relationship again because we did so well at those concerts and all the bands were having a blast. It became clear, once again, that Joey was our guy, which gave those tours this triumphant spirit and opened the door for the future in a way we hadn’t experienced in a long time.
I love all the guys in Metallica and Slayer, and I have a good relationship with everyone in Megadeth as well, so we’ve always had
fun when we went out with those guys. Over the years, a lot of people have had friction with Megadeth front man Dave Mustaine, but he has always been cool to me. I knew him way back when he was in Metallica when they first arrived in New York from San Francisco. He came to the first Country Club show Anthrax played with Raven in Los Angeles. He had only been out of Metallica a little while at that point, and he already had demos for what became Megadeth’s first album, Killing Is My Business . . . and Business Is Good.
After the show we sat in some girl’s car, and he played me “The Skull Beneath the Skin,” the title track, and “Last Rites / Loved to Death.” I said, “Dude, this is amazing!” And he joked, “Right, right, I fucking rule! Those guys kicked me out of the band, I’ll show them!”
Like I said, Dave has always been a friend, even going above and beyond, like when we played on the Maximum Rock tour with Megadeth and Mötley, and he always made sure our backdrop got hung up when he went to check the stage as well as taking our gear on their truck back to New Jersey for us after we left that tour. The only time there was any weirdness between Dave and I was a few years ago, and I wasn’t around when it happened. Pearl and I were on vacation, driving around with our friend Joe Bastianich in Friuli, in the beautiful northeastern part of Italy. We were heading to a restaurant in the countryside when my phone rang. Our manager said, “Have you seen [the metal news website] Brave Words?”
“No, I’m in the middle of nowhere. I’m lucky I even have a phone signal.”
“It’s all over the place,” he continued. Mustaine is telling these stories about how you told him in 1986 before Cliff died that Metallica were going fire Lars when they got home.”
I don’t know if I ever told Dave that. I don’t know why I would, but maybe I did at some point. The story wasn’t a secret. People knew it and Lars knew it. My manager went on, “Well, Dave’s promoting something, and in every interview he does he seems to be mentioning that you told him this story.”
That night when we got back to the house where we were staying, I called Dave and said, “Hey man, what’s going on?” I told him what my manager told me and asked why he was bringing that up in interviews.
“Yeah, yeah, I figured I’d get your name out there and get you in the press to help you promote your book.”
“Dave, I don’t have a book,” I told him. I have no idea why he thought I did.
“Huh? You don’t have a book?”
“No, Dave. No book, nothing. No record coming out. There’s nothing happening right at this moment. Next time you want to do something to promote me, run it by me first, please.” (Hey, I have a book now . . .)
I quickly got hold of Lars. I texted him and said I didn’t know why Dave was telling twenty-year-old stories. He didn’t really seem to care. It was just weird. But that’s the only time I’ve had anything approaching a bad experience with Dave, and compared to a lot of people he’s come in contact with over the decades, that’s pretty good.
In September and October 2010 on the tour with Slayer and Megadeth, we went back and started carefully listening to the songs for Worship Music. We needed to figure out what was good and what had to be changed, what we still loved and what could go in the scrap heap. We sat in the dressing room every day and listened to the songs and went over them with a fine-toothed comb. We focused on the arrangements and made sure that every part of each song was the best it could be. Understanding Joey’s strengths as a singer—which are considerable—really helped lift the music from good to great. By the end of the year, we had all the arrangements for the record ready to go. The band was working together in a way we never had before, and it was clear that this time Anthrax really were back as powerful as ever!
Some of the tracks for Worship Music, such as “Fight ’Em ’til You Can’t,” came together really easily. It was one of the first songs Charlie and I wrote in late 2006. Charlie had the main riffs, I had the idea for the middle bridge part, and the arrangement came together immediately. I wrote the words in the backroom of the old house in Beverlywood where Pearl and I lived. The idea of using a zombie holocaust as a metaphor for the band never dying instantly came to me. But the title came from a line in the new Battlestar Galactica TV series. I always wanted to write a song with that title, but as nerdy as I am, I couldn’t figure out a way to actually write a song about the story of two of the show’s characters, Chief Galen Tyrol (Aaron Douglas) and Kara “Starbuck” Thrace (Katee Sackhoff). They were fighting the Cylons until they couldn’t. That was simple enough. But the title was more about us as a band—Charlie, Frankie, and I—never stopping, never giving in, and never letting anything kill us. Literally, we will fight until we can’t. There were also lines in that song inspired by the Steve Niles comic 30 Days of Night. “The darkest devil nightmare blacker than their evil souls, you gotta fight ’em / God save us prayers fall on deaf ears” comes from a part in the comic where someone’s praying to God, and the vampires are like, “There is no God!” On the surface, it’s the nerdiest song I’ve ever written, which, as a sci-fi and comic book freak, I’m extremely proud of.
Some songs were harder to nail than others—much harder. “In the End” took forever to get right. It went through so many different revisions, and it still wasn’t quite there even when we worked it through the demo stage and I started the lyrics. I knew I wanted to write a song about Dimebag Darrell, not necessarily paying tribute but about the loss of our friend and how much we miss him. Only, I felt I wasn’t doing him justice. I’d read back ideas I came up with, and they sounded so cheesy. I’d throw them away, write something else, and it seemed just as bad. As hard as it was to come up with the lyrics, the melody was maybe even harder. We all had ideas—me, Frankie, Charlie, and Rob—and we were trying to make it cohesive, but nothing was working. We’d give it a rest and come back three days later with other ideas, and they still weren’t strong enough.
At some point, I realized I could write the song about Darrell and Ronnie James Dio. They were both close to us and they were both heroes. That’s when the lyrics started coming together better because it didn’t have to be all about this one person. I could make it a little more general but just as reverential. Then, when Rob and I were on tour with the Damned Things in early 2010, we were in the car in Detroit, and Charlie sent an MP3 to both of our phones. He wrote, “I think I’ve got it!”
We listened to the file, and it was this whole new arrangement with a completely different chorus that elevated the song to where it needed to be. Rob and I were cranking it in the car and digging this new guitar harmony part and the solo. We called Charlie back and said, “Dude, that’s it! Finally!!”
Worship Music is filled with great tracks. It’s the most complete album we’ve ever made. “In the End” is my favorite song on the record and my favorite to play live. I’m so proud that we stuck with it and hammered away at it and IN THE END we got it right.
I knew I wanted to write some different kinds of lyrics on Worship Music. I had done a lot of songs about bad relationships, my divorce, and questioning my place in life. I wanted to write about everything on Worship Music—from comic book science fiction to real-life politics. For “I’m Alive” I combined ideas about religion and politics. I’m fine with religious people. They can believe what they want. But when it comes to fanaticism from any religion, things get scary. Some religions have the ability to brainwash people, and I expressed that with lines like “Look into my holy eyes / An empty smile and you’re hypnotized.” Then I really wanted to put a strong message in there about what the Republican Party has become.
In my lifetime the Republican Party has changed so drastically from what it was in the age of Ronald Reagan in the eighties. A lot of Republicans look at Ronald Reagan as a hero. But I feel like they have no idea, other than the fact that he was a famous and popular Republican who came into office after Jimmy Carter. He took the power back for the party. That’s true. But if they went back
and looked at his policies and what he represented—especially tax-wise—it went drastically against everything the Republicans have been saying since the year 2000. They quote this guy all the time as being their Jesus, yet at the same time everything they want to do is the opposite of what Reagan did. It’s become all about money, and they’ll kowtow to the religious Right or any special-interest group that’s got the cash regardless if they actually feel that way.
These people are so fucking hard up for votes, they would do anything and sell their souls to anybody. If the fucking Phelps’ church—the fucking “God Hates Fags” people—had enough power and money, you can bet the fucking Republicans would’ve sided with them to win a House or Senate seat. It just sickens me that this once-great party aligned themselves with the hardcore religious fanaticism that exists in America, thinking that’s what was going to save the country, and it certainly didn’t.
Not to get on my political soapbox here, because people like Bono and Tom Morello do it much better than I ever could, but there’s stuff in that song as well about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld leading America to war. As a nation, America is a child compared to the rest of the world. We’re not even three hundred years old, and we’re led like children by these people into war, over and over. These hawks prefer military conflict to peace because they only care about money. What are people going to look back on when they examine the 2000–2010 era? What is history going to say about that decade, with the wars we got into and the weapons of mass destruction we declared were in Iraq but didn’t exist? When the government starts to create laws by sucking up to the religious Right, that starts to affect me. That’s where I feel I have to make my voice heard through my music and stand up and protect my right as a free American, because their policies go against everything that I believe in and take away freedom.
Look, I’m not some whiny liberal either. I’m a human being who has his own opinions. Turn off the TV. Get off the Internet. Go outside and live.