by Scott Ian
Chapter 32
Rock-a-Bye Baby
When things are going well, that’s when the bottom sometimes drops out. From the time we released Stomp 442, I had gotten used to that happening. I can’t say I ever became immune to it—being an optimist in general means every disappointment still feels like a knife to the gut—but the old scars healed over time, and the anticipation that life is destined to improve kept me going. Since 2010 the ground has been pretty solid under my feet, and with each step I’ve been able to reach a higher personal plateau.
In January 2011, Pearl and I decided to get married. We had been together ten years and had talked about it for ages. Since we had both been married before—me twice—neither of us felt the need to have a piece of paper drawn up just to prove that we were a couple and we were in love. We would fantasize about it happening somewhere down the line, but Pearl never pressured me to get married, and I never felt the need to do it until she got pregnant. It just made sense at that point, and why not? We were completely in love, we were best friends, and we were about to start a new chapter in our lives together. I knew that getting married wouldn’t change us.
We had talked about children a lot over the years, and we’d always say, “When the time is right.” Well, there really never is a right time, so in 2010 we just decided to stop worrying about it. We weren’t trying to have a baby, but we weren’t trying not to, either. We pretty much knew what would happen; we just didn’t think it would happen so fast. We’re pretty sure our son, Revel, was conceived in Louisville on the Jäger tour with Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax. Megadeth had a bowling party on a night off, and Pearl and I got pretty tanked up, went back to the hotel, and made a drunk baby. Based on when she took the pregnancy test and when her obstetrician predicted her due date, we were able to trace it back to around that time. We were both unbelievably excited. A baby! Holy crap!!! I knew I always wanted a child and always imagined that moment of realizing it was happening. The reality was even bigger and better than anything my brain could conjure up. Pearl and I were ecstatic and so were our families.
A few months later my dad had his seventieth birthday party in Las Vegas, and we decided to surprise him by setting up a surprise wedding to go along with his party. Nobody knew what was going on. My dad was there with his wife, Rhea, my brothers Jason and Sean, Jason’s wife Tina, and our friend Brian Posehn and his wife, Melanie, who happened to be in Vegas at the same time.
I invited my mom as well, but she was in Florida then. I waited to invite her because the wedding was such a secret and I didn’t want my dad to find out at all. Nobody knew anything. By the time I told her, she felt like the trip was too much to handle so she didn’t come, but everything was fine. I wasn’t mad and she was happy for me. Her firstborn was having a child. What could be better for a Jewish mom?
Pearl and I planned all the logistics, getting our license, booking the chapel, around my dad’s birthday plans. My dad got tickets to see the Cirque du Soleil show The Beatles Love. We were all going to go to the performance and then have dinner. Pearl told my dad she planned for a limo to come pick us up from Love and take us to the restaurant so we wouldn’t have to deal with cabs.
We all got in the limo, which was stocked with champagne. We were driving and driving. Everyone thought we were going to the Cosmopolitan. No one was paying attention to how long the drive was because we were all having drinks and talking about how great the show was. And then I saw the chapel and smiled.
The limo turned into the parking lot, and my stepmom said, “Where are we going. . . . Oh my God! They realized what we had pulled off, and it was fucking awesome. My dad was so happy. We had an Elvis impersonator marry us, then we got back in the limo and went to dinner. It was the ideal way to get married rather than have months of planning and inviting three hundred guests. I’m sure if we had done that, it would have been a fucking fantastic party, but in its way this was so much cooler.
When Pearl and I got back to LA, we had to start preparing for the baby. We needed to find a new house because the place we were renting at that time didn’t have heat. There was a woodburning stove that’d heat the place and we had space heaters, but we had a baby coming and we’re not pioneers. Also, I was back and forth on tour with the Damned Things. I started coming home early from those tours to be with Pearl as much as I could while she was pregnant.
Before long, the sonograms started coming in, which were really cool. We’d come home with fifty pictures of the baby and video. Pearl’s doctor was nuts for that, and to him it proved the baby was fine and we had nothing to worry about. But still you worry. That seems the main role of a parent—to worry. That’s all my mother ever did. And Revel wasn’t even born yet.
All in all Pearl had an easy pregnancy. Now that is not taking anything away from how hard it is for a woman to be pregnant no matter how “easy” or “smooth” things go. For the man, the stress of his lady going through pregnancy may be bad, but for the woman it’s unfathomable. As guys, we can never really know.
I’ll never complain about the birth of my son, because it’s the greatest thing that’s happened in my life, but the timing could have been better. Anthrax had done the first seven Big 4 dates in 2010, starting June 16 in Warsaw, Poland, and ending in Istanbul, Turkey, June 27. Since that went so well, Metallica lined up seven more Big 4 shows, mostly in Europe, but including two shows in the US, April 23 in Indio, California, at the Empire Polo Club and September 14 at Yankee Stadium (we’ll get to that later).
Pearl was due in June, which presented a dilemma. I had never missed an Anthrax show in the history of the band. As sick as I’d been with the flu or as delirious as I was from exhaustion or heatstroke, I always took the stage. Up to that point the only concert we canceled was in Dusseldorf, Germany, in the late eighties because Charlie was too sick to play. There was no question in my mind that I was going to be there with Pearl for Revel’s birth and that I was going to have to miss some of the Big 4 shows. There was nothing that would’ve taken me away from that. That was obviously my biggest priority. But the idea of not playing those shows was really weird. I made it perfectly clear to everyone that I had to take three months off when Revel was born, and no one had a problem with that. At the same time, we didn’t know what to do.
The first person I thought of to fill my spot was Andreas Kisser from Sepultura. Well, James Hetfield was my first choice, but that wasn’t going to happen. So, Andreas was perfect. I’ve known him forever. He’s a great rhythm guitar player and he understands the aggression of the music. And he’s a name, a personality. That was important to me. If I couldn’t be there, I wanted to make sure that whoever was onstage in my place was someone people knew and would be psyched to see. Andreas is a fucking icon. Everybody in the metal world knows who he is, and he’s universally respected. He wasn’t like some unknown dude that we’ve never hung out with. We’ve played with Sepultura and been fans of Sepultura forever.
We sent him everything he needed to learn. I e-mailed him once a week and wrote, “Hey, do you need me to make any videos of how the riffs go?” He always wrote back, “Nope. I’m all good. I got it.” He never asked for help and he didn’t need it. I loved his confidence, but I couldn’t help but be nervous because there was going to be someone onstage in my place.
As these things go, Pearl’s delivery was normal and fast, considering it was her first baby. Her doctor, Dr. Paul Crane, started the maternity ward at Cedars-Sinai in LA in the early seventies, so she was in the best hands in the best hospital. They took such great care of her, we didn’t want to leave! I can’t tell you how important it was to feel safe in that scenario. As first-time parents we didn’t know shit, so trusting the doctor and nurses was paramount. There was a moment when Pearl’s doctor had to manually break her water, and that caused her some intense pain. She was writhing on the bed, and it took every bit of self-control I had to not tackle the doctor off the bed onto the floor to
stop her pain. She went to sleep not too long after that, and when Dr. Crane came back in the morning, he checked her cervix and said, “Are you ready to have a baby?”
At 10:19 a.m. on June 19, 2011, Pearl and I became parents. The second I saw Revel’s head come out, my whole life changed. I cut the umbilical cord, which seemed like a revelation. Everything I ever thought I knew was different. It was insane and amazing. It was like a switch was flipped, and suddenly this infinite amount of love filled my heart for this baby, this person I didn’t even know yet but I would take a bullet for. All of that profound emotion, and I hadn’t even eaten any ’shrooms.
A week after Revel was born, I was as happy as I’ve ever been and just as sleep deprived. Meanwhile, Anthrax were in Germany rehearsing before the first show of the run. Since I couldn’t be directly involved, we set up a FaceTime session. Revel was only a week old, so I was sitting there with my tiny, tiny baby, feeding him a bottle, and watching Anthrax rehearse without me. They were jamming in the rehearsal room with Andreas, and it was so surreal, yet at the same time it was perfectly right because I was exactly where I wanted to be. I didn’t feel, “Oh God, I’m missing this.” If it wasn’t Andreas, maybe I would have been more freaked out by the whole thing, but Andreas really saved me and made it okay for me not to be there. The shows started, and I got reports back that Andreas was a perfect fit and everything was going well. The guys were telling me I should relax and enjoy being a dad. And then I got a call from our manager.
He said, “You’re gonna wanna fucking shoot me, but we need you to fly to Italy for the show in Milan on July 7.”
“You’re outta your fucking mind!” I said. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got a two-week-old baby here. This is where I need to be.”
And he said, “Well, Guitar World is shooting the Big 4 cover. It’s you, Mustaine, Kerry, James, and Kirk. And we just really feel like you would rather be there than not be there.”
I was irate. “Who’s thinking that? I’m not thinking that! I’m not getting on a plane from LA to fucking Milan.”
They literally wanted me to fly in, do a photo shoot, and then fly home, which meant twenty-eight hours of flying just to go take a picture. I asked them why the photographer, Ross Halfin, couldn’t shoot me in LA and then composite the shot. Magazines do that all the time. And they said, “Guitar World doesn’t want a composite. Ross doesn’t want to do it that way. Guitar World said they want you guys in the room together, at the same time, because they’re doing the interviews backstage that day, and it’s happening with or without you.”
I talked about it with Pearl, and she was the one who said, “Look, you really should be there. It’s okay.” But in my heart, it wasn’t okay. It was fucked. They were really putting the screws to me, and finally I said, “Alright. I’m gonna fucking do this. I’ll leave my wife and my two-week-old son to go take a picture for fucking Guitar World.” My voice dripped with venom, like, “You motherfuckers owe me.”
I got into Milan late at night, and the next day was the show. So I got driven over to the venue site, and I saw everybody. It was so weird because the tour had been going on for a few weeks already, and I just came walking in. It was like I had entered the Twilight Zone. I wasn’t on the tour, but suddenly I was there. It was great to see everybody, and they all asked about the baby. We did the photo shoot and the interviews, and then the question was, do I play the show?
My right hand was in no shape to do it. My chops were nowhere near where they needed to be to properly play an Anthrax concert. And I truthfully didn’t want to do it. I felt weird about that, because we all sat there—me, Charlie, Frankie, Joey, Andreas, and Rob—and I said, “You know, it’s strange that I would just come and show up and play the show and have Andreas sit out.” I didn’t think that was cool, and that’s when we came up with the idea of having the band start with Andreas, and three or four songs in, when they got to “Indians,” I would walk out at the part where I scream “War Dance!” every night, and then play the show out from that point. It would be a special surprise for the audience because no one knew I was there.
So the show started. They opened with “Caught in a Mosh.” I was standing stage left by the monitor board watching. And I had my guitar on because I wanted to play along unplugged to warm up and get my hands ready since I hadn’t played guitar in months. I was standing next to Kerry King. He looked at me and then looked at the stage and said, “Wow. This is pretty fucking cool, huh?” And I said, “Actually, it is!” And he went, “Yeah, I never get to see Slayer!” It was a special moment because I really watched them up there, and they were kicking ass. I thought, “Yeah! Anthrax are fucking great!!” I thought, “When do I get a chance to stand and watch my band? Never.” And Andreas was fucking awesome. His tone was ripping, and he was tight as fuck with the rest of the band.
Finally, they got to “Indians.” I walked out, the crowd saw me, and the place went fucking bananas. It was so fucking cool playing with two rhythm guitars on stage left, because Andreas and I were so tight even though we had never gotten together to work on the songs. For those next five songs, it sounded like one massive brutal fucking guitar coming off of stage left, and with the two of us doing the backup vocals together, it was so good to the point where I thought, “Man, we should just have him join Anthrax!”
The experience was so rewarding I didn’t feel that mad about having to fly for twenty-eight hours straight to make it happen. To do the photo—whatever. That was a jerk-off. But to get onstage and have that musical experience with my band and another rhythm guitar player and just have it be so mind-blowingly cool and sound so great, that actually rectified it in my brain, like, “Okay, I did the right thing.”
After the show, the guys were all trying to get me to come on the bus because they had a day off in London and then the next show was the big Knebworth concert, which was going to be in front of 75,000 people. Everyone was saying, “Just get on the bus! It’s one more day!” and although I was tempted I put my foot down. “It’s not one more day. It’ll be two more days and then the flight home which makes it three more days.” So I said, “Fuck that shit, I’m getting on the plane and I’m flying home.” I couldn’t wait to get back in the house and see Pearl and Revel. That meant more to me than anything.
I truly believe Pearl and I were meant to save each other because we were both on terrible paths when we met. Whoever is pulling those strings certainly pulled the right two at the right moment, and our lives have only gotten better with the birth of Revel Young Ian. You think you can’t have any more love than you do in your life, and then your child comes and everything amplifies. My love for the both of them has increased dramatically. Pearl and I are going on fourteen years together, and it’s the best. As they say, third time’s a charm. I just hope we both live long enough to be two old crabs sitting on a porch somewhere, yelling at kids cutting across our front lawn. I was never able to picture that in my other relationships, but I absolutely envision us together when we’re eighty, ninety, one hundred to infinity.
Fortunately, I’m thirty years from that now, and Anthrax still have a lot to accomplish before then—not that we’ll be jumping around the stage in our seventies like the Rolling Stones, but Worship Music definitely injected new hope and life into the band, so I think we’ll stick around for a while.
I don’t know if it has anything to do with having kids and learning patience or getting older and being more tolerant, or just growing the fuck up and putting my ego in the backseat. But I feel like I understand Joey more now than I did in the past. Since he’s rejoined I think we’ve gotten closer as friends and bandmates. I have his back. In the eighties I never put the time in to get to know Joey as a person; we didn’t hang out at all. We spent a lot of time together when he came back for Worship Music, and the experience was enlightening. Everyone in Anthrax has a distinct personality, and instead of fighting with someone whose interests and abilities
contrast with mine, I’ve learned to accept them. We’re all people. I’ve learned to let people be people instead of trying to control them. And maybe I have Pearl and Revel to thank for that.
Joey is a great front man. He just has that “thing,” that ability to hold an audience in his hands for two hours and take them on a ride. His spot-on vocals and maniacal energy are what put him in the rarified air of great front men. Seriously, the only other guy that moves as much as Joey and hits every note is Bruce Dickinson. That’s good company. We put our trust and our faith in him because we know he’s going to get onstage and kick ass every night, and that’s good enough for me. These days I’m not sweating the little things; I’m celebrating his greatness as a singer and performer.
Anthrax used to be a dysfunctional family, and there’s still some of that, but now I live by one of Dimebag’s favorite mottos: Don’t sweat the small stuff. Now, Joey will text me if there’s something he needs to know because he understands I will get back to him right away. I’m pretty insane about returning texts promptly because I hate when I send someone a question and it takes them three days to get back to me.
Once Joey was back in, everybody’s big question was, what’s he going to sound like on the new record? How will he fit in with these songs? That was a huge unknown. The first time we heard him was when Jay Ruston sent us an MP3 rough of Joey singing “I’m Alive.” Charlie, Frankie, Rob, and I were waiting around our computers for this thing to arrive. We all got the e-mail file at the same time and hit play right away because about six minutes later everyone hit “reply all” at the same time.
“Holy shit! Oh my God! He sounds incredible!” we all enthused. It was such a huge relief. I don’t know what I was expecting, but when I heard it I thought, “That’s the voice of Anthrax!” It sounded like the old Joey but with this depth, warmth, and maturity he didn’t have in 1990. From there, everything got better. We barely had to send Jay any notes with suggestions for how Joey should sing something another way. They were nailing it song after song.