by Scott Ian
The heads-up all-in flop. Courtesy Lisa Tenner.
Sully is dancing, doing what I think is called the running-man and yelling at the poker gods for a queen. I’ve got my hands on top of my head and am saying ace ace ace ace ace ace in my brain.
Ace ace ace ace ace ace.… Courtesy Lisa Tenner.
The turn card is the 7c. Now Sully only has three outs. Only a queen on the river can save him.
The 7c on the turn. Courtesy Lisa Tenner.
Time seemed to slow down waiting for the dealer to deal the final card.
My brain was a tornado inside my skull; every muscle in my body was tensed like I was about to get in a fight. I was holding my breath in anticipation of the last card, and then the river is dealt and it’s the 8h, and it’s over. I punched my fist hard into the air, all the tension leaving my body in a scream from my gut, “YEAHHHHHHHH!” And then again with both fists pumping, “YEAHHHHHHHHH!” I was so excited, the Joker-like smile on my face so wide that it could lop off the rest of my head above it. I had done something I thought was completely impossible, literally for me a miracle. I was stunned. I just stood there taking it all in. Everyone was cheering and backslapping me and trying to talk to me, and all I wanted to do was kiss and hug Pearl like Rocky looking for Adrian at the end of Rocky. Mark Tenner said, “The fighter beat the dancer Phil. Once again Lady Luck smiled down on Scott Ian. He had the best cards, and they held up.” Phil and Mark came down to the table from where they were commentating, and I shook hands with them and with Phil Laak and Antonio. I remember looking at Pearl in the audience; we both had the same giant smiles on our faces.
The thrill of victory. Courtesy Lisa Tenner.
And the agony of defeat. There’s that Joker smile. Courtesy Lisa Tenner.
Sully was talking to Phil, telling him, “I couldn’t catch a hand—eight, nine hands in a row it was seven-three, nine-deuce, eight-four. I was just waiting for a face card, and I saw one, and I freaked out, and I pushed all-in. He decapitated me, man. I just had a really bad run at the end.”
He’s not lying. He really did have a bad run, and I had a great run.
Sully continued, “My plan worked. I wanted to get to heads-up and then hopefully face someone inexperienced.”
Phil Laak said, “If he didn’t keep waking up with cards, you would’ve taken it. But he kept waking up.”
Looking back on it now I can pinpoint a couple of things that happened heads-up against Sully. I had nothing to lose and was playing that way, with zero fear. I never should’ve lasted in the game as long as I did, so I was just happy to be there and was having fun. And then on top of that, even a novice like me knew what to do with the run of cards I got dealt heads-up. With each hand I won, my confidence grew. Sully and I were conversing back and forth, and he was giving me info just by talking with me. I could tell he was confused by my play as I had played very safe the whole game and now all of a sudden I was being aggressive. He didn’t know whether I was bluffing or if I really had a hand. He didn’t know if I even knew how to bluff (I understood the concept of bluffing but had never actually tried it). My read on him at that point was that he was overthinking what was happening and that I would take advantage of that. To understate a poker phrase, I was running good. I was on a heater, as they say, and everything was going my way. I had won five hands in a row, and Sully was reeling and on the ropes. I came back from insurmountable odds, almost a five-to-one chip deficit all the way to being up six-to-one in chips and about to deliver the knockout punch to kill the giant. The dead man’s hand took care of that, and I was the winner.
Phil gave me my trophy, which was very cool. More importantly they handed me one of those giant checks made out for $25,000 to the charity I was playing for, LIFEbeat.
L-R: Vinnie, Ace, Antonio Esfandiari, your boy, Phil Hellmuth, Sully, Phil Laak, and Dusty.
Courtesy Lisa Tenner.
Anyone have a giant FedEx envelope? Courtesy Lisa Tenner.
After all the handshaking and good-byes Phil Hellmuth came over and asked me how often I played poker. I told him I had never played no-limit hold ’em in my life before this tournament. He laughed and said he could tell because my game was a mess but my instincts were good and I had a lot of patience. He told me that my patience was the reason I won the tournament and that patience was something you could not teach. Phil gave me his phone number and told me that if I ever wanted to learn more about poker to give him a call. I thanked him and just nodded and smiled a lot. I really didn’t know what he was talking about and just wanted to go eat and take a nap. Remember, I didn’t even know who Phil was at the time; I just knew he was some poker pro. It wasn’t until I got home from the trip and Googled him that I found out he was the Michael Jordan of poker. I thought it was interesting that this (at the time) nine-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner took a minute to tell me that if I ever wanted to get serious, to give him a call.
A week later I had forgotten all about it. Poker had disappeared from my radar. Or so I thought…
To be continued in All-In, Part Two, later on in this book.
THE LAND OF RAPE & S.O.D.
If it weren’t for my guitar riffs and monster tone on S.O.D.’s Speak English or Die, Trent Reznor wouldn’t have won an Oscar.
Yep, I just wrote that. And I’d guess that right about now you’re thinking, Is he fucking high?
Nope. I’m allergic.
Let me explain…
I met Al Jourgensen, the man behind seminal industrial band Ministry, in the early nineties, and we immediately hit it off. It was a fuck-fest of mutual respect. Ministry was about to head out on the 1992 Lollapalooza tour, and Al invited me to their shows in New York and asked if I wanted to get up and play with them. I was a big Ministry fan. S.O.D. covered the Ministry songs “Thieves” and “Stigmata” to fill out our set on tour. I’d seen Ministry live a bunch of times, so to get on stage and be a part of that Dante’s Inferno of a rock show was something I had to do. The first night of their three-night stint at the Jones Beach amphitheater I played on one song, a cover of Black Sabbath’s “Supernaut,” and when it was over all I could think was, I need more of that. I felt like I was playing on the edge of a cliff, and falling off was the fun part.
I guess I passed the audition because the next night I played two songs with them, on the third show at Jones Beach I was up there for four, and by the time the Los Angeles shows rolled around a few weeks later I was on stage playing half the set, including some of their best songs like “Burning Inside,” “Just One Fix,” “So What,” “Thieves,” “Stigmata,” and “N.W.O.” It was a fucking nerve-shattering blast, and Al would hand his guitar over to me, freeing him up to create even more onstage chaos than usual. I had the responsibility of playing all his parts, and his guitar was loud as fuck, in the monitors on stage and out front to the audience, as loud as a jet engine. There was no way to hide in the mix, and if I made a mistake, everyone would hear it. In a normal band situation this wouldn’t be a problem for me—I’m not going to cause a train wreck—but this was Ministry, and there was Al riding around the stage on a mic stand made out of animal bones and cow skulls, crashing into anything and anyone. There was real physical danger, and there was no safe word—you just had to play like your life was at risk, because it was. It was true anarchy, and I had never been a part of something so crazy. I liked it. A lot.
Wait, so how does this have anything to do with Trent and his Oscar?
Patience, my friends, patience.
Trent Reznor started out in Cleveland in the mid-eighties playing in pop bands. Then he discovered Ministry and started writing heavier electronic songs with an edgier and dance-ier sound that would become the template for NIN. Before he recorded anything that anyone heard he actually worked as a roadie for Ministry, which was like getting shipped off to boot camp and pledge-hazing week at the frat house all in one. Not only did he learn about killer guitar tones and extreme onstage battle royals; he also learned how to dodge
lit firecrackers and deflect flying beer bottles. One night Al mickied him and shaved his head and eyebrows. But Trent didn’t flinch and returned from the ordeal undaunted, enraged, and stronger for it. He wrote and recorded his breakthrough album Pretty Hate Machine in 1989 and then the metallic Ministry-esque Broken in 1992. The rest is history.
A year later, the summer of 1993, Anthrax released Sound of White Noise. Al did remixes of two of the songs, “Potter’s Field” and “Hy Pro Glo.” We headed out on a US tour to support the record with White Zombie and Quicksand opening for us. It was a killer package. White Zombie’s song “Thunder Kiss ’65” had become pretty much the main theme of MTV’s animated hit series Beavis and Butt-Head, and they were on the verge of blowing up. Al came to the show in Chicago, and after the show we headed out in his brand-new Nissan 300ZX; at the time it was one of the fastest cars you could buy. We were speeding through downtown Chicago at 110 mph, jumping median strips, going the wrong way on one-way streets, and somehow not dying.
And now we flashback to the summer of 1992…
The Lollapalooza tour had just played Chicago. Al and Eddie Vedder are out postshow, tearing through the streets of Chicago in another barely street-legal car that Al shouldn’t be driving. All the while there’s eardrum-shattering music cranked on Al’s car stereo as Eddie holds on for his life, Al turning downtown Chicago into his own private Grand Prix. Eddie can’t help but listen to the music—it’s so loud you can’t not listen—and all he knows is it’s the heaviest thing he’s ever heard in his life and seems to be playing on a loop. Time speeds by, and eventually Al screeches to a halt in front of Eddie’s hotel, and it’s a miracle in itself that anyone even remembered where the hotel was. Eddie happily says goodnight to his maniacal chauffeur, and as he’s getting out of the car Al pops the tape out of the player and hands it to Eddie: “This is for you to remember this night by. S.O.D. Speak English or Die.” Eddie takes the tape and stands there dazed as Al peels out into the early morning Chicago heat.
Okay, nice anecdote about Eddie, but what does that have to do with Trent?
Wait for it…
A year later in the summer of 1993…
So we’re flying around Chicago in Al’s Japanese rocket, and Al has the S.O.D. tape cranked and is singing and playing air guitar at me. I’m smiling big on the outside but on the inside all I can think is what bad luck it would be to die while listening to “The Ballad of Jimi Hendrix.” By the way, for the “Ballad of Scott Ian,” just use the “March of the S.O.D.” intro riff two times: duh duh, chucka, duh duh, chucka, duh duh chucka duh duh, you’re dead. It’s in my will to have that played at my funeral.
Al lands the rocket outside some bar, and before we get out of the car he tells me—very nonchalantly, I might add—that S.O.D. is the reason he wanted to put heavy guitars into Ministry’s music and change from being a synthy new wave band into the industrial juggernaut the world knows them as today. That back in the eighties he heard S.O.D., and that was the influence, the impetus to become the Ministry that would make The Land of Rape and Honey, The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste, In Case You Didn’t Feel Like Showing Up, and the rest. I couldn’t believe it, and in my drunken/terrified state I figured he was joking. But he wasn’t.
My mind reeled at the thought, trying to make sense out of it. S.O.D. covered Ministry, I played with Ministry, and the whole time it had been a direct result of something I did back in 1985. Somehow S.O.D. was responsible for Ministry and everything they influenced. It was like the movie Looper without the hitmen. Well, okay, maybe not wholly responsible for Ministry and everything they influenced, but at least partially, and that’s where I get off saying Trent wouldn’t have won an Oscar for scoring the Facebook movie The Social Network, nor would NIN even exist.
HA! Take that, nineties!!!
I kid, of course. After all, it is an honor.
And Trent rules.
I have another story about Al that is worth telling even though Al tells it in his memoir Ministry: The Lost Gospels of Al Jourgensen as well. The difference is that I have the corroborating story from Steven Spielberg. Yes, that Steven Spielberg.
In 2000 Spielberg approached Ministry to play a band in a scene in his movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Yes, I know the movie sucked, but I’m not here to review it, and I apologize for reminding you of something so terrible. Still, Al didn’t know that many would consider the movie to be Spielberg’s worst; it would be huge exposure, and they were getting paid well to do it. And it’s fucking Steven Spielberg.
So Ministry flew to Los Angeles to shoot their scene. They’d been on set a few hours, just hanging out in their trailer in a typical hurry-up-and-wait scenario, and suddenly there was a knock on the door.
An assistant of Steven’s told them that Mr. Spielberg was on his way to meet the band. Al told me he was as excited as anyone else to meet Spielberg but wanted to think of something special to say. He didn’t want to be on the end of some lame receiving line and to just shake hands and say, “Hi, nice to meet you.” That’s not Al’s style.
Spielberg shows up at Ministry’s trailer with his entourage of assistants and basically glad-hands his way down the line, saying, “Hello, and thanks for being in my movie” to all the band members.
Al is last, and as Spielberg shakes his hand, Al grabs it in a vice grip and shakes it extra hard, and as Spielberg reiterates the same bland greeting to Al, Al replies, “Yeah Steve, I need to talk to you about your movie.”
The simultaneous intake of breath from all of Spielberg’s assistants was as loud as a Ministry show, followed quickly by an awkward silence, everyone in the room frozen in that moment, staring at Al and Steven Spielberg.
Al, thriving in the silent chaos he has created, continued to shake Spielberg’s hand in his vice grip. Spielberg slowly waking out of his scripted behavior, confused and taken aback that someone is even talking to him, finally asks, “What about my movie?”
Al, still shaking Spielberg’s hand and right up in Spielberg’s face, immediately replies, “Steve, do we look like a band that would be in a movie about some robot kid and a talking teddy bear?”
Spielberg, now even more confused and annoyed, is looking around at his assistants for an answer, “Did he get a script? Did you send him the script?” Looking back at Al, “Didn’t you read the script?”
Al interrupts Spielberg’s questioning, “Steve! Do we look like we want to be in a movie about some fucking robot kid and a goddamn fucking talking teddy bear? We’re fucking Ministry! We were told this movie was called A.I. Anal Intruder!”
Spielberg is blown away, freaking out. No one ever speaks to him like this, and he’s looking at his people in disbelief as he stammers back at Al, “Who told you this? Who told you it was called Anal Intruder?”
Al waits a beat, waits another beat, making Spielberg sweat, and then he claps him on the shoulder and says, “Aww Steve, I’m just fucking with ya!”
Spielberg is silent. No one in the room dares make a sound, and then after what seems like an eternity Spielberg starts to laugh. All his assistants follow suit, of course, suddenly relieved that the king isn’t going to have their collective heads. Spielberg slowly walks out of the room laughing and telling Al, “You’re a funny guy, Al, very funny…”
Spielberg and his entourage leave, and Al figured they’d be thrown off the set, fired immediately, go-directly-to-jail-do-not-pass-go FIRED.
A few hours slowly pass, and there’s another knock on the door. It was one of the assistants summoning Mr. Jourgensen to the set to see Mr. Spielberg. So this was it, Al thought, we’re done. Well, he thought, at least he’s got the balls to tell me to my face. As Al was escorted onto the set, into Spielberg’s director’s world, he noticed a chair with his name across the back right next to Spielberg’s director’s chair. What the hell? Al thought as Spielberg, all smiles and hand-shakey, proudly showed Al the chair he had made for him and had set up next to his so Al could watch the shoot the same way he
did, telling Al if there’s anything he needs, to just ask. Apparently Al’s way of breaking the ice had worked, and now he was Spielberg’s best friend, with Spielberg even buying Al a really expensive leather duster jacket and treating Ministry like gold for the rest of the week they were there shooting.
Cut to January 2003, and I am in Germany promoting Anthrax’s album We’ve Come for You All. I had finished my promo trip in Germany at the same time my then-girlfriend (now wife), Pearl, was in Stuttgart to perform with her dad’s band on a German TV show called Wetten Das, which was like a three-hour-long Tonight Show that only aired six or seven times a year. It was the biggest Saturday night TV show in Germany, maybe even all of Europe, so they would get the biggest celebrities promoting whatever new movie/record/book they had coming out. I was having a who-the-hell-let-me-in-here moment hanging out backstage with Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Leonardo DiCaprio, Meat Loaf, Hugh Grant, Faith Hill, and Christina Aguilera.
So it’s this big celebrity soiree backstage, with everybody talking to everybody except for Christina Aguilera, who apparently was so extra famous and important that she needed her own dressing room in a separate hall guarded by giants who looked like they would later appear in Game of Thrones. Good for her.
