Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography.

by Ferris, D. X.

  Venom had offstage problems, too: Mantas was stranded in England. At the time, the official story said the guitarist was having problems with his paperwork. As Goodman recalled it, that was just an excuse: He really had chicken pox.

  Frontman Cronos played the first part of the tour with Davy Irwin & Les Cheetham14-3, backup temps who were not, by King’s standards, up to the task. With most of the band missing, recalled the guitarist, “That tour was a big disappointment.”

  King wasn’t pissed off, but by tour’s end, Venom was pissed on.

  Before it began, the Venom tour was a hot ticket. The band’s promotional clips for “Bloodlust” and “Witching Hour” made the band look like the underground equivalent of Kiss, packing tons of pyrotechnic overkill onto the stage and playing in a firestorm. When the band arrived in America, not only was the lineup not intact, but they didn’t have full special effects. And without the pyro, they were far from Kiss. Still, they tried.

  “They were terrible,” says Goodman. “Cronos wanted to be Gene Simmons: He stomped around with his big boots, with his tongue. They were kind of a caricature of themselves. “

  Slayer warmed up with some preliminary headlining shows. Then the full package opened with two nights in Quebec City. The opening bands joined members of Voivod in the audience. Venom played a sloppy set, both opening and closing with “Countess Bathory.” Slayer didn’t think the callback was cool.

  ‘We went into that first show, thinking, ‘Oh, it’s Venom, it’ll be great,’” says Goodman. “And we were disappointed very quickly. We realized there was a reason they barely ever played.”

  Cronos couldn’t believe that Slayer and Exodus ventured into the audience with the unwashed masses.

  “Venom came from an era,” explains Goodman, “their direction was that they were the rock star on stage, and in their world, they didn’t cross paths with the punters, the fans. They might sign autographs, but hanging out in a bar with them? Never. Slayer came from the ‘We’re all in this together’ mold. Venom couldn’t grasp the concept of that.”

  Things got worse when Slayer mingled with the headlining act. One night, a drunken Araya staggered onto Venom’s tour bus and asked where the pisser was.

  Cronos opened his mouth and said, “Right here!”14-4.

  Araya dropped trou and urinated in the singer’s chest-length hair.

  Cronos, unamused, rose and headbutted Araya, splitting the Slayer singer’s forehead open. Blood poured out of a wound that was bad enough to warrant stitches, but nonetheless went untreated. Araya was left with a fading gash.

  A tense cooling-off period followed. Overall, though, the exchange didn’t affect the mood on the tour; the damage was already done.

  Slayer had covered “Venom’s Witching Hour” at some previous solo shows, so some fans hoped they would join Venom for the song. But Slayer never seriously considered doing it. Slayer were getting a better reception than Venom was, and they didn’t need a guest appearance.

  New York, as always, brought additional chaos to Slayer shows. In 2006, Lombardo told Cam Lindsay of Exclaim.ca that one of the ’85 L’Amour shows was not only a low point for the tour, but his entire life. Dave caught a beating too.

  After the set, Lombardo was at the front of the stage, tossing drum sticks into the crowd and pretending he was about to dive into the audience.

  Suddenly, a security guard grabbed Lombardo. In the beefy bouncer’s grip, Lombardo spazzed and started resisting. The rustling sent them into a stack of Marshalls, knocking over the tower of heavy black boxes.

  The guard took the drummer down to the ground, then let him go.

  Lombardo regrouped and said, “You son of a bitch, I’m in the band!”

  The guard wheeled around and punched Lombardo in the face14-5.

  Slayer weren’t the kind of guys who antagonized bouncers, but the thrashing crowds had security staffs on a standing state of alert nationwide.

  “That stuff was so new, the stage diving and mosh pits,” reflects Goodman. “Security and venue people didn’t know what it was.”

  Working their way westward, Slayer returned to Canada for a two-night stand at the club Les Rendezvous. Venom canceled the shows, and the British band had to P.A. system, so Slayer was forced to cancel too. Slagel wired the broke band some money, and the caravan headed back to San Francisco.

  At the San Francisco Venom show, Slayer took the stage late. It wasn’t because they were acting like irresponsible rock stars. On early visits to the Bay, the band had stayed on the lower level of their friend Kirk Adams’ house. Since they were in the area, Araya wanted to stop by and pay his respects to Adams’ parents.

  As Slayer’s irons grew hotter and hotter, crowds found new ways to lose control. The band’s shows were becoming the stuff of legend. In the Summer 1985 issue of the L.A. zine It’s All Over in 1986, Jim Dulin — one of the early Slayer associates credited as road manager when they needed help on tour — recounted two dubious incidents that nobody else on the tour recalled now.

  At an early Seattle show, Dulin claimed, a sizable contingent of the crowd showed up in armor, wrapped leather, studded with steel, and ready for a melee.

  “You’re going to have problems,” Dulin warned. But the venue staff didn’t believe him. By the times fans were leaving, their faces bashed in, it was too late. The staff, Dulin claimed, was forced to improvise extreme new crowd control tactics.

  “It was the most violent show we ever played,” said Dulin. “[The crowd] were wanting to fight our road crew. The road guys had to break the legs off tables to defend themselves onstage.”

  Two weeks after the Studio 54 show, the band was back in California, at San Diego’s California Theatre.

  According to Dulin, during Slayer’s set, a rabid fan climbed up to the balcony and dove off.

  “That’s the new thing now: suicidal dives,” Dulin said. “This one guy dove on the stage, and he went right through the stage, put a big hole over by Hanneman. In fact, he almost knocked Hanneman out.”

  Unphased, the roadies reportedly scooped the jumper out of the hole and tossed him back into the audience14-6. If it happened at the California Theatre, it was a helluva leap; the loges are barely within reach of the stage, and the balcony is at the rear of the venue. But without close scrutiny, the anecdotes were not unbelievable.

  For the Venom shows, crowds were between 3,000 and 5,000. But as the trek went on, audiences were pro-Slayer and anti-Venom. Punks who came to see Slayer stayed around to check out Venom and wound up spitting on the band — and not in the old-school punk-rock way of showing appreciation.

  “The whole tour got weird toward the end,” says Goodman

  Slayer had a better time playing off-date shows with just Exodus. As the full Combat package approached the end of its dozen scheduled dates, Venom checked out mentally, then physically. After a harrowing experience with the rollercoasters in Disneyland, the Brits had had enough of America. They cancelled the final show. By the tour’s end, the black metal icons had played just 11 concerts. With Venom gone, Slayer headlined. In late April, the tour’s final shows featured opening acts Raw Power, then Dark Angel.

  The band appreciated the swelling American crowds, but they hadn’t been blown away by an audience’s size or reaction. Yet. During the Hell Awaits tour, Slayer would fight their way out of clubs. In the summer of 1985, the group stage their first European raid.

  Hell Awaits was getting good reviews. And though it was selling well, it hadn’t been out long, and the cash wasn’t quite piling up yet. Europe was ready for the band, but Slagel still couldn’t afford to send them.

  To release albums in Europe, Metal Blade had partnered with Roadrunner Records, the Netherlands-based indie metal outfit that eventually grew into a worldwide major-label powerhouse, progressing from Mercyful Fate to bands like Nickelback and Slipknot. Roadrunner boss Cees Wessels offered to bankroll a monthlong European tour. Slayer accepted. (Wessels, who is notoriously averse to interviews
, declined to be interviewed for this book.)

  The labels, combined, had money to send just six guys across the ocean. The day before they left, the Slayer camp learned they couldn’t afford to bring lighting tech Kevin Reed with them. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t buy a ticket. The band’s merch company paid for K.J. Doughton, founder of the Metallica fan club and later biographer of the band, to travel and sell T-shirts.

  Slayer landed at Heathrow airport on May 25, 1985. From the get-go, the tour looked like it would be a bust. It started off bad, and things quickly got worse.

  The band were picked up in a “splitter” — an airport shuttle-style van split between the passenger section and a rear hold for equipment. The squad were driven over to a gear rental place. Hired hands started loading the backline into the bus. The Slayer crew were confused. They expected a big tour bus. And they didn’t see one. The grunts continued lifting cases into the little shuttle bus.

  Collectively, the group began asking where the bus was, unaware they had already been in it.

  The rental company set Goodman straight: “This is your bus.”

  By American standards, it was a big van. It wasn’t half a bus.

  Bewildered, they asked about the driver.

  “You’re driving,” said the Brit.

  And he handed Goodman the keys. And a single photocopy of two pages from an atlas, with a big X to mark London and another X by Poperinge, Belgium, the site of the first show, the Heavy Sound Festival. The town itself was so small, it didn’t appear on the map.

  The splitter’s cargo hold filled quickly. Add in the crew and the merch, and the bus didn’t have enough room for everyone and everything. Agitated, the band began removing gear from damage cases and stacking it as carefully as possible, which seemed like a fool’s errand.

  “Fuck this,” said King. “Let’s go home.”

  “Fuck that,” said Hanneman. “We’re here. We’re playing.”

  Araya and Lombardo agreed. King had been outvoted, and the overwhelmed guitarist didn’t feel like arguing the point.

  The crew packed in all the gear they could. And they left London without a full backline. The absent equipment blew a major hole in the band’s confidence. Dejected and pissed, they hit the road.

  The crew took turns driving on the stick-shift shuttle down the highway, struggling to use the left side of the road. White-knuckled, they navigated in the slowest lane, tension building. Goodman, tasked as chauffer, had never driven a manual transmission before. Another member of the crew had to usher the bus to cruising speed before the tour manager could jump in the driver’s seat and take the wheel.

  Countless highways, pit stops, and a ferry later, Slayer arrived in the little Belgian town.

  A day after their dejecting arrival, Slayer arrived at the Heavy Sounds grounds. Warlock — the old of band of Doro Pesch, then the hottest woman in metal — was onstage. Warlock’s set ended as the band hit the restrooms and began unpacking.

  Now that Slayer had arrived at the venue, they didn’t feel much better. The bill was loaded with much bigger groups, the kind of acts that Kerrang! covered: Lee Aaron, Pretty Maids, Tokyo Blade — all headlined by a diluted lineup of UFO, ’70s classic rock heroes who were one of King’s favorites. Slayer’s expectations were low. Maybe, they figured, a thousand fans would turn out to watch the American indie band. Maybe two thousand, they hoped.

  As Slayer stretched out, an announcement boomed over the PA system, and soon it replayed. In between some odd foreign words, the group could make out “Slayer.” Goodman found it curious it didn’t mention the other bands. Just “[something something something] Slayer [something something].”

  Goodman was still disoriented from his whirlwind first trip to Europe. He started to worry. The unintelligible announcement felt like the principal was calling him to the office. The acting tour manager set out to talk to a festival representative.

  Goodman finally found someone with the right badge who could speak some English. He introduced himself and got to business.

  “What’s the announcement they’re making?” he asked. “They’re talking about Slayer.”

  The rep answered him in stilted English: “We are telling the crowd: Slayer are playing. There is a rumor they are not… They are playing, right?”

  Goodman noted a look of concern that was wrinkling the guy’s face.

  “They are playing, correct?” he asked again. “Slayer are here?”

  “Yeah,” said Goodman. “We’re here. We’re here.”

  The festival rep’s body language relaxed.

  “Oh, very good,” the European said.

  “Why?” asked Goodman. “What’s the big deal?”

  The rep waved his hand, gesturing toward the crowd.

  “Twelve thousand people,” said the festival rep.

  “Yeah,” said Goodman, still on the defensive. “That’s amazing.”

  Looking at the crowd, the concert rep said, in a sharp accent, “Eight thousand for Slayer.”

  “Get out of here,” said Goodman. “UFO is playing.”

  The rep looked at him. “Eight thousand for Slayer.”

  Variations of the thought “Wow” echoing through his head, Goodman made his way backstage. He headed to Slayer’s dressing room and told the band about his conversation with the promoter.

  “Twelve thousand people, eight thousand for Slayer,” Goodman recounted, imitating the accent.

  “Fuck you,” said Hanneman. “UFO’s playing.”

  “I don’t know, man,” Goodman said. “The promoter tells me 8,000 are here for you guys.”

  More bands played. Slayer sat backstage, unsure what to think. It was nice to think the story was true. But it seemed impossible. The biggest crowds Slayer had played to were just south of 5,000. And that was in their home country. And that was with Venom headlining.

  As Slayer warmed up, Canadian singer Lee Aaron finished her set. The venue staff got ready for Aaron’s scheduled encore.

  The music ended. A roar rose from the audience. Louder and louder, a repeating word was echoing over the crowd.

  Ten thousand Europeans — give or take a thousand or two — weren’t shouting for more Lee Aaron. Backstage, the American thrash band could make out the unified, massive roar:

  “SLAYER!”

  “SLAYER!”

  “SLAYER!”

  “I get goosebumps, thinking about it now,” says Goodman. “We’re six American kids from California, one of us from Oregon. It’s always been club stuff. We’d played some pretty good sized venues lately. And here we are: It’s been a tough few days. None of us have flown that far before. We landed in England, drove to Holland so we could find this festival. We get there, people are talking these different languages. And now people are going fuckin’ crazy.”

  Thousands of fans strong, the chant continued, with hint of a Germanic accent, growing faster and louder

  “SLAYER!”

  “SLAYER!”

  “SLAYER!”

  Bullied by the cheering crowd, Lee Aaron never came out for her encore. The band surrendered the stage to Slayer.

  Backstage, three days of escalating aggravation melted away. The fastest, heaviest, evilest band on the bill stood in the dressing room, smiles growing wider and wider.

  “You start to realize: Maybe that guy was wrong,” says Goodman. “Maybe it’s not 8,000 people there for Slayer. Maybe he’s wrong on the low end. At very least, the other 4,000 people are there for UFO, they’re into it.”

  Lurking in the wings, Slayer waited to take the stage. Finally, they walked into the sunlight.

  The scene that greeted them was everything it sounded like — and more. Hardly anything separated the stage and the crowd — just a thin gap and a chain-link fence. On either side of the venue, the fences were covered in homemade banners, most of them reading SLAYER.

  The band strutted onto the stage. Basking in the crowd noise, they performed a last-minute tune-up as the crowded chante
d “SLAYER / SLAYER” faster and faster.

  “HOW ARE YOU GUYS FEELING TODAY?” shouted Araya, grinning ear to ear. And followed a speedy rendition of the endless tease of the “Hell Awaits” intro. When the song was over, King raised his right arm in a victory salute eight years in the making. 15 minutes into the set, “Captor of Sin” wrapped. Between songs, Araya quizzed the crowd about the festival’s location in the hinterlands.

  “Is this where they have to put metal?” he asked, with the fervor of an evangelist. “Can they put it in the arenas, in the cities, in the major cities? We’ve come a long way, and we have yet further to go!”