PAUL DI’ANNO: During my last tour with the band, me and Steve almost came to blows right before we went on in Glasgow. He was going, “Yeah, you’re fucking up. You can’t be bothered anymore.” I said, “Oh, fuck you.” I was about to fuckin’ hit him and then the intro came on and we all forgot about it and went onstage. We finished that tour and [management] says, “Paul, come into the office, we want to have a word.” I said, “I think I know what it’s all about so I’m gonna tell you anyway what I want to do before you say anything.” I said, “I’ll just move on. It’s the best thing for everybody.”
BRUCE DICKINSON: I was with Samson; we all knew each other. Clive Burr, the original Maiden drummer, was in Samson for two years before Maiden. It was a big hodgepodge of musicians who all went to each other’s shows and toured with each other. Everybody knew who did what, and who was capable of what. The first time I saw Maiden I was blown away. I was a big Deep Purple fan when I was a kid. In Rock [1970] first got me going. The feeling I got off Maiden was like that—no disrespect to Paul, [Di’Anno]—I looked at Paul and went, “Goddamn, I want to be up there. God, if I was singing for that band, wow, what stuff we could do.”
PAUL DI’ANNO: I knew Bruce. Fucking hell, they were horrible—Samson, I’m sorry to say. Bruce was pretty good, but the way he used to dress was awful. We used to make fun of him. It always looked like Stevie Wonder dressed him. It was all mismatched and he had this beard. He’s all right, Bruce. If he could leave his ego behind he’d be all right.
BRUCE DICKINSON: A year later, I was doing a show [with Samson] at Reading Festival, and Rod Smallwood, who is Maiden’s manager, came up after the show, and Steve [Harris] had been in the audience. They’d both come to check me out. Rod said, “We’d like to offer you the chance to audition for Iron Maiden.” I was, like, twenty-two, but I was full of piss and vinegar, and I said, “Look, mate, if I audition for the band, I’m going to get the job. So let’s not muck about. First, I’m gonna be a bit of an awkward customer, and I’m going to have a lot of opinions, and if you don’t want that kind of a guy in the band, tell me now so we don’t waste our time.” I thought, “Wow, did I really say that?” He went, “Okay, fair enough. That won’t be a problem.” I went down, I learned both albums. They only wanted me to learn four songs, but I had a couple weeks so I learned everything they’d ever done and walked into rehearsals and we bashed through a big chunk of their entire repertoire. Steve wanted to get me in the studio that day, but one wasn’t available, so a week or so later they came back and got me in the studio, and we did four songs so they could have a listen to what I sounded like in the studio. That took a couple hours, and they said, “Right, that’s it, let’s go get drunk, it’s happened.” And the next album was Number of the Beast.
MARTIN BIRCH (producer): Bruce was capable of handling lead vocals on some of the quite complicated directions I knew Steve wanted to explore. So when Bruce joined, it opened up the possibilities for the new album tremendously—and for that reason, Number of the Beast was the turning point for Iron Maiden.
BRUCE DICKINSON: When I was recording Number of the Beast, there was that quiet, whispered intro. [There] wasn’t a question of [me] not being able to physically sing [right after that], but there was an atmosphere [producer] Martin [Birch] wanted, that I couldn’t quite get, and I ended up throwing chairs, and going, “What is it you want?!” We were in the control room and Martin said, “Look, when we were doing Heaven and Hell with Black Sabbath, Ronnie came in, and they were all ready to go, and we started recording the song ‘Heaven and Hell,’ and Ronnie was note-perfect. Then Martin stopped and said ‘Ronnie, we need to do this again, rethink it,’ and Ronnie said, ‘What’s the problem, was it out of tune?’ Martin said, ‘No, no, but if you listen to your opening lines, it says, Sing me a song you’re a singer. You are a singer. It’s your life. So I just want those two lines delivered as if your entire life depends on it.” That was the way Martin got inside your head.
ADRIAN SMITH (Iron Maiden): The Piece of Mind American tour was probably the start of the whole band becoming a little bit more sensible. In the past, touring America had been so easy. We’d do our spot early on and spend the rest of the night having a good time. Now we were headlining and we couldn’t afford to piss around. People said we were wrong to go out as headliners in the States so soon; that we weren’t ready for it and we’d never be able to pull it off. We had something to prove. We all took it a little bit more seriously.
STEVE HARRIS: For me, [1983’s] Piece of Mind was the best album we’d done up to then, easily. I carried on thinking that right up until [1988’s] Seventh Son of a Seventh Son album, five years later. I’m not saying the two albums we did in between, [1984’s] Powerslave and [1986’s] Somewhere in Time, weren’t good, ’cause there’s a lot of stuff on those albums I still think of as some of our best ever. But Piece of Mind was just special. It was [drummer] Nicko McBrain’s first album. [Di’Anno-era drummer Clive Burr left in 1982.] We felt like we were on a high, and you can hear that mood on the album.
In the wake of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, two main subgenres emerged: thrash bands—including Metallica, Exodus, and Anthrax—which were heavily influenced by the musicality of Diamond Head and Raven and the speed of Motörhead (and will be addressed in detail later); and doom outfits, which were more drawn to the lazier tempos, psychedelic textures, and sludgier, Sabbathian riffs of Angel Witch and Witchfinder General. Pentagram, which had been around in the Washington, DC, area since 1971, suddenly came alive, and in 1985 released its eponymous debut. Sweden’s Candlemass; Chicago’s Trouble; Washington, DC’s the Obsessed; and LA’s Saint Vitus (the latter two of which were fronted by Scott “Wino” Weinrich) weren’t far behind. From those tangled roots sprung Down, Cathedral, Kyuss, Eyehategod, Sleep, Orange Goblin, and countless others who valued the intangible journey to the end of a song as much as the elements that brought them there.
BOBBY LIEBLING: I was a huge Sabbath fan. When Tony Iommi first came on the scene, he was the fastest guitar player I had ever heard. Their music was all bummed out and sick, soupy, heavy moan-tone guitars. I was crazy about ’em.
JOE HASSELVANDER (Raven, ex-Pentagram): Sabbath wasn’t the first band to do doom metal. There were many other bands at the same time doing the same thing. Most of them were German and Italian: Black Widow, Night Sun, Iron Claw. There’s a band called Zior, and the guy who did their first album cover did the first Sabbath album cover. There was a whole lot of sinister riffing. Even Toe Fat had stuff that was as sinister sounding. Sabbath’s first album, to me, sounds a lot like the first two Taste records by Rory Gallagher. It’s jazz-oriented, but yet it’s hard rocking, too.
BOBBY LIEBLING: We started Pentagram on Christmas day, 1971. At the time, nobody knew what the word pentagram meant at all—I mean nobody.
JOE HASSELVANDER: Bobby had been in bands called Shades of Darkness and Ice. Pentagram was going to be called Stone Bunny as a joke because [guitarist] Randy Palmer said, “Pentagram? You might as well call the band Stone Bunny, it’s so stupid.”
SCOTT “WINO” WEINRICH (Saint Vitus, ex–The Obsessed): I met Bobby Liebling a pretty long time ago, but he’d already been doing Pentagram for years before I had a working band. He was definitely the first guy from our area to be doing that heavy music that we love. I was coming out of a Motörhead concert and I saw Bobby standing outside asking everybody that came out if they had drugs. I was like, “Wow, that’s so radical.”
BOBBY LIEBLING: My favorite Pentagram album of all time is [1991’s] Sub Basement, and that record is extremely bummed out and depressing and horribly difficult to listen to—for me, even. It’s total sonic overload and it makes you want to kill yourself. We wanted to do the most depressing album in history. We were going to call the album after Sub Basement “Bummer.” It was really cool to be suicidally depressed and in absolute hopeless despair.
JOE HASSELVANDER: Bobby got the job done musically on Sub Basement because I made
him. If I hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened. He had all his drug paraphernalia and sat on the couch downstairs while I’m upstairs in the control room mixing the record. I’d come downstairs. He’d wake up and go, “Sounds perfect. Don’t change a thing.” How would he know? He’s not even upstairs listening. I used to have to wake him up in between lines in the song. He’d fall asleep standing up. But I would make him do it. I have compassion for people. Bobby is extremely talented. Nobody can take that from him, but he has to have somebody there doing it for him, then he always takes the credit. When you work with Pentagram, he gets the glory and the band who did it gets nothing. I played all the instruments on the entire album. I mixed it. I didn’t mind, but when I found out he had taken some of my songs from earlier years and claimed he wrote them, and when I went to BMI and found out that he was the composer and author of my songs, that was it. That was a sign of someone who’s desperate and wants to make sure he always has that drug money.
WINO: One time me and Bobby shot drugs together. He had all the connections—anything you wanted any time of day, night or day. He’d say “park here.” Five minutes later he comes back with the stuff. He had huge scars all over his body. It looked like somebody held him down and put cigars out on him for about a week. We were in the bathroom one time and Bobby said, “Will this freak you out?” And he just jabs the fucking spike straight down between two tendons in his wrist, right into an artery. I’ve never seen anything like that.
BOBBY LIEBLING: I should have died twenty-five years ago. I should be dead ten times over. I’ve been addicted to heroin for forty years and methadone for thirty years. I was on methadone and shooting heroin on top of it seven days a week and smoking $500 to $1,000 of crack every single day around the clock. I’ve had lots of near-death experiences. The last one I had, I had just taken my methadone. I had been awake around the clock smoking crack for six days straight before a gig. No water, no food, not a minute of sleep. And I was debuting a brand new Pentagram lineup at a packed house at the Black Cat in Washington, DC. I wasn’t aware that I came out onstage twice and then fell into the drum set and blacked out. Then, of course, I seized because of all the drugs. I flatlined twice on the way to the hospital. Next thing I knew, I was going down a tunnel of light. Many people who have died and then been revived talk about the tunnel of light. It’s all true. I couldn’t believe it. There’s a funnel, and at the end of it there are globule amoeba-type things. One had my grandmother’s face, but they’re translucent and out of focus, and they kind of glob together like an overhead light show projector. Everyone is beckoning you with their hands, telling you to come to the light. And you’re sliding down the slide, tranquil as a baby. I almost got through the tunnel. Then it felt like there was a kaleidoscope closing up the hole in the middle with these propeller-like flaps, and I felt like I got sucked back up a sewage pipe, and realized I was alive. God told me I wasn’t ready. I’m a very strong believer in God nowadays, regardless of the name of the band.
Even though Washington, DC, was the launching pad for ’80s U.S. doom thanks to Pentagram, Saint Vitus, Obsessed and Internal Void, a decade later New Orleans became “doom central.” Major bands included Eyehategod, Crowbar, Soilent Green, and Down, a supergroup that featured Pantera vocalist Phil Anselmo and bassist Rex Brown (who quit in 2011), Crowbar front man and guitarist Kirk Windstein, Corrosion of Conformity guitarist Pepper Keenan, and Eyehategod guitarist Jimmy Bower (on drums).
MIKE IX WILLIAMS (Eyehategod): New Orleans is a grim place. It’s very hot in the summer, there’s lots of poverty and crime. I guess it did manifest itself somehow in the music and with the feedback and the dirty sound. We were huge Melvins fans and we liked Black Flag. But besides being into them, we liked that [doom metal] was easy to play because we weren’t very good musicians when we started [in 1988]. We basically played three chords a song, but slowed down with me screaming over it. Our shows were pretty crazy. I used to break a lot of glass and cut myself with it—stupid, childish stuff, really. After we started getting a following, people would put bottles in front of me onstage because they knew I would smash them. One time in Dayton, Ohio, I cut myself really bad on the forehead and I started getting kind of dizzy, but we finished the whole set. It was a weird night because a bunch of the kids in the crowd had brought angel dust and I did that before we played, which made me feel weird to begin with. Anyway, I guess I hit an artery with a shard of glass because my forehead was pumping out blood. A friend of mine, [horror director] Jim Van Bebber, was there with his girlfriend. She was standing a foot or two away from me and she kept getting sprayed by my forehead—all over her chest. We went next door to the fire station and they bandaged me up and told me I had to go to the hospital, and from there I got stitches, which I took out myself three days later.
PEPPER KEENAN (Corrosion of Conformity, Down): We grew up together in New Orleans since we were fucking kids. Phil [Anselmo] and I used to jam in 1992 when we was sixteen years old. We were into Saint Vitus, Sabbath, Trouble, and all this heavy shit, and we were all stoned and drunk so the music came out really doomy. We went in there for a laugh, but ten minutes later we weren’t laughing anymore. So we made a tape and started trading it around. Next thing we knew, six years had passed and people were still asking about it.
JIM WELCH (ex-A&R, Earache Records): I’ve never seen anybody as a collective group take more different kinds of downers than Eyehategod and Crowbar. Guys in New Orleans are really into that, which I never really understood. But shit, you can hear it in their albums.
PHIL ANSELMO (Down, Pantera, Superjoint Ritual) [2002 interview]: For six months after my first real bout with hard dope, I used to have dreams about it. I used to yearn for it a lot. That’s where a lot of the depression comes from—wanting something you can’t have, and you really can’t have it because you damn well know what’s coming. That’s why I say do it in moderation—so you don’t get caught up in the fucking game. Don’t go chasing it. There’s a time and place for just about fucking everything unless it fucking sucks you in. [After surviving a crippling addiction, overdoses, and major back surgery, Anselmo kicked hard drugs. He has since reversed his stance on moderation and now helps struggling addicts get clean.]
MIKE IX WILLIAMS: We played at the Covered Wagon in San Francisco and I drank a lot of Jagermeister and had some dope. I got back to the house we were staying at and I had the bright idea to do some more heroin, which was stupid after drinking that much. I was locked in this bathroom and I wouldn’t be here right now if there hadn’t been a window in the bathroom. There was hardly anybody at the house, but somebody said they heard a thump. That was me hitting my head against the wall when I fell off the side of the toilet overdosed. Miraculously, they heard that and ended up breaking through this window and pulling me out, and somebody else gave me mouth to mouth—so I’m still here. I remember I jumped up, I don’t know what I was thinking, but I remember coming to and seeing all these people standing over me, and they said I jumped up and started humming as if nothing happened.
BOBBY LIEBLING: When they came out, I wasn’t crazy about Saint Vitus or Trouble. I had been doing that kind of a thing already for ten years. If I’m to be completely honest, I was kind of bitter that I had never gotten recognized for anything and these bands got overnight acclaim and were viewed as pioneers.
PHIL ANSELMO: There would be no Down if it wasn’t for Trouble [who Pantera took on tour in 1992]. Yeah, they play slow, but as far as their influence goes, it’s vast and comes from a lot of different sources other than Black Sabbath. Eric Wagner had a miserable quality to his voice. He sounded in pain. It was a depressing sound going along with these droning, beautifully constructed riffs and great drumming.
DAVE GROHL: What was doubly amazing about Trouble was not only were they heavier than most bands, but they were singing about God. How’s that possible? It was cool and off-center and something you’d never expect. Listen to those first two records, [1984’s Psalm 9 and 1985’s
The Skull], and they’ll blow your fucking mind. But it’s weird. God and metal haven’t really had the best relationship with each other.
RICK WARTELL (Trouble): Eventually, a couple of the guys became practicing Christians, but we were never a Christian band—by no means. There were some good messages there, and Eric started reading the Bible and using cool quotes from it. But it didn’t dawn on any of us that this would become a kinda stamp on us. When we got the “white metal” tag, that really didn’t sit well with us. I mean, we did a lot of cocaine and weed—everybody but [guitarist] Bruce [Franklin]. We were rock guys, man. We went out and got drunk and met girls and did things rock guys do. It’s how we lived.
JOSH HOMME (Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, ex-Kyuss): I’m not into Trouble and I thought Vitus was cheesy. I hate both those bands. I was into Black Flag, Minutemen, and the Descendents. That’s what was more vital and important. Vitus was just some cheesy guys in pants that were too tight.
While Danzig frontman Glenn Danzig was reclusive and moody in person, his band had an accessible sound that downplayed the punk roots of his earlier groups, Misfits and Samhain. On their first four groundbreaking albums, Danzig combined Elvis-meets-Bauhaus vocals with sustained, sensual guitar chords and pulsing, pounding rhythms, paving the way for the mainstream success of Type O Negative and other so-called gothic doom metal bands.
GLENN DANZIG (Danzig, ex-Samhain, ex-Misfits): Danzig stayed together long enough for people to catch up with it. The previous bands I was in always either broke up or, you know, Samhain turned into Danzig. “Mother,” [which first appeared on the band’s self-titled 1988 debut], was a live track on [the 1993 EP Thrall: Demonsweatlive] and [that’s when] it started getting some airplay. Radio guys were calling up Mark [DiDia] over at American Recordings and saying, “You should re-release ‘Mother.’”
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