Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

by Jon Wiederhorn

  SCOTT IAN: We were really on a roll in every way business-wise, creative-wise, emotionally. We played London and Lemmy from Motörhead came to our show. Every little thing was a huge fucking deal. I remember [drummer] Charlie [Benante] coming in with the riff to “I Am the Law,” and I was like, “Oh, my god. Fucking huge.” That and “Indians” were the first two songs we wrote for Among the Living, which a lot of people consider our best album. We were already playing them on the Spreading the Disease tour. Our confidence was so high. It’s almost like we were being guided by the power of metal. It was out of our hands. We were being used as the tool to make the record that needed to be made.

  DAN SPITZ (ex-Anthrax): That record was Anthrax to a tee. Charlie and Scott come from a hardcore background and they’re bringing that to the music, and me and Joey are connecting musically, inflicting a lot of melody into the band, and [bassist] Frankie [Bello] is barreling right down the middle filling every gap.

  SCOTT IAN: In 1986, we were suddenly the big kids on the block in New York. We had a record on a major label; we were all-original. Coming up, you could never get gigs unless you were a Van Halen cover band. But here we were in ’86, we almost had a hundred thousand records sold, and we could sell out the Ritz. It was kind of a big “fuck you” to a lot of people who stood in our way for years.

  For all the tragedy, turmoil, controversy, scuffles, addiction, and shake-ups that plagued the thrash metal community, there were plenty of good times; many, many memorable moments; and the kind of sexual misadventures non-glam bands had once only dreamed about—thanks in part to the coverage of the music by MTV’s Headbangers Ball.

  GARY HOLT: When we did the MTV Headbangers Ball tour [with Anthrax and Helloween in 1989], it was about as close to a Mötley Crüe kind of scene as we were ever gonna know. We’d roll into town every day and there’d be thirty or forty women hanging outside. The real beauty of it was the other bands on the tour weren’t debauched like us. We were fuckin’ chicks every day, all day, multiple amounts, and really thinking it was ridiculous because we’re not a hair band. “Why is this happening? Who cares? Just enjoy it!” The really crazy stuff usually involved the road crews. You look at some of these guys and go, “Okay, he has never been laid in his life.” And all of a sudden he has the power of the backstage pass. I’ve seen chicks with flashlights up their pussy drinking beer out of dog dishes and girls blowing, like, twenty guys just to get that fuckin’ pass. Everybody in the band knows what she did to get it and no one’s gonna touch her! No one wants to give her a hug. She blew all these dirty old guys instead of the dirty young guys.

  KIRK HAMMETT: I couldn’t figure out why all of a sudden I was handsome. A fat bank account will make you look handsome. No one had ever treated me like that before in my life.

  LARS ULRICH: We all had some pretty slutty moments. I don’t think there’s anybody in this band who hasn’t had crabs a couple times or the occasional drip-dick.

  LEMMY KILMISTER: I don’t care what people say. They’re in it for the pussy, you know? The music’s important too, but it’s more about the pussy.

  DAVE MUSTAINE: I think that heavy metal is obviously very sexual. Rock and roll itself is Negro slang for having sex. But there was a time before I got married when I couldn’t fuck just one girl. I had to have two fucking each other for me to even get excited. That’s when I started to think, “Man, I’m losing my perspective on things because pretty soon I’m gonna have to get a whole girl scout troop in there just to get an erection.”

  JAMES HETFIELD: We had our battles with spandex, that’s for sure. You could show off your package: “Wear spandex, dude. It gets you chicks.” On the first tour through America, my spandex were wet from the night before, and I was drying them by the heater. A big hole melted right in the crotch. I opted to keep my jeans on, and that was the best thing that ever happened. Lars wore spandex up through the Black Album tour, though he might tell you different.

  CHUCK BILLY: On our first tour ever we were out in a van, and me and [guitarist] Alex [Skolnick] got a couple ladies in our van in Richmond, Virginia, and we were hammered on Jack Daniel’s. One of the girls started mouthing off to me and I got pissed off. We were parked right on the boat dock so I opened the door and flung her into the water. It was about a twenty-foot drop into the bay, with no stairs to get up. So she’s holding on to the wooden pier. The water’s hitting hard. She’s crying. She keeps getting rubbed up and down, and she’s getting slivers all over her arms and her chest. She’s getting cut up. So we got ropes and hauled her out of there. She was so pissed, and all the fans were around the van cheering us on.

  When they weren’t hooking up with groupies, thrash musicians amused themselves in other ways: drinking to excess, taking recreational drugs, and playing stupid pranks.

  BOBBY “BLITZ” ELLSWORTH: One night I set [Slayer front man] Tom Araya on fire at a party. I just lit him up, man. He had on a T-shirt with a rat with a joint in his mouth, and I had the idea that I was lighting the joint. Suddenly the flames are running up his shirt, and we had to pat him down. I spent the next day looking for a replacement for the shirt, and I found one.

  TOM ARAYA: I would think I’d remember that, but I was totally wasted drunk all the time and that was not a good thing because I was a belligerent drunk. I was total rage. They told me I would do all kinds of crazy shit. I had a lot of blackouts, which were not cool. Do you wanna keep waking up every day apologizing for all the stupid things you did that you don’t remember? No way, man.

  JEFF HANNEMAN: One of my favorite things that [drummer] Dave [Lombardo] ever did happened when we were going to a gig and we pulled over because Dave had to shit and we didn’t have a tour bus at that time. Dave went out and took a Big Gulp cup, shit in it, wiped his ass with a leaf and then got back into the car. I was in the car behind him. We’re driving along and he reaches out the window and throws the cup of shit at us and it hit the windshield. There was shit all over the windshield. And of course, you turn on the wiper and it just smears all over the place.

  GARY HOLT: When we went for our first tour in Europe supporting Venom, we loved nothing more than cock-blocking each other. Someone’s trying to get laid, and just for fun we’d come up and spit all over the girl until she ran away screaming. Then someone’s really pissed off and we know the next time we’re gonna try to get laid the same thing’s gonna happen to us. On the last show of the tour, I pulled off one of the most amazing catches since Willie Mays’s basket catch [in the 1954 World Series]. I was 30 feet from the stage on the floor, and the stage was 5 feet high and 30 feet deep. Venom’s drummer Abaddon is 20 feet up on a platform and he spits towards me, and I caught that shit in my mouth and swallowed it. It was so gross. That completely outgrossed Venom, and that was quite a feather in my cap at the time.

  TOM ARAYA: I did crack in 1987 out of boredom, but that was a one-day thing. At the end of the night I was like, “I’m glad I don’t have any money, I can’t control myself.” I was searching around for little things on the floor. The stuff’s just too good for me. The high was fucking awesome, and I can see why people get hooked.

  KERRY KING: There was a time when we did crank, stuff like that. It’s ridiculous. Mostly for us though, it’s just been about drinking.

  TOM ARAYA: There was a time in Montreal in 1988 that went down as “Tom’s Supersonic hurl.” It was two-for-one happy hour, so we were pounding beers. I walked out and my stomach’s sloshing. There was snow all over the ground, and I just said, “Watch this.” I opened my mouth and spewed all over the snow, and the snow melted. We walked a little further, and I’m like, “Check this out.” It was a four-foot arc of puke. They couldn’t believe it and they were like, “Do it again! That was intense.” The last time I did anything as fucked up as that was in Japan, and that was just me in my hotel room. It was scary because I woke up with a pizza pie circle of puke around my bed. I was like, “Man, who the fuck stinks?” and then I realized it was me and I thought, “Damn, I did that i
n my sleep.” That freaked me out because some people who do that don’t wake up.

  GARY HOLT: For a long while, we’d snort anything you’d put in front of us, but back then it was much smaller amounts. It was mostly booze, and when we dabbled with methamphetamine we’d get a half gram and the whole band would get wired all night on it, which allowed us to keep drinking. Decades later it got to the point where some of us were smoking it and we’d burn up a half gram in thirty minutes. The only good thing methamphetamine ever did for me was I had about one-sixteenth of speed hidden in my rehearsal room. I had no money, and before I left on tour I let the repo man come get my car. I got dropped off at a rehearsal studio and I lived forty-five minutes away. I went in the rehearsal room and pulled out the bag of dope and used it to barter a ride home. That was about $180 of speed and the last time I ever held any in my hand was when I gave it away.

  TOM ARAYA: Me and Jeff made a pact in ’88 that we would cut the crap that we were doing. So I stopped then. You find yourself driving down the road doing fucked-up shit without a care in the world and then you realize that’s a real good way to get yourself killed.

  GARY HOLT: We all had bad methamphetamine habits—me, [vocalist] Paul Baloff, drummer [Tom Hunting], and [ex-guitarist] Rick [Hunolt]. I had to bury five friends who died from that. Eventually, you realize it’s a dead-end street. That’s why we parted ways with Rick. He’d get clean to tour, then go back home and start again. And I love Rick to death. I want nothing more than for him to straighten up his life. But when you’re smoking that shit, it’s a whole different ballgame. And he was in deep and wouldn’t stop.

  The glory (and gory) days of thrash came to an end because there were hardly any new ideas being generated, and the glut of bands didn’t seem to care as long as they were partying and getting laid. By the late eighties and early nineties, thrash was on its way out—and a new form of heavy music brewing in Seattle was about to redefine the musical landscape. But before grunge took over, thrash had one dramatic last gasp. In 1990, a promoter put together the first Clash of the Titans tour in Europe, which featured Slayer, Megadeth, Testament, and Suicidal Tendencies. The tour was named after the 1981 Desmond Davis fantasy movie about the Greek myth of Perseus. Before the tour even began, Megadeth front man Dave Mustaine accidentally started a rivalry with Slayer that would last until their Carnage tour in 2010. The tension wasn’t noticeable from the audience, however, and all four bands delivered jaw-dropping performances before stadium crowds. The shows went over so well that the tour continued in 1991 in North America, with Anthrax replacing Testament, and a then-unknown Alice in Chains taking Suicidal’s spot.

  DAVE MUSTAINE: This was way before stuff like Ozzfest, so having Slayer, Megadeth, and Testament on one bill was really special. Then when you add Anthrax in the States, nothing like that had ever happened. It should have been really fun, but before we started the European run, we had to do a photo shoot for Rolling Stone, and [Slayer front man] Tom [Araya], myself, [Testament vocalist] Chuck [Billy], and [Suicidal Tendencies vocalist] Mike Muir were supposed to all be there, and Mike couldn’t make it. I said something and it got back to Mike, and he didn’t like it. That started a shit storm.

  MIKE MUIR (Suicidal Tendencies): Before we left, someone said, “Hey man, you sitting down?” I’m like, “No, why?” He said, “I wanna read you something.” He read me a couple interviews Dave Mustaine did. I was like, “Why [is he talking shit about me]? I don’t really know this guy.” When I finally saw him a few days into the tour he told me, “Hey, I never said any of this stuff. It’s the press. They’re trying to get me. Why would I say that?” I went, “I dunno, man. It seems like a little bit too heavy of a conspiracy to me, you know?” The next day he came open and went, “I said some stuff I shouldn’t have said. I got some problems. I don’t know why I did it. All I can say is I shouldn’t have and I was wrong.” And that was the end of it.

  MIKE CLARK (Suicidal Tendencies): Dave Mustaine is a jerk. I’m not one to put people down and talk behind people’s backs, but during that tour he publicly stated in some magazine interviews that we were unprofessional, not good enough, and did not deserve to play the Clash of the Titans tour. He said Mike couldn’t sing—“sings like a frog,” something stupid like that. Then in his usual manner he said he was very drugged out at the time and apologized. Dave was lucky that Mike actually didn’t beat the shit out of him, because he did deserve it. You can ask anybody.

  DAVE MUSTAINE: We got overseas and we were in an airport and there were some guys that were drinking and having a good time. I wasn’t drinking. I was newly sober and in that AA police thing, so I was miserable, and as I was suffering silently, my lips gave way and I spoke out. I said something about [Slayer guitarist] Kerry [King] that I shouldn’t have said and that I regretted. I think it’s probably better left unsaid because it’s water under the bridge now.

  KERRY KING: That was the beginning of me and Dave Mustaine being at odds, because he was just a pompous ass back then. We had never had any problems before. Over the course of a tour you find out stuff about people that you didn’t know when you were just hanging out at a show or a party. It was funny because he said in an interview that he was angry about us drinking in the hallways, farting and burping and having a good time. I’m like, “You’re just making us sound fun, dude.”

  TOM ARAYA: We were stoned and drunk in a hotel in Scotland. We were goofing around and my hand ended up hitting the side of the elevator. So Chuck decided he’d punch the side of the elevator. There was a display there with glass and he put his hand through it. Blood was running down on the floor of the elevator and I was like, “Dude, we need to take care of that.”

  ERIC PETERSON: Tom grabs Chuck’s wrist and goes, “You stupid idiot. Look what you did to yourself!” He’s slapping Chuck in the face—and Tom’s the only guy that could get away with that; Chuck’s got a lot of respect for Tom. So Tom went, “C’mon, we gotta get you to the hospital.” We got a cab to the hospital, and while Chuck’s getting stitches in the emergency room, these old Scottish people are looking at us all funny and someone says something to Tom about our long hair. So he gets up on the top of the table in the waiting room and yells, “Satan rules your soul!” He totally freaked those people out.

  TOM ARAYA: They stitched up Chuck’s wrist in the emergency room. And there were some old people there. I must have been pissing them off because this old man was yelling at me and started coming at me, attacking me. The hospital staff had to get him away from me. Then the doctor came out and said, “Chuck won’t let me do anything. He wants you back there with him.” I sat with Chuck while they stitched him up. The doctor was scared shitless. I’m not a small guy and Chuck’s this big Indian dude, and we’re being loud and stupid. We got out of there to get the cab back to the hotel. I realized I didn’t have any shoes on. I was barefoot the entire time and I didn’t realize it.

  DAVE MUSTAINE: The rumor mill went crazy. It didn’t help that Chuck Billy cut his hand, and then I walked underneath the curtain and some idiot didn’t raise the lighting truss and I ran right into it and split my nose open. So there was a huge chunk of skin hanging off my nose and Chuck’s hand’s bloody, and everyone’s thinking he punched me in the face.

  RICK ERNST (director, Get Thrashed): A lot of people don’t know that Alice in Chains weren’t originally going to be on the U.S. Clash of the Titans tour. The last spot was given to Death Angel, but they got into a horrible bus accident and couldn’t do the shows. So if you think about it, the tour symbolized the end of thrash and the torch being passed to something else.

  ROB CAVESTANY (Death Angel): On November 28, 1990, we got in an accident that ended everything for a while. We had just done a show in Mesa, Arizona, and were traveling to a show in Vegas. It was 6:30 in the morning, and instead of a normal bus our management chose to save money and go with a mobile home. The soundman was driving and he fell asleep at the wheel doing 90 down the highway. We went into a ravine, tipped over, a
nd slid for 300 feet. It looked like a bomb blew up. Our drummer Andy [Galleon] was injured really badly. We didn’t even know where he was at first. He had been thrown against the side window, and then when the bus flipped over on its side, he was against the pavement of the street with a mattress and a big TV on top of him, and it literally pressed his head to the pavement while we slid. It took a year for him to recover [from severe head trauma].

  JERRY CANTRELL (Alice in Chains): I never felt at home on Clash of the Titans. It was never our audience, but it was an opportunity to play in front of a big crowd. We took some serious abuse on that tour.

  SCOTT IAN: We’d stand onstage every night and watch Alice get pelted with everything those crowds could throw at them. [Vocalist] Layne [Staley] would be jumping into the audience and punching people. But they never once walked off the stage. Every night they finished their set. They stood there and they took it.

  KERRY KING: At Red Rocks [in the Rocky Mountains, near Denver] somebody had a big gallon jug that they had pissed in, and they dumped it on Alice in Chains more than once. I was like, “Goddamn, that sucks.”

  JERRY CANTRELL: As soon as we hit the stage shit just started raining down; it was insane. It was like that movie Three Hundred with all the arrows. The sky was black with coins and bottles during our whole forty-minute set. Somebody threw a gallon jug of something that crashed down on Sean Kinney’s drum set. You had to keep your eye out, just dodging shit. Then Layne got pissed off and was like, “Fuck you, motherfuckers!” We kept playing, and he jumped the barricade while people were spitting on him. He was spitting back. They were hitting him, and he was kicking and hitting back, and we did the same thing. We were right there, but we kept playing, like, “Fuck you, we ain’t goin’ anywhere.” We finished the set and we were like “Jesus Christ, that was insane.” We’re waiting to get in the bus to leave, and there were a bunch of Slayer fans backstage that had passes and they started walking toward us. We’re like, “We’re gonna get our fuckin’ asses kicked.” But they walked over and went, “Okay, man. You didn’t puss out. I guess you’re all right.”