EVAN SEINFELD: As productive and successful as we were, I was so fucked up on drugs. I was really into coke. I used to smoke crack before it was known that crack was a bad thing to do—like it hadn’t hit the news yet. The vibe was, “Hey, there’s this new thing! It’s like freebase, but it’s five dollars.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s great, I got $20. Let’s go.”
BILLY GRAZIADEI: All of us were into drugs and alcohol. Evan used to deal coke, and he was doing a lot of it himself. We were young and amped up, and the violence was crazy. We once played Riverside, California, and there were these Latino white power dudes there. I was going, “Why are they sieg heiling? They’re Mexican.” So we went off on them and it erupted into a big brawl. New York shows were crazy too, because we were pretty solid in Brooklyn, but we played a lot in Manhattan. So a lot of DMS [gang] guys would come out. There was another crew in Brooklyn called BYB. It seemed like whenever we played, that was the meeting point for all the different gangs in the hardcore scene to have beef. A lot of kids used to hold razorblades in their knuckles and then when they were dancing they would just start slashing people. I’d see all these kids leave the pit with slices down their back.
EVAN SEINFELD: In England, a fight broke out with the bouncers and I punched this guy in the head and broke my fucking hand, like a boxer’s break. Now I’m trying to fight with one hand. I can’t even raise my other hand. We ended back in the dressing room. They emptied the club, pulled down the gates, and locked us in, and we were terrified. I thought they were going to kill us. There’s twenty of these football hooligan bouncers and eight of us. All of a sudden there’s a knock at the door and we hear this Irish brogue, and the guy says, “We’d like you to send out one representative.” Our tour manager was a Scottish guy named Rush Duncan and he says, “I’m your manager. I’ll go out.” So he opens the door and we’re waiting for an ambush. We got a refrigerator blocking the door and we’re holding these chair legs. It’s like The Warriors, and the head guy, the guy I broke my hand on, his head has got a big fucking giant lump, and he says, “Well, we talked it over. We think you are stand-up guys and we want to buy you some drinks.” We ended up having the coolest night ever.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: We’d score heroin at night after work and party, drink beer, and cause trouble. And then the next morning you’d snort crystal meth and go to work all day. You’d do that three or four days in a row. And then you’d take three days off and call in sick because you couldn’t do it anymore. I lost a lot of friends and saw people wither away. I had a friend Hal, a skinhead from the Lower East Side. He had this big heroin problem and he hung himself. It shocked me because, I was like, “You don’t hang yourself. You’re a junkie. You die. You OD. That’s how you go out when you’re a junkie.” That’s when I realized, “You know what? Living like this is way more dangerous than I ever imagined.” At first you’re like, “I’m only snorting” or “I’m only smoking.” Then it’s, “I’m only skin-popping, I’m not mainlining.” But you end up getting to a place where you think it’s the bottom, and there’s always one step lower. When Hal hung himself, I said, “You know what? Making music is getting me more excited than doing dope.” And we started straightening ourselves up.
EVAN SEINFELD: For a long time, everything was still all about sex, drugs, and violence. We were in Phoenix, Arizona, on tour with Sick of It All and Sheer Terror, and a brawl broke out between these kids and these skinhead guys, and some guy whips out a hammer in the pit and cracks some kid in the head. We all went out to the Winnebago and the kid comes knocking on our door, and he’s got a dent in his head that looks like it goes back into the middle of his brain. It had to be six inches deep. He’s like, “I don’t feel so good.” I’m thinking, “You don’t feel so good because you’re probably going to die any second.” Over what? Over a rock concert. The night turned into a full-on ballroom riot. Every guy in every band was standing back to back in the club fighting these dudes. One guy from our crew had two cue balls in a woven sock and he started cracking people in the head. One of my friends had two glass beer pitchers he used as weapons, and I had a broken pool cue. It seemed like it made sense back then. We were like warriors of the wasteland. But I look back and I try to think of what we were fighting for. We had a positive message in our music and we were trying to fight ignorance. But we were all acting like thugs. So we thought, “Well, maybe we can find some positivity and use our music as a positive release to all this negative energy and let other people use it to vent their frustration, and we ended up taking this thing that started really negative and turning it around.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: Our judgment was clouded because of our lifestyles. Evan was still doing tons of coke, but then he had a heart attack [on May 31, 1988]. He thought he was gonna die. They rushed him to the hospital. After that he went through rehab and straightened out. Evan was the first to clean up his shit and I followed suit, and what kept us straight for a long time was trying to help [guitarist] Bobby [Hambel]. Well, how do you help your buddy with a drinking problem while you’re sitting there holding a beer? The first time we toured with Pantera we were straight, and they thought we were the most boring band ever. But Evan wasn’t going to just straighten out and be this normal guy. As soon as he was clean and sober he jumped deep into the other vices of life and got heavily into sex.
Today, Seinfeld is as notorious for his life as a porn star as he is for being a metal icon. In 2004, after doing some professional acting work, including the HBO series Oz, Seinfeld married pornographic actress Tera Patrick and became her manager. The couple performed in fifteen movies together, Seinfeld under the name Spyder Jonez; he has been involved in more than thirty-five in total. In September 2009 the couple divorced. Seinfeld launched his own website, RockstarPornstar.com, in March 2010, and after nearly a three-year break, Biohazard reunited with now-sober guitarist Bobby Hambel to tour and work on the follow-up to 2005’s Means to an End. In June 2011, Biohazard announced that Seinfeld had left the band amicably. He has since become the vocalist for Attika 7, which also features celebrity motorcycle builder Rusty Coones.
EVAN SEINFELD: I was always obsessed with pussy and girls. The very first video I saw was “The Beatles at Shea Stadium.” Girls were screaming and pulling their hair, and I thought, “Fuck, I want somebody to scream for me like that.” When I got my first bass guitar, all of a sudden all these new girls that I didn’t know before were suddenly interested in me. Playing in a metal band and going on the road is almost like being an urban land-pirate swashbuckling your way across the earth, raping and pillaging. To me a good concert was like this: there’d be a fight, I’d get laid, and the show went well.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: One time I ended up in the hotel room with two girls. We’re hanging out and the girl to my left says to the girl on my right, “I can’t believe we were in this same hotel last week.” One of them goes, “I was with Phil,” and the other says, “I was with Dime.” I’m like, “Aw fuck, two friends of mine.” The funny thing about that is we just did a tour with Unearth and the same thing happened to them regarding us. One girl they were with said, “I was with Evan.” And the other goes, “I was with Billy.”
EVAN SEINFELD: If I was in it for the money, I would’ve been in a commercial band. I’m a smart guy. I could’ve been a lawyer. For me it was about having a good time and living that rock-and-roll outlaw lifestyle. I ride choppers and Harleys, I drive hot rods, I’m tattooed. I like brutal heavy metal and fast times with easy women. And I love girls who know what they want and aren’t uptight.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: Evan had “the book.” Really, it was Biohazard’s book, but he likes to take credit for it. The way it started was we’d get a girl to consensually show us her tits and we’d take a picture of her. At first, there were ten Polaroids on the table. And then somebody decided to put them into a photo album. The album gets bigger and bigger, and it progresses from, “Oh, shit, this girl showed her ass” to, “Oh, shit, this girl showed her landing strip for her Brazilian
wax.” Eventually, it turned into a full-on porno book. There were volumes and volumes of these things.
EVAN SEINFELD: I heard that Gene Simmons had a photo album of naked girls and I thought that was the coolest fucking thing ever. I thought, “This guy is documenting his role as a super-pimp.” So my friend Drew Stone says, “You should take it a step further and take pictures of chicks sucking your dick.” I said, “That’s really funny, but how are we going to get them developed?” He goes, “We won’t, we’ll get a Polaroid.” So we got the camera and one day I said to Drew, “When I get her back in the bus just come in with the Polaroid and I’ll ask if she minds taking a picture.” A lot of girls were into it, posing with my cock, and it became really funny. Then Billy and I hosted MTV’s Headbangers Ball and we had to interview all the bands who we were on this festival tour with, including KISS and Ozzy Osbourne. After the interview, Gene says to me, “So, I heard you have a book.” I was floored. I said, “I have a book, Gene. Actually, you inspired my book because I heard about your book.” So Gene, who’s in KISS makeup, in his full demon outfit, reaches into his shirt, under his wing, and pulls out a photo album. I’m looking at this book, and there’s hundreds of pictures of naked girls. He goes, “This is just one volume from the last tour, but there’s hundreds of volumes.” I was impressed. Then he says, “So, can I see your book?” I felt it was like a meeting of the minds, and I sent one of the guys from my crew to get it. So he brings it back and Gene opens the book. It has facial cum shots and girls with my dick stretching their mouth. Gene’s face was somewhere between shock, disbelief, envy, and disgust all at the same time. I’m thinking to myself, “I’m on to something here” because if you can get that kind of reaction from Gene Simmons, then porn is the new punk rock. And that’s when I decided to enter the porn business.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: Once, Evan got in a fight with one of the girls he was dating. He threw a bunch of his Polaroid books out in the garbage and said, “I don’t give a fuck about these girls. They mean nothing to me.” After he sorted out his shit with his old lady he called one of my boys and asked him to go through his garbage and pick up the books because he threw them out just to save face with his girl, but he really wanted to keep them.
EVAN SEINFELD: We were filming the movie Load Stories in our bus, and between takes, two of the girls gave me a blowjob, but it wasn’t on camera. And [porn veteran] Ron Jeremy, who was my idol as a kid, walks in and goes, “Wow!” I’m like, “What do you mean, ‘wow’?” He goes, “Those chicks were totally sucking your dick.” I’m like, “Dude, you fuck a different couple of girls every day. You’re Ron Jeremy!” And he goes, “Yeah, but they fuck me because they have to. They fucked you because they wanted to. They weren’t getting paid.” It’s definitely the most validating thing—someone wanting to have sex with you, giving themselves to you because they think you’re hot or they admire you.
BILLY GRAZIADEI: One time we were on tour with Pantera, and they were having a party on the bus. There were two naked blond girls on the couch kissing and licking each other. And there were twelve people cheering them on. It was all of Biohazard, Pantera, and our tour guys. Then this girl takes a banana and starts inserting it in the other girl. I’m thinking, “This is fucking crazy.” There are eighteen dudes here all screaming and yelling, and more people kept piling in the front door. Morally, I thought this was kind of fucked. All of a sudden, Evan stopped and went, “Hold on. Everybody stop. Chill the fuck out,” ’cause guys were reaching over and grabbing the girls’ breasts and it was getting a little out of hand. As soon as he said that, I was like, “Fuck yeah, man. Stand up for these girls. Tell these guys they’re being disrespectful and they should be cool.” Then all of a sudden he reached down, head first, and eats the banana out of the girl’s crotch. And I was like, “Ah, man. All decadence. Rock and roll.”
EVAN SEINFELD: My signature trademark is something I invented in Biohazard called the “dickfold.” It looks a little humiliating, but it’s done in good sport. And now, every time I shoot a porn scene, after I do my patented facial cum shot, I blindfold the girls with my cock by pulling my dick across their eyes and holding their head tight with it. That’s the “dickfold.”
By 1995, crossover had run its course. Biohazard had transformed the genre from a counterculture vehicle for rage and nonconformity into a mainstream entity that embraced the traditional hedonism and debauchery of rock and roll. Cro-Mags broke up for an extended period after the prophetic 1993 debacle Near-Death Experience. Suicidal was on hiatus, and when it returned in 1997 it was without guitarist Rocky George and bassist Robert Trujillo (Metallica). And Corrosion of Conformity slowed down and embraced doom metal. The last gasp came when Bad Brains, the group that had sparked much of the excitement and revolutionary activity that spawned crossover, began to self-destruct. Vocalist H.R. struggled with the decision whether to continue with Bad Brains or pursue a reggae career. Then, in 1990, after the fierce and metallic Quickness, H.R. abruptly left the band and was replaced, first by ex–Faith No More vocalist Chuck Mosley and then, in 1991, by Israel Joseph I. The following year, Jenifer convinced H.R. and drummer Earl Hudson to return to the Brains. The band recorded its first album, God of Love, for Madonna’s record company, Maverick, with which the band had reportedly signed a lucrative deal. But H.R. was in no mental condition to be back on the road. He was still ambivalent about playing hardcore and metal, and in Lawrence, Kansas, during an opening slot for the Beastie Boys on the Ill Communication tour, he self-destructed, clubbing two fans with the mic stand in the middle of the set. Police arrived, closed down the show, and arrested H.R. for battery. One fan required five staples to repair his fractured skull.
DARRYL JENIFER: There were skinheads at that show with suspenders, boots, sideburns. He thought those skinheads were out to get us. Basically, a kid spit on him in the spirit of punk, and H.R. smacked the kid with the mic stand and told us, “Get ’em, soldiers.” He thought we had to battle the skinheads that night. Turns out the skinheads were our biggest fans. They weren’t Nazi skinheads. It was a big confusion and what went down was horrible. I don’t even think the people who got hit with the mic were the people that were spitting. When I saw that shit, I just put my bass down and left. I went out the back door of the club and walked down the alley like I was a bystander. The police came and it was a mess.
H.R.: It wasn’t really catastrophic, but a momentary absence of the objectives and the reward that one receives once they are able to tune in with what is happening in the matter of expansion of the soul, rebuilding the nation, and learning to love I and I. It was a temporary expression of communication in the nation [that] had been withheld for natural purposes, being that some of our artists visiting were still learning how to walk at that time. They’re a lot more mature now, a lot more responsible, and can receive the information not from secondhand individuals or a subculture, but from someone who knows what’s going on and has proven time and time again that we can survive.
DARRYL JENIFER: Whenever we got to that point when it looked like we were gonna get big, something would occur that would seemingly look like H.R. was behind it. He would walk out or do something crazy. People wanna say, “H.R. fucked you all up.” But when you look at the Bad Brains as a cosmic musical force, it’s the great spirit’s work. That’s why Living Colour can’t do what we’re doing right now. The mild attention that we’re getting for being who we are, the respect that we get, the respect our records get, a lot of bands don’t have that. Maybe they have platinum plaques, but do they have lasting significance?
7
FAR BEYOND DRIVEN: THRASH REVISITED AND REVISED, 1987–2004
Arlington, Texas, doesn’t seem a likely spawning ground for one of the most important bands in the history of metal. And in the mid-eighties, when Pantera were teasing their hair, wearing spandex, and putting out LPs that sounded like a hybrid of Van Halen and Mötley Crüe, the band was barely on the radar outside of Dallas. Then they discovered thrash meta
l, hooked up with a new young singer from New Orleans named Philip Anselmo, and transformed into the heroes of the second generation of thrash. While other thrashers in the nineties (with the exception of Slayer) were either breaking up or becoming slower, grungier, and more alternative, the Cowboys from Hell stuck to their guns, holding the metal torch aloft and inspiring a new generation of underground bands that would later dominate the metalcore scene. Even traditional metal heroes like Rob Halford and art-metal pioneers such as Rob Zombie were moved by Pantera’s energy.
ROB HALFORD: Pantera changed the playing field for a lot of people. They were so heavy and aggressive, and their songs had amazing melodies. And there was this unbelievable guitarist who was in your face and played with incredible skill.
JAMEY JASTA (Hatebreed, Kingdom of Sorrow, Jasta 14, ex–MTV’s Headbangers Ball host): They were so heavy, and they still got so big. You could always hear Pantera on mainstream radio. They’d play “This Love” and “Cemetery Gates” on big rock stations, and I remember thinking, “Damn, that’s huge for metal.”
SCOTT IAN: At the top of their game, no one could touch Pantera. Dime was the sickest guitar player and Vinnie and Rex lay down these grooves that were unreal. With Phil screaming overtop and really venting all his poisons, they were, like, the greatest band ever.
Vinnie Paul Abbott and his brother Darrell had music in their blood. Their father, Jerry, was an established country and blues producer who owned his own studio, Pantego. Every step of the way, he was instrumental in teaching his sons the ropes and encouraging them to pursue a career in music.
DIMEBAG DARRELL: My brother Vinnie came home from school one day carrying a tuba, and my dad said, “Son, take that thing back. Play the drums or do something that’s gonna make you some cash.” When I was about ten years old, I used to go down to my dad’s studio as much as I could. I was lucky enough to see guys like Bugs Henderson, Jimmy Wallace—all these great Texas blues players.
Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal Page 30
