I'm the Man: The Story of That Guy from Anthrax

by Scott Ian

  “We can’t afford hotels. There’s no money,” he said. That much was true. Metallica had no cash and Jonny had spent his last $1,600 to get them to New York. He had to pay for everything with credit cards and refinance his house. It was a sucker’s gambit. “You realize there’s no place to sleep and there’s no showers and no hot water,” I said. “It’s a fucking shithole.”

  “I know, I know. They’re aware of that.”

  Lilker and I were there the day Metallica showed up in New York for the first time. We all hit it off immediately and became fast friends. We were both in the same boat; we were no-name bands trying to do something real. Granted, they were actually in a worse boat back then than we were. They didn’t know anybody except us, and they were about to see the place they’d be calling home until they went on tour.

  We did everything we could to help them out. They could barely afford to eat. We had a refrigerator and a toaster oven in our jam room. We gave those to them after I walked in and saw their bassist Cliff Burton with a pack of Oscar Mayer hot dogs. He was eating them cold because they come precooked. I said, “We have a toaster oven downstairs. We’ll give you the toaster oven so you can at least heat these things and have a bun. Use our fridge and keep stuff in it.”

  I have a picture of James with a piece of bologna on his hand, because they couldn’t even afford a loaf of bread. We called it the “loser’s lunch”: bologna on hand, hold the bread. We’d drive Metallica back to our houses to shower because Lilker’s parents would go to work, and my mom still worked. So during the day we’d head over to the Music Building, pick up Metallica, come back home, and let them shower. Then we’d all go back to the Music Building. Some of our other friends started helping out, too. Some guys we knew in Queens let them crash at their houses. Sleeping on the floor in someone’s house was better than being on a flea-ridden mattress in the Music Building.

  My initial jealousy of Metallica melted away as soon as we met. I pretty much lived at the Music Building 24/7, although I slept at home. So I felt like we were brothers. I used to sit in their room night after night and listen to them jam. Whenever I had seen any band rehearse before, they set up like they were playing a show. The drums were in the middle, the amps were on stage left and stage right, and everything faced out. Anthrax practiced that way, too. Metallica were the first ones I saw that set up the drums and then put all the amps around them. Lars Ulrich was in the middle of a semicircle, and everyone else was around him, facing in. Soon after we met I saw them setting up their gear and I said, “What are you guys doing?”

  “This is how we jam,” Lars said. I didn’t know what to make of it. . . . And then they started playing, facing the amps, and once again, I had that feeling, “This is the best thing I’ve ever heard.” The tone that Dave Mustaine and Hetfield had was like a dual chainsaw symphony. Sitting in that ten-by-twelve room, surrounded by their amps, listening to Metallica play those Kill ’Em All songs in late ’82 before the album came out, were definitely some of the coolest moments of my life. It’s especially amazing, realizing what Metallica went on to become and knowing that I was literally sitting there when they were putting all the pieces together to start their domination. They were on fucking fire; it literally seemed like flames were coming out of their fingertips. They were so ready to seek and destroy. Every time I heard them, I was totally inspired. And although they were already notorious drinkers and I was around them all the time, I always abstained. I was completely sober back then because I got alcohol poisoning on my seventeenth birthday and I couldn’t touch alcohol for years after that.

  Chapter 7

  Soldiers of Metal

  Up Your Ass

  It was New Year’s Eve 1980, and we had a big party at my friend Richie Herman’s house. He lived on the first floor of our building, and his dad was always out of town, so we had fifty or sixty people at his house to celebrate my birthday. I went nuts. I’d been drinking before, but now I was almost legal. I was seventeen, and I drank so many screwdrivers made with that ultrapremium vodka, Popov. It’s right up there with Grey Goose and Tito’s, if they tasted like used Russian bleach. I must have had twelve. I have vague memories of making out with this girl, and we stopped kissing because I was getting queasy. I felt the vomit come up my esophagus, and I pulled away and puked all over her and then proceeded to puke all over Richie’s bathroom.

  I crawled up the stairs one flight back to my mom’s apartment, crashed out, and woke up the next day still throwing up. I was sick for two or three days. Just the smell of booze nauseated me for years. Looking back, that was an advantage because I didn’t drink much during all the formative years of Anthrax, and that helped me maintain focus. I’d go to bars and have a beer or two, but I was not part of the Alcoholica team. Metallica had a totally different dynamic back then. Their music was strong enough to hold up even when they were sloppy drunk, and even when Dave Mustaine was in the band they really were the Four Horsemen. They just all had very strong, different personalities. James Hetfield was actually the wallflower. He was quiet like Charlie with a good sense of humor and hadn’t developed his rock star persona yet. He looked awkward around people, but when he was holding his guitar and screaming into the mike he was right at home. That was where he belonged, even though he never said anything onstage.

  Mustaine was the real front man of the band. He did all the talking onstage and he had that rock star personality. He was also an out-of-control, mean drunk, but he had a sharp sense of humor. Lars could be funny, too, and he could talk a ton of shit. He actually couldn’t really play when they started. He learned by jamming along with James’s songs and just got better as they went. It would be hard to imagine Lars in any other band, but he’s the right drummer for Metallica. He was also the voice of the band from day one.

  If I were to single any of them out as someone who looked like he didn’t belong, it would be Cliff. Anthrax and Metallica had a certain look: tight jeans, high-top Nike or Converse sneakers, metal T-shirt, leather jacket, or denim over leather. And then there was Cliff in his bell bottoms, cowboy boots, R.E.M. T-shirt, and jean jacket decorated with Lynyrd Skynyrd and Misfits pins. He was definitely an oddball, but in his own way, he was the most metal of all of us because he flew his own flag and he was the most talented musician—possibly the best I had ever met—even better than Lilker. He was a virtuoso bassist, and he understood music and theory. Compared to him, we were cavemen. He was very aloof but not standoffish. He was cool, laconic. He ­almost resembled a character from the fifties, like the Fonz from Happy Days, if the Fonz played in Molly Hatchet. Cliff would stand there with a cigarette, give you a squint-eyed Clint Eastwood grin, and say, “What’s up?”

  We were into the same movies, books, and TV shows, and we liked all of the same bands, so we became instant friends. I was a Skynyrd fan from growing up, but I had never heard R.E.M. I asked him who they were, and he said they were this killer band from Georgia. Then he gave me a tape with Murmur on one side and Reckoning on the other. I took it home and checked it out, and, yeah, he was right. That early R.E.M. stuff was cool. Cliff was an awesome, awesome dude and everyone knew it. He had this aura. They all did. At first, there seemed to be no dissension between them. They were all drinking buddies and they did stupid shit. But Dave was a little stupider. And when he was really drunk, he could be a total asshole. Late at night he would dump piles of trash in front of other bands’ rehearsal room doors, so when they’d show up the next day their whole front door would be covered with a mountain of garbage. And they’d know which band did it because Metallica were the only ones sleeping there. So all these musicians would knock on Metallica’s door, wanting to beat them up.

  I was with them on April 9, 1983, when they were playing L’Amour with Vandenberg and the Rods. Vandenberg were onstage in the middle of the afternoon sound checking, and Mustaine was already hammered. He was in the middle of the floor of the venue, and as soon as they ended a song h
e started screaming at them that they sucked and they should get the fuck off the stage. Jonny Z pulled him away. But I didn’t think any of that shit was enough to get him kicked out of the band. The guy is arguably the godfather of thrash metal. He wrote a lot of the riffs on Kill ’Em All and even some of Ride the Lightning. Without Dave Mustaine, maybe thrash metal never would have happened. At least in the beginning, he was the driving force, artistically.

  A day or two later, I woke up, drove to the Music Building, and saw Cliff standing outside having a smoke. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing. What’s going on?” I answered, figuring it was just another day.

  “Not much. We fired Dave. He’s on a Greyhound back to San Francisco.”

  I laughed because Cliff was always being sarcastic and busting balls.

  “Yeah, that’s funny,” I said. “Look, I have to go work with my amp. I’m not real happy with the tone. I’ll see you upstairs.”

  “I’m totally serious,” he said. “Go upstairs to the room right now and talk to James and Lars.”

  I went upstairs, looked around, and didn’t see Dave anywhere. “What’s going on?”

  “Didn’t Cliff tell you?” James said.

  “Yeah, but he’s lying, right?”

  “No, we fired Dave this morning,”

  I still figured that was impossible and they were playing a trick on me. “You’re fucking serious?”

  “We’re totally serious,” said Lars.

  I said, “Holy shit. You have gigs coming up and you’re making an album next month. Does Jonny Z know?”

  “Yeah, we told him a couple days ago,” Lars continued. “We made him promise not to say anything. We didn’t want Dave to find out. We didn’t know what he would do.”

  They had the whole operation planned out with the precision of a military air strike. It turned out that L’Amour show with the Rods was Dave’s final straw. They purchased a one-way bus ticket back to LA and waited for a night when Dave got really drunk, which they knew wouldn’t be long. There was a Greyhound station almost next door to the Music Building; they woke him up while he was still mostly incoherent and fired him. He had passed out in his clothes, so they didn’t have to help him get dressed. They just collected his stuff, which they had mostly packed in a bag already, and literally put him on the bus before he understood what was happening. Then they made plans to send him his gear.

  I was standing there with my jaw open, speechless, and Cliff walked back in. “See, I told you,” he said.

  “Well, what are you going to do about your shows and the record?”

  “We have a guy coming in from this San Francisco band, Exodus,” Lars said. “He’s flying in and joining the band. He already knows most of the songs, and he’s learning the leads.”

  When he got there, Kirk Hammett was a fucking trouper. Everyone’s attitude in Metallica and Anthrax at that point was, “Fuck, put me on a park bench with a newspaper on top of me. I don’t care. We’re making a record.”

  I was nineteen. Everyone else was around the same age. We didn’t give a fuck about anything except making music, whatever it took. But adapting to that lifestyle was harder for Kirk than for any of the other guys. He was certainly the most sensitive of the four of them. Sometimes the stress of living like that would show. Back in San Francisco, he was in a band that was starting to happen, and he had a place to stay. He wasn’t living in a filthy rehearsal squat. But he never complained or got angry. He was probably the nicest guy I’d ever met, and he never, ever changed, even with all the money and fame. He’s still the same sweet kid I met the day after he arrived from SF.

  Once I got done helping Kirk acclimate to the luxuries of South Jamaica, it was time to focus again on Anthrax. We decided “Soldiers of Metal” would be the song to introduce us to the world because it had that barreling double bass that delivered a knockout combination along with the guitars, bass, and vocals. But the demos all sounded flat. We needed someone to produce it properly. Tom Browne was a huge Manowar fan, so he introduced me to their guitarist, Ross the Boss. I didn’t know much about Manowar, but I kind of liked the first album. It was cool that they had Orson Welles narrating “Dark Avenger.” I thought the image of them in loincloths holding swords was a bit gay, but Ross was in the Dictators, and I was a big Dictators fan. I told Ross we wanted to make a quality demo, and he said, “Let me produce it for you; I’ve been doing it for years.”

  So in early 1983 I used $1,500 that I saved up from work to go into this really good studio in Long Island, Sonic Studios, with Ross and record five songs. Like I said, I was always paying. Neil Turbin was a cheap motherfucker, Lilker never had money, and even though Spitz had some cash he never wanted to spend it on Anthrax. We recorded “Soldiers of Metal” along with some old songs we had already recorded with Greg but that had a different feel with Charlie playing. We tracked the music in two days, and Neil sang his vocals on the third day. It was a solid five-song demo, the best thing we had done.

  We went to the flea market to give it to Jonny, and someone there said, “Oh, Jonny’s at the IHOP down the street on Route 18.” So Danny and I went over there and literally walked up to the table where Jonny and his wife Marsha were eating breakfast. He said, “Oh, it’s you guys. What’s going on?”

  “We have a new demo, a new drummer. Ross the Boss produced it.” We were so amped up each sentence practically ran into the next.

  “Oh, really? Wow.” That was what Jonny said when he was impressed by something. Then he said, “Okay, we’ll check it out. But can we finish eating breakfast?”

  We went back home, and the next day Jonny called me all excited. I had never heard him talk about our band like this before: “This is great, this is great! You’ve got it now. You have it! This is great!!”

  He said it was the best thing he’d ever heard from us and he wanted to sign us to a record deal, and if we wanted him to, he would manage us as well. Jonny made good on every word. He printed up the single of “Soldiers of Metal” and sent it all over the world. All 2,000 copies they printed sold out. A couple of months later we were in the studio recording Fistful of Metal.

  In April and May 1983, before we started working on the rec­ord, we played about five shows around New York and Jersey with ­Metallica. In the inner sleeve of their Kill ’Em All album, there’s a live photo of them, which was actually a staged shot taken at a sound check. In the foreground of the picture, in front of the stage, there are these KISS road cases lined up to extend the stage out. Those were ours. I bought a bunch of them for our gear. Most of the backline they used was mine, too. Then in early 1984, Metallica were scheduled to play The Channel in Boston, but all their equipment was stolen from their van, including James’s prized guitar amp. In a state of despair, he sat down with an acoustic and wrote “Fade to Black,” their first big metal ballad.

  Metallica had just released Kill ’Em All and they were about to go to Europe. Suddenly, they had no gear, so we lent them tons of stuff, basically our entire backline, to play the shows. At one point, Jonny Z offered me a point on the Metallica record as payment for helping them out and lending them a ton of gear. I told him I didn’t want it and that I’d feel sleazy taking money from them. I was just glad I could help. I would have done that for anybody. I would only expect they’d have done the same for us. And Metallica definitely paid us back in full by taking us on tour with them and breaking us in the UK.

  We wrote about half of Fistful of Metal before Charlie was in the band. And after he joined we came up with faster stuff like “Deathrider,” “Metal Thrashing Mad,” and “Subjugator.” The album is a really good representation of what we were listening to at the time: Maiden, Priest, Motörhead, but also other NWOBHM stuff like Raven, Accept, and old Scorpions (even though those last two bands are German). In addition, we were into British punk, including GBH and Discharge. It was all part of that process of discovering
the next heavy band. We heard Venom and went, “What could be more extreme than this?” Then we listened to Discharge’s Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing and went, “Okay, this is the heaviest record ever made! Let’s do something even heavier!!”

  The first time I saw slam dancing and stage diving was when I went with Neil to check out the Exploited at Great Gildersleeves. At that point, I had never been to a punk show in my life. We were sitting up in the balcony, and I was looking down at the kids in the crowd as they smashed into each other and climbed on top of one another’s heads, crawling to the stage and diving off. “Dude, that looks fun. Let’s go down there,” I said. Neil seemed alarmed: “No man, you’ll get killed. They’ll beat our asses. Punks and skinheads hate metal dudes.”

  I didn’t believe him and thought he was being a pussy, but I found out later it was true. When the punk, hardcore, and metal scenes started to cross over in ’84/’85, there were so many fights between longhairs and skinheads in the crowds at thrash shows. Even so, slam dancing soon became a really big thing in metal. The West Coast–style circle pit was suddenly everywhere, and that evolved or devolved into moshing, where people in the crowd formed a much more violent circle pit that was less about actual slam dancing and expressing yourself and more about making aggressive physical contact with other moshers. There were always a few assholes in the pit, but most of the fans were there to have a good time, not to hurt anybody. There was an unspoken rule that if someone got knocked down, you weren’t allowed to trample him. You had to help him get up and make sure he was okay. It was civilized anarchy most of the time.

  Lilker was into the most extreme hardcore and metal as well as great, melodic rock, and he was the main songwriter in Anthrax back then. He wrote about 75 percent of the riffs for Fistful of Metal. But we all worked on the songs as a team. We’d be writing a song, and we’d say, “No, we should play that one faster. That’s how fast Motörhead plays. We should go even faster than them.” We could, so why not? Charlie could play faster double bass than Philthy Animal Taylor, and we could play the riffs faster, so we did because we thought it was a blast. It felt so good to play that fast and bang our heads to the beat of Charlie’s double-bass drumming.