Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. (22 page)

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Chapter 16:

Touring Blood

Dave Lombardo leaving Slayer is nothing new. He quit the band the first time in 1986, during the
Reign in Blood
tour. The dramatic trek around the country should have been a victory lap. It felt more like a series of trials.

While writing and recording
Reign in Blood
, Slayer had been a well-oiled machine, loud and harmonious. Collectively, the band had brushed their historical tensions aside.

Preoccupied with a new album and label, Slayer didn’t play a dozen shows between January and October 1986. But the Fall ’86 Reign in Pain tour brought Slayer more money and more problems. After a skimpy year for concerts, the band crammed in two dozen concerts between Halloween and December 8. The year’s total of 30 shows was not a high number for the group. But if Slayer had played more than that, the band might not have survived.

There was never question that Slayer would meet the challenges. But for a time, it looked like the group would emerge as a diminished force. They could have joined the legions of bands who made an amazing album, only to have the classic lineup split, and then continue on, forever diminished.

Touring
Reign in Blood
, Slayer would weather pickets, steal the show, bring the mosh pit to middle America, survive a death threat, and – temporarily — lose a member in the climax of a long-running conflict that could have ended in real bloodshed.

“Yeah, there were tensions,” recalled Lombardo. “They didn’t agree with [me] – I was losing. I didn’t care to unload my drums. I had other interests. And I don’t think they liked the fact that I was married.”

Lombardo barely made it to the tour. He orchestrated a power play within the organization. It failed miserably, briefly scarring Slayer’s reputation in the promised land of Europe. The drummer was lucky to exit the episode with his skin intact.

Work on
Reign
wrapped in March 1986. Slayer returned home and played just a handful of shows over the next few months, barely keeping busy before the album’s October release date.

In the fall, just before the
Reign
tour was scheduled to kick off, Slayer passed up an opportunity to fill in for the newly coronated kings of  metal.

Metallica was riding high on the
Master of Puppets
, a disc one could argue as the best metal album of all time. “If they ever award a titanium album, it should go to
Master of Puppets
,” wrote
Rolling Stone
’s Tim Holmes
^16-1
.

The rising stars released the disc and tore through the United States. Metallica were on the road in Sweden when bass god Cliff Burton was killed when the band’s bus wrecked September 27.

Metallica were scheduled to play a starring set at Holland’s Aardschok Festival October 26. With Metallica knocked out of commission, Aardschok’s booking agent reached out to Slayer to fill the slot.

Or, rather, the booker thought he was reaching out to Slayer. Like Rubin before him, the agent had managed to contact Lombardo. According to King’s 1987 account of the bizarre story in
Metal Hammer
^16-2
, Lombardo had been discussing the deal with the European parties, but not the rest of his band or their management.

In Europe, Slayer was announced as Aardschok’s replacement heshers, the headliners, the top of the bill. When word reached the group in America, it was news to Slayer. They never made the trip. King attributed the cancellation to a phenomenon that would plague Slayer over the years:

“Miscommunication with the booking agent who took things into his own hands with relaying anything to us,” King told
Metal Hammer
. “He was working with Dave, and Dave wouldn’t tell us a lot of things…. We weren’t ready to do a headlining show there, either.”
^16-3

Araya later said the decision had an emotional component, too. “We all felt it would have been a travesty to replace Metallica as billtoppers,” Araya told
Metal Hammer
’s John Duke later, in 1989. “We simply didn’t have the heart to do it.”
^16-4

But at the time, Kerry said the band just needed time to practice. He wasn’t going to take the stage unless the band had its steel sharpened and ready to slay.

“A lot of word was going around that we didn’t want to do it because Metallica couldn’t, which was bullshit,” King told
Metal Hammer
at the time, shortly before leaving their first UK tour. “We would have done it. We weren’t ready. All the money talks were misinterpretations too…. It was the agency that fucked it up. That’s why we don’t use that agency any more.”
^16-5

It wouldn’t be the last time Lombardo interfered with a European festival.

Meanwhile, Slayer’s American agency had a tour lined up, ready to kick off November 1, after some warmup shows.

Chapter 17:

Blood in America

or

Love, Def Style

Tensions had been building between the band and Lombardo for years.

The drummer’s unsuccessful attempt to earn a voice in the band’s affairs pushed him further toward the margins.

In conversation 21 years later, Lombardo was the most contemplative member of the group. He has the air of a suburban dad who can dress you down without raising his voice. But you don’t rise to the top of metal drumming by being a chill guy all the time.

Said King, “He’s a caffeine head. He’s always ampin’. He can’t sit still. We call him A.D.Dave.”

It doesn’t take Jeff Hanneman’s expert touch to wind up Lombardo.

Buzz Osborne, Lombardo’s bandmate in Fantômas for the better part of a decade, says the drummer’s hyper nature extends to his personality: “He's the exact opposite of mild. He's a high-stress-for-no-reason-at-all guy.”

During the
Reign
era, Lombardo had some real reasons to stress out. King had never forgiven or forgotten Lombardo’s early transgressions. And by late ’86, they were adding up.

Early on in the band’s run, when Lombardo called off for a gig because he was sick, he cast a permanent shadow on his commitment.

More recently, before the band was big enough to pay roadies, he had taken to leaving gigs and letting the rest of the group pack up his kit.

Around
Reign in Blood
, Lombardo took a night off to attend an AC/DC concert.

Lombardo adopted a gruff, incredulous headbanger-
dood
voice to re-enact King’s reaction: “You missed practice to go to
AC/DC
?”

Lombardo had another great interest the band didn’t share:

“Things were going well,” said Lombardo. “I was in love.”

Being in love made Dave happy. It made the rest of the band want to choke him. All the members were in their early-to-mid 20s, and they had different ideas about how to celebrate success.

“I think I was growing up a little quicker than they were,” said Lombardo.

Lombardo and Teresa had been together almost as long as the members of Slayer had been a band. And the couple were far closer than the drummer and his bandmates. They’d been inseparable since the group’s earliest shows.

Tour manager Doug Goodman arrived in the Slayer camp early, in the first days of 1984. And the anti-Teresa sentiment was already in place.

““Everybody in the band disliked Teresa,” says Goodman. “I never really knew why.”

She shook it off like a champ. As soon as Slayer signed the contract with Def Jam, Dave and Teresa became engaged.

In the Lombardos’ divorce records, Teresa recalled the engagement talks, declaring that Dave “laid me down and put his arms around me and said, ‘When we get married I don’t want you to work and I want you to travel with me always.”
^17-1

Over 20 years later, the wedding date was fresh in Lombardo’s mind: July 19, 1986.

“Upon hearing that I was going to get signed to a major label, it was like, ‘Baby, all our dreams are going to come true,’” recalled Lombardo.

The deal included some nightmares, too.

By now, King had become the band’s unofficial captain and quality-control agent. In that capacity, he would make it his business to bristle at Lombardo’s working honeymoon.

“We used to say [Teresa and Dave] were attached at the hip,” said King.
“
And they are. It’s what [made] the relationship work. ”

And it almost brought the tour to a screeching halt.

Rubin had become Slayer’s acting manager. But now that the band was on a major label, with a release and tour to promote it, they needed real, full-time support staff. As he rose through New York City’s music scene, Rubin had met Cliff Burnstein and Peter Mensch. That hall-of-fame duo had guided AC/DC – one of Rubin’s favorites — and Def Leppard to success. (Later, their Q Prime agency would handle Jimmy Page, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and the Black Keys.)

Rubin talked Burnstein and Mensch into meeting with Slayer. The managers liked the band, but they were busy with Metallica, whose career was taking off.

Still, Burnstein and Mensch helped: They recommended a tour manager who had done well for them: Rick Sales, a veteran who had worked for Herbie Hancock, INXS, Blue Oyster Cult, and Dokken. He still manages Slayer, and his Rick Sales Entertainment Group stable includes Mastodon, Bullet for My Valentine and Ghost.

In the music business, good music will only get you so far.

“Rick Sales had a very important effect on [Slayer’s] ascension, aside from the fact that they made great music.” says T.J. Scaglione, who was on hand for the
Reign
tour — more on him in a moment. “My favorite thrash band of all time is Exodus. And they just never got the break. The business side is very important, sometimes more important than music. Metallica, they got the right people behind them. You have to have people who know the right decisions to make. And some people are very good at that.”

Sales made his bones on that tour. From the start, he encouraged the band to think big. If they were going to hop from Frisco’s Stone to Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom, then they could no longer simply stuff the gear, lights, and crew into Araya’s Camaro and a trailer. So, staring down a long trip, the band rented a Silver Eagle tour coach.

That first taste of comfort created the tour’s first and worst problem. Lombardo realized a tour-bus bunk had room for two. And the newlywed wasn’t about to leave his new bride at home. This tour, as the band prepared to don the mantle of rock stardom, he wouldn’t have the opportunity to be unfaithful. True to his word, Lombardo was bringing Teresa on tour.

But Slayer’s no-entourage policy was now official.

“We had a rule,” explained King. “People didn’t go [on tour] with us. When everybody agrees to something, and one guy does whatever he wants, that’s never a healthy situation. None of us ever had anything against his wife. [The problem] was probably just that she was there all the time. As short-sighted as that sounds, when you’re 22 and you make your rules, it’s like a little brotherhood, and this is what you
do
. And three of us agree, and one doesn’t.”

The drummer put his fast feet down: If Slayer took him on tour, they were getting two Lombardos.

Teresa resigned from her union job and hit the road with her new husband. On tour, Araya, Hanneman, and King had one more thing to agree about: The Lombardos could be a pain in the ass.

Teresa tried to steer clear of the other members. Unlike groupies and obnoxious rock girlfriends, she didn’t think she was part of the production; she wouldn’t curl her hair in their dressing room. But for the rest of the band, the stone was in the shoe.

“For some reason, they didn’t want her around,” Lombardo later told
Metal Maniacs
’ Borivoj Krgin. “It was like, ‘Why? You’ve known her for years. You’ll bring the sluts and the scumbags on the bus, or whatever… and I have my person I wanna be with every night. What’s the difference?”
^17-2

“It was very uncomfortable for Dave and for her,” says Overkill drummer Rat Skates, who was on hand for the Reign in Pain leg of the tour, from November through December 1986. “And the other guys were uncomfortable, because the other guys wanted to bring girls into the hotel rooms and get blowjobs and have beer-drinkin’ fun. And Dave had a solid girl who wasn’t walking around with a barbed-wire bra.”

The rest of the band thought that Lombardo wanted special treatment.

 “At that time, we all had girlfriends, and they stayed home,” said Hanneman. “And [Lombardo] wouldn’t let it go. We couldn’t figure that out.”

In that heightened atmosphere, routine issues became big problems.

While the rest of the band were glad to have expenses taken care of, Lombardo started to wonder where his checks were. And it wouldn’t be the last time.