Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. (8 page)

In a difference sense of the term, Lombardo was always a sick drummer, and Slayer was always a sick band. They didn’t arrive fully formed, but they always had
it
. On the club circuit, Slayer smoked competitors like Vermin, Tormentor, and Abattoir.

Early on, like Metallica, Slayer wowed crowds with spot-on cover songs. The band fleshed out set lists with tunes by Judas Priest, Deep Purple, and UFO. A highlight from early sets set was a jaw-dropping rendition of Iron Maiden’s “Phantom of the Opera.” They worked the covers out of the set by early 1983.

King’s vast Slayer archive contains cassettes of early shows, but Slayer cover sets have never surfaced on widespread bootlegs. They are Slayer collectors’ Unholy Grail.

Curious fans can get a taste of Slayer covers, though. In 2009, footage surfaced of Araya jamming with his brother John’s band, Bloodcum. Wearing tight jeans and a leather jacket, Tom sings
Mötley Crüe’s “Looks That Kill,”
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AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell,” Quiet Riot’s “Bang Your Head (Metal Health),”
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Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law,” Dio’s “Rainbow in the Dark,” and the Scorpions’ “Blackout.”
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)

Slayer’s catalog quickly took form. Some songs crawled out of the primordial sludge and changed names as they evolved: An early version of the slamming New Wave of British Heavy Metal-spawned “The Final Command” was called “Blitzkrieg.” Early on, the proggy “Kill Again” was called “Warlock.” In its original form, “Crionics” had a slow, clean intro that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Lynyrd Skynyrd album.

Muddy bootlegs preserve some of the unreleased nuggets. “Night Rider” plays like an accelerated cover of a classic-rock tune, with sixty-second drum solo in the middle of the four-minute rocker. The centerpiece of “Simple Aggression” is hot-lick fretwork that demonstrates King’s love of Van Halen. At the heart of “Assassin” is a repetitive, rawkin’ riff that accelerates until the song sounds more like “The Antichrist.” With a razor-tipped riff that recalled Judas Priest, “The High Priestess” splits the difference between “Aggressive Perfector” and “The Final Command.”

Elements of “Ice Titan” survived in “Crionics” and “Altar of Sacrifice.” That cut is the only unreleased, pre-
Show No Mercy
song that would later see the light of day on the 2004 box set
Soundtrack to the Apocalypse
. That career retrospect culled the best Def Jam/American material, rare video, alternate versions, bonus cuts, and live versions. The band rerecorded “Aggressive Perfector” during the
Reign in Blood
sessions, making it the second pre-album cut to become part of the discography.

In the band’s recording days, as ever, Slayer were not prolific songwriters. The band’s unreleased songs amount to an EP worth of material.

While Slayer were hashing out original material like “Aggressive Perfector,” they were getting their look down, too. They played early shows in flashy shirts, big hair and tight pants.  In photos from the earliest gigs, Hanneman poses in tight red leather pants and a purple-and-black zebra-stripe shirts. King wears a tight red and black shirt with a functionless chest flap.

December 1982 party flyer by
Live Undead
/
Hell Awaits
cover artist Albert Cuellar. Mimeographed on yellow paper. Address and map deliberately obscured for this presentation. Reproduced courtesy of Cuellar.

During shows, Hanneman, Araya, and King would form a straight row across the stage and – emulating Judas Priest – headbang in vicious synchronicity, eyes circled in black makeup, a hesher frontline for the ages. The choreography, raccoon eyes and spandex didn’t last long. King would later refer to those days as their “Scorpions phase.” 

A December 1982 ad depicted the band it their spandex glory with the caption, “The heavy metal nightmare begins!”
Hanneman looks more like Billy Idol than Matthias Jabs; inspired by his favorite punk musicians, he had shaved his head, and it was still growing in
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.

Slayer’s flashy show and furious music caught the eye and ear of Brian Slagel, a record store clerk turned Kerrang!
kolumnist
and publisher of the
New Heavy Metal Revue
fanzine. He launched Metal Blade Records – which is still a leading metal label – in 1980. Its first release was the
Metal Massacre
comp, which featured crunchy bands like Avatar, Bitch, Cirith Ungol, Malice, and Steeler, topped with “Hit the Lights,” the first recorded song by Metallica.

In Fall 1982, Slagel attended a club show by Metal Blade band Bitch. He had never seen the opening act, Slayer, before. His discriminating senses were overloaded.

“They were unbelievable live,” Slagel recalled. “They just had a certain intensity and magic on stage. They were heads and shoulders above the other bands. Then once they started to write songs, they were starting to write great metal songs as well.”

Reeling from the experience, Slagel went backstage, and talked to the band’s then-manager, Steven Craig. Slagel told Craig about the upcoming edition of his compilation series,
Metal Massacre III
.

Slagel got him some copies of Metal Massacre comps. King listened to the B-squad bands and thought, “Oh, I can do that.”

Slayer’s burgeoning reputation attracted other key allies. April 23, 1983
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, Slayer met one of their biggest fans.

At the heart of Slayer was a hidden love story for the ages. As it turned out, the guy who would write “Necrophiliac” had a romantic streak. Kathryn Hanneman, Jeff’s longtime wife, recalled the story for
Guitar World’s
Jeff Kitts in his surprisingly tender account of Hanneman’s life and death
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.

Kathryn, then 15, was tired of going to the movies. She needed a new kind of fun. She was about to find it. She talked her father into letting her stay out late to attend a metal show at the Woodstock.

With fewer than two dozen people in the audience, she was able to get a prime spot in front of the stage, in front of Hanneman. Hanneman had a girlfriend. But when the guitarist caught a look at the leggy, buxom blonde, he was moved to action.

The guitarist kneeled on the lip of the stage, grabbed Kathryn’s hair, and kissed her.

Rather than slug the stranger, she let the lip-lock continue, and they made out.

Once Hanneman ditched his girlfriend, Jeff and Kathryn would be together for the rest of his life.

Click here to Google search “Slayer photos 1982”

Chapter 8:

Sign on the Axe and
Show No Mercy
: The Metal Blade Deal

Released on
Metal Massacre III
in mid-1983, “Aggressive Perfector” was Slayer’s first formal recording. And it left Slagel salivating.

Hanneman and King split the credits for music and lyrics. With a slow wind-up, the primitive version’s arrangement owes much to Metallica’s
Metal Massacre
cut.

“The intro’s very similar to ‘Hit the Lights,’” observes King. “That’s what people do: You take your influences and do what they do. It’s how you can use it and make it sound different that makes it your own.”

Slayer’s first song is close to the band’s mature sound — unlike Metallica’s first crack at recording, which is the audio equivalent of an awkward freshman’s photo from a high school yearbook.

Slagel wanted more. At that point, the Metal Blade CEO had more experience than anyone else on the scene. And he showed more interest in the group. He wasn’t just after Slayer as a financial opportunity.

“He was the boss,” says William Howell, a Metal Blade staffer during its formative years, now widely known as DJ Will, host of KNAC’s
The Vault
and
That Metal Show
’s studio DJ. “He was also the one who enjoyed the music, and still does — the headbanger-in-charge.”

Slagel offered to both manage the band and sign them to his label — an proposition that was unconventional, but not unprecedented. They accepted. Tenacious and focused, Slagel knew his way around the music world. All the way around the world.

“Brian had a lot of contacts,” says Howell. “He had the ability to forge those relationships and to have them lead toward staying in business. A lot of different bands, a lot of different magazines. Those were building blocks to continue to sign bands, put records out, and hope that fans will appreciate what comes out on the Metal Blade banner. Good business acumen.”

The Slayer-Slagel team had two productive years. The band and their manager were learning as they went; some of them recall the time more fondly than others.

At first, for Slayer, the Metal Blade deal was an opportunity, but not a payday. Slagel offered a short contract for a long-term commitment. Araya remembers it as a single piece of paper with just a couple of paragraphs. Slayer signed and locked themselves into a multi-album deal. Slagel took the lion’s share of the publishing rights, the most lucrative part of a record deal. And he would own Slayer’s master recordings for the label. (Locking down the masters and publishing is a common practice in the business.)

“Now, he didn’t pay for the recordings, but because we signed a contract, we literally just kind of gave everything to him, trusting our manager,” said Araya. “And later on, you find you signed your publishing away to this guy.”

King’s recollection of the arrangement is more generous.

“You’ve got to put it in perspective,” he says. “We wanted to be bigger.  [Slagel] made an offer to a band that had no offers, and we took it. I know Tom, in particular, to this day, has been bitter about it. To me, [Slagel] was just doing his job, being a businessman.”

King and Hanneman remained friends with Slagel. After Hanneman took ill late in his life, Slagel was one of the few music people he kept in contact with.

“He’s not really a bad guy,” Hanneman said of Slagel. “He’s like us: He was a young guy, he didn’t really know what he was doing. He says it’s his lawyer – his lawyer’s the one [that] drew up the contracts. We didn’t know what we were doing, so we signed them. He’s still getting paid writers fees for stuff me, Kerry, Tom wrote. He’s getting half of it. And it pisses you off because he didn’t write any of it.”

In 1983, Slayer doubled their concert count from 1982, playing a dozen club shows over the year. Sets at the time were 100% original and — “Crionics” excepted — relentless, as
documented on a hand-written set list
from a July 6 show at the Troubadour
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:

EVIL

AGGRESSIVE

CRIONICS

FINAL COMMAND

ANTICHRIST

BLACK MAGIC

DIE BY SWORD

FIGHT TILL DEATH

SHOW NO FUCKIN MERCY

By the time
Metal Massacre III
hit the streets, Slayer had already outgrown the rough recording. Live, the were a force to be reckoned with.
An ad from that period bills the band as “THE HEAVIEST, FASTEST, AND LOUDEST BAND IN THE UNITED STATES!”
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As summer ’83 drew to a close, Slayer’s 35-minute sets were a professional presentation. Tom’s brother John, who would made a career as one the band’s key technicians, was listed as one of the live sound engineers. Manager Steven Craig was listed as “lighting and special effects” in the band’s first album credits. During live shows, he got a workout.

By now, Slayer’s Scorpions look was part of the past. The band hit the stage in Judas Priest-style studded leather armbands and vests. Whenever possible, the band used smoke and flashpots. In August, the band played the Woodstock three times, almost every week.

On a video of the August 12 set, the room goes dark, and a intro tape plays of spooky music that’s somewhere between Ozzy Osbourne’s intro to “Mr. Crowley” and Crüe’s “In the Beginning,” with backward-masked moaning. As the white light rises, Araya takes the stage and immediately shouts, "THEY SAY WE'RE NOT ALLOWED TO USE FIRE TONIGHT! YOU GUYS WANT FIRE? YOU GOT IT!"
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