Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal (38 page)

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.”

6

THE AGE OF QUARREL: CROSSOVER/HARDCORE, 1977–1992

I
n the mid-eighties, thrash metal and hardcore fans who had once been bitter rivals realized they had a lot in common. Once the barriers between the two subcultures had broken down, the foundation for crossover was established, and bands from across the country began constructing their own blends of metallic hardcore.

ROGER MIRET (Agnostic Front):
Back then, there wasn’t much difference between metal and hardcore scenes. Everyone dressed in black, everyone was walking out of step with society, because whether you were a punk rocker, a skinhead, a hardcore kid, or a metal dude, you didn’t fit in. You were a weirdo, and nobody’s mother wanted their kids hanging out with you.

BILLY GRAZIADEI (Biohazard, Suicide City):
We formed our own culture because we weren’t accepted by society. It wasn’t like now, where everyone’s listening to Green Day and you can buy the latest punk fashions in Hot Topic.

DAVE GROHL:
Bands like Cro-Mags, C.O.C. [Corrosion of Conformity], and D.R.I. [Dirty Rotten Imbeciles] went from being strictly hardcore to adding more metal riffs and getting even heavier. That crossover period of music really allowed both hardcore and underground metal to grow because everyone was feeding off each other’s ideas and sharing each other’s audience.

HARLEY FLANAGAN (Harley’s War, ex–Cro-Mags, ex-Stimulators):
If it were not for Venom and Motörhead, the Cro-Mags would not have sounded the way we did. That, along with the Bad Brains and Discharge, were our main influences. I wanted something to set us apart from the other hardcore bands, period. I was hanging out with violent skinheads with crazy pentagrams and swastikas tattooed all over them, listening to Venom and Discharge, huffing glue, trying to invoke demons. Our idea of fun was, “Hey, let’s go out and stomp people,” not, “Let’s go out and have a few drinks.”

While bands like Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, and Void laid the groundwork for the new subgenre, the Misfits were the first to draw both a hardcore and metal following.

GLENN DANZIG:
We were the first hardcore band to experiment with speed metal, and we got a lot of flak for that. I never saw why the two weren’t connected. They were both about power, rebellion, violence.

EERIE VON (ex-Danzig, Samhain):
The Misfits were playing super-fast. They had this occult image. Those were metal signposts. You could see these metal kids showing up with long hair. Later on, we’d see all these bands and we’d say, “This is just like hardcore, but with long hair and guitar leads.”

JONATHAN ANASTAS (DYS):
The Misfits were the first ones to lean in a rock star direction. Even when they weren’t playing a show, [guitarist] Doyle [Wolfgang von Frankenstein] and [bassist] Jerry [Only] would show up in full regalia, six-foot-eight in those heels, in the lobby of a Minor Threat show, and they’d be mobbed.

GLENN DANZIG:
The funny thing is that the Misfits weren’t really popular when they were around. Also, they weren’t very good live. I was as good as you can be at eighty-million miles an hour. I don’t think a lot of people got what I was doing. The guys in the band didn’t even get it.

EERIE VON:
Some people thought it was a joke, but Glenn took the occult stuff pretty seriously. The Misfits once got arrested for going into a graveyard in New Orleans with two hundred people following them, thinking they could just reach in and grab skulls and take ’em home.

GLENN DANZIG:
People like to use the word
occult
like it’s going out of style. It can cover parapsychology, witchcraft, Satanism, black magic—everything. It’s an unfair word. You don’t have a cover-all word for Catholicism. My words and music are made to fit a certain mood, and my lyrics accompany that.

EERIE VON:
Glenn wanted the band to be his life. And the other guys—their dad worked in a machine shop. One day he said to them, “Well you have to run the family business. I’m retiring.” So they couldn’t go on tour very often. They could do a show but they’d have to fly there and then fly back to be at work, and at that point they might as well have just played for free.

GLENN DANZIG:
The Misfits didn’t break up on good terms. I cut myself loose because it was a dead end. They were holding me back.

EERIE VON:
Glenn eventually said, “We have one more Misfits show in Detroit and then I’m telling the guys I’m quitting, and when I get back I want to start this band with you.” He wanted the timing of the rhythms for Samhain to be different and didn’t want to play fast. And he wanted it to be weirder. We did two or three rehearsals, but I couldn’t play the drums for that stuff. It was beyond me at the time. So he said, “Why don’t we get Steve [Zing] from Mourning Noise to play drums, and you play bass? Anybody can play bass. Besides, you’re a ham, you should be out in front.” We played a little too slow for some people. They’d be like, “Play a fast song!” and Glenn would say, “You wanna hear a fast one? Okay, here’s another slow one.” But we had fun. We did the first show that probably anybody’s ever done all covered in blood. People would show up and give us deer heads and tombstones. But what do you expect from a band covered in blood?

The progenitors of crossover formed during the conservative Reagan administration. Most were white and working-class, and saw little hope for a better future. Some were political, though not always well informed. Few had backgrounds in music, and some were street brawlers and troublemakers with criminal records. Ironically, the band most commonly cited as the era’s greatest influence is Bad Brains, composed of four talented black musicians from the ghettos of Washington, DC. Bad Brains was raised on funk and R&B, and even when they cranked their amps, ramped up the tempo, and integrated fleet-fingered metal runs, their songs were fueled by messages of peace and love.

IAN MACKAYE (Fugazi, Minor Threat):
From the start, the Bad Brains were really constructive. They were encouraging, they were inspirational, and their music was undeniable. They made you want to do something. And [their singer] H.R. was a visionary who made things happen. Plus, the way they played was so incredible that if you were on the same bill and didn’t at least try to put on a show, you had no business having a guitar in your hand.

HENRY ROLLINS (Rollins Band, Black Flag):
H.R., to me, is still the ultimate front man and a huge influence. At one point, I was at a Bad Brains show, and he went, “You are gonna be a singer,” and I went, “Oh, c’mon, H.R.” He went, “Nope, you’re gonna be a singer and tonight you’re gonna sing in the Bad Brains.” He had me come up and sing along and that planted the seed in my mind that, “Okay, maybe I’ll do this.”

JOHN JOSEPH (Cro-Mags):
If you want to know the baddest front man who ever stepped onstage, I’ll say, hands down, it’s H.R. He’s athletic, and he can sing his ass off. I’ve seen him smoke an ounce of ganja and go onstage and put out more energy than anybody, hit every note perfectly and do a backflip and land precisely on the last note of “At the Movies.”

SHAVO ODADJIAN (System of a Down):
There probably wouldn’t be a System of a Down if it wasn’t for the Bad Brains. They were so influential, and not just musically. They paved the way for artists to not give a fuck and do what they want to do.

EARL HUDSON (Bad Brains):
We were ahead of our time, at least beat-wise. I can say from the jump that people were really into the speed thing. It was different, and it was hitting them hard.

H.R. (Bad Brains):
From the start, my spiritual advisors gave me good advice and expressed how much they wanted to see, breathe, and hear. What we wanted to do was an amplification of the inner thoughts of people’s hearts and their minds so they could work on their motor skills and find themselves a little creative immortality and focus on the supernaturalistic gifts that God has offered them in the fine arts impulses.

On the East Coast, the toughest of the new breed were New Yorkers Agnostic Front and Cro-Mags, bands whose lifestyles contrasted starkly with those of their straight-edge hardcore influences, including Washington, DC’s Minor Threat and Government Issue, who didn’t drink, take drugs, or have sex. Cro-Mags and Agnostic Front had no such ethical concerns. They didn’t just take drugs, they sold them, and never backed away from a fight.

JOHN JOSEPH:
The first time I met [ex-Cro-Mags bassist] Harley [Flanagan] was in Washington, DC, when [the band Harley played drums for], the Stimulators, played with the Bad Brains at the 9:30 Club. After that Stimulators show, we hung out all night and I told Harley, “I’m originally from New York,” and he said, “If you ever come back up, let’s hang out, I’m on the Lower East Side.”

HARLEY FLANAGAN:
Our original singer, Eric Casanova, was fifteen and a real B-Boy skinhead. The dude would breakdance, do a floor spin, and then kick into some crazy hardcore shit and do a stage dive. But he had a kid at fifteen, and he tried to do the right thing, which meant leaving the band. We auditioned Roger from Agnostic Front and John Joseph [“Bloodclot” McGowan], and really, John was just a better salesman. One of the first times I hung out with John he was wearing a T-shirt that said in magic marker, “Fuck you Bitch, I’m Celibate.” And he had T-Boots with bandanas around his ankles and spurs, and a chain around his waist and his head shaved, trying to look all tough. John and I were good friends. The thing is, I’m five years younger and that’s quite a difference when you’re fifteen. So I was probably a little bit gullible even though I
did
grow up on the streets and had a pretty rough life. John really taught me how to be a hustler. He had already been in prison and I can honestly say he led me more astray than most people did. We used to lay down in the snow with fake guns, then we’d jump up and rob weed dealers. He was already in his twenties. I’m not saying I’m any less at fault, but he took advantage of my youth.

ROGER MIRET:
[Vocalist] Vinnie [Stigma] and I have been together longer than most people in marriages—thirty years, at least. We’ve always got along, but he’s a different creature than I am; Vinnie’s very laid back and just goes with the flow, and I’ve always been more outgoing. They started with another singer, [John Watson] for a few months, but once I got in there, Agnostic Front became more established.
I
started doing all the records, put the band on the road. I’m just more motivated than he is. And he’s very grateful for me being who I am because I gave him his career. And at the same time, I am very grateful that he is who he is. He’s like my Eddie—like [the zombie mascot] in Iron Maiden. People love him.

HARLEY FLANAGAN:
We were street punks, selling weed on the Lower East Side. When we weren’t working on the band, we’d shoplift our food. Sometimes friends who worked at restaurants would feed us out the back door. Otherwise, we wouldn’t eat. So there was a certain realness to our music that didn’t come from practicing in your parents’ garage. We lived in squats with no electricity and we toured with a pocket full of quarters and a map to get from city to city.