Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. (18 page)

Chapter 14:

Hell Hits the Road

Now influential and acclaimed, Slayer took on the world alongside their heroes and peers.

Before
Hell Awaits
’ September 1985 release
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, Slayer refined the material live, gigging up and down the West Coast. Gigs were sparse in January and February. But March launched a package tour that was pure power: Slayer supporting Venom during the British band’s six-week American Invasion, with thrash heavyweights Exodus as the lead-off band some of the shows. (This tour is commonly identified as taking place in 1984, though it didn’t.)

That roadshow was immortalized April 3, 1985, with a concert filmed and released as the popular home video
Combat Tour Live: The Ultimate Revenge
. The title contained two references: “Combat” was the Metal Blade-affiliated Combat Records, an NYC-based indie powerhouse that released or distributed Megadeth and Mercyful Fate, not to mention dozens of underground A-listers, including Agnostic Front, Dark Angel and Corrosion of Conformity.

“The Ultimate Revenge” was a shot at the club it was filmed at, Studio 54, which had been a hotbed of disco culture. The video opened with an image of John Travolta from
Saturday Night Fever
, going up in flames. (At the time, disco’s death was a mere five years removed, and the memory of the omnipresent dance music was still a fresh horror.)

The metal bands’ vicious sets deconsecrated the site once and for all. Venom headlined, immediately preceded by Slayer, with Exodus warming up.

At the time, Venom and Exodus were two strong candidates to occupy the role Slayer eventually earned as all-time metal icons.

Exodus formed in 1980, before California rivals Metallica and Slayer plugged in for the first time.

Like Venom, Exodus is a marquee metal name that non-metalheads might not know. When headbangers debate which band should be ranked next after thrash’s Big Four groups, Exodus and Testament generally get the most votes for the no. 5 slot
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. Exodus haven’t had the prolific, continuous career Testament has. But for this writer’s money, Exodus’ highs have been higher — barring Testament’s amazing debut,
The Legacy
, which is vintage thrash’s most Dungeons-and-Dragons moment.

In the musical mainstream, Exodus is best known as a footnote in the Metallica story. When Metallica decided to fire Mustaine, they poached Exodus guitarist Kirk Hammett. On the Venom tour, Exodus was supporting its debut album,
Bonded by Blood
. Though the platter remains an undisputed classic, it completely lacks the mass appeal of the Big Four’s early albums, for reasons good and bad. It’s pure thrash, but the hollow sound makes it another casualty of the reverb that was so trendy in ’80s production.

Exodus addressed
Bonded
’s shortcomings by re-recording it with the band’s 2008 lineup, releasing the new version as
Let There Be Blood
.  Technically, there’s nothing wrong with the new version. But the deceased singer Paul Baloff is simply irreplaceable.

Unlike Slayer, Exodus extensively mingled with fans. Offstage, Baloff was a John Belushi-like ringleader. Onstage, like Araya, he was known for quotable stage raps. But Baloff’s banter veered between the violent and the whimsical. He famously encouraged pogroms against poseurs lurking in the crowd: “I want to know how many of you people go out on the streets looking to kick someone’s fuckin’ ass!” And the
Ultimate Revenge
intro to “Piranha” found the singer name-checking different species of fish: “It ain’t about no
trout
!”

Exodus and its early masterwork might not offer much for casual metal fans, but for committed longhairs,
Bonded
was as good as it got:

“I think Exodus is the one band that should have got bigger and never did,” King told me in 2007. “I’ve always dug that band….
Bonded by Blood
, Jesus Christ, you can’t go wrong with that.”

King gushing over Holt was uncharacteristic. And it might qualify as foreshadowing.

Venom still manifests from time to time, staging fireball live shows and recording respectable albums. But the band’s classic lineup was already falling apart by 1985. King was honored to be part of the tour. But he was disappointed by the fill-in players’ execution… not that the original members were maestros in the first place.

“To me, Venom was a really awesome band that couldn’t play their instruments,” said King. “The three of them together made killer songs – they couldn’t play in time. No matter how good the songs are, that first album, let’s say it’s not a metronome.”

Venom had offstage problems, too: Mantas was stranded in England. At the time, the official story said the guitarist was having problems with his paperwork. As Goodman recalled it, that was just an excuse: He really had chicken pox.

Frontman Cronos played the first part of the tour with Davy Irwin & Les Cheetham
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, backup temps who were not, by King’s standards, up to the task. With most of the band missing, recalled the guitarist, “That tour was a big disappointment.”

King wasn’t pissed off, but by tour’s end, Venom was pissed on.

Before it began, the Venom tour was a hot ticket. The band’s promotional clips for “Bloodlust” and “Witching Hour” made the band look like the underground equivalent of Kiss, packing tons of pyrotechnic overkill onto the stage and playing in a firestorm. When the band arrived in America, not only was the lineup not intact, but they didn’t have full special effects. And without the pyro, they were far from Kiss. Still, they tried.

“They were terrible,” says Goodman. “Cronos wanted to be Gene Simmons: He stomped around with his big boots, with his tongue. They were kind of a caricature of themselves. “

Slayer warmed up with some preliminary headlining shows. Then the full package opened with two nights in Quebec City. The opening bands joined members of Voivod in the audience. Venom played a sloppy set, both opening and closing with “Countess Bathory.” Slayer didn’t think the callback was cool.

‘We went into that first show, thinking, ‘Oh, it’s Venom, it’ll be great,’” says Goodman. “And we were disappointed very quickly. We realized there was a reason they barely ever played.”

Cronos couldn’t believe that Slayer and Exodus ventured into the audience with the unwashed masses.

“Venom came from an era,” explains Goodman, “their direction was that they were the rock star on stage, and in their world, they didn’t cross paths with the punters, the fans. They might sign autographs, but hanging out in a bar with them? Never. Slayer came from the ‘We’re all in this together’ mold. Venom couldn’t grasp the concept of that.”

Things got worse when Slayer mingled with the headlining act. One night, a drunken Araya staggered onto Venom’s tour bus and asked where the pisser was.

Cronos opened his mouth and said, “Right here!”
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.

Araya dropped trou and urinated in the singer’s chest-length hair.

Cronos, unamused, rose and headbutted Araya, splitting the Slayer singer’s forehead open. Blood poured out of a wound that was bad enough to warrant stitches, but nonetheless went untreated. Araya was left with a fading gash.

A tense cooling-off period followed. Overall, though, the exchange didn’t affect the mood on the tour; the damage was already done.

Slayer had covered “Venom’s Witching Hour” at some previous solo shows, so some fans hoped they would join Venom for the song. But Slayer never seriously considered doing it. Slayer were getting a better reception than Venom was, and they didn’t need a guest appearance.

New York, as always, brought additional chaos to Slayer shows. In 2006, Lombardo told Cam Lindsay of Exclaim.ca that one of the ’85 L’Amour shows was not only a low point for the tour, but his entire life. Dave caught a beating too.

After the set, Lombardo was at the front of the stage, tossing drum sticks into the crowd and pretending he was about to dive into the audience.

Suddenly, a security guard grabbed Lombardo. In the beefy bouncer’s grip, Lombardo spazzed and started resisting. The rustling sent them into a stack of Marshalls, knocking over the tower of heavy black boxes.

The guard took the drummer down to the ground, then let him go.

Lombardo regrouped and said, “You son of a bitch, I’m in the band!”

The guard wheeled around and punched Lombardo in the face
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.

Slayer weren’t the kind of guys who antagonized bouncers, but the thrashing crowds had security staffs on a standing state of alert nationwide.

“That stuff was so new, the stage diving and mosh pits,” reflects Goodman. “Security and venue people didn’t know what it was.”

Working their way westward, Slayer returned to Canada for a two-night stand at the club Les Rendezvous. Venom canceled the shows, and the British band had to P.A. system, so Slayer was forced to cancel too. Slagel wired the broke band some money, and the caravan headed back to San Francisco.

At the San Francisco Venom show, Slayer took the stage late. It wasn’t because they were acting like irresponsible rock stars. On early visits to the Bay, the band had stayed on the lower level of their friend Kirk Adams’ house. Since they were in the area, Araya wanted to stop by and pay his respects to Adams’ parents.

As Slayer’s irons grew hotter and hotter, crowds found new ways to lose control. The band’s shows were becoming the stuff of legend. In the Summer 1985 issue of the L.A. zine
It’s All Over
in 1986, Jim Dulin — one of the early Slayer associates credited as road manager when they needed help on tour — recounted two dubious incidents that nobody else on the tour recalled now.

At an early Seattle show, Dulin claimed, a sizable contingent of the crowd showed up in armor, wrapped leather, studded with steel, and ready for a melee.

“You’re going to have problems,” Dulin warned. But the venue staff didn’t believe him. By the times fans were leaving, their faces bashed in, it was too late. The staff, Dulin claimed, was forced to improvise extreme new crowd control tactics.

“It was the most violent show we ever played,” said Dulin. “[The crowd] were wanting to fight our road crew. The road guys had to break the legs off tables to defend themselves onstage.”

Two weeks after the Studio 54 show, the band was back in California, at San Diego’s California Theatre.

According to Dulin, during Slayer’s set, a rabid fan climbed up to the balcony and dove off.

“That’s the new thing now: suicidal dives,” Dulin said. “This one guy dove on the stage, and he went right through the stage, put a big hole over by Hanneman. In fact, he almost knocked Hanneman out.”

Unphased, the roadies reportedly scooped the jumper out of the hole and tossed him back into the audience
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. If it happened at the California Theatre, it was a helluva leap; the loges are barely within reach of the stage, and the balcony is at the rear of the venue. But without close scrutiny, the anecdotes were not unbelievable.

For the Venom shows, crowds were between 3,000 and 5,000. But as the trek went on, audiences were pro-Slayer and anti-Venom. Punks who came to see Slayer stayed around to check out Venom and wound up spitting on the band — and not in the old-school punk-rock way of showing appreciation.

“The whole tour got weird toward the end,” says Goodman

Slayer had a better time playing off-date shows with just Exodus. As the full Combat package approached the end of its dozen scheduled dates, Venom checked out mentally, then physically. After a harrowing experience with the rollercoasters in Disneyland, the Brits had had enough of America. They cancelled the final show. By the tour’s end, the black metal icons had played just 11 concerts. With Venom gone, Slayer headlined. In late April, the tour’s final shows featured opening acts Raw Power, then Dark Angel.

The band appreciated the swelling American crowds, but they hadn’t been blown away by an audience’s size or reaction. Yet. During the
Hell Awaits
tour, Slayer would fight their way out of clubs. In the summer of 1985, the group stage their first European raid.

Hell Awaits
was getting good reviews. And though it was selling well, it hadn’t been out long, and the cash wasn’t quite piling up yet. Europe was ready for the band, but Slagel still couldn’t afford to send them.

To release albums in Europe, Metal Blade had partnered with Roadrunner Records, the Netherlands-based indie metal outfit that eventually grew into a worldwide major-label powerhouse, progressing from Mercyful Fate to bands like Nickelback and Slipknot. Roadrunner boss Cees Wessels offered to bankroll a monthlong European tour. Slayer accepted. (Wessels, who is notoriously averse to interviews, declined to be interviewed for this book.)

The labels, combined, had money to send just six guys across the ocean. The day before they left, the Slayer camp learned they couldn’t afford to bring lighting tech Kevin Reed with them. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t buy a ticket. The band’s merch company paid for K.J. Doughton, founder of the Metallica fan club and later biographer of the band, to travel and sell T-shirts.