Slayer 66 2/3: The Jeff & Dave Years. A Metal Band Biography. by D.X. Ferris Read Free Book Online

museums. I'll never forget him walking around that place, looking at all of the tanks, weapons and other exhibits. He was like a kid on Christmas morning. But that was Jeff's thing, he knew so much about WW II history, he could have taught it in school." 5-11
     
    Despite his impressive poetic ability and an active interest in history, Hanneman was far from an academic. As a growing teenager, he added metal, punk, women, drugs, video games, and alcohol to his list of interests. And after the band dropped drugs from their party plate, he never updated that list again. Hanneman probably wasn’t the only guy in metal with both Raiders and Dead Kennedys stickers on his guitars, but he’s the only one that comes to mind offhand.
     
    If you overlooked his pale skin, his laconic manner and dude-ly dialect would have suggested he was a surfer. He also had a belligerent streak. He told Kerrang! about an old romance that evoked his destructive side.
     
    “A girlfriend I had at the time was from a really rich family, and I wasn’t, so I was also going through this stupid class-envy thing,” he told Steffan Chirazi. “I’d take out her car and smash it into things for no reason. I’d look at the car and start thinking, ‘Goddammit, rich little — and BANG!” 5-12
     
    Cars and tanks were integral to Hanneman’s identity. As a teen, he dabbled in auto theft, but his days behind the wheel were numbered 5-13 . After some DUI arrests, he surrendered his driver’s license, leaving King and Araya to chauffeur him to and from practices for years. Drinking was a priority for Hanneman. It may seem like a contradiction, but over the years, he became less and less of a party person, and more of a drinker.
     
     
    In the early ’80s, as metal grew heavier, those four dissimilar, competitive, performance-driven personalities were drawn together by a need for speed.
     

 
     
     
    RAD PHOTOS MADE POSSIBLE BY UNDERWRITERS LIKE…
     

     
     
     
     

Chapter 6:
    Thrash Incubator
     
    The state of California didn’t just host the thrash metal revolution. It sponsored it, to the tune of $2.3 billion, via a project whose inadvertent results included a stronger version of metal.
     
    Southern California is place of contrasts, a sun-baked melting pot of religious Republicans, conservative businessmen, their rebellious kids, chill surfers, stoned hippies, belligerent rednecks, a handful of Latino cultures, an equally unhomogenous black population, other nationalities, and cornucopia of good-looking type-A personalities drawn there from all over the world. Given the weather and culture, the area is a fertile ground for gritty alternatives.
     
    Over the course of the 20 th century, musical culture had drifted away from its roots in myth, magic, mysticism, and the martial tradition. Metal brought it back. Thrash was faster than everything that came before. It was heavier. It was louder. It was darker. Compared to party-hearty bands like Mötley Crüe and Quiet Riot, intricate thrash compositions felt closer to classical music.
     
    In the mid-1980s, Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax  established the broad parameters of thrash metal. The bands were collectively known as “The Big Four” thrash bands. They weren’t always the genre’s most extreme acts, but in that golden age, they emerged as its most successful groups. Eventually, they headlined arena tours, and they put up platinum numbers. Three of the Big Four hailed from California. Over six decades, the state had invested in a thrash incubator.
     
    In the early ’80s, Southern California’s emerging metal scene was built by suburban teens from outlying Los Angeles- and Orange Counties. Its stars weren’t old enough to legally drink. And they weren’t polished enough to play clubs. So Metallica, Slayer, and their pals worked at home, where they smelted metal into a new form, in Downey houses that were soon to be demolished. The blue-collar community had resisted the