Part 11 (1/2)
One other artist had a rough tier Sinead O'Connor The year began wonderfully for her, with a nuh-ranking albu the summer, when O'Connor refused to allow the national anthem to be played at one of her performances in New Jersey, local and national ht, there were calls for her to be deported back to the United Kingdo herFrank Sinatra) and harassed in public Over and over, irate Aainst the national anthem? (The answer is easy, and fairly innocent: O'Connor is opposed to nationalis for a photo session for Rolling Stone earlier in the year) But there was another question that wasn't asked and perhaps should have been: Namely, in a year when rock was treated as subversion by so many American lawmakers and pundits, how could any principled rock & roller do anything but refuse any false tributes? Why should any performer be forced to pay tribute to a nation that is so reluctant to stand up for the rights of its own artists?
The incident was erous times to advertise yourself as a malcontent in American pop culture But it was also a reminder that rock's best and bravest heroes aren't about to back dohen confronted by indignant authoritarians Kicking against social repression and moral vapidity-that's an activity which, for well over thirty years now, rock & roll has ed to do better than virtually any other art or entertainment form But at this juncture, the forces that would not only condemn but curtail or silence that i, it is that if we value rock as a spirit of insolent liberty, then the tiladly muzzle that spirit
clash of the titans: heavy metal enters the 1990s
”It looks like hell,” says the security guard, gazing at the scene before hi up all over the place”
It is a hot spring night in 1991, in Dallas, Texas, at the open-air Starplex theater, where the Clash of the titans-a bill featuring three of the leading exponents of speed- its opening date of a two- a loud-hard-fast set of songs about rage and apocalypse, but at the rear of the theater, on a large grassy slope, it looks like apocalypsefor real Up on that knoll, hundreds of heavy metal fans have started to build bonfires and dance and stomp around them in an almost tribal fashi+on Fro theel's portrayals of the inferno brought to modern life
”Man, I have never seen anything like that,” says the security guard, shaking his head, still transfixed ”This is e get for letting this heavy metal shi+t into this place I tell you, the stuff is fucking evil”
HEAVY METAL: Over the course of its history it has been accused of everything from musical low-e suicide and suburban Satanisislators, local lawmakers, conservative (and liberal) ures, all of who: athe souls of its listeners and delivering them to the darkest forces of evil
But for all the scorn and dismissal that has been perpetually hurled its way, heavy metal is the only constant standard-bearer that rock & roll can claim Whereas movements like rockabilly, psychedelia, disco, and even punk played out their active histories in a handful of years each, metal has proven consistently popular for over twenty years now Plus, it has also served as a vital and reliable rite of passage for its audience-that is, it is music that articulates the frustrations, desires, and values of a youth population that has too often found itself without any other cultural advocate or voice Indeed, metal often works as music for outcasts: kids who feel pressed or condery, and who need to assert their own pride and bravado Consequently, a ard as a form without rede people feel powerful-or at least feel like they've found a ly coldhearted society
In other words, et for legislators and uitar-driven rock & roll has lost its primacy in the world of popular music-heavy metal remains as audacious and defiant as ever At present, in fact, it supports one of thealternative-culture scenes in all modern pop, a vast and coazines, radio stations, nightclubs, newsletters, and leather-and-T-shi+rts shops What'sthe widest spectruressive hip-hop and punk-inflected rock & roll of Living Colour; Faith No More; and 24-7 Spyz; the classic bad-boy posturing of Guns n' Roses, the blues-derived majesty of the Black Crowes, the pretty-boy raunch of Poison and Warrant; the grungy grandeur of Pacific Northwest bands like Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Screaarde extrerindcore bands like Napalm Death, Carcass, and Godflesh
Yet when it co in all pop-except for some of the more notorious rap artists of the day-can coadeth, and Anthrax Inspired as much by the brutal rhythms and bellicose stance of early 1980s hardcore punk as by heavysome of the boldest music of our tihtening ”When victory's a roup's latest album, Seasons in the Abyss, ”When victory is survival/When this end is a slaughter/The final swing is not a drill/It's how h it's possible to read it as an indictment of the bloodshed that it describes, it's also possible to hear it as a celebration: a surrender to the exhilaration of the kill Either way, it's one of thosein rock & roll'sAn art form which has often striven to convince its audience that the world h action or opposition now seeks to tell us unflinchingly violent truths about the increasingly violenta new book in rock & roll history,” says Dave Mustaine, the lead singer and guitarist for Megadeth ”If Elvis Presley liberated the body and Bob Dylan released thewhatever's left: all the stuff that people would rather overlook in a world that's gone mad Actually, I prefer to think of us as'shi+t, fuck, piss, kill,' and all the rest of it”
FOR THE BETTER PART of the last decade, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax have been working in rock'saudience thatthe heavy nore In fact, as far as much rock media is concerned, this whole scene may as well be invisible
But the Clash of the titans tour is an attee all that, and to assert that these bands can attract a itiht It's an ah the three co-headlining bands share a roughly similar style, they don't all share the saeful tunes about the horror of interadeth-despite its sical disaster, and iuitar aficionados Anthrax-a New York band-plays some of the most erudite and a the heavy metal audience understand the power and responsibility that lies within its own co these three bands (including profoundly different philosophies in politics and personal behavior) as there is uniting them (na, intelligent, and viable pop forms of the day)
Consequently, there is soht happen when the bands' various audiences -haired youngtime with the music's lickety-split rhythms-while Anthrax draws a crowd that likes to sla in which kids sto off each other at a furious pace Slayer's audience, however, can soeles in recent years, the LAPD (always good for an overreaction) sent in riot squads and helicopters to deal with some rowdy fans outside the concert halls, and at an ill-faroup's fans ild, tearing seats apart and hurling theuards The band's lead singer, Tos the Forue ”Thanks a lot, assholes,” Araya told the crowd ”You fucked this up for yourselves”
For this tour-which will easily draw soest thrash or mosh crowds ever assembled in the States-the three bands have hired a special security overseer, Jerry Mele, who previously worked with Madonna, a of the hall's various security and uards assembled at the Starplex amphitheater in Dallas, ”I want you to treat these kids with respect Iteach other out there, but it's their way of having fun If they come over the barricade down front-and some of the thee I'll have a talk with thes this on't have any serious trouble here” You can see the look of skepticis,rowdiness with force-but in the end they agree to Mele's requests
The first test comes an hour later, when Slayer opens the Dallas show (the three bands will rotate the headline slot) There is nothing in all e The whole place rises to its feet as the band slams into ”hell Awaits” at a ludicrous breakneck pace, and hundreds of kids press their way to the front of the stage, where they proceed to throw the with a furious intensity At first the security force looks a bit edgy-it is not always an enviable position to be staked out between Slayer and its fans-but in a short tientleness with the fans pays off nobody shoves or punches anybody, and the few ti to hurt other dancers in the s the offender out hi is even e part that's because Anthrax's music, in contrast to Slayer's, is more concerned with questions of community than with the thrills of violence When Anthrax plays, even young wo out-which is rarely the case during a Slayer set
But then, just before Megadeth is set to perfor eruptions of fla and shoving to dance as close to the flares as possible
When you venture up close, though, the fire-dancing doesn't see or licentious In fact, there appears to be a rather strict social order at work in constructing the event First, one or two kids strip off their T-shi+rts and set thes until they attract the attention of other fans It's al each other in closer, as a way of finding other sympathetic souls in a dark landscape After a bit, the kids toss the burning rags into a heap and toss in paper cups and other inflaoing Meantiins to tra up speed and attracting new ets scary is when security guards charge up the hill, pushi+ng the kids aside and extinguishi+ng the fires with che s the kids to turn and run, so each other down in the process Invariably, though, the fires start up again, and the circle of wildly storations taking place on the hill were an enacte has been proclaiadeth's set, Dave Mustaine sings the sex Pistols' ”Anarchy in the UK”-the song that first announced that rock & roll could accoets to the song's incendiary closing verse-”I want to be anarchy, you knohat I ain I'm pissed/DESTROY!”-the hill has erupted in s out the song's incitements as fast as Mustaine can proclaie is done In the rass and soathered here, a genuine power struggle took place tonight-the first one that many of them have ever won
THE NEXT DAY'S show in Lubbock, Texas, proves to be so of a letdown The turnout is one of the smallest that the tour will see-a little over two thousand fans show up in an arena that can hold over twice that er problem seems to be the sound Thethat they could not hear the, and that the mix in the sound adeth's Dave Mustaine is coldly furious At the end of the evening, he stands in the backstage area and tells his tour er that he wants the soundIt is plain that the tour er will not find this an easy request to accoh it's also plain that Mustaine-who has a for-isn't about to give ground
It's only two days into this trip, but already Dave Mustaine is beginning to wear on the nerves of some of the others involved in the tour, particularly Slayer A for user and drinker, Mustaine these days is scrupulously clean and healthy As a result, he insists on keeping himself at a distance fro up In a Los Angeles Times article that appeared at the outset of the tour, Mustaine told an interviewer that he had been e their recent European tour together ”There were times where it was detrimental to my sanity,” he said ”When we travel and we're stuck on the sa at the top of their lungs and belching and guzzlingI felt like I wanted to crawl off into the bathroom of the plane and dieI have e than their behavior” Needless to say, these coone over well, nor has Mustaine's insistence that Megadeth stay in different hotels than Slayer and that the band's two dressing rooms are located as far apart as possible
But there is also another side to Dave Mustaine, and it can be surprisingly affecting A few minutes after his tantrum about the sound problem, the thin, blond Mustaine sits on the band's bus in the parking lot of the Lubbock Coliseum and talks quietly about all the years and friendshi+p that were lost to his drug abuse Inin Mustaine'sInstead, he comes across as somebody who is smart, conscience-stricken, and deeply sad-as if he has endured a long nighted to inflict so e on himself and others over the years
In so bouts of self-abuse were probably an extension of the ruin he had felt as a child When he was seven, his parents divorced, leaving Mustaine and his sisters andin poverty in the suburbs of Southern California By his early teens, his mother was absent much of the ti with his sisters and their families One day, when he was fifteen, says Mustaine, one of his brothers-in-law punched hi to Judas Priest's Sad Wings of Destiny ”I decided right then,” says Mustaine, ”that I was going to play this e”
In the early 1980s, after playing in a series of pop and metal cover bands, Mustaine hooked up with Lars Ulrich and Jaether, they formed Metallica-a band that, within a few years, would become the most important heavy metal ensemble since Led Zeppelin It was Metallica, in fact, that codified speed-metal as a music derived fro melodic drive of early-1980s British denim-and-leather ifts, the group was also beset with serious personality conflicts Mustaine and the others fought frequently-so use, sometimes about leadershi+p of the band-and in time, the tension became unbearable ”One day,” says Mustaine, ”they woke me up and said, 'Uh, look, you're out of the band' And I said, 'What, no warning? No second chance?' And they said, ”No, you're out'
”To this day,” continues Mustaine, ”I have a hard ti, ”You know, you guys are really fucked for firing ivewith you' And while they're responsible for their own success, I don't think they ever would have developed the way they did if I hadn't come into the picture I was a key part of that band”
Back in Los Angeles, Mustaine settled deeper into his drug use and thought for a tiether But in 1984, after he met Dave Ellefson, a bassist who had just moved to California from rural Minnesota, Mustaine decided to take another stab at band life, and forht of this band as not just the return of Dave Mustaine,” he says, ”but also ht, ”This is the ressiveto alter heavy ood to his proadeth shared Metallica's passion for hard-and-fast riffs, the best tracks on albu and So Far, So Good, So What! demonstrated a melodic and textural versatility that no other band in adeth has also seen its share of probles, as well as Mustaine's worsening drug problem ”One of the earlier otback in the womb, and, Iin the world and for me to be fully inside a pussy was the fantasy of a lifetime, and that's what heroin was like toot to the point where I just could not play anyet sober, and even that wasn't enough tofor coke or heroin I would have even gone into prostitution”
One -and-alcohol stupor, Mustaine was pulled over by the police He had heroin, cocaine, speed, and liquor in his blood system, and he also had some of those same substances in his car He was arrested, and a short while later he was given a choice: Get clean-and stay clean-or go to jail It turned out to be the impetus Mustaine needed Within a feeeks he had joined a twelve-step addiction recovery prograht,” he says, seated aboard the bus in Lubbock, ”is o today was the last tis And you knohat? Now a lot of ot adeth yet, and we also finished our best record, Rust in Peace I think it all has to do with the fact that now I pray andfor so creep to colances at the clock on the wall It is now past 1 AM The bus should already be on its way to the next stop, but everybody's waiting for a final band ests that thewoe, Mustaine turns momentarily livid The woman, says Mustaine, is a recently recovered addict, and he won't tolerate anybody in his band using her As it turns out, the rumor is false-the person in question had barely even met the wooodbye to everybody, Mustaine and bassist Ellefson (who is also a recovered addict) spend severalher to keep up her sobriety
”A lot of things have changed for enuine concern for others-though I' or using drugs Also, I don't have the same kind of interest I once had in the occult I think it's simply that now I know that there is a God, and, uh, it's not me”
THE NEXT DAY-when the titans tour appears in San Antonio-is a Sunday, and one of the local newspapers bears a story on its front page under the headline: ”Face to Face with a Devil” It is a flimsy story of a woman as reportedly exorcised of a demon by a local priest, but it is covered as if it is major news, and it also serves as a reminder that these Texas cities that this tour has been visiting the last few days are strongholds for conservative religious values On the surface, towns like these ht seem unlikely places to harbor a substantial heavy metal audience (In fact, a few years back, San Antonio's city officials considered banning heavy metal concerts within the city, but instead settled for an ordinance restricting kids under the age of fourteen fro ”obscene perfore Wasteland (probably the best book written about contemporary youth culture), conservative comer and fear, they also tend to breed conservative fears-like fears of the devil and rock & roll And, if you're young and have had to live with these sort of values too long, what could be better as a way of rubbing against the local ethos than subscribing to the syns of the local youths' appetite for offense as the crowd begins to arrive at San Antonio's Sunken Gardens a, andblack T-shi+rts emblazoned with the names of their favoritefavorites include Metallica, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, and Danzig) These shi+rts are rife with horror-derived ireenish skulls, and apocalyptic deruesome, and yet when you're confronted with an endless variety of these shi+rts in -even lovely-about it all Plus, it's simply a kick to draw the attention or disapproval of others by wearing these shi+rts It's a way of boasting your toughness and your proud status as an outcast Conservative moralists can fume all they like about the question of what art is tolerated inside ouran important point: The canvas has shi+fted in this culture, and it is kids like the ones who are gathered here in San Antonio who are bearing the defiant new art on their chests And the best part is, there is no way this art can be shut down or deprived of its funds It has already spilled over into the streets, and into our hoe in San Antonio, and begins to sla quality to the band's sound-the bass ruuitars blare and yowl in unison-but it's all played with a remarkable precision and deftness Meantie erupts in frenzy, with soainst each other while others clamber atop one another so they can dive over the barricade This goes on and on until even the band can't take its eyes off the action On a night such as this, there isn't anything in all rock & roll like a Slayer show Watching thethe ful a live band as exciting as the sex Pistols
At the sa subjecthard after the punk-metal coalition that had been , Metallica, and Venouitarists Kerry King and Jeff Hannes about Satan and hell But in recent years, under the influence of bassist and vocalist Tom Araya-who is now the band's chief lyricist-the e a time of political unrest and who has lived around soeles and witnessed the effects of gang warfare-decided the band should write more about the human and social horror of the modern world, and over the course of the band's last three albums, he has developed a special affection for topics like political oppression, s, and serialis ”Dead Skin Mask,” told from the point of view of Ed Gein, the famous mass murderer who killed numerous children and adults and flayed them, and who later served as the inspiration for such works as Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs In ”Dead Skin Mask,” Araya enters into Gein's heart and mind, and tells the story of his crimes fro like that,” says Araya, ”where I', freaks people out They say, 'How could you sit there and think that way?' Well, it isn't hard at all In fact, it's very easy I sit there and I ask myself, 'Noould it feel if I really wanted to kill somebody?' And I know: I'd feel an exhilaration I'd feel awesome
”See, when I wrote 'Dead Skin Mask,' I had just read this book called Deviant, about Ed Gein As I read it I was trying to understand this guy-why he did what he did, and how he got that way The fact that he could seriously skin these people and preserve their body partsI arter beltsout there Can you i that it's okay, and not really knowing the difference between right and wrong? That's just fucking as like that with no heart at all And then I cauy nao murdered all these little boys and then ate their penises He said he tried eating their testicles, but he found thehts up, until by the tiets to the part about chewy testicles, he is shtedly After aand blushes ”You know,” he says, ”I can sit here and talk about h because of the things these people do, but I do know the difference betrong and right I mean, I sit and think about murder, and sometimes I think it would be real easy to do And then I write the stuff, and for ht about it, I knohat it would feel like-and that's good enough for me”
LISTENING TO Tom Araya talk about the titillations ofto Slayer's music-in fact, even more so At least with Slayer'shorror in such unflinching and unros actually work as critiques of violence and evil But after talking to Araya, you have to wonder if sos aren't precisely what they sound like: namely, celebrations of the ruin of life
Actually, either interpretation-critique or celebration-seems fine by Slayer, who is probablyterrible realities without giving any indication of how the band views the moral di any ed just how deep the horror runs in the stories it has chosen to tell Killers like Ed Gein or Albert Fishto read or talk about, or to see portrayed on the screen, but the truth is, real human lives were tortured and destroyed at their hands, and the horror andfamilies and friends of both the victims and the killers had to live the rest of their lives with the effects of those crie of all the hopes that were forever transformed and sealed off in the seasons of their bloodshed This is the sort of horror that never knows an end-the sort that lasts beyond death or fiction or art-and it reater evil than Araya and his band are prepared to comprehend or address
At the sa unpleasant or evil-see about Araya himself In fact, he comes across as a basically funny, courteous, and sweet-teuy who has a deep affection for his family and his fans, and who only becohing up some exuberant fan In short, Araya is a bit like many of the rest of us: On one hand he can be fascinated by the depictions of evil in a true-crime book or a piece of fiction like The Silence of the Lambs, but when the real violence spills over into his oorld, he is genuinely repelled
And sometimes that violence can spill over in unexpected ways For exa the recent Persian Gulf War, Slayer received several letters from troops stationed on the front line, some of who ragheads,” as one soldier fan put it) and thanked Slayer for providing them with the morale to do so Closer to hoo called ”Kids Who Kill” It featured a panel with five adolescents, all of whom had killed either other kids or family members, and all of whom cited a passion for thrash or speed-metal bands-particularly Slayer To soest that Slayer's art is a dangerous one, that it works as an endorseht even help embolden it Well, perhaps But at the same time, ould it be like if the music of Slayer didn't exist? If the band disappeared or were silenced, would that absence diminish the frequency of s committed by the children on Geraldo Rivera's show?
Jeff Hanneel of Death”-the song that got the band thrown off CBS Records), doesn't think so ”Obviously,” he says, ”a lot of our fans do identify with evil-or at least they think they do But the truth is, when you couys going Sa-tan! Sa-tan! Sa-tan!-and you say, 'Now calo, 'Yes! Sa-tan!' And then you go, 'No, no-do you really believe in Satan?' he'll go, 'Uh, well, no, not really' You know, to him it's cool because it's evil, and evil is rebellion
”I mean, these are just normal kids-at least normal by today's standards,” Hanneed a lot, and soh family realities and so against all that They go to a show, thrash around for a few hours, and then they go home and hopefully they've worked some stuff out of their syste like Motley Crue, with soirlwell, they can relate to that, but they've got this anger inside that they need to get out and Motley Crue doesn't help the a positive thing,” says Hanneoes overboard, I can't take responsibility for that I mean, we all have an inborn capacity for violence, but oes over that line, then their boundary is obviously gone, but that has rew up than with our music So and stuff like that, but it isn't like we're out there giving the, 'Here, cut your throat Hurt so”
Rick Rubin, who has produced Slayer since the mid-1980s, has his own view of the band's impact on its listeners ”There's no question,” he says, ”that a lot of really troubled people like this band You can see the with boredom and stress every day of their lives, kids who really have no a to live for And I think that these kids recognize that the people in this band are troubled spirits as well There's a kinshi+p there All these people-both the band and its audience-have these feelings in common Slayer exists because people feel this way-because some kids kill, or want to kill But Slayer is simply a reflection of that condition, not the cause, and you shouldn't blame a mirror for what it reflects If you don't like what Slayer represents, then change the world, and make it a better place Do that, and bands like Slayer won't exist”
TO A CASUAL listener, eable After all, most of them tend to boast predictably dire names (soel, Suicidal Tendencies, Atrocity, Entombed, Carcass, Coroner, Repulsion, Dismember, Deathcore, Aboent Stench, Death Strike, and, uh, Defecation), and nearly all of them trade in predictably dire topics like, you know, death, the devil, and dauitarists who blast out grinding sheets of rhythrowl impossibly wordy descriptions of perdition at iivens of the genre-the shared traits that give any pop style its claidoular unto itself, but there is probably none that isthan Anthrax Like Slayer or any other nue and despair But in contrast to these other bands, Anthrax wants to knohere those dark feelings coroup's audience If speed-metal can lay claim to its own Clash or Who-a band that tries to make sense of its audience's moment in history and how that moment can be transformed into the basis for community-then clearly, that band is Anthrax
In part, Anthrax's commitment to the ideals of community owes as much to the band's interest in punk as to its roots in metal Like most of the other musicians on this tour, the members of Anthrax first developed their passion for heavy metal in the ent, Black Sabbath, and AC/DC were defining the frontier of rock & roll bravado But in 1976, all that changed Punk groups like New York's the Raland's sex Pistols took heavy metal's style and stripped it of its excesses-its overreliance on flashy lead guitars and pretty-boy cock-rock-and transfor that was at once both more primitive and enerational, and political lines across the breadth of rock & roll, and they declared that if you did not stand on punk's side of the line, then you did not stand anywhere that counted As a result, the punk andvery well, despite a couitar-and-drums-driven rock & roll
But Scott Ian, as a heavy h school in Jamaica, Queens, New York, when punk was at its peak, couldn't see the reason for all the division and antipathy ”To round-and every bit as valid-as the Ramones or sex Pistols”