RIP Jeff Hanneman

[supa]

I don't think Jeff gives a shit if we go off topic. I would love to hear a valid argument that supports that statement.

[derekeverett]

I don't think Jeff gives a shit if we go off topic. I would love to hear a valid argument that supports that statement.

I'll state my opinion. I wouldn't call it an argument though, if for no other reason then I don't wish to debate it. Like I've already said, I regret making the comment, and I apologize.

I'll take you at your word that you would like to hear my position, and that you aren't looking for a fight here. My days of arguing about this sort of thing via Internet forums are over. Please don't take offence to that, I've just been involved in one too many stupid Internet arguments and I avoid it now. But because you asked, here it is in a nutshell....

Musicians, like all artists, draw inspiration from others, this is commonly recognized. It's never long before an artists of any type is asked who inspired them to do what they do. Slayer and Metallica, particularly in those early days, I imagine would have inspired each other a great deal. When bands are young, a lot of what they will become is inspired by their peers. This is the smaller of my 2 points, but for this reason alone I think it's a safe bet that Metallica would have taken a totally different road if there had not been a Slayer. The reverse would also probably be true, but this may have worked to Slayer's advantage, there is no way to know.

My larger point is this. The 1981-1985 time period for both bands was bleak. Being that they both found success, we now read about those times and discuss them in an almost celebratory fashion, but they were literally starving at the time.

The odds were stacked against both bands. At that time there was no radio promotion for that sound. There was VERY little in the way of a college scene to support them, which is how many indie bands survived at the time. And there was certainly no Internet for them to self promote. There was also not a lot of venue's or promoters looking to give them opportunity. Slayer, Metallica, Exodus, Anthrax and a hand full of other bands survived by creating buzz about each other and their scene. In the end Metallica came out on top of this, but for a time Slayer was just as big a player.

It was a time of tape trading and word of mouth promotion from one fan of this type of music to the next. If you discovered Slayer through a friend, surely most of the other groups would soon follow. It was pretty much unheard of to be a fan of one band and not the rest of them.

This is easy to forget now as we look back at albums such as Puppets, Justice, South of Heaven, and Seasons. Those are all important albums in their own right, but pre-1985 those albums didn't exist, and the bands depended on fans of one band being turned on to all of them. And it worked, so the bands kept touring, kept writing, and kept recording. If you had bought a Slayer shirt, you bought a Metallica and Exodus shirt too. That's just how it was.

This is how these bands, despite having a very limited fan base, survived. If a piece of this puzzle as important as Slayer had not have existed, I think it's a fair bet Metallica would not have been financially able to continue through those 4 lean years. Not to mention they wouldn't have been as inspired to continue as the fan base would have been smaller, and they would not have had the musical inspiration that came from Slayer as well. Metallica and history would have been completely different, and I think it's very plausible that members of Metallica would be disgruntled auto mechanics today, perhaps participating in an AC/DC tribute band on the weekends.

Post-1985 things changed. Both bands had survived and built a fan base. While this was still a time of fans generally liking both bands, each band began to really hone in on a more customized sound. The next couple releases from each band would come to define them.

Obviously, post 1990 things really changed.

So to sum it up, it is my opinion that Slayer was an integral part of the machine that kept Metallica alive through the lean years, and helped to build the very audience that would prop them up and get them heard. Just like there is no such thing as a self made man, there is no such thing as a self made band.

This is of course just my opinion. I was alive at the time, and was a fan of the bands at the time, but I was just a kid. I do however have a lifetime of experience with struggling bands, musicians, and artists.. so I think a lot of my assumptions and drawn conclusions are somewhat educated best guesses from experience, combined with shit I've read over the years.

Hope that wasn't too much for you to read, but if I was going to say anything at all, I wanted to try and explain myself as thoroughly as possible.

[supa]

I'll state my opinion...

Pretty far stretch bro but I'll give you an A for effort.

I don't know how old you are but I'll assume you're somewhere near the average age of FTRs member base. I was 13 when both bands debut albums came out and was a huge fan of both bands from the beginning. I saw Metallica play (at the Whiskey [with an 'e' eug] I think) when Mustaine was still in the band. When I was 15/16 I was in a band that played almost exclusively Metallica covers (mostly from Kill em All).

The reason I bring this up is I was there when all this was going down. Hell yeah times were bleak for musicians in the 80s. It was a time when pay to play was common. You didn't book a gig and get paid for it. You had to buy the tickets up front and hope sell enough of them to cover your costs. Usually you didn't and gave most of them away to friends and relatives just to prove you pack the house. But this was thousands of bands, not just the unfortunately coined "Big Four" that some idiot decided to call them.

At the time the 2 bands were part of completely separate genres. Slayer was Death Metal, a part of the metal scene that only the most hardcore were willing to be associated with. Slayer was the anti-metallica. People liked Metallica. Metallica was considered to be in a genre of their own. If you told people they were Death Metal or Speed Metal they'd argue with you and tell you they couldn't be classified. I always thought that was fucking stupid but whatever, it gets to my point. Metallica was in a class by itself almost from the beginning.

I'll give your starving argument little credit. It's what every band did at the time but Metallica certainly didn't do it for long. The Kill em All for One tour in 83 wasn't exactly arena gigs but most of their dates were in 3000 seat venues like the Country Club in LA. I can tell you from first hand experience that when you're playing those kinds of venues early in your career you are living your dream and while you might not be making hookers and cocaine money you are light years away from the pay to play gigs you're used to doing.

As far as influencing each other I don't know. I'm sure there was some for of influence both ways even but Rentons point of faster tracks on later albums isn't really true. Listen to Whiplash on Kill em All. Nuff said?

Another point that I had to look up because I couldn't remember is Metallica and Slayer only toured together one time and that wasn't until 95, 12 years after both of their debut albums. It took 12 years for these bands to finally play together when they came from the same city, formed the same year and released there debut albums the same year.

Anyway, I know you weren't looking for an argument and I'm not really trying to poke one out of you, I just thought some perspective was needed.

[Renton]

but Rentons point of faster tracks on later albums isn't really true. Listen to Whiplash on Kill em All. Nuff said?

I won't argue too hard since you're obviously coming from a superior position, but Whiplash (and Metal Militia) wasn't really that fast. It was certainly fast for its day and by Metallica standards but the Damage Inc esque stuff later was faster.

Honestly Metallica was always limited by having The Worst Metal Drummer Of All Time (tm) so that might have just been as fast as they could make it. Listening to the earliest Slayer records, I seem to recall them sounding VERY like Kill em All, but they quickly went in a much different direction than Metallica after that.

Interesting semi-unrelated: I find it funny how Metallica was so hardcore about forging this genre in the early days but their music was really just louder/harder blues-Sabbath-Lizzy-influenced rock. Other bands (like Slayer) actually carved new niche subgenres of metal and remained largely in obscurity because of it.

Anyway I kind of hate both of the bands now, but it is fun to have warm reminiscences of my former musical tastes.