SLAYER guitarist Kerry King was interviewed on the November 1-3 edition of Full Metal Jackie's nationally syndicated radio show. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below. A transcript of the question-and-answer session follows.
To see a full list of stations carrying the program and when it airs, go toFullMetalJackieRadio.com.
Full Metal Jackie: SLAYER, of course, has the North American headlining tour [coming up at the end of October], the band's first in two years. It runs through the end of November. You guys have been touring all summer [in Europe] with Paul [Bostaph, drums] and, of course,Gary Holt [guitar, also of EXODUS]. At what point over the last five months did you know that this lineup of the band was ready to go into the studio, or work on new music?
King: Well, realistically, as soon as Paul got with us, I started teaching him new stuff, because I've got probably thirteen, fourteen songs [written for the next record]. So when we didn't have any touring schedule that we had to learn stuff for, I was, like, "Well, let's take this time to get your and my chops up together to work on this new stuff so when the time comes, we'll already have 90 percent of the work under our belt."
Full Metal Jackie: Kerry, metal fans around the world were terribly saddened by the death ofJeff Hanneman. Will his style and what he brought to the band continue to influenceSLAYER's legacy even after he's gone?
King: I think so, because, I mean, when you play guitar opposite somebody — Jeff with myself or myself with Jeff — I think our styles infused a bit. I think in some of the things I write, I think people are gonna say, "Wow, that sounds like Jeff would have wrote it," and stuff he would have wrote, had he written anymore, people would have said, "Man, that sounds like something Kerry wrote." But, you know, we've been together so long that we kind of infused ourselves into each other. So I think it's going to be business as usual going forward, [but] just one member less, which sucks for everybody.
Full Metal Jackie: This is the first full-blown SLAYER headline tour in quite a few years. What are you looking forward to the most about it?
King: Yeah, this is the first one in at least six or seven years. Every time we've come through the States, it's either been on [Rockstar Energy Drink] Mayhem [Festival] or on SLAYER / [MARILYN] MANSON tours or SLAYER / MEGADETH tours, so we might have maxed out [with our time on stage] at an hour and five [minutes], an hour and ten [minutes], but on this one, we get to play an hour and thirty [minutes], an hour and thirty-five [minutes], which we haven't been able to do in the States in a very long time. I enjoy doing full headline sets, because if you're the actual last person playing, most people spent their money to come seeyou. So I wanna be able to give them something they're gona remember for the first time in quite a while.
Full Metal Jackie: What can we expect from the setlist from the rest of the tour? Will you be debuting any new music prior to releasing it?
GRAMMY.com recently conducted an interview with legendary rocker Sammy Hagar (VAN HALEN, CHICKENFOOT, MONTROSE). You can now watch the chat in eleven parts below.
Asked if he misses his friendship with the Van Halen brothers, Hagar replied: "Oh, every part of me — from my hair to my toes — miss my friendship with Eddie and Alex Van Halen.
"I think Alex and I are probably still good friends. Eddie and I, we hit a real hard bump in the road. It's kind of like a relationship with a partner and things go so wrong that you just don't feel like you can ever let that go. But we'll see. 'Cause I think I can let anything go. I don't know if Eddie can let anything go; maybe he can. But right now, there's a lot of resentment built up. It's almost like there's so much anger that I don't wanna even run into him."
He continued: "I used to always say, 'Oh, if I ran into him somewhere, it'd be, like, 'Oh, Eddie. How are you doing?' Big hugs and kisses. I don't think it'd be like that right now. I think it'd be, like, 'You did this' and 'You did that' [laughs]; we'd get in each other's face.
"It got real ugly.
"Unfortunately, when I wrote my book, I had to say it all, because in my whole life, what do I do? I go through life and I run into fans. 'Oh, man, I loved you in VAN HALEN. You were the best guy.' Of course they tell me I was the best guy in VAN HALEN and they tell the other guy he was the best guy. But the truth of the matter is, they would say, 'Why can't you andEddie get…? Man, you guys…' And I'm going, 'You don't understand.' So when I wrote my book, I wanted to clarify that; I just wanted to throw that out the window. Don't ever ask me again why I'm not in VAN HALEN. I was thrown out, I was stabbed in the back and left for dead. And you just can't go back and hug and kiss those kind of people that do that to you. So I wrote about it in my book. And now that I really wrote about it in the book, I don't thinkEddie would ever look me in the eye and shake hands and no hugs and kisses. But Alex knows it's all true and he knows it was all… Well, he knows what happened. He was a bystander who stood by his brother, and I love 'em both."
He added: "I still love Eddie Van Halen with all of my heart and I wish him nothing but good health and hopefully he gets himself together. But he put me through some miserable stuff that one human being should not do that to another human being. And it's not like I didn't have a choice. I had a choice; I could have split in the middle of that tour, but when I did, I was threatened to be sued for so much money that it was, like… 'I'm gonna stick it out.' And sticking it out through those situations [meant] I had to get my own airplane, [we] couldn't fly on the same plane, he was in this dressing room in the arena, I was in the farthest one over there I could get. And it was, like, every night, sitting there and looking at the clock, it's time to go on, Michael Anthony [then-VAN HALEN bassist] and I, and we'd hear Eddie's guitar. It was, like, 'OK, he made it. Let's go.' We'd walk out on stage every night. [We'd] wait and make sure the guy could make it.
"But I love him; I really do love him. My friendship and the songs and the music we made makes up for all of that — if he would be willing to say, 'Hey, let's let it go.'
"But I'm not looking to get back [in VAN HALEN]. CHICKENFOOT is my band now."
Hagar recently said that Eddie Van Halen isn't as "fluent and versatile" as Sammy'sCHICKENFOOT bandmate Joe Satriani. Hagar, who just released the star-studded collection,"Sammy Hagar & Friends", took a swipe at Van Halen while downplaying his own guitar playing, telling Gibson.com, "In CHICKENFOOT and VAN HALEN, I just put the guitar on and got a big cheer always, and then I'd burn for a little bit and then take it back off before I ran out of chops, y'know? I rate myself as a guy that can play, and I can express myself extremely well but only in one language. I can only play blues-based guitar. And when a guy like Joesteps up there, he can play. Once he finishes with my repertoire, he can go into French, Spanish and Russian on the guitar! He's just so versatile and fluent."
Hagar pressed on, comparing Van Halen to Satriani, saying, "Eddie's not as fluent and versatile. Eddie's got a style for himself and he's very much in that pocket, but Joe can play anything. He freaks me out."
Hagar told The Pulse Of Radio that the split between him and Eddie Van Halen became apparent during the sessions for the band's 1995 "Balance" album, which was his last full-length set with the band. "Eddie needs somebody to make decisions and a leader, y'know?" he said. "He's not a natural born leader kind of guy. And his brother was always the leader before — or [David Lee] Roth was the leader before — and when Roth left, his brother and him bumped heads so much, when I walked in, it was like, 'Well, what does Sam wanna do?' y'know? So it became kind of like, yeah, I was making all the decisions, so then on 'Balance', all of a sudden he didn't like my decisions, and it was, like, really weird."
