N
ot long ago, Slayer co-founder Kerry King had a day
off on the southern shore of Lake Erie. Don't call it a
vacation. Typically, when killing time in those hardscrabble stretches of the United States that still favor thrash
metal, the 51-year-old SoCal native does what comes naturally: sleep until 4 p.m., read reviews of local steakhouses,
maybe talk to Illinois Entertainer about Cleveland.
For kicks, the day off would be a break from
old routine. He'd wake up early enough to see
how badly the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Museum butchered the Metallica exhibit. A
diehard fan in the early days, circa No Life 'Til
Leather, when Dave Mustaine was Metallica's
lead guitarist, King played second guitar at
Megadeth's first five shows. The dude knows
his artifacts.
"I was surprised how cool it is, actually," he
says of the place, laughing nervously by phone
in Portland, Maine. "I didn't know what to
expect. I didn't expect the enormity of it. It's
huge...seven floors, and there's just so much allencompassing stuff in there. I was blown away,
really."
It's hard not to picture the guitarist standing
in front of Jason Newsted's fossilized shirt and
pants, studying Doris' scales of justice, stroking
that pointy beard of his, grinning. In the mind's
eye, he's the only patron on seven floors wearing sunglasses. Metallica, inducted in 2009, are
arguably the only full-on metal band to have
been given a pass by a committee that took 20
years to acknowledge Kiss, Rush, and Alice
Cooper. Surely, you don't think...
"Absolutely," King states, abruptly. He's
serious: Slayer should be in the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame. "I can't think of too many bands
that are sneaking up on 35 years together that
are still relevant." Well, they are eligible, ever
since 2008, 25 years after the release of their
blasphemous debut, Show No Mercy.
King formed Slayer in 1981 with fellow guitarist Jeff Hanneman (who died in 2013 of liver
failure) and snagged vocalist/bassist Tom
Araya, whom King had played with in a cover
20 illinoisentertainer.com july 2015
band. But, what would be in a Slayer exhibit?
Spiked wristbands? A book on Josef Mengele
that inspired Hanneman to write the infamous
Holocaust song, "Angel Of Death"? German
war medals pilfered off dead Nazis by
Hanneman's father during the D-Day invasion
(and later worn in Slayer photo ops)? Cans of
Stella?
"I think the important thing...is a big fucking picture of just an intense crowd. We played
Carolina Rebellion recently, and I was just
blown away. We were next to the last band, on
the last day. And that crowd looked like they
were fresh, man. They ripped shit up. And a big
part of Slayer's live show is the intensity of the
crowds."
If the members of Slayer are ever seriously
considered for induction, should the subjects of
their songs be held against them? The nation's
visual-art equivalent to the Rock Hall, the
Museum of Modern Art in New York, had on
prominent view a 1946 piece by Francis Bacon
(Painting) at its 2004 reopening that rivals the
wickedness of any Slayer tune. A shadowy figure rules from an armchair of meat. An umbrella obscures his identity, protecting his suit and
bright yellow boutonniere from a mess of crucified animal tissue. The blinds, appropriated
from a photograph of Adolf Hitler's bunker, are
pulled down. Enter to the realm of Satan.
Advertisements declared, "Manhattan is modern again."
Bacon told art critic David Sylvester in 1966
that he kept his paintings raw in an attempt to
be honest. "People feel that that is horrific," said
the English painter of Irish birth. "Because, if
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