Source: Bravewords.com
On March 26th, drummer DAVE LOMBARDO guested on Radio Screamer and discussed his split with SLAYER, guitarist Jeff Hanneman, and his band PHILM. Check out the interview below:
In the video below, Lombardo has some fun playing the RAY CHARLES classic ‘Mess Around’ at Esse Music Store in Italy from March 7th:
Thrash drumming legend Dave Lombardo (PHILM, ex-SLAYER) was recently in Northern Ireland for a drum clinic. My Global Mind caught up with him for an interview, you can read some excerpts below:
Musically then, outside of the clinics are you working on anything specific at the moment?
Dave ”Yes at the moment I just finished recording and producing the new Philm album which is the second release. We haven’t nailed down a record company and we are probably thinking about releasing it independently. I hope to find a good record company and put it out.”
Looking back over your extensive musical career, what have been the particular high and low points?
Dave ”Well it fluctuates, up and down you know. A low point was probably January of last year when ever they went down, you know with Slayer. It was leading up to that you know unfortunately. Well not really leading up to it because my bags were ready and packed to go.”
Still must be difficult for you on a personal level? As they were your friends, and people that you had grown up with.
Dave ”Yeah, it’s strange. It’s unfortunate as well because I realize now that they weren’t really my friends. They were just business partners. I lived and hung out with them, as if they were friends. Wow these guys are watching out for me-and it didn’t quite turn out that way.”
How do you feel one year on? Has your attitude to the situation mellowed, or…..?
Dave ”Yeah I have, I am more like-oh well, shit happens. Move on, you know”
To read the complete interview, go to this location.
Source: metalinjection.net
One of the biggest stories of 2013 was the major falling out between former SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo and the rest of the band, which ultimately ended his stint in the band, most likely forever. Both sides said their piece and everyone moved on, with Lombardo carrying on drumming in projects like his PHILM band and even with the Golden State Pops Orchestra for a show.
Now, in an interview posted with metal Wani on Feb. 3 (audio below), Lombardo was asked what one of the most important lessons he’s ever learned as being a professional music has been. His response? Totally not a shot at Slayer:
“There is absolutely no friends when it comes to money. That’s the number one lesson I’ve learned.”
Sure, the band and Lombardo have never explicitly said it was about contractual stuff or anything like that but it’s basically safe to assume that’s the idea behind the split at this point. Lombardo also commented on the late Slayer guitarist and songwriter Jeff Hanneman being left out of the Grammy’s “In Memoriam” section:
“Yeah, that was disappointing. But they’re notorious for that. That organization is predominantly rap- and country-driven. And they don’t wanna hear rock; they don’t care about rock and metal. Metal, I think, is music for misfits, and it’s played by misfits. And what do they wanna do with this kind of music? We wanna get recognized? They’re not gonna do it. Let it be. Let it be. We don’t need a doorstop. Metal doesn’t need a doorstop or an organization to recognize who we are. We have our fans. Let the voice of the fans show how big metal is.”
Source: Blabbermouth.net
Former SLAYER and current PHILM drummer Dave Lombardo perfomed an amazing piece of music by Christopher Young called “Ghost Rider” with the Golden State Pops Orchestra at the haunted Warner Grand Theatre in Los Angeles on October 19. It was an evening of horror movie scores performed with the chills and intensity only a 75-piece orchestra can convey.
Video footage of the “Ghost Rider” performance can be seen below.
Source: Blabbermouth.net
During a brand new interview with Brian Aberback of New Jersey’s Steppin’ Out magazine, SLAYER bassist/vocalist Tom Araya was asked about the band’s decision to part ways with drummer Dave Lombardo bring back Paul Bostaph.
“That whole issue came down to this: Dave had been jamming with us for a while, as a working member of the band, but he wasn’t a partner,” Tom began. “Like all things like that, you have to have agreements, so nobody feels cheated. We had ongoing issues and finally he put us in a position where we had to find someone to replace him. He wasn’t happy, so he decided to have his Facebook rant and told the world about a lot of issues going on within the band that are legally binding and private. I thought that was wrong and it was upsetting. A lot of the claims he made were untrue. Part of the agreement is you don’t do that. Kerry [King, SLAYER guitarist], Jeff [Hanneman, then-SLAYER guitarist] and I got on the phone and made a collective decision and we let Dave go and gave Paul a call. Paul said he’d be happy to come back. He has brought some life back into our live performances. He’s in hyper drive and kicking ass, which makes us play faster. People have commented on how energetic we’ve been lately. We’re playing faster than we would have. It’s good injection of adrenaline.”
Lombardo sat out SLAYER‘s Australian tour in February/March due to a contract dispute with the other members of the group. Filling in for him was Jon Dette (TESTAMENT, ANTHRAX).
During an interview with the KZRADIO.NET alternative radio station in Israel conducted on May 1 — just one day before the tragic passing of SLAYER guitarist Jeff Hanneman — Lombardo stated about his the circumstances that led to him being absent from SLAYER‘s current trek: “Basically, I had to renegotiate my contract two and a half years ago and I got an attorney because it was too complicated for me to do it myself. And my attorney was asking questions. And the answers she got from her questions, they weren’t correct; they weren’t the right answers. So we worked on it for two and a half years. And 2013 came around and SLAYER had to go on tour, and I said, ‘Guys, I can’t go on tour unless we resolve this, I’ve been advised.'”
He continued: “What I need is clarity — clarity and transparency.
“You go and make money for somebody, and if somebody is gonna pay you a percentage, you need to know where all this goes. They say I don’t deserve to know, but I think if you’re gonna pay somebody a percentage, they deserve to know. Because how are you gonna know what you got paid when you don’t know everything else?
“It’s a little complicated, and there’s more to it as well.
“They feel that because I left in 1992 and I left for 10 years, they feel I don’t deserve [to know all the details of their business].
“I mean, I love the guys — they’re like my brothers — and I wish this didn’t happen. But now there’s like this wall between us.”
Regarding some fans’ criticism that money should not get in the way of the members of SLAYER making music together, Lombardo said: “What people don’t understand is that, being a musician, you have to be a part businessman. There’s contracts… If you’re a musician and you don’t have a contract and you don’t follow up on your business, people are gonna take from you and they’re gonna steal from you.
“Chuck Berry, Ray Charles… all those guys in the early days, they made, let’s say, $500. Well, a poor musician will be happy with $100. ‘Wow, I made $100.’ Well, what happened to the other $400? Who took the other $400?
“[Being] musicians, you have to understand business as well as your art and your music, and you have to be professional.”
Bostaph was SLAYER‘s drummer from 1992 until 2001 and recorded four albums with the band — the gold-certified “Divine Intervention” (1994), the 1996 punk covers album “Undisputed Attitude”, “Diabolus In Musica” (1998), “God Hates Us All” (2001) that received a Grammy nomination for “Best Metal Performance”, as well as the DVD “War At The Warfield” (2001), also certified gold. In addition to SLAYER, Bostaph has been a member of FORBIDDEN, EXODUS, SYSTEMATIC and TESTAMENT.
Source: Blabbermouth.net
The surviving members of California thrash titans SLAYER have opened up to Guitar World magazine about the passing of the band’s founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who died on May 2 from alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, a result of a lifetime of drinking.
“Jeff was always a drinker,” former SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo tells the publication for its August 2013 issue. “He always had a Coors Light tall can in his hand. Always.”
“Jeff and I always drank,” SLAYER guitarist Kerry King adds. “They called Steven Tyler and Joe Perry the Toxic Twins. We were the Drunk Brothers.” He laughs. “The difference being that I don’t wake up in the morning and need a beer. Jeff didn’t know how not to drink.”
“I would express my concern [about his alcohol intake], and he would back off for a few months — but then he would go right back to drinking,” says Kathryn Hanneman, Jeff‘s wife of 24 years. “A few years before his dad died in 2008, I did notice that Jeff was relying on alcohol to start off his day. But I couldn’t say much at that point, because I just knew we’d wind up in a verbal confrontation about it. And I’m not going to say I didn’t drink with him — I did drink with him, sometimes quite heavily. I figured if l couldn’t beat him, join him. But eventually I realized that I couldn’t go on like that, and that if l stopped, I might be able to help him get away from it too. But I couldn’t. He just relied on it too much to get him through the day.”
Hanneman‘s SLAYER bandmates also spoke about the arthritic condition that he had been battling for many years and that was progressively worsening to the point of interfering with his playing. “His ability to play was slowly deteriorating,” SLAYER frontman Tom Araya says, “but he didn’t let anybody know that. We could just tell that things were going wrong. It was becoming hard to get stuff out of him. He was very proud and didn’t want to make anyone worry about anything. Jeff would show up and play, and he didn’t want anyone to know or worry about what else was going on with him. He tried to be really strong and sometimes that can weigh you down.”
“You would notice it in his hands and a little bit in his walk,” Lombardo says. “It seemed like He was struggling with his playing — it wasn’t fluid. You could hear it in the leads. His playing just wasn’t as tight as it could have been.”
In January 2011, Jeff was bitten on his right arm by an insect that was carrying a flesh-eating disease called necrotizing fasciitis. The infection ravaged the flesh and tissues of Hanneman‘s arm, leading to numerous surgeries, skin grafts and intense periods of rehab that forced him into semi-retirement and left him near death at several points.
“For me it was really difficult to make the decision to go on without Jeff,” Araya tells Guitar World. “They started naming names to take his place, and I’m like, How can you guys even think about this? We can’t do this without Jeff. But we had to do something. SLAYER, aside from being band members and really tight-knit, we are a business. Those are aspects of what we do that fans have a tough time understanding. So we had to make decisions because we were obligated to do these tours.”
“I remember when the tour came up, Jeff said to me, ‘No. No. There’s no way in hell this band is going out without me,'” Kathryn says. “He was definitely hurt by the fact that, for the first time ever, the band had to go on without him, but eventually he became okay with it, and a lot of that was because it was his friend Gary [Holt, EXODUS guitarist] that was going to fill in for him. He knew the band had to go on.”
“Gary was a friend, he wasn’t an outsider,” Araya says. ”We’ve known him for 30 years and he was a good friend of Jeff‘s. When we first met EXODUS, he and Jeff were inseparable.”
“We were holding out hope until the day he died,” King says. “If he ever came to us and said, ‘Okay, I can do this,’ there was no question. This was his gig. Now, did I think that would actually happen? No, I didn’t.”
“I think part of him knew that he wasn’t going to be back in the band,” Kathryn adds.
“People have to make their own decisions about how they want to live their lives,” Araya says. ”You can’t start dictating how they should live because it just pushes them away. It doesn’t help anything. It wasn’t easy, but it’s not like we were blind to what was going on. And there were points that we tried to help and encourage him to come back — tell him he could still be a part of what we do, even if it wasn’t full time.
“But I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that he didn’t want to let us down. He didn’t want to disappoint us. I think when he was having real difficulty over that last year, he just didn’t want us to know about it. He kept saying that he needed more time. And the isolation didn’t help much either. I think that no matter how things would have worked out, the end result would have been the same.”
“It eats you up because you think, Why can’t I fix this guy?” King says. “And it’s not that he didn’t want to be fixed . I mean, he didn’t want to die. But he also couldn’t help himself before it was too late.”
Regarding SLAYER‘s future plans, King tells Guitar World, “I plan on continuing. I don’t think we should throw in the towel just because Jeff‘s not here.”
Lombardo, who recently split from SLAYER — for at least the third time — due to a contract dispute, tells Guitar World he is open to reconnecting with his former bandmates.
“If they want to talk, I’m here,” he says. “I don’t want any kind of animosity between us. Life is too short and we’re too old for that shit. I’m ready and willing, so we’ll see what happens.”
Araya, meanwhile, seems to be unsure of what SLAYER‘s future holds.
“After 30 years, it would literally be like starting over,” he says. “To move forward without Jeff just wouldn’t be the same, and I’m not sure the fans would be so accepting of that drastic a change. Especially when you consider how much he contributed to the band musically. And you can have someone sit in for him, but there’s no one on this planet that can do what Jeff did. There’s no replacing him.”
To read more of the interview, purchase a copy of the August 2013 issue of Guitar World magazine.
