Jeff Hanneman 1964-2013
I got into hard rock/metal at the tender age of 10 during the summer of 1985. Hearing Eddie Van Halen rip it up on Michael Jackson’s new single “Beat It”, hearing Sabbath’s “Iron Man” used as the ring music for my favorite wrestling tag team The Legion of Doom and happening across a midnight showing of KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park one night on TV all within a few months of each other had a profound effect on my musical interests. I began with KISS, Van Halen, Black Sabbath which led me to Iron Maiden and Judas Priest which ultimately lead me to the heaviest metal of the day: thrash. By the next summer in ’86 I had been introduced to the seminal thrash album, Metallica’s Master of Puppets, and thus began my obsession with all that was fast and heavy in music.
I was freshly into middle school by this time and most of the other kids into metal were a couple years older than me and about ready to leave for the big leagues of high school. I never hung out with them as at that point in life a couple years age difference was like generations. But one Friday as I was leaving school to walk home, I pulled out a copy of a Metallica cassette (can’t remember which one) I had on me to look at the cover and walked past one of the older metalheads I had seen around the school hallways. He took notice of my Metallica tape and flashed me an approving thumbs up. Then he withdrew something out of his pocket and began to hand it to me, simply saying “Slayer. Dude…SLAYER!.” It was a brand new cassette of the Reign in Blood album. Ladies and Gentlemen, that guy was Jeff Hanneman.
No, I’m joking. It wasn’t Jeff, but the generous metalhead who had handed me the cassette then said, “Just give it back to me on Monday. “ Then he pointed at the tape and grinned “…it’ll fuck you up.” So I took it home for the weekend, listened to it and yes indeed it did fuck me up. So much so I can honestly say this: Slayer was the first band to ever scare me. The sheer intensity and brutality was way too much for me to handle at that stage of my musical discovery. As heavy as Metallica was, Slayer was still a huge leap above that. So I finally found the mystery metalhead on Monday, returned his cassette to him with the affirmation that yes, it fucked me up and I put Slayer on the shelf for a year or so. It wasn’t until ‘88’s South of Heaven that I gave them another shot and finally “got it”. I’ve been Slaytanic ever since.
Slayer had a huge impact on my approach to playing heavy music. My guitar playing style (when it comes to heavy music) is largely the product of the 4H Club: Hendrix, Halen, Hetfield and Hanneman. There are elements of all those guys in my playing whenever I pick up a guitar, crank the gain and get loud. The thrash band I had as a younger man, Minotaur, had their base sound deeply footed in the Slayer model of aggressive attack. And that’s what Slayer was..aggression personified. ‘Tallica is often credited with taking the Sabbath sound to the next level, but I give that credit to Slayer (I’ve always likened Metallica more to Motorhead). They took the menace, doom and evil that Sabbath projected, soaked it in grain alcohol, punched it in the mouth with brass knuckles and then sent it into the pit flailing wildly with a straight razor.
I was fortunate enough to see Slayer live 3 times in my life. Each show was a severe ass-kicking of the best kind. I was able to introduce my wife to the live Slayer experience in 2007 when they co-headlined a tour with Marilyn Manson. She blames them to this day for the awful bladder/kidney infection she got that night during their set.
And now, one of the men most responsible for all that is suddenly gone. And the metal world is poorer for it. Kerry King is, for all intents and purposes, the face of Slayer. He has the overwrought extreme image that people reference with Slayer : the nail covered gauntlet, sprawling tribal tats that traverse his arms, neck and head, the Viking beard. But Jeff was truly the musical backbone. Hanneman was the substance to King’s style. When I look at my all-time favorite Slayer tunes, they are all musically penned solely by Hanneman and the lyrics were either co-written or fully written by him: “At Dawn They Sleep”, “Angel of Death”, “Raining Blood”, “Hell Awaits”, “Behind The Crooked Cross”, “South of Heaven” (lyrics by Tim Araya), “Spill The Blood”, “War Ensemble”, “Dead Skin Mask” (lyrics Araya), “Seasons In The Abyss” (lyrics Araya), “Bitter Peace”, “Stain of Mind” (lyrics by King), “Disciple” (Lyrics by King), “God Send Death”, “Jihad”, “Final Six”, “Eyes of the Insane” (Slayer won a Grammy for this one), “Human Strain”, “Psychopathy Red”….you can’t mess with that.
Jeff was always my favorite member of the band. Quiet, a bit aloof..just sort of stood back and allowed King and Tom Araya to handle the majority of the press. But he was articulate and blunt when he did take part in interviews. He seemed like just a regular guy who enjoyed his Jager, hockey, showing his dogs with his wife and playing guitar in one of the world’s most badass bands.
In 2011, he was bitten by a spider on the arm and began a long battle with necrotizing fasciitis (flesh-eating disease) due to not seeking immediate medical treatment. He had to halt all activities with Slayer in order to focus on recovery while the band continued to tour with a fill-in guitarist (the very capable Gary Holt of the also legendary Exodus). During the very early days of fighting the illness, he was reportedly in a coma for a period of 3 days and had several surgeries to repair damaged tissue in his arm. During periods in 2012, reports began to bubble up that he was recovering nicely and that his return to the stage with Slayer was imminent. He even made a special appearance onstage at one show that year. But as 2013 dawned other reports stating that Jeff was still very much ill began to surface. Nobody really knew the true nature of his circumstances so it was an utter shock when on May 2, 2013 at the age of 49, Jeff Hanneman passed away in a hospital due to liver failure believed to have been linked to his ongoing fight with the complications from the spider bite.
Jeff created a sonic vocabulary with his work in Slayer that musicians continue to draw from steadily and is a pioneer. The bands directly influenced by his work are legion. His contributions to the canon of extreme music are indisputable.
The future of Slayer is a bit uncertain at the moment. I think for me on a personal level, I consider the band to be over seeing how many times I refer to them in the past tense in this posting. Jeff was too much of a pillar of the band for it to ever be the same for me. But if they continue recording, I will surely check it out. But I’ll be truthful, my expectations are low.
One last parting comment (Jeff had a twisted sense of humor and I think he would appreciate where I’m coming from with this): There is nothing lighthearted or funny about dying too young or about the disease that claimed Jeff. But let’s be honest, dying slowly from a flesh-eating disease caused by a poisonous spider bite….how fucking metal is THAT?!! \m/
Only in Slayer. Dude…SLAYER.
