It’s not unusual for band members to deal with trolls and hecklers at a show. It’s a little surprising, however, that someone as seasoned as Slayer guitarist Gary Holt would only deal with “two genuine hecklers” during his time in the legendary thrash metal band.
Holt has played with fellow thrash godfathers Exodus since 1981. He joined Slayer as a temporary guitarist in 2011, when founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman fell ill, and became a permanent member in 2013 after Hanneman’s death. During a recent conversation with Ultimate Guitar, Holt opened up about joining Slayer, and revealed the pair of not-so-kind fans he had to suffer in the early years.
“In all the countless shows I did, I’ve only had two hecklers. Two hecklers that I noticed,” Holt shared. “Most people looked at my participation like this: ‘Get well soon, Jeff,’ which is how I looked at it, too. ‘But while this is available to me, this is cool. I’ve watched Slayer and Gary Holt play together. Let’s check this out. This is going to be awesome.’”
“I had two genuine hecklers, one in Germany, this guy with this awful skullet. He was down there, like, flipping me off the whole show,” Holt went on to recall. “Usually, I’m super thick-skinned — this doesn’t bother me. But I sent a production manager down, and he was on the radio, and they were about to throw the guy out because he was starting to fuck up my show. And then the guy realized that, and he booked.”
“But you know, dude, you know this wasn’t a surprise fill-in,” Holt went on to say, noting that his participation in the concert had been made public beforehand. “You knew before tickets went on sale, you still bought the fuckin’ ticket. So, why are you here if it’s that bad?”
“Then we played a show in Milan [Italy], and they had a guy front row, dead center stage, just screaming ‘Fuck you!’ at me, the whole show,” Holt continued. “At that one, I jumped down on the subwoofers at the end of the show, like a foot from his face, and asked if he had anything to say now. And he didn’t.”
“He was pissing me off. Younger me might have thrown a punch,” Holt laughed. “He was stuck. There was nowhere he could have gone. You know, 5,000 people behind him. But he had to get front row to make his thoughts known.”
“You paid for the ticket. You’re a fuckin’ moron if you hate it that much,” Holt added. “But two people out of, like, countless shows. That’s a pretty good track record, I guess.”
The post Slayer Guitarist Recalls the ‘Two Genuine Hecklers’ He’s Had to Deal with appeared first on VICE.
The post Slayer Guitarist Recalls the ‘Two Genuine Hecklers’ He’s Had to Deal with appeared first on VICE.
