THE YEAR THAT THRASH BROKE

By 1986, thrash metal was outgrowing its violent playground in the dives of San Francisco, and Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax were poised to release albums that would change the face of music forever. This is the story of the year that thrash broke, by the people who were there

WORDS: JON HOTTEN

★★★★★ FROM THE ARCHIVE ★★★★★

It was 1985, almost 1986. The biggest record in the world was Bruce Spingsteen’s chest-beating Born In The USA. The upper reaches of the American charts were populated by bands who had appeared at Live Aid that summer. MTV was four years old, and still 15 months away from the launch of its first specialist show, Headbangers Ball. The rock bands that could get airplay included Ratt, Ozzy Osbourne, Def Leppard and Judas Priest. The biggest band in Los Angeles was Mötley Crüe, who were at the head of a new glam rock movement that soon had old arena lags like Ozzy and The Scorpions frosting their hair and wearing eyeliner.

But below the radar, something was stirring. The unruly offspring of heavy metal and punk rock, thrash metal had coalesced three years earlier around a handful of disenfranchised musicians in San Francisco’s Bay Area, with smaller pockets of activity in New York and Los Angeles. The key bands – San Francisco’s Metallica, LA’s Slayer and Megadeth and New York’s Anthrax – had all released records that had been greeted rapturously by those in the know.

The scene was based around a handful of independent labels: Metal Blade and Megaforce in California, Music For Nations in the UK. For three years, they’d sustained themselves without any overlap with the mainstream music industry.

But all that was starting to change. Metallica – the undisputed heavyweight champions of the scene – had signed with major label Elektra in 1985, and their peers were eyeing their progression with a mixture of admiration and envy. By the end of the year, the floodgates had opened, and thrash had planted its size 11 baseball boots squarely in the mainstream.

Brian Slagel (Metal Blade Records founder): “The thrash scene was super-small. In the US, all the bands knew each other. Back then, everyone was just so in love with the music. It was an us-againstthe-world mentality.”

Lars Ulrich (Metallica drummer): “You could send five demo tapes to people, and a week later, 100 kids had copies. It could spread like brush fire.”

Brian Slagel: “I guess it’s easy now to think that the big bands of the time were the Big 4, but I think back then, if you were going to name a band that would come from inside that scene who would eventually make it huge, we all would have said Armored Saint. But it just ended up not ever happening the way we thought it would.”

Lars Ulrich: “You could certainly argue that me and James at that time were more kind of the squarer guys, ’cause we were more like, ‘MOTÖRHEAD! IRON MAIDEN!’ Heavy metal t-shirts, and long hair and banging our heads into the wall.”

Harald Oimoen (photographer): “Dave Mustaine, of course, was extremely bitter about his dismissal from Metallica and drowned himself in alcohol and drugs. I was more than happy to indulge him. Lars and Mustaine still hung out regularly, unbeknownst to the media, where Dave spoke his mind, slagging Metallica at every possible chance.”

Eric Peterson (Testament guitarist): “Paul Baloff [late Exodus singer] was the idol of the Bay Area, because of his personality. He had a real wolf.He’d walk into the clubs with his wolf, taking it everywhere. It had paws like a bear. He had a couple of commands that would make it snarl at you.”

Gary Holt (Exodus guitarist): “The wolf’s name was By-Tor. Paul had this Jim Jones quality over a crowd. If he said drink the purple Kool-Aid, they drank it. He had that sort of twisted leadership.”

Brian Slagel: “Slayer was an interesting group because they weren’t particularly good friends. When they would get together it was just magical, but they didn’t really hang out a whole lot.”

Tom Araya (Slayer vocalist/bassist): “The scene was bigger in Europe. We played the Heavy Sounds festival in Belgium [in late 1985] to 15,000 people. We’d been playing to 300-400 people in clubs in the US.”