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(metal guitar shredding)

♪ The core of the earth is its womb ♪

♪ A fetus for a million years ♪

♪ Crawling up from the underground ♪

♪ The creature appears ♪

♪ Sharp red thorns armored skin ♪

♪ Eight legs sharp as knives ♪

♪ Breaking glass with its sonic scream ♪

♪ The monster is alive ♪

♪ Gorantulla Gorantulla ♪

♪ Gorantulla Gorantulla ♪

♪ Gorantulla Gorantulla ♪

♪ Ooh ♪

- [Narrator] San Francisco Bay Area music scene

has always been a mecca for many styles.

From a summer of love and the psychedelic sounds

of Jefferson Airplane

to the portal metal of Blue Cheer,

the City by the Bay kep producing talent after talent.

The 1970s spawned such early hard rock acts

such as Montrose with Sammy Hagar,

the Latin flavored sounds of Santana

and, of course, the experimental fusion

of early Journey.

The defining moment

for the Bay Area hard rock scene was when

a young four-piece from the East Bay

called Yesterday and Today hit the clubs

in the mid 1970s, setting the stage

for the soon to be identifiable Bay Area

heavy metal sound.

♪ Nothing but a name ♪

- Late 70s, early 80s, a lot of bands

would come to high schools and play at lunch.

I don't think they do that anymore,

but Y&T would come to Alameda High

and they would play our auditorium

and they were a big band.

- There were so many styles of music

that were just flowing through

all of these types of clubs

and, like I said, to some degree

that was an advantage for us

because we truly stuck out.

I mean in the Bay Area, we stuck out.

There was nobody playing hard rock

except for Ronnie Montrose.

Realistically, I mean Journey was playing

more at that time more spacey, kind of, you know,

almost instrumentally, you know,

oriented kind of stuff before Perry got in.

I mean, they were doing obviously songs

that, you know, singing, Greg was singing

some great stuff.

But, they were a little bit more about

the musicianship and less about the pop singles,

you know, at that time.

- The thing about San Francisco was

it's always been a hot bed for music and entertainment.

It started back in the late 40s, early 50s

with the bebop jazz clubs

and then the beatniks of the early 50s, late 60s

comes into the Summer of Love,

all a sudden and then you have

all these clubs already and

all these magazines in place.

So Rolling Stone started there in the 60s and stuff,

so when my generation got there,

it was the tail end of punk,

you had clubs like the Mab, and the Stone

and the Waldorf and they catered to all these things

so, you know, you had a bunch of fans going already.

You had top notch nightclubs

and you had a media that reinforced it.

- And then eventually Sammy broke out

from Ronnie's band and then started doing something

and he was the other guy in the band,

you know, in the Bay Area

that was doing sort of straight ahead rock and roll.

- As time went on, it was cool

to say, oh, I play heavy metal.

In those days, man, people didn't wanna

be associated with that.

That's why I'm like fuckin' get off of it, man.

A lot of these fuckin' bands, man,

you know it's easy to say you were metal.

Back in those days, bands didn't want

to call themselves that.

- It just seemed a little bit more free up here

than anywhere else I had been,

a lot more creativity, a lot more people were more

apt to go out on a limb and do different things.

There were great young bands out back then

that never got a record deal like Broken Man

or even bands like the Horde of Torment.

All these old bands, and Pandemic back then,

you know that were bending what heavy music

was at that time.

It was really cool to be a part of that.

- In the late 70s, you know, you did have bands

like Yesterday and Today that were really going strong

and then there was,

there was even bands that I hadn't heard of

that people mentioned like, you know Earth Quake.

Earth Quake was a very good band

from the East Bay that had several albums out

in the late 70s and early 80s.

You know, Sammy Hagar, who was born down in Monterrey,

you know, he was a rock star in his own right

at the time here in the Bay Area.

- The bands that started that were hard rock

were yesterday and today and this band called Harvey,

that were like black guys that were killer.

They were hard rock.

- Harvey was an all black rock band,

Reggie Harvey, Donnie Harvey,

I can't remember the other,

I can't remember the bass player's name,

but great guys.

I saw Donnie Harvey first from the band

I think called Status playing the Lionshare.

I thought, man, this guy is great.

- It really shows how bands that were,

more just straight ahead metal, you know,

as far as more progressive metal influence

and then there's bands like, I don't know,

there was like this band Steele,

that, you know, has this kind of Judas Priest

thing going and then was the bands

that were just definitely like, you know, hair bands.

- Well, there was Winterhawk, who were actually

Native Americans and they rocked early on

and they got more generic over time,

but Winterhawk, their first album is intense.

And they got, like everybody else, you know,

like Y&T, like everyone else,

they wrote like more and more commercial songs and stuff.

- The other guy that came out from that area

was Eddie Money.

Yeah, so it was Eddie Money, Sammy

and Y&T that were constantly playing all the time.

- It was just a great scene there.

It was thriving, just great form,

time for creativity, it was wonderful.

- [Woman] Bay Area did whatever they wanted,

but always so respectful.

- So Eric Martin was one of the best acts,

Mile High is one of the best acts.

Violation was a cool band.

- MK.

Chumby.

- Chumby. - Chumby was great.

- And then there was Violation.

Bleufood.

And Anvil Chorus.

- Right.

- Who else was good?

There was Roadrunner.

(laughing)

What other great bands were out there.

Hans Naughty.

Yeah, yeah, they were nice guys.

- They were our biggest competition.

- One of the nicest guys in the world.

- As musician growing up

in our early teenage years,

we were somewhat confused by

the psychedelic stuff that like Hendrix

would kind of put out

and then there was the heaviness

that the Black Sabbath records had,

which had a huge profound influence on everyone.

Then there was the Y&T,

which was Yesterday and Today

because they were hard rock homeboys,

you know, they're right from here.

Then there was like the Genesis influence

and then the progressive stuff,

like Allan Holdsworth and UK and things like that.

That came in, and then Rush.

- A lot of bands were progressive,

they were trying to play progressive type rock,

what was popular on the radio

and they were kind fuckin' snobby, dude.

They didn't like that hard shit, man.

Really.

A lot of them jumped on the bandwagon later,

but really in those early days, my friend,

a lot of those bands, they didn't think

that music was going any fuckin' where man.

- The summer of 79,

I got a call from this producer Bob Hayman

that was doing a rock opera called "Rock Justice,"

that Marty Balin had written

and so he actually knew who I was

from this all girl band,

so the all girl band kind of opened

up the doors for me to play with all

these other people, so I did this,

it was a rock opera.

It was originally supposed

to be recorded for HBO.

One of the first HBO videos

that was recorded live.

And it was supposed to be a story

about a rock singer who

gets hauled into court

for failing to have a hit.

So it's basically like a satire

of the record industry,

which Marty Balin obviously knew a lot about.

And then Mike Varney played guitar

and this is before he had Shrapnel Records.

- But yeah, Steel Wind was great.

The band I think Airborne were around

for a minute that turned into Heist.

Some of the guys turned into Heist from Airborne.

They were great.

I used to go see all the bands.

I mean, the early years.

There was a lot of really great stuff out there.

- [Narrator] By the late 1970s,

an every growing choice of concerts

was giving exposure to the European hard rock bands

that came over the pond

to play such festivals as the Day on the Green

or the large venues around the Bay.

Acts like Judas Priest, UFO, the Scorpions

and Thin Lizzy all started to inspire

a whole new generation of young musicians.

But what really made the biggest impact

was the explosion of the new wave of British heavy metal,

spearheaded by Motorhead, Saxon, Angel Witch

and Iron Maiden.

- After that school year finished

in June of 1981, I kind of just got,

I got a little kind of disillusioned

with being there and this was the first time

that I could sort of take off by myself,

so I took off and went back to Europe,

to England specifically and that was when

I did the whole kind of runaway

with Diamondhead and going, you know,

stayed with Sean Harris and Brian Tatler

and went back to Denmark

and made some money and went back to England,

you know, bought records and found Saxon

and hung out with Motorhead

at their rehearsal studio in London

and went to a bunch of shows,

the Port Veil Heavy Metal Holocaust.

So that was that summer and then I was so

kind of invigorated and so,

you know, fired up by spending three months

in Europe, you know, July, August, September of 1980,

then I came back and I called this guy I'd met

briefly named James Hetfield and then, here we are.

- A lot of my friends had bands

and they were all more like Judas Priest,

that was like the big thing.

And then bands like from L.A.,

like that kind of look with a lot of stripes

and yellow and red and black and

so I roadied for a lot of friends,

bands like Black Leather, Roulette

and I remember, I had a lot of riffs,

but I didn't start a band yet

'cause I was really into Maiden,

but everybody was doing the Maiden thing,

so I was just like, well,

you know, I really don't wanna do that.

I want to try to do something different

and it wasn't until actually roadied

for my friend's band Roulette

and it was a show,

it was Roulette, a band from L.A.

called Metallica, Laaz Rockit

and yeah, when Metallica came on,

it was just like, it was just like wow, this is cool.

You know, it was totally something different.

It was totally different like new wave

or British heavy metal.

Had that kind of guitar playing,

but the drums were supper fast, you know,

kind of like GBH or something.

And I think for everybody,

it was just kind of like automatically after that night,

I think they were like the favorite band

in the Bay Area,

and they weren't even from the Bay Area.

And they even moved up here because of that.

They just felt the love.

- And I think the first time we played the Waldorf

was probably 82 if I'm not mistaken.

- Yeah.

- The scene was changing very, very rapidly

at that time.

- It was.

- Music in general, so,

it was a great time to play any club, you know.

The crowd was there.

It was exciting.

We really were lucky to be able to play.

- It did seem to spring up almost,

not overnight, but the metal scene-

- But very, very rapidly.

- Exploded really, really quickly

and it was right up our alley, what we were doing

and it was just to walk into a club

that felt like a unity there.

It might sound cliche,

people, you know, kind of dressed the same,

were all there for the same thing.

It was a scene for sure

and you felt it in the air like a buzz.

- Without a doubt.

- And, you know, you went to see other bands.

There were bands around back in the day.

I can remember bands like Griffin, you know.

- Great bands. - Great bands.

- You know, Third Rail.

There was some really good heavy rock bands

doing the same thing.

- Wizard. - Yeah.

- When the Metal Monday first came out in 1981,

yes, the new wave of operation heavy metal

was going strong, but I think it was born

out of its own movement, right?

The rebellious movement against some

of those AOR melodic bands like Journey

that were taking out kind of the wimpier road,

no disrespect, but you know,

it was kind of it's own movement.

I think what it would've happened

even without the new wave operation of heavy metal.

- A lot of the metal bands,

I mean Metallica was around and Exodus.

You know, real infant stages,

but it was bands like Roadrunner and Head On

and kind of more of the straightforward rock stuff.

- Roadrunner was going on when I was in

the other band as a guitar player

and they were popular and stuff

and then, and head on I thought was the best

of all of those bands, you know what I mean?

They're like, you know, and they were doing

the whole hair thing and stuff, too.

And, you know, their stuff was really commercial, too,

you know what I mean?

They had it all I thought.

- I loved Head On.

I always wanted to form a band

with Frank, the guitar player,

but we, we had already tried to get in for Cinema.

But he wouldn't do it.

He wouldn't do it.

We wanted him bad.

- But Head On should have made it.

Head On was everybody's dream.

And so for people mentioning them,

it makes sense because, you know,

they really were inspirational.

- As a singer, I was kicked out of Righteous Sire

for a brief time and then I went into

a band called Malibu Barbi

and was the singer for Malibu Barbi.

- [Interviewer] They were an all girl band.

- They were.

As a matter of fact,

I'm on Wikipedia as the singer

for an all-girl band.

Yeah, I'm pretty famous for that.

- When I first got here I fell into

hanging out with people like that,

I hung out with Journey and I had the privilege

of meeting Grace Slick,

so it was kind of that arena rock thing

and then I auditioned for a band called the New Girl

and the rehearsal studio was I Hate Ashbury,

which is really cool to me

coming from upstate New York.

It was like Hendrix, Joplin, Grace Slick,

you know hippie town.

So when I went there, it was just

the breeding ground.

I mean that's where Metallica,

we used to eat at the same pizza shop

and Exodus and Testament,

it was that hard core scene that I got thrown into

and I was also a late bloomer to Dio and Sabbath.

So, that was a whole new world for me.

It was pretty incredible.

- Really, we had no idea what was happening,

that we were creating something in the Bay Area

Vicious Rumors, Death Angel, Legacy became Testament,

Damage, Laaz Rockit, you know what I mean.

The list goes on, Forbidden.

- Everyone thought that were like like

in this secret little club almost,

you know, you'd see people dressed like this

and then whatever.

It wasn't total mainstream and on the radio all the time,

so we felt that were jumping in

on the ground floor of something

that was a little bit below the radar, you know.

- And it was changing very rapidly at that,

at that time.

Through the early 80s, all the way through

to the end, it was changing, you know.

- We were all discovering,

these English bands that were starting

to come over in 1980 and Def Lepperd played in May

with Pat Travers, Scorpions played in May 1980.

- The first time I heard Merciful Fate

and King Diamond's voice, I'm like what is this?

And the changes, the guitar changes,

nobody ever did stuff like that.

It was kind of like pretty much, you know,

the song's got 4:4 time, it's got a bridge in it,

it's got a chorus and then maybe a lead section and end.

That was the first time where there was

a total change in the middle of the song,

you know, that went somewhere else

and I think a lot of.

- Journey.

- It was.

A total, it still is.

You know, those were the types of things

that formed thrash metal.

You know, we were like let's have changes like this,

you know, let's go-

- Come out of nowhere, but totally fit.

- Right, except it still fit.

- I don't think there's any one event

that brought

that created sort of the Bay Area metal movement

or thrash movement or whatever.

I think everybody got inspired

around the same time,

so it was certainly the new wave

of British heavy metal.

You know, I was inspired by that

and a lot of other people were inspired by that.

Saxon, bands like Iron Maiden, of course.

You know, Tygers of Pan Tang.

Those bands were a big influence on rock bands

with the foundation, of course,

with bands like Judas Priest, Scorpions

and Deep Purple,

but the new wave of British heavy metal

was the icing on the cake.

- July, Judas Priest finally played

a big show at the Warfield, 1980.

That was huge.

That was a huge metal scene.

You know, whoever we'd get on tour.

The really, the biggest one really didn't happen

till July of 1981 when Motorhead arrived.

That changed everything.

- We were so interested in what was going on

in other parts of the world,

what they were doing musically,

new wave of British, I mean we all loved Def Lepperd,

Tygers of Pan Tang.

Tokyo Blade.

Angel Witch.

Crocus, I mean we loved all of those bands.

Totally.

And those are the bands we modeled ourselves after.

- It was actually very enticing

to be part of the scene, like it was between 83

and 88 up there for whatever

just because it was as loud, as crazy,

as partying, as any scene going on in music

and we always kind of felt like the underdog,

like the, you know, the stepchild

or however you wanna put it in terms

of these other markets.

And we sort of embodied that and we embraced it

because we're gonna go after it harder,

we're gonna party harder,

we're gonna be way crazier than you people.

You know, if you want crazy,

we're gonna bring crazy in and we certainly did.

- There were some, yeah, some great thrash bands

and Legacy involved into Testament.

I liked the more progressive bands

like Blind Illusion could go off,

could be everything from thrash

to these intense, you know, Les Claybull

inspired jam sessions and Anvil Chorus

was, of course, hard rock.

- And the scene was so big and thriving

because we were all in high school.

So you had that high school word of mouth

that you don't get with these newer band.

You say it ain't like it used to be.

It's 'cause we were all fucking kids, dude.

Like everybody told everybody.

They had kegger parties and we tore down fences

and it was way different.

Things were crazy, you know.

A bunch of kids raging.

So you don't have that.

- There was Anvil Chorus and then was a band

called Church of Metal

that turned into Metal Church

and went up to the northwest.

- With the Anvil Chorus guys,

they were the Church of Metal,

shortened it to Metal Church

and then Kurt moved back to Seattle

and didn't hear from him for two years.

- [Interviewer] Wow.

- Until they came back with a great album.

But Merciless Onslaught, one of the most intense,

I mean, faster than any,

I tried to get Lars to audition as drummer

for Metal Church in 1981.

He disappeared.

That's the first time he disappeared.

I don't think he was ready to play.

- I showed 'em my songs, to my manager

that ended up becoming Death Angel's manager later,

and my manager now to this day

and Christina Aguilar's manager.

Christina, and she was just a,

had a little record store that she started

at 18 years old, put on Katrina Sudovsky,

put on her own gigs and she just had

this really flair and taste

and was like beyond her years.

So I played her the thing

and I kind of sang the song.

She goes man, that's really cool.

I could get you some studio time.

So I got a little studio time,

made a little demo.

She was friends with Kurt Cam.

She played it for Kurt Cam

and he goes, "I wanna get in production.

This guy's got like a really cool voice.

It sounds like a guitar sometimes or something."

So then I ended up doing a demo with him

and that's how the band started.

- We started playing around 84.

We played tons of shows in 84.

Carl Albert was the singer

and we played in L.A., up and down the West Coast.

Played with some great bands,

I remember playing with City Kid,

ended up being Tesla

and they had opened up for us one time.

Another time I thought, ooh, man, yeah,

we're in trouble, these guys are good, you know.

And, yeah, it was a,

we shared the bill with Vicious Rumors,

shared the bill with Armored Saint,

shared the bill with Loudness, Keel, Saxon,

a lot of national acts.

- Like the guys in Vicious Rumors

had just started their band.

We'd all like be sleeping on couches.

Half the time there was no PG and E

and everybody survived by working

at record stores, which was like

the coolest job at that time.

- That Bay Area metal scene was thriving

and happening before Metallica ever showed up.

So anybody who's out of the U.S.,

who sees this, just know

that the Bay Area metal scene started

prior to that.

- [Narrator] The rise of metal gave birth

to many European magazines.

This inspired the launch of

two highly influential Bay Area fanzines,

"Metal Mania" and "Metal Rendevouz."

In addition, College Station's Rampage Radio

hosted by Ron Quintana and Ian Pelham,

played a huge role in supporting the scene.

Finally, the record stores,

specifically Bill Burkard's Record Exchange

and the Record Vault, not only brought in

the hard to find European imports,

but hosted bands for in stores

and carried all the local bands demo cassettes,

most notably Metallica's "No Life 'Til Leather"

which brought the hammer down.

(heavy metal music)

- I really thought the band magazines

served a super important part

of the metal community.

There wasn't so much that they featured metal bands

on the covers or what have you

or even had articles on them,

but that's at least where my friends and I,

that's where we got our listings.

That's when we knew who was playing,

who was playing Metal Mondays,

who was playing Keystone Berkeley,

Stone San Francisco, Keystone Palo Alto.

- And between everything was this little

black and white rag,

this little thing, all crumpled up.

I opened it up, said, "Metal Mania."

I pulled out this little rag

that introduced me to all this stuff,

I was reading about Merciful Fate

and I said, I've got a,

they're suppose to be as evil as Satan,

so you know, I'm in.

I wanted the heaviest stuff,

so that was my introduction to everything

and I was 13 years old at that time.

- And one day our high school friends,

Tim Karochikov, who grew up in the Ukraine

and he showed up with this 10-page really badly copied

on some cheap copier, a little magazine,

couldn't even call it a magazine

with one staple in the corner, right,

and he called it "Metal Rendevouz."

I said, this is really cool.

This is kind of what we were talking about, right?

And I looked through and I said,

"Manton, you did this?"

And where did you get the interviews,

and he said, ah, and he just talked to some people,

you know, local bands.

There's really nobody that huge or famous was in it,

but the idea was there, right?

And idea and he really deserves

the credit for truly giving us

the kick in the ass to get this thing

up and moving and when we decided

to do another issue, Bill Hale and I

fully involved and eventually I took over

as editor and made it into

what it was towards the end of the 80s

when we were publishing 125,000 copies in full color.

- And "Metal Rendevouz," I mean John and Bill Hale

took photos, I mean, when I was young,

these were like rock stars to me as a musician.

- And then "Art Jock," the first real metal fanzine

from Holland, sent me some of their issues.

So I start cutting out pictures of theirs

and then pasting them on my tape list

and then Motorhead played

and then suddenly I have a million great pictures.

It was the same thing in the fanzine scene.

You know, you bop, you had "Metal Headbanger", right,

me, we had "Metal Rendevouz."

We weren't competing.

We were supporting each other and we appreciate each other.

Ron Quintana with "Metal Mania,"

we were supporting each other

and appreciating each other,

you know, "Kick Ass Monthly," out on the East Coast.

- Then I put out, I xeroxed copied,

these little, 8 by 11s, folded them over,

because we didn't have enough to be a real magazine.

We didn't have enough to be a real magazine

till much, much later.

But, so we folded them.

And they were little metal manias

and Lemmy was on the first few covers

and Judas Priest and Scorps and Y&T

and you name it, but that quickly evolved

in August of 1981.

- We brought in "Kerrang."

We were actually running a U.S. subscription service

for "Kerrang" for a while.

Not sanctioned, but simply, you know,

if you want Kerrang, we'll mail it to you every month.

I brought in hundreds of copies of each.

Each one, and then as far as the fanzines go,

man, I tell you what, it was

like "Metal Rendezvous" magazine.

"The Crucible," was a magazine that we did.

- [Interviewer] "Metal Mania."

- [Bill] "Metal Mania," yeah.

- So San Francisco was just exploding.

They kept doing, our show expanded, Rampage Radio,

so we'd have to have six hours a week

of local demos and metal and metal and metal.

So, and then all the local metal nights,

there was just so many new bands.

When I got back from Europe, I was amazed.

- I think Rampage Radio was really instrumental

in exposing people to metal

that otherwise had never heard.

I'm pretty sure we are the first ones

that ever played Metallica on the air.

You know, the heavy metal scene.

I remember when we got these demos

that we played it all the time,

we just started the whole hey, everybody's God riff.

I think I remember that because he started believing

that he was God.

- I think Rampage Radio and Ron Quintana

definitely had a major impact,

because I remember lots of my friends

were, they told me about Rampage Radio

and I think it was Yngwie.

It was him spinning Yngwie's demos

that really got Rampage Radio known.

- The Record Vault.

The Record Vault was the bomb.

That had the best imports,

the best selection of wall to wall metal and demos.

I got the Legacy demo there.

I mean they had Attitude Adjustment,

they had all these great bands

before they ever got signed,

their early demos

and just all these overseas, these bootlegs,

killer T-shirts, anything you needed.

I would go spend my entire paycheck

at the Record Vault.

- Everybody made a pilgrimage to the Record Vault.

It was almost like a religious experience.

That place, that was the place,

you know what I'm saying.

That's where you heard all the news.

They introduced me to Ron Quintana.

And you know Ron Quintana,

that was the first person that I heard

call the music thrash.

He was the first person.

First person to play us on the radio.

I love that guy, man, you know.

- We had a little record store in Fremont, California

called The Record Factory.

And the Record Factory was where I'd pick up my,

when I first got there, you know,

my Iron Maiden stuff, because you know,

I was still under the standards

that made Priest accept Saxon.

- We'd head to, The Record Vault

and the Record Exchange,

two different heavy metal stores, you know,

that could actually make a living

off of it being a heavy metal record store,

so the scene was thriving at the time.

This was the place to be.

- When I started going over to London every month or two

and I'd bring back a lot of memorabilia,

the really nice cast metal pins

and patches and all the fun stuff,

so we had quite an assortment of stuff.

- There was a store that opened up in Lafayette,

it was called The Record Exchange

and it was like Lafayette's version

of the Record Vault in San Francisco.

And I remember walking in there

and they didn't have like anything commercial.

It was just like, you know, they had

Unleashed in the East, they had

the new Iron Maiden record,

and you know I'd never seen that.

I don't even know what that was yet.

It was just like, it just came out.

Then, you know, and here I'm in eighth grade

just going wow, what is this stuff.

It looked cool, you know,

it looked really, everything was evil.

- I was virtually living in my Volkswagen bus,

on Polk Street and doing the Record Vault.

After the Record Vault,

I did, I went over to Walnut Creek

and helped Bill Burkard turn Record Exchange

into a metal store.

He was doing like a new wave and punk store

and then we wanted to go metal

and he knew I had done it over in Record Vault,

San Francisco, so we started doing it there.

- I started to search for the imports

and I hooked up with a couple of really cool people

that helped me bring stuff into the country.

'Cause at that time, nobody was carrying it here

and all of a sudden I was with the AC/DC records.

And that was, you know, little old Walnut Creek,

37 miles outside of San Francisco in Suburban

milk toast land and we started to get

all these headbanger kits coming out

from Berkeley and San Francisco.

- When I didn't do The Record Vault anymore,

I did the Record Exchange and we had Trouble,

we have Overkill, we had Metallica,

we had Slayer.

You know, that was another all metal store,

lined up around the corner for these in stores.

- Me and a couple friends of mine,

there was probably about five of us

decided to cut school because we were seniors

and went there to go meet them

to do the in store and we got there

and there was no one there, it was only them.

So, it was just my friends and Motley Crue

and their wanted beer,

so we went and got somebody

to buy some Moosehead for us

and we shared Mooseheads with them

and it was pretty cool hanging out with them.

- So then we have Slayer come to the in store

at Walnut Creek and we let Slayer in

and that blonde-haired dude that played guitar

tackled my Iron Maiden standup.

I had Eddie "Piece of Mind" standup,

and this kid rolled in there

and just jumped on that shit on the floor

and fucked it all up,

so I picked him up by the neck

and took him in the back room

and it was Jeff Hanneman.

I was pissed at that kid, dude,

I was gonna kill him.

And so there was kids back there going

you're mean, you know, 'cause I was like

giving him some shit

and I was like, "Dude, I would never go

to your house and fuck your shit up like that,

dude, what did you do that for?"

And he goes, "Dude, man, you're posers."

You know, and it's all this kind of shit, dude.

- Nick Mars would just kind of stand there

with the shades on, kind of just, you know,

looking around and he was talking

to me and my friends, "So, so, where do you live?"

And we were like kind of creeped out.

And then Tommy comes up and sticks

a Moosehead right up his butt

and he's all like don't do that.

- Of course we sold "No Life 'Til Leather"

and a couple different versions of that

and the ones I sold that were actually in Lars handwriting.

He wrote on each cassette, I remember that,

'cause he was like I gotta write this down, you know.

But they ran out, we'd sell several we could

and we made a promise to the bands back then

that we were never gonna copy these things

and resell them on our own,

that we'd buy them from the band

if they could just bring them out, you know.

And we held to that, as far as I knew we did.

- The independent record store for me,

was really about the Record Exchange

and I cannot tell you how many things, Bill,

a lot of them I didn't like,

some of them I did,

but I remember getting Holocaust

and thinking that was the most amazing record.

Bill always had great vinyl and I think

I even bought the Violation seven inch there

and I always thought Violation

was this great Bay Area metal band

that Leonard Hayes had produced of Y&T

and I really thought that band deserved

a better fate.

- [Narrator] The Bay Area was long known

for producing guitar legends.

In the 70s, Carlos Santana, Ronnie Montrose,

Neil Schon and Y&T's Dave Meniketti

set the bar for guitar heroics.

In the 80s, the pioneer in bringing

new guitar talent to the public eye

was Mike Varney.

His U.S. Metal compilation records

gave worldwide exposure to new talent.

Mike also brought over

the newest guitar virtuoso since Eddie Van Halen.

Yngwie Malmsteen.

All this created an exposure of Bay Area shredders.

Joe Satriani, Marty Friedman, Jason Becker among others.

They all became the latest guitar heroes.

(heavy metal music)

- That's one thing about thrash metals,

everybody really like a lot of European bands,

so you have Shanker, Wooley, Frank Marino,

you know Glen Tipton of KK.

So those were in influences on thrash metal,

those kind of guitar players.

- I really think that beyond Bay Area Magazine,

if somebody said to me Brinkerhoff,

what are the most important elements

or who was highly influential in the Bay Area metal scene,

I really think was Mike Varney.

- What happened is I was a guitar teacher

and I made a lot of money.

I was never a good guitar player.

I had the skills of like maybe like

a Punky Meadows or something, you know,

and so I was giving all these kids lessons, you know,

'cause I was a cool guy.

And I had all these kids around

and they were giving me good money for lessons,

it was a good job

and I was like in high school, you now.

And then all of a sudden, is started losing students,

like two dropped out and I'd be like what's going on,

what's going on and then finally,

somebody came to me and said,

"This guy Mike Varney is stealing all your students."

And I'm like, "Well, who's

this fucking Mike Varney guy?" Right?

- It was 1980, and I was a record collector

and was just kind of upset

that there was hardly any metal coming out

and I knew people were interested in it.

But I was having to buy imports, you know,

and America was taken with disco

and taken with new wave,

which is watered down punk rock.

And things were just,

I just wasn't able to get enough metal.

So I decided, well, I'll get my own.

- So then I went to him

and I said something like, "Hey, buddy,

why you stealing all my guitar students,"

and then all this stuff.

And then he showed me what a great guitar player he was

and I was like, "Well, that's why right there.

He's a way better lead than I am,

so that's why they're all going to him."

- By the time I was 20, 21,

I had made, you know met Jeff Pilson

and we did that "Rock Justice" record

with Leonard Hayes and Phillip Kennemore

from Y&T, Yesterday and Today at the time.

But by 1980, I had already kind of seen where the,

you know, bread was buttered

and didn't really wanna be an artist

'cause I just thought it was overwhelming odds

of doing anything and I was trying to get,

gonna get married, and I thought why

am I gonna work so hard to be away

from this person that I love,

six to eight months out of the year

if everything goes right.

So like I'm trying to build a house up

at the front at night,

I'm taking the bricks out the back

and not getting anywhere,

so I said I'm gonna do a label.

- I do remember I was so psyched

after that U.S. Metal album,

even though I didn't think it was great

all the way through,

but I did like some of the people on it.

I wrote to P.O. Box P in Navado,

wrote a letter to Mr. Varney

and get some call back from him

and, of course, Varney's legendary.

He'd always call you with somebody else

on the line that he wouldn't tell you

is on the line.

He'd go hey, Brian, what do you think

of like Pete Marrino of Lemans?

Oh, I think he's great.

Hey, Brian, Pete's on the line,

hey, say hello to Pete, you know,

and he was always, you know,

and I used to joke with Varney,

he would always do what I'd call

the AT&T mix.

- I was looking at the state of guitar

at that time and I thought,

God, Europe has got Lily John Roth,

they've got Gary Moore.

They had all these great players.

Then Hendrix and Van Halen,

I'm sure there were a lot of people

that fell in the cracks in between,

but we didn't really have, you know,

a super shredder in heavy metal at that point in time

that was new and I knew there had

to be somebody out there.

So I wrote to magazines state to state

or called the editors actually

and said, "Look, I'm putting a record together,

the Best Unknown Guitar Players.

I think your area's got somebody?"

"Oh, yeah, we got three guys."

So everybody, nobody said we don't have anybody.

Nobody said, oh, we're not gonna have anybody here.

Everybody had somebody.

- He promoted the guitarist.

And so it didn't have to be that metal,

but the guitarist on each of those songs

was ripping, shredding like Chumby

and Lyle Workman, they were just shredders

and we all worshiped shredders.

- So then Mike called me and he goes

there's these guys in Chicago called Lemans

and they're really cool and they got rooster hair

like you, like you might just fit

with these guys really well.

He goes, they need a singer.

The bass player's not that great of a singer

and, but the band is killer

and it's got that guy Derek Frigo

and I had seen Derek Frigo

'cause he came out with Lucy Forbes.

Lucy Forbes was trying to sell him

to a major band.

She brought him to L.A. and San Francisco,

this is Derek Frigo.

And Derek Frigo was like 12 years old,

13 years old and he was already doing coke,

you know what I'm saying,

like at 13 years old and he had the crazy rooster

and he was kind of like a Jeff Beck meets,

who's the guy with Billy Idol, Steve Stevens.

And he had great Van Halen style.

- There were clubs to play every weekend.

I met Mike Varney very, very early on

from moving to San Francisco.

He had become a friend of mine.

He obviously really trusted in my talent.

When Rude Girl ended, as I said before,

I literally called him immediately

and he hooked me up with David Chastain.

- How I got in Anvil Chorus,

that after I was in "Rock Justice,"

I'd known Mike Varney from "Rock Justice,"

and he had these two young guitar players.

I was 20 and they were 16,

so when you're 20 you're already like

I'm a grownup and 16-year-olds, high school kids.

It was Dan Meblin and Bob Gillis

and they were like shredder guitar players

and so Mike Varney got me into a band

with those two guys,

with this other singer named Pete Marrino, Peter Marrino.

- So Bill Burkard he said, hey, this exchange student's

over here from Sweden and brought this

tape into this guy.

You should hear him.

So it was Malmsteen.

- How did it feel dealing with the fact

that we had Yngwie coming onto the scene?

How was that?

Well, let me tell you.

As a guitar player, it was pretty shocking.

I mean this guy was pure talent

and he came from another planet, Sweden,

and he came into our scene

and just kind of like,

just turned it upside down,

it was incredible.

And this after Van Halen had already

single-handedly done that, too,

so this is like when I was mentioning earlier,

we didn't really realize we were in such

a special area or a special time,

but this is one of those moments

where we kind of realized where I could step aside

and think to myself wow, man,

this is something really special going on here.

- And he gave Bill the tape

and Bill played it for him

and I said wow.

This is great, but oh the guy's in Sweden,

I'm a young guy, I'm thinking how crazy

it would be to deal with immigration

to get some guy over here.

It just way above my station in life

at that point in time.

I thought how can I do that?

Then like two months later, Yngwie sent me

a tape directly, just coincidentally

and I wanted to put him together with Billy Sheehan

and Leonard Hayes.

That was the plan, you know,

that's what I wanted to do

and then Ron Keel came up to my house

with his fiance Didi and they were looking

for a guitar player.

I said well, here's this guy I'm thinking

of doing something with

and I played it for Ron

and Ron's like oh, yeah, man, that's,

that's the guy or whatever.

So I said okay, so,

Yngwie was really excited about coming out

and doing it.

I got a letter from him somewhere in my archives

where he's really psyched, but that didn't last two long.

- [Woman] I loved him so much,

I had never seen Van Halen live

so this was extra exciting.

- Alcatraz, Yngwie had already left Steeler

and so he'd started to,

he left to join up with Graham Bonnett

who was this big huge,

you know one of his big rainbow things

and so he had a chance to move up

and so he was doing this Alcatraz thing

and Alcatraz was supposed to come out and play

and Anvil Chorus secure the support spot

for this show, but Alcatraz canceled

and so Ian came, Ian Callen and Ron,

who they were from the Rampage Radio Show,

Ian came with this idea and said

well, why don' we just fly them up

and he can come out and play with you guys

and he can play with Anvil Chorus.

And I go, wow, cool, let's do it,

okay, so Ian gets in touch with Yngwie

and says hey, we know that you wanna come up here,

there's a shit ton of fans,

you should come up here and play for them,

you can play with this backup band Anvil Chorus,

you know, their rhythm section will play with you

and so Yngwie says, "Yes, we'll do it."

- Yngwie had this band that was called Alcatraz

and Anvil Chorus was gonna open up for them

that night at, I think it was

not the old Waldorf.

It was that other place

that Bill Graham had after old Waldorf.

- [Man] Warfield.

- Not the Warfield, not the Kabukki.

It was on Columbus.

Wolfgang's, Wolfgang's okay.

I think it was at Wolfgang's

and possibly it was the old Waldorf

they were gonna open up for

and we had done the sound check

and the entire Alcatraz band ended up quitting

on Yngwie because he was such a dick.

So after the sound check,

I went back to my house,

who I lived with Ian Callen

and I was talking to my roommate Michelle Castro

going, "That fucking Yngwie, what a dick that guy is."

And I'm like completely banging on him

on the phone.

I turn around and he's like standing

in my hallway with Ian

and I was like.

So we ended up having to be his backing band that night.

- When I was in Cacophony and we were doing like

the "Go Off" album live, it was the first time

I felt like I was in a band like Judas Priest.

This is like really, (imitating heavy metal).

I was like this is great you know.

- I remember Peter Marrino saying

this is a short show, one time,

so let's skip guitar solos,

so I got all Yngwie on him.

- Mary Friedman was around kind of

from the very beginning

and he was a teenager.

I wanted to do something with him, yeah.

And so we got him on the compilations,

I did the Hawaii record

and then he moved out to San Francisco.

And he had some demos that he'd made

on a four track or something

and I thought this is cool stuff.

- I took all of my shit,

which is like nothing,

it was like a guitar and an amp

and small suitcase and said I'm never

going back to Hawaii again.

I don't care what I'm doing.

And we had seven gigs in L.A.

and one in San Francisco.

All the L.A. gigs got canceled.

We get to L.A., we though we were gonna

be superstars, we were so rad,

as soon as we play for anybody

we're gonna get signed right away.

Look at all these metal bands getting signed.

They're gonna love our shit.

All our gigs got canceled.

You set us up with one gig

in Radio City, which we did

and I don't remember much of it.

But I remember our next gig

was in San Francisco the next day.

We had no transportation

to get to that gig, so we were asking people

in the parking lot hey, you wanna drive us

and our gear to San Francisco

for our gig tomorrow.

And so somebody did.

Some dude, a cool dude named Ralph,

and if you're out there dude,

I'm thankful for the ride,

drove us all up to the gig in San Francisco.

We played in Ruthie's Inn,

which is like a big thrash place.

- [Interviewer] Right.

- And Legacy played there

with Alex Skolnik was in the band

and we rocked that show.

I mean it was the best show Hawaii ever had,

because actually we were playing

to fans who could probably relate

to what we were doing.

And so it was a small, KUSF, was it,

that the station?

- [Interviewer] Yeah, Ron Quintana.

- That would promote metal

and it would promote underground stuff like that,

so like the few people in the audience

knew who we were and to them it's like

oh, my God, they've arrived from somewhere to play

and we played a really good show

and I have great memories

of that particular show,

but after the show, we all went our separate ways.

I don't even remember where the rest

of the band members were.

I never saw any of them again.

Didn't say like see you or anything.

It's like show is over and then we just like,

poof, we were gone.

- [Interviewer] And what was your thought

when you first got together with Marty Friedman.

- [Woman] It only took a few minutes

for me to know he was a genius

and I wanted to learn from him.

- I remember being at Hunt and Sound

in Santa Fe with Dean Castranova,

Marty Friedman, Jason Becker, Jimmy Oshi and me

and we were rehearsing and I was like

pinch yourself now mother fucker,

'cause you ain't ever gonna find

a band like this again.

- And then Jason Becker sent me something,

he was 16 and so actually I recorded Jason Becker,

we did "Perpetual Burn when Jason was 17."

And his parents had to sign,

or his dad or whatever, his parents signed

some kind of a guardian type of thing

to make the contract enforceable,

you know, 'cause he was a minor.

And it was really cool.

Jason was a wonderful guy

and is a wonderful guy.

And same with Marty.

And I thought that Marty had some maturity

and you know know experience, you know,

but then Jason had these crazy musical ideas

and in a technically facility,

I thought that how great would it be

if these guys got together

and did something.

So they just hit it off

like a house on fire.

They're still best friends to this day

as far as I know.

- [Woman] After I left Cacophony I recorded

a bunch of songs that were more

like Van Halen, so Varney said

that is why he recommended me

to David Lee Roth.

- Alex, definitely with his sound

and my songwriting and, you know,

riffs and stuff, together we had

the formula of what Metallica

and Exodus have as far as being heaviness,

but then solo wise, you know,

we had, you know, the George Lynch

and the Yngwie and the Shanker kind of

old school melodicness all put together.

- [Narrator] The new wave of British heavy metal

certainly changed the environment

of the Bay Area metal scene.

The young new bands took this European sound

and elevated it to more aggressive and faster levels.

Led by the arrival of Metallica from Los Angeles

and the local rebels, Exodus, they were

soon followed by Death Angel and Legacy,

who later became Testament.

(heavy metal music)

- You know Slayer started coming up here.

Death Angel popped up.

Actually they were playing like the clubs

like a year before us and then Exodus, of course,

and then Legacy and then Forbid

and the Violence, it just all was like

a, it just all happened so quick, it was weird.

You know all of a sudden we had this new scene.

- Nobody knew what it was yet

and nobody knew how to contain it

and nobody knew how to security it.

- And then Metallica comes on

and it all kind of fit together

and gelled really well,

so those two bands were actually

very much spearheading what was to become

this new Bay Area thrash thing, you know.

My band, Anvil Chorus was doing

like this pompous kind of keyboardy thing

and, you know, it was fun,

when I saw all this,

what the Metallica guys and Exodus guys were doing,

it's like goddamn, this is exactly kind

of like what I wanna be doing, too.

I've always been like this.

- A lot of us in Exodus,

in Legacy and, again, all the other bands

that were around at the time, Death Angel,

you know possessed and everybody all fed

off of that.

- When bands like Metallica,

you know even Slayer started,

they didn't move here, but they would start coming

up here and playing a lot of shows

because this is where they would do good.

And then the fans just adopted to that

and then you had all these bands

that didn't really know what they wanted to do,

but when they heard that, they kind like,

you know, bands like my band, Legacy

and just Death Angel and Exodus,

they all kind of just changed when those bands came.

And it was like a domino effect.

There was just so many bands here

that just adopted that sound.

- I wasn't interested in the Seattle scene at all,

but the Bay Area thrash metal scene caught my attention.

It was like taking what the bands

in the mid-80s were doing,

it took it up about two notches

and it was still hard and guitar driven,

but yet melodic at the same time.

- We didn't know that it was like

the first incarnations of certain genre music

or anything, you know, but we just thought, look,

pushed the boundaries

as much as the next band

and you're all playing with all the baddest of the Bay.

- But some of the guys didn't wanna go thrash.

You know, this was a kid thing.

The youngsters were like into the new thing,

which was thrash.

And the older guys, you know,

they were trying to like stick

with that 70s hard rock thing.

They didn't want the screaming going on,

they didn't wanna get real fast,

so you had that kind of shit going on at the time.

- When trash metal took over,

I think it fed all the people

who were into metal that always felt

that it didn't take it far enough

and it gave them a platform and something

to follow and because of that,

when Metallica exploded, I mean then bands

like Exodus started getting more noticed.

Testament finally, that got into form.

- The 83, I think Blizzard evolved into Possessed.

- I remember there was that band Blizzard.

Somebody, please hook me up with a Blizzard demo.

- Okay, El Serito, Metallica mentioned

they used to have parties there late at night.

People were coming.

There was kids that was starting a band called Possessed.

There was a lady Debby Bono

that was gonna manage them.

There was a band called Monolith that was there.

- When I started there, I had very little knowledge

of the heavy music movement up here.

So guys like Jason from Chaos, Harold O.

kind of helped refine to me

what the vision of metal was.

They kind of helped to stir my interest

in what was going on because even though

I was at the Omni and I was primarily booking

a lot of the hair metal bands,

I had to learn that genre real quickly

and so they kind of like hand-held me

into the situation, so I would, you know,

going from seeing bands like Laughing Dead

and Death Angel and all these bands playing

the Omni and getting that experience

and getting to meet who Chuck Billy is,

and all these cats, you know,

when they were coming up right when they were starting.

It was a time when it almost didn't matter

what was at the room, people were out

to see the bands because it was that exciting

because you never knew when you were gonna see

the next Metallica at a venue.

It was that hot back then.

- I don't think at the time we ever realized

that it would have the effect that it did.

Perhaps even to this day.

The scene that the San Francisco thrash scene created.

- Well, there was no order back then.

I mean people would tie string around barrels

and think that was a barricade

and they didn't know what they were doing,

they didn't know what was gonna happen.

- We didn't see the need to put any kind

of onus on their experience.

We wanted them to have that experience.

That was part of the culture was the slam dancing

and the stage diving and pogoing,

whatever, depending on what show you're at.

So it was our job to make sure

that everything that was doing that

were safe while they were doing it.

- [Narrator] Led by Y&T

and he major European acts,

there were many who stayed true

to the more traditional styles

with bands like Vicious Rumors, Laaz Rockit,

Steel, Griffin and the more progressive

Anvil Chorus and Broke as Hell.

However, they were often overshadowed

by the punk and the burgeoning thrash movement.

(punk rock music)

- There wasn't too much hard rock stuff

in San Francisco, it was more punk.

Back in those days, it was big time punk.

So people laughed at hard rock,

people laughed at the hard rock guys

and the long-haired guys 'cause punk

was a big fashion.

- The punk scene was just exploding in London really

around that time that we left.

We really didn't touch on punk ourselves.

I wasn't, I didn't get exposed to it

till a lot later really, until I came

to the States, but we always had

a passion for the harder rock

that was hard to find on the radio

and place like that in the U.K.

I found it refreshing when we came

to the United States and just the FM radio thing just alone

and the exposure of bands

you just didn't hear on the radio in the U.K.

Was very refreshing.

- I could just see there was a trend coming

and so when I joined then in 77,

that was before Dead Kennedys were known

or any of that stuff

and so it was the Nuns, Crime and Dils.

Even Dils was from L.A.,

they had a very San Francisco presence.

So we were kind of the first, I think punk rock band,

I think to really kind of do some stuff.

We were offered some record deals

and, of course, we didn't take any of them,

none of them were good enough.

I'm not the one that made that decision at the time,

but our manager did.

But, so, yeah, we got to play Winterland

a number of times, that was kinda of cool.

We opened for Widowmaker.

I was so embarrassed, I was apologizing

Ariel Bender, I said I been a big fan of yours

and Spooky Tooth, you know,

I've been a fan of Widowmaker

and have Widowmaker open for the Nuns,

just I thought at the time at 19 years old,

this doesn't seem fair, you know,

and he was very nice.

But, we played with Mother's Finest and Roxy Music

and played with Dictators,

the Ramones, Blondie a couple of times.

So we played all the venues at

the Starwood in L.A., the Whiskey.

- Mickey's Mohawk was a crossover

of like, you know, we definitely had more

of the punk roots of things.

You know, not just the image wise of the Mick's Mohawk,

but the music, too, it's almost the same difference

of why Jetbo and Guns 'N Roses kind

of had this clique.

Because we both were really into the punk scene as well.

- And every once in a while,

we would cross over and go play the punk club, you know.

Just for fun, just to see what would happen

and, of course, our fans would follow us.

It didn't matter where we were going, so,

and the club owner just loved it, you know.

- Well, we had already heard about the punk rock scene

in the Bay Area,

which is why we came here and landed here.

And you it did not disappoint

when we got here.

We immediately started getting gigs

and it was a great scene we got in.

- And when I saw James and Lars

at a Discharge Show at the Mab..

You know, this is when Discharge was hard.

And I'm standing there, man,

back because understand in those days,

it was not really cool for long haired white guys

to go to a punk show.

It was not cool, man.

- I went to a couple of Metallica parties

in San Francisco in like people's apartments.

And stuff, but I always felt,

it wasn't my, they weren't my good friends.

You know, we didn't hang out a lot,

but it seemed like I got some respect from them

and, of course, you know, was at their party, but I-

- There was like, there was no like

division of people.

Rock and roll was rock and roll.

I mean being that the Mab, Mabuhe Gardens

was right across from the Stone,

I mean Head On would play there all the time

and we had that group, you know,

full on punk rockers.

That was the punk place,

but then we could also go across the street

and everybody intermingled.

It was just like Rock and Roll.

- Yeah, it wasn't like L.A.

'Cause in 1980 in L.A.,

you did not hang out,

if you had long hair and you go to a punk rock club,

you'd get your hair cut off.

- And the next thing I know, man,

Discharge were playing their music

and the crowd was ferocious, dude.

It was ferocious man.

I wouldn't go nowhere near that shit, man.

And next thing I know I see James and Lars

right in the middle of that shit.

And them guys were trying to hurt 'em, man.

It didn't mean shit.

James and Lars would jump right back in there.

When I saw that,

I said them mother fuckers is the real deal.

- The scene in San Francisco supported both

and like I said there were certain clubs

that the punk guys were not so much at,

but they were more at the others ones that, you know,

were next to the club or down the street

or something like that.

And sort of, it was segregated to some degree.

But we tried to, you know, get in there

and just mess with people every once in a while.

- We got lost a little bit in the thrash movement,

you know, we were doing the heavy metal thing.

I remember sitting down with a couple people,

a couple labels and, you know, in L.A. even,

said hey, if you guys can kind of do this

and do that,

yeah, we'll get you the studio.

But, it just, we wanted to play the music

that we were doing.

- The thing with Righteous Sire

is that, it's weird because we didn't quite make

the thrash label.

We never could go fast enough, you know,

with our abilities and so we kind of just

always worked with what we could work with,

but we would borderline, you know,

and in the early 80s, thrash was big,

so I wanted to go thrash heavier,

but I think our abilities held us back,

so we were always stuck in this category, you know,

where you had the big hair bands

and then you had the other side it.

There was nothing between except Righteous Sire

was in between maybe, so I think that played

a big role in how Righteous Sire, you know,

doesn't get recognized that much, you know.

- You never lose if you ere on the side of heavier.

Always, you always win if you go heavy.

That's my stock and training, that's what I do.

- There were some that definitely got hurt.

I think Forbidden got hurt a lot because

Forbidden was not truly a thrash band.

They had thrash elements.

Craig Locecero can play the shit out of a guitar,

but they were miscategorized as being

in the same boat as like an Exodus

and they just weren't.

- Yeah, there's like two,

the bands that went into the more hardcore arena

and then the bands that tried to do the arena

and Forbidden, Evil and Forbidden

always thought we were gonna like make that leap

into, you know, that next level arena metal stuff

and that was always the plan,

it just never worked out that way.

- You know, we were a little bit

on the outside of that whole thrash metal thing.

I was coming from, like, you know Sabbath,

Priest, Maiden, Alice Cooper, Kiss,

you know, I was thinking of those kind

of arena acts for Vicious Rumors.

- You know, VR, we got signed,

things started to happen.

At the same time in the Bay Area,

all the thrash metal bands starting

having all the opportunities,

so I think in some way we kind of got lumped

into the thrash thing.

- If you weren't like 100 percent into thrash

the whole time, you knew that it was big

and it was cool and I know I had a lot of friends.

And even some of the guys in my band loved thrash, too

when they were kids and younger, then,

but there was such a ton of people

that were into just regular giant rock

because that was getting bigger, too.

- [Interviewer] Was that style and influence on you

and were you into a lot of those Bay Area thrash bands

at that time?

- Funny, not at all.

I came more from the guitar player's side.

I loved metal, but I was more

into every style of guitar.

- When I was in Cacophony, we played

a lot of those thrash type of gigs

at the Stone and the Omni and stuff like that

and I'd on KUSF with Ron Quintana.

But I was always kind of an outsider

from that whole like Exodus

and who are the other bands, Testament.

- [Interviewer] Death Angel.

- Death Angel.

I was never really in that group hanging out.

Mainly because I didn't really party very much.

I was always working on music and writing music

and recording and doing that and these guys

were like socializing and partying and stuff

and I was kind of on the outside of that,

but I really always liked their music

and would only really see those guys

kind of at gigs and very, like acquaintance at most.

- [Narrator] The Bay Area was quite unique.

It was truly a community where the musicians

supported each other, yet it was not void of competition.

Once Metallica broke into the main stream,

others were eager to follow and many succeeded.

♪ Spirit whispers ♪

♪ Right behind your ears ♪

- Talk about this and want to try

to be historically somewhat accurate,

I think you gotta, you can't separate,

you can't separate Metallica from the scene.

- But the good thing about the San Francisco scene

is you got all these bands,

you got all these fans, then you had the media

to cover everything.

We had a great camaraderie.

It was like a brotherhood or something like that,

a big gang.

And it doesn't matter if you were a gang band,

you were a thrash band or a metal band

or a rock band, we all hung out at the same shows

for a long time, I think until 86.

Everybody showed up and you know,

guys from Head On showed up,

guys from Jetbo would showed up.

Exodus would show up everywhere.

Bail Off would show up with Gary Hold

on every show and so we were just like,

you know, we just loved music, it was cool.

It was before it got segmented.

- You have somebody like Davy Vain producing

the first Death Angel album,

someone in the glam band producing a trash band.

Everybody got along and everybody was friends

and everybody, it was genuine,

it was a genuine time.

- That's it, everyone always says of course

'cause we did, 'cause we were all like cool

with each other, but at the same time,

everyone was like you know,

we were just trying to make a name for our band, too.

When you're playing with all these big

great bands and stuff and you better have

the goods or you're gonna get just like

booed off the stage.

You know, you want to have the pit going

and stage diving going on.

- You were a little bit on the outskirts

of most of those guys

'cause they grew up on the northern part

of the Bay and the East Bay and in San Francisco.

We were in Fremont, which is like suburbs,

so we came out and there was a little bit

of resistance to us at first

because we were so melodic

and we had a singer that was so different

than anybody else,

but yet it was so thrashy that it was

kind of like, they were a little taken aback by us

at first, so they welcomed us in

after, it took us a few months

to kind of like where Exodus was cool

and everything was cool,

'cause at first it was like who are these guys.

I know you, but who the fuck are these guys.

So, but that ended quickly and it was only a blip,

but it was always cool from that point on

and like especially now dude,

that camaraderie has really flourished

and everybody is really happy

to see each other these days

when we all see each other.

Everybody's like dude, you know,

we did this together.

We were all a part of that.

You just kind of feel, you don't have to say it,

but everyone knows it.

- But it was a lot less segregated then you'd think.

A lot of people that, you know, yeah

they talk crap to each other,

but usually they were there to like hold the beers

in the air at the same show.

- There was really no competition

between the bands.

They were all friends, they were all brothers,

they all supported each other.

You went to a Laaz Rockit show

and all the Exodus guys were in the audience, right?

And vice versa.

And that's what I loved about

the San Francisco scene.

There was no put down of bands.

They were all supporting each other

and playing each other

because it was such a tight community.

- We so need bands like Death Angel, for example,

the thrash scene seemed to fit hand in hand with it.

You saw people at the thrash shows.

You'd also see them at the classic metal shows, as well.

I think it was just the whole vibe of it all.

And some of it was much more heavier than the other,

but you'd see the same people.

And it didn't seem, even though

it was a healthy competition between the bands,

it didn't seem, at least I didn't see

any of the real cutthroat stuff.

I'm not saying it didn't happen,

but there was much more

of a sense of community about it all.

And a support within the bands for each other.

- Like all the people in the bands

were all hanging out.

It wasn't like the bands and the fans.

We were all just together.

There wasn't a separation.

- In the Beer Gardens, everyone's walking around

like it's the mecca and the warriors in movies.

Everyone's a gang and everyone's got their thing

and these guys have got their letter vests

and these guys are in debt.

You know, it's just,

that's what was fun about it, I thought.

- We weren't treated different, like you said.

There was no competition we went through.

Even because we come from out of town,

I don't they felt we were a threat.

We were a visitor.

They welcomed us with open arms.

Look how Slayer and Exodus became.

We became tight friends.

It was a good experience for us out there.

- And Exodus didn't really have a competition

because they kind of just got the next deal

and then there was a lot of other bands behind them.

- In the same way that we may have inspired

the scene, the scene also inspired us.

We may have influenced the scene,

but the scene, do you know what I mean?

So it's just one big fucking mesh

of just people and

energy and moments, you know,

that just happened over the course of a while

and it was like a year or two where

it was just fucking vibing.

- We'd do the same.

We'd go there to support other bands

and we always had a great night

when we went out to these places

and we always felt warmly welcomed

when we played any club in the scene.

- And there were some great bands, you know,

that we got to see, as well.

You know, I remember Roadrunner, Steele,

Exodus I saw, was you at the Exodus show?

- Yes, yes, I was.

- So, you know, we're talking probably 82, 83.

- Yes, they were competitive,

but at the same time,

if they saw one of them in trouble

or needed help, they were there to help and support them

and I loved that about the San Francisco scene.

- The scene was fueled by drugs

and fueled by bands trying to get deals.

Everyone was trying to get a deal.

Everyone was.

The record companies kept coming up weekly,

like to see Metallica, to see Exodus,

to see us, see Vain.

We were the ones that took the longest to get a deal.

I sat in every office in L.A. with Varney

and we thought we were gonna get signed

like three or four times,

and then finally Columbia came back,

like a year later.

And I guess I owe it all to Ron Quintana.

- But I think one of the things about it

that was interesting was for the most part

we didn't hold grudges

and I think that our scene,

we sort of policed ourselves.

And we didn't have the attention all the time

of record companies or executives

or these people who looked at you

as if your behavior's going to be a risk.

- I don't think anybody here paid attention

to that either.

- I didn't really get into the music.

I didn't hang around rockers,

so we were kind of isolated.

And so, and most of the black people weren't with it.

They thought I was fucking crazy,

you know what I'm saying?

But my folks, my dad, he wasn't so much into it,

but they tolerated it.

My folks, you know, my mom, she was,

you know, she was in my corner,

you know what I mean?

But most of the people oh, they joked,

you know that's where some of the determination came from

just getting ridiculed.

- [Narrator] Heavy metal shows

started to pop up all over the Bay Area.

It all began with the old Waldorf

when they started the Metal Mondays series.

The first show featured Motley Crue

with Anvil Chorus, followed soon

by Motorhead's first appearance in San Francisco.

Clubs like the Three Keystones in San Francisco,

Berkeley and Palo Alto, Wolfgang's

and later the Omni, Off Broadway

and finally the haven for the heaviest

of the thrash bands, Ruthie's Inn.

(heavy metal music)

- So here we are, I'm here with John Strednansky

in the heart of downtown San Francisco.

We're standing in front of yet another

historic building, why don't you tell us about this John.

- This, believe it or not,

this was the old Waldorf

and, you know, when we called the Stone ground zero

for the metal scene here,

this was really the genesis.

This was really the genesis.

- The beginning.

- The old Waldorf had shows here

back in the 70s, like Pat Benetar

and those kinds of rockers played here,

but 1981 met the first Metal Monday.

Motley Crue and Anvil Chorus.

The really kicked off what the San Francisco

metal scene was all about.

- There was a lot of music going on.

There was a lot of bands trying to play places

and there was nowhere to play.

So we'd do things like put on our own shows.

- Let's mention our good friend Cathy Page,

who used to work for KRQR.

She was amazing.

She was the one who started Metal Mondays.

- Cathy.

- Cathy Page.

- [Interviewer] I didn't know that.

- She was amazing, everybody's mother, you know,

even though she was a young hottie.

- But she also was program director at KRQR,

which was the biggest FM radio rock station up there.

So, she put on these shows

and if she liked you.

- Promote you.

- She'd help you out immensely.

- Thank goodness for people like the Corona Brothers

who booked the Keystone Clubs.

Or Tony Isabella and Rachael Matthews,

who booked us all at the Waldorf.

These are essential people

that made these opportunities

for all the bands.

- That Metal Monday scene

at the old Waldorf.

That was the best club to play at

at the time.

All the bands were playing at the,

you know, there was a lot of venues

in San Francisco.

There was, you know, you had Morty's,

you had the Stone, you had Rock on Broadway,

you had the Blue A Gardens,

and you'd have live music five nights a week.

- But I think the Metal Monday thing

was an all ages thing

and when that came on,

we were really ready for something to happen.

- The Metal Monday stuff, it was a legacy

by the time I was in the scene,

but that was already done.

So I had just come in on the back end of that

and Ruthie's was it, right.

So you hit those, it was like Laaz Rockit,

I'm thinking, was it Control, like all those bands.

Anvil Chorus, you know.

And then whoever would come up from L.A. to do it

and then Metallica got their start

doing that stuff there.

- We were in tune with these people

and they gave us a chance and we got a chance

to do this Motley Crue thing.

- Anvil Chorus opened up for

both Motorhead and Motley Crue,

like way, well, Motorhead had been around

and I think like I remember Lemmy telling

us that we played too many notes.

And I was thinking that's what they said about Mozart.

- There was Anvil Chorus, Hans Naughty,

and Motley Crue, I think that's what it was.

We actually opened the show.

- Part of what I liked about Metal Mondays

and even at the Stones was some of the L.A.

Bands would come out.

I started to get hip to some of these bands,

but I remember when Motley Crue

came and played Metal Mondays

and they came on,

I thought they fucking sucked.

My friends and I, we stood at the back of the room.

We threw ice at them while they're playing.

We're going Motley Crud, fuck you.

- What's real interesting about this club,

I mean, if you look around, we're in such an oasis,

right, in downtown San Francisco.

It's quiet up here.

This is built on top of a garage

and you kind of walk into this tranquil garden

and here is one of the coolest rock clubs

that I've ever been to, right,

the old Waldorf.

The Punchline in the background was here

back in the early 80s, so that's still around.

But it's real interesting where

they chose to put this club at.

- Yeah, I always thought a very interesting location.

- And what's interesting the way it's built,

if you walk inside, the back stage door is right there,

right next to the front entrance

and the bands actually just walk right

through the crowd to the stage.

It was very, very fan friendly.

- Overdrive was a band that consisted of

Randy Fererra on bass,

Mark Pena on drums, Mike Carsey on guitar

and myself on guitar and vocals.

And we were high school buddies.

And, you know, we started playing

in the Bay Area music scene

when we were about 15, 16.

We would do gigs at the old Waldorf on Metal Mondays

and we would play our set

and then we'd have to go hand out

in the dressing room 'cause we were too young

to hang out in the club.

- The Waldorf Metal Mondays,

I remember being in high school

and them announcing Righteous Siren

playing Metal Mondays

and I thought I was a real rock star

when I heard my name on the radio

and Mabue Gardens, On Broadway,

Keystone Palo Alto, the Stone in San Francisco

was kind of our little circuit, you know.

So we would just rotate between those clubs.

We never really traveled or anything.

We were always a Bay Area band.

- All these places, pretty soon

the old Waldorf had to have metal bands every Monday.

Then the Mab had to have metal bands every Sunday.

They had Brutal Sundays,

so all these clubs

starting added metal nights

and all these little kids

suddenly had places to play, it was amazing.

- When I first started coming up to

the Bay Area, we had connected

with Tambray Bryant, Michael Oliver

with LNO Productions and they were doing

a series of shows at the Mabuhe Gardens.

That was my introduction

and it was a seedy,

I mean it started out as a punk club, right?

And it was just this seedy amazingly cool club

that was unlike anything I've ever seen.

- The best place in town to play was the Stone.

- No, the Waldorf.

- Well, the Waldorf was best, but that didn't last as long.

- [Bob] Here we are.

So this is it, man.

The Stone.

Ground Zero.

- This was indeed ground zero of the metal scene

here in San Francisco.

This was where, everybody came here, everybody was here.

Everybody met up here.

First show for Metallica outside.

- Metal Massacre Night.

- With, I believe it was Bitch.

Yes, what a night.

Really got everything started here.

- And you were at that show.

You came up with Lars, right,

you grew up with him.

- I came up with Lars,

they picked me up in Monterrey,

we drove up together

and they actually asked me to announce them on stage.

It was a great memory and a fantastic start

to a whole new era in San Francisco metal.

- The Stone had three clubs

and they were spread throughout the Bay Area

and we played all three of them religiously

and especially the one in Palo Alto,

which was sort of between San Jose

and San Francisco.

That just became the place to play

especially for hard rock music.

It just, Keystone Palo Alto.

That was it and they'd jam it,

almost like a thousand people into this place,

and it wasn't very big, but the way it was set up,

you could do that.

- The Stone was a magical place.

The Omni was a magical place.

I don't see any clubs like that now.

They might be in like Philadelphia.

You know I went on Gore Tour later

and I saw some clubs like that,

but they were on the East Coast.

But all that stuff has been,

it's like all in the Bay Area,

the clubs now are nothing like that anymore.

They're all strip clubs now,

'cause you can't make the money.

- The Chatterbox, ah, well, that was a fun place

because that was an interesting crossover point

where punk and metal kind of intersected.

It was kind of a small place,

not the greatest sound system, but adequate, you know.

But the vibe, it was all about the vibe and everything.

It had a Kiss pinball machine

and they had Johnny Thunder's spray painted,

you know, some shit on the rafters, you know.

So you can't argue with pedigree like that.

- [Bob] We're at the location of

the old Keystone Palo Alto, huh?

- [John] Indeed.

You can't recognize this place anymore.

It sure looked different 30 years ago.

- [Bob] The old hangout.

- Yeah, this was kind of where the whole South Bay

got going with their heavy metal scene.

First show I ever saw here was Saxon

back in 1982 when they played the three Keystones

around the Bay Area.

- Gentlemen in Leather tour.

- Trauma opens down here.

How awesome's that with cliff Burton

and this club endured quite a while.

I believe I saw Michael Shanker here

as late as 1995 or so.

So, this club endured for a while,

but now gentrified in a whole different neighborhood now.

- We played the Mabuhe Gardens,

we played the Rock on Broadway,

We played the Cocadrie, we played Morty's,

we played the Omni.

The Keystone Berkely, the Eye Beam.

On did I not say Ruthie's.

- [Interviewer] No, you didn't say Ruthie's.

- Ooh.

Ruthie's Inn and every club that existed.

The Farm.

- [Man] Yes!

- Yeah, we played every fucking club.

- Well, luckily for us, you could have pretty

hard core bands at the Mab.

And then the popular metal bands,

but you had to go to Ruthie's

for the more intense bands in 83 and 84,

so Slayer would play there first

and Megadeath would play there eventually.

And, you know, just the heavier

and heavier bands played at Ruthie's

'cause you could get away with more.

You could do anything.

(laughing)

- There used to be a club called Ruthie's

in Berkeley, California,

I don't think it's there anymore.

And just sick.

Again, spit on, been cans thrown at me.

It was just, as I said before,

a good training ground.

You had to learn how to try to get the crowd in.

I loved it, it was like football practice,

it was pretty wild.

- And my first club show that I went to

was Exciter and Griffin at the Stone

and my next club show was Possessed and High Rex

at the Mab, Mabuhe Gardens.

- [Interviewer] Of course.

- And then next, not even a few months later,

I was playing Ruthie's Inn at 15.

- Then the Stone and all the Stones,

those were hot spots, as well as Ruthie's Inn

was here in the East Bay.

It was a place where a lot of bands played

and at Ruthie's was an interesting venue

because one night you'd have punk rock,

the next night you'd have rock and roll

and the next night you'd have heavy metal.

- Ruthie's would have a show Friday,

Saturday, maybe a Sunday afternoon

and then Tuesday or Wednesday during the week

there would be like Death Angel, Forbidden, Evil

and Legacy, you know, on a Wednesday

and it would start at six, you know,

and the headliner would go on 9, 9:30.

There was so much of a scene that we

could have that many bands and kids,

people would show up.

- I mean, even Armored Saints

and these bands that we were all compatible in a way.

I think what we mostly brought were great shows.

It wasn't necessarily about

a scene, because the scene was evolving,

the scene was sort of coming together

sort of harmoniously between the bands,

especially at the beginning.

- Nobody knew exactly where it was gonna go

and it grew in self, when Ruthie's Inn opened,

it just opened up a whole new field.

I mean, Ruthie's Inn, the guy who ran Ruthie's Inn

was willing to put on anything

that would put money in his pocket

and metal just like, it was the perfect home

for it, you know.

There was no problem with the police.

We were standing down in the street.

- They weren't gonna come down to where it was.

- They didn't want to come to that area

and it was just a perfect,

it was the perfect storm for metal.

- You remember Day on the Green, right?

Well, West Robinson had Day on the Dirt.

And it was at Aquatic Park in Berkeley.

And it was a hell of a bill,

It was Blue Cheer,

it was Suicidal Tendencies, Exodus, Slayer, us,

Roadrunner anda bunch of other bands.

- Well, I remember us playing a festival called-

- [Interviewer] Dirt Fest?

- Day on the Dirt, instead of Day on the Green,

it was Day on the Dirt and it was all punk bands,

Exodus, Suicidal was playing.

It's amazing.

- We played Ruthie's Inn a lot.

That was the place.

And there's that guy named Wes, who's the book man.

You go in there and you say at his house

and you played a show

and every band I talked to,

he owed everyone money.

I'm sure he still owes us money, too,

but again, that was a cool scene.

We played with a lot of bands.

Like I remember when Legacy opened for us.

Alex was like 16 or something like that, you know.

And yeah, I still have a lot of memories

of that place fresh in my mind

'cause they were fun shows.

- When it came our first opportunity

to play a show, I went and talked to Wes Robinson

at Ruthie's Inn and I was a snot nose cocky kid,

you know, and I was like hey, I got this band

and I was like acting manager, the youngest guy in the band.

Ralph's like go talk to him.

He's like you go talk to him,

so I did and we got offered the Metal Church show

for the Eastern Front.

It was all these Eastern Front series of shows

where no one knew they were really being recorded for it,

but we were.

And so we played with Metal Church that night,

opened the whole show and people pretty much

freaked out for us the first time.

- Yeah, Broadway Avenue in San Francisco.

- During that area.

- The two-block stretch had the Stone,

the Chi-Chi Club, the Mab, which is now

the Rock on Broadway, which is upstairs.

That was a special little area

and, of course, all your wonderful strip clubs.

But in San Francisco.

- For 20-something musicians that was

a great moment in time.

- Then we had our friend Brent Turner

open up the Rock on Broadway.

- He did real well there for a while

until he started having his bouncer

throw people down that flight of stairs.

Two-story flight of stairs, straight line,

Don Chichi would just like ah!

- A band could play Oakland

and in that same month play San Francisco

and still draw 250 people,

which is unheard of now.

But it was a different scene back then.

- John Nadie with some of the money he made

off the Nadie System stuff,

he opened up the Omni in Oakland.

I'd go to a lot of shows there.

I saw probably every local metal band,

I mean Vicious Rumors.

Testament when they were Legacy.

Blind Illusion with Les Claypool, Trauma

with Cliff Burton.

- After the Stone and everything kind of tamed down,

the Omni in Oakland was the place.

- Yeah, none of this conversation could happen

without mentioning.

- Yeah, the Omni was essential,

just as essential and important.

- And the thing about, especially about the Omni was

you would go in there and all the bands

would be in there.

So, you know, not playing,

just having beers or whatever

and there was kind of a rule

that you didn't talk to the bands,

you just sort of left them alone

and me being me, I did not leave

any of them alone.

I was like oh, dude, you know,

I can't believe I'm meeting you, you know, whatever.

And they were all just unbelievably cool

and they all would give me tapes

and, you know, at the time it was all tapes

and I grew into it really big

in the late 80s up into the early 90s.

- Or even bands like Lynch Mob,

you know George Lynch's project.

They would play these three rooms

and three or four dates in the Bay Area,

sometimes getting an outside promoter

and they would still do like 800 tickets a night.

- All of the bands were very lucky.

There was a good variety of clubs to play, you know

and a good following when you got there.

Just very proud to be part of that whole area,

that whole scene that just sprung up,

it was wonderful.

- But we had these great places to play

where you could put on shows.

- With really big stages.

- Yeah, and pyro because my manager

could finagle his freaking way

into saying it's gonna be really small.

I don't know how many stages we set on fire

or blew holes in the roof.

- [Narrator] The world took notice.

Soon the Bay Area bands were touring the planet,

appearing at many of the prestigious

European clubs and festivals.

The record labels started to sign them

one after another, gaining them international acclaim.

(heavy metal music)

- Finally, when we went over in 82 to the U.K.,

we went over there to record the "Black Tiger" record,

we met with some of the A&M guys over there

and they're like, I don't know

what your American counter partners do,

but we're kicking ass over here for you guys.

You guys are, you know, you guys are taking off

and you haven't even played a show here yet.

And we were like, you know,

we had seen some of the stuff,

but we didn't know what was actually happening

until we started playing shows over there.

- What's interesting is that the scene

that was in San Francisco was just maniacal and crazy

as it was, this scene started to spread everywhere else.

I mean the Anthrax guys saw it

in their turf in New York.

You know, as we did the "Killing Is My Business" tour

and went across the country,

you could see that scene was building everywhere,

you know, across the country

and then as we all started to go to Europe,

it was like okay, this is new scene.

This isn't even the old of new wave of British

heavy metal scene,

this is a brand new one.

- Because when we first went to New York

for the first time, we toured with Venom and Slayer,

like we were doing interviews and like talking to people,

yeah, we heard you on W blah, blah, blah

in fucking Syracuse, New York

and like people were putting in the word back then

to like, you know, get this music out there

and get it heard.

- Every time we tried to form something

in the Bay Area with the people that were there,

it turned into drama and disaster

and it's still that way,

'cause I still have property there,

so it's the place.

I thought it was the place then,

now I know that it's true, it was the place.

You know, so if I imported people from Chicago,

it went better and the Chicago guys

were like meat eaters,

they were like, they were like ready to kill people,

you know, like let's go out and play, come on man.

And the Bay Area guys are like well, man,

you know, after we done smoking some joints,

I guess we'll, you know it was like totally different guys.

- It you look at the different, the different scenes

that there are

with Florida having the death metal scene

and, you know, San Francisco being considered

the thrash metal scene

and L.A. being considered the hair metal scene

and, you know, with all these different things

that are going on, it's kind of

a like-minded mentality, you know.

And I think that's why certain scenes thrive

because all the bands

are doing certain things the same.

- The Bay Area metal scene is,

even though it got a lot of publicity

in the underground presence,

it never got the mainstream publicity

that L.A. got from metal or what Seattle got for grunge

and even our history books

that cover the history of the Bay Area,

even in articles, they always talk about

the Summer of Love in the 60s with the Jefferson Airplane

or the Grateful Dead or whatever

and they even cover the 70s punk explosion

in the Bay Area with the Dead Kennedys,

the Nuns and the Avengers and things like that.

And then of course we had the classic rock,

Journey, Night Ranger, Santana.

You know Huey Lewis and the News,

and all that stuff,

that gets a lot of publicity.

And of course Metallica does,

because they were from here

because they had so much success

and sold so many millions of records,

but then the whole overall metal scene,

which was out here, which I had worldwide success

seems to get ignored or overlooked

and I think that's just a crime and an atrocity.

(heavy metal music)

- One time I was hanging out with Lemmy

and, you know, and he's know to be so hard core

and we just, I just played with Skid Row

and Hammer Sathotia.

At the end of the show, all of us in Skid Row,

Yngwie got on stage and Lemmy and Robert Plant were there

and Lemmy got on stage

and we did "Train Kept A-Rollin'."

And Lemmy, I was standing right next Lemmy

'cause I was like man, this is the Hammer Sethotia

and Lemmy's here and this is the first time

I played here and he went over to the bass,

he had his bass on and he just put his hand

across the top and it just went (imitating ripping).

Then he looked at me and goes, this is my settings.

And so after we did the show.

We were walking down the street

and I had like these leather pants with rings,

so I looked kind of, still kind of glammy

whatever you want to call it,

to me it was rock and roll.

It's like, you know, the Stooges glam,

I don't know, to me it's just rock and roll, you know.

So walking down the street,

I'm walking next to Lemmy

and there's a big party we're going to.

And some kid comes up and yells to Lemmy

hey, Lemmy, that guy's a poser.

He's wearing the, look at those pants,

what a fag or something like that.

And he goes, hey, shut the fuck up

you snot nose.

He goes, those trousers are rock and roll.

It's about getting pussy.

If I could get my ass in there

I'd wear them too if I got laid tonight.

And the guy's like oh, sorry Lemmy.

- I saw Steeler up in Sacramento play a warehouse

and I wish I could recall all the details

of why they ended up in a warehouse,

but show up, I'm all excited to see Steeler

and Yngwie's not there on guitar.

It's this guy Kurt James,

who was a great player,

don't get me wrong, he's fabulous.

And so, I watch the show,

they play the whole record.

It's all good everything

and I go to Ron at the show,

"Where's Yngwie, where's your

guitar player, where's Yngwie?"

He goes, "Yngwie Malmsteen is a penis with fingers."

And I still remember that quote.

- I played with then at Hunt Sound that day,

and there was this rich woman

named Sally Procter that lived

and she was like the heiress to Procter & Gamble

and she was a big partyer and

he had a warehouse with all the sound equipment

in Navado, so she called me that day

and I was rehearsing with all them

and she goes, I got Metallica up here

at my studio.

Come up here and sing Led Zeppelin songs

'cause James didn't want to

or he was too high or something.

I don't know what it was,

so I came up there totally high out of my mind, right,

and sang Led Zeppelin songs with Metallica.

- This mother fucker probably has something to say.

- Hello.

Georgio, what's up.

- We're talking Bay Area metal dude.

Good for you. - Good for you.

(heavy metal music)

(technological music)

(heavy metal guitar shredding)