Hailed as one of the most important and influential guitarists in heavy metal, Jeff Hanneman would
be instrumental in giving Slayer their iconic sound, while also serving as one of their
principal songwriters.But his time would be cut short due to an unfortunate set of medical
circumstances that led to a downward spiral.
That’s what we’re going to explore in today’s video.
Slayer’s origins date back to Los Angeles in 1981 when guitarist Kerry King was meeting
a band holding auditions for a guitar player recalling to Guitar World
“As I was leaving, I saw Jeff just kinda standing around playing guitar, and he was
playing stuff that I was into, like Def Leppard’s ‘Wasted’ and AC/DC and Priest.
So I started talking to him and just said, ‘Hey, you want to start a band?’
I already knew Dave [Lombardo, drummer] and we had been playing together in his parents’
garage a bit, and so I brought Jeff in, then went to Tom [Araya, vocalist/bassist], who
I was playing with in another band, and said, ‘Hey man, I have a different band if you’re
interested.’
And that was it.”
Hanneman would admit to author Jon Widerhorn that he was initially intimated by King’s
guitar playing recalling ‘I just remember I was scared shitless.
I had been playing the least amount of time, so I sucked.
I’d only been playing for like a month by the time I met Kerry, and after I saw him
play I was like, ‘Oh man I gotta speed up the learning process’.”
Slayer would be influenced by british metal acts including judas priest, iron maiden and
black sabbath.
But apart from metal Hanneman was also influenced by hardcore punk, introducing the other members
to the genre and giving the band a harder edge to their music than their contemporaries
with Hanneman telling Loudersound “We weren’t schooled musicians,” “but we knew what
sounded dark.
If it sounds like I’m standing over a body that’s just been stabbed to death, then
it’s perfect.”
Apart from king being the more technical of the two guitar players he knew well where
his strengths lie and that was in songwriting going on to write the band’s best known
known songs Angel of Death and Reigning Blood recalling in an interview ‘I tried to emulate
what Steve Vai and Joe Satriani did and really grow as a guitarist,” Hanneman once mused,
before adding, “Then I said, ‘I don’t think I’m that talented, but more importantly,
I don’t care’.”
It was during the band’s early years that three of the four members had vehicles to
get to and from practice.
According to guitar world.
Hanneman either had a series of DUI’s or never had a license at the time.
Araya would tell Guitar World “When we started the band, Kerry would pick
him up from his house in Long Beach and I would drop him off after rehearsal,” . “That
was the trade-off.
So we spent a lot of time in the car together, usually drinking beer.
I would drop him off, and sometimes I’d hang with him at his house with his parents.”
It was around the time Slayer released their first album Show No Mercy in 1983 that Hanneman
would meet his life partner Kathryn.
She would recall to guitar world “My girlfriend and I were getting tired of going to the movies
every weekend, so we decided to go see this band called Slayer at a little club in Buena
Park called the Woodstock,” “They were playing with a band called Leatherwolf.
I begged my father to let us go to the show, knowing that I would be home later than my
10 o’clock curfew, and he was okay with that.
There may have been 15 or 20 people at the show, so I was able to stand up front against
the stage, on Jeff’s side.
And before I knew it, he kneeled down, grabbed me by the hair, and started making out with
me.
I was blown away, and that was how we met.”
The couple would stay in touch and they would wed in Las Vegas in 1989.
In 1986 Slayer would release their seminal album Reign In Blood, which featured the hugely
controversial song Angel of Death.
AUthor Paul Elliott would recall how Hanneman told him how the song was written in a strange
setting recalling @The last time I spoke to Hanneman, in 2009, he explained that Angel
Of Death was written in a most unlikely setting – at the home of his girlfriend’s parents.
He laughed about the bizarre nature of his creative process.
“It’s weird.
When I’m angry, the music doesn’t flow.
But when I’m happy the evil comes out!”
Hanneman would spend his years on tour with the band visiting war museums, reading history
books about world war 2 with kerry king remembering “Jeff was super intelligent about history—World
War II became his thing,” Hanneman’s father was an American soldier during world war 2
and he would bring his son home medals and other items taken off the corpses of german
soldiers.
It was that fascination with Germany’s world war 2 history that landed the band in trouble.
Hanneman would be the principal songwriter behind one of the band’s best known songs
angel of death.
The song was written abou german scientist josef mengale’s experiments on prisoner’s
of auschwitz.
The band drew widespread criticism for being sympathic towards germany in world war 2.
It resulted in Def Jam the band’s label losing distributor columbia and instead having
to release the record through Geffen with Araya telling guitar world
“Jeff wrote what he wrote,” says Araya.
“And people would analyze it and come up with their own conclusions—but to Jeff it
was just a song about this or that.
There was no deep meaning behind anything.
And a lot of the stuff he did, he knew that it would cause a reaction—he knew it would
get a response.
And if you’re going to make a big stink about it, that’s your problem—that was
his attitude about it.”
Slayer would spend the next three decades successfully releasing albums and touring.
After nearly three decades on the road Hanneman seemed a little tired of the lifestyle of
being a traveling rock band telling Loudersound “The thing I personally hate out of this
whole thing is travelling,” “I hate airports, I hate getting in a van and going someplace…
I hate the whole travelling aspect.
Once I get to point B – fine.
But I hate the actual travelling!”....There are nights when you’re sick and the last
thing you wanna do is go up onstage.
But when you get up you feel the energy from the kids, and it bounces back and forth.
You feel great.
Then the show’s over and you start to feel sick again.
Once, a guy grabbed my guitar and started to sing the words right in my face.
So I just hit him.”
In 2011 it was reported that Hanneman had developed a flesh eating disease caused by
what was thought to be a spider bite, however it was never actually confirmed if it was
a spider or another insect carrying the disease.
In 2011 during an interview with metal injection hanneman told the publication he was visiting
a friend sitting in a hot tub when he noticed the bite saying "Didn't even feel it.
But an hour later, I knew that I was ill."
Two years later Hanneman would pass away due to liver failure and It was initially reported
that the cause of his death was attributed to his insect bite which happened two years
prior.
But even before the insect bite Hanneman was dealing with arthritic condition in his hands.
His bandmates could tell the condition was impacting his playing with Araya telling guitar
world ‘His ability to play was slowly deteriorating,” Araya says, “but he didn’t let anybody
know that.
We could just tell that things were going wrong.
It was becoming hard to get stuff out of him.
He was very proud and didn’t want to make anyone worry about anything.
Jeff would show up and play, and he didn’t want anyone to know or worry about what else
was going on with him.
He tried to be really strong and sometimes that can weigh you down.”
with lombardo adding “You would notice it in his hands and a
little bit in his walk,” Lombardo says.
“It seemed like he was struggling with his playing—it wasn’t fluid.
You could hear it in the leads.
His playing just wasn’t as tight as it could have been.”
While he would see a specialist his wife would tell guitar world that her husband wouldn’t
take medication to dealing with his condition.
Also contributing to his condition was alcohol .“Doctors wanted him to stay away from three
of his favorite things—beer, red meat and peanut butter—but Jeff was going to do this
his way, and he would just deal with the pain on his own terms.”
.
His wife Kathryn told Guitar World that his cause of death was not the insect bite but
the downward emotional spiral the guitarist found himself in after his diagnosis and treatment.
Kathryn would reveal the guitarist remained at the friends house for another week before
coming home and her realizing just how ill he was with her recalling
“He was pretty well lit when he came through the front door,” He just wanted to go upstairs
and go to sleep.
Before he did he said, ‘Kath, I need to show you something, even though I really don’t
want to.’
And he took off his shirt, and I just freaked out when I saw his arm.
It was bright red and three times the normal size.
I said, ‘Jeff, we need to go now!
We need to get you to the ER!’”
But all he wanted to do was go to bed and sleep, and I knew that I was trying to rationalize
with a very intoxicated person.
So there was nothing I could do that night.
But the next morning I convinced him to let me take him in.
He didn’t have a lot of strength, but I was able to get him into the car.
Hanneman would have to undergo surgery on his arm with his wife recalling @The doctor
looked at Jeff and told him, ‘First I’m going to try to save your life.
Then I’m going to try to save your arm.
Then I’m going to try to save your career.’
The guitarist would would be put into a medically induced coma, and undergo multiple skin grafts,
and more surgeries.
Hsi arm would be saved but it would be a long painful road to recovery.
His wife would recall to guitar world
“I couldn’t get Jeff to go to rehab or therapy,” Kathryn says.
“I think he was letting the visual of his arm get to his emotions, and it was messing
with his mind.
It was hard to keep him upbeat at that point.
“I think he thought he could do this on his own—that he would just to go rehearsal
and play, and that that would be his rehab.
But I think he started to learn, once he tried rehearsing, that he wasn’t playing up to
his ability and that he wasn’t able to play guitar at the speed he was used to.
And I think that really hit him hard, and he started to lose hope.”
On April 23, 2011, Hanneman joined Slayer at a Big 4 show in Indio, Calif., to performing
“Angel of Death” and “South of Heaven.”
Araya would recall to loudwire “It was after that that I think he realized
that he could only play for a little bit and then had to stop,” Araya said.
“He would come in to rehearse and jam out some parts and then he’d stop and just fiddle
with his guitar.
He did that a few times then he just stop coming to rehearsal.”
Hanneman’s life outside of Slayer resulted in him turning to the bottle.
WHile he had drank for years, he started to abuse alcohol shortly after his fathers death
in 2008.
According to his wife Hanneman changed after his father’s death and hit the bottle even
harder “I did notice that Jeff was relying on alcohol to start off his day,”.
“But I couldn’t say much at that point, because I just knew we’d wind up in a verbal
confrontation about it.”
Slayer would reveal in a statement that the guitarist died due to alcohol-related cirrhosis,
a type of irreversible scarring of the liver.
His bandmates and friends weren’t aware of how bad Hanneman’s health was as he was
back in the ICU days before his death.
He would passa way at the age of 49.
While it was expected he would slowly return to Slayer at some point in the future those
close to him had no idea the condition hanneman was in.
Kerry King would tell guitar world “Jeff and I always drank,” King adds.
“They called Steven Tyler and Joe Perry the Toxic Twins.
We were the Drunk Brothers.”
He laughs.
“The difference being that I don’t wake up in the morning and need a beer.
Jeff didn’t know how not to drink.”
Once Hanneman would return home from tour he usually lived a quiet life hanging around
home watching classic 80’s/90’s sitcoms, working on music or playing video games.
Even his bandmates would admit to guitar world that they wouldn’t hear from hanneman during
downtime.
At the fifth edition of the revolver golden god awards on may 2, 2013 news had spread
about hanneman’s death.
Former bandmate Kerry King would take to the podium alongside Zakk Wylde to pay tribute
to his departed bandmate telling the crowd “You may notice I got two shot cups up here
[in my hands]," King said.
“My friend Zakk doesn't drink anymore, so obviously this is for me and my fallen friend
Jeff.”
King paused for a moment to recompose himself and continued: “I've thought about this.
I thought should I do a moment of silence.
And I thought, 'Fuck, no!
This is the Golden Gods, man.
Jeff fuckin' Hanneman, he played in Slayer.
He does not want a moment of fuckin' silence.
Jeff wants a moment of fuckin' noise.
You got a drink, raise it up, you got a fist, raise it up, and tip one back to our fallen
brother."
King posted some personal memories of Hanneman, including remembrances of their early years
on the road.
"In the early days when we were out on the road, he and I were the night owls, we would
stay up all night on the bus, just hanging out, talking, watching movies," he wrote.
"World War II movies, horror movies, we watched 'Full Metal Jacket' so many times, we could