The group Slaughter was one of the last hair metal bands to have success just before the whole scene
imploded in the early 90’s thanks to the rise of alternative music. Their success was almost
unheard of because of the unusual path they took. Today, let’s explore the history of Slaughter.
Slaughter’s beginnings started with vocalist Mark Slaughter and bassist Dana Strum. Mark Slaughter
would hail from Vegas and was even a one time guitar teacher, and fronted a band called Xcursion
but the city, wasn’t a hotbed of rock talent back in the 80’s as he would tell the Las Vegas sun
"I'm very proud to be from Las Vegas. This is a great city."
"In those days, you high-tailed it out of Vegas as fast as you could to go be a rock star in L.A.,
New York or whatever,""Coming from Vegas was almost comedy" he'd say.
The Las Vegas musician would meet Dana Strum for the first time when Slaughter
was recording backing vocals for a band called Sin, who was hoping to land a fanbase in Japan.
Strum, at the time was a studio engineer who had already worked with
ex-kiss guitarist Vinnie Vincent and who famously told randy rhoads to audition for Ozzy Osbourne.
. Side note guys i’ve done a whole video on the life and death of randy rhoads. The link is down
below. Strum would recall to the Las Vegas Sun "All of a sudden I hear this kid in the background
sessions, singing, n that (upper) register," "And I said, 'Hang on, do you always sing like that?'
And he's like, 'Do you want me to drop down?' And I'm like, 'No, no, no.
Is that an act or do you always sing like that?' And he says, 'Well, I'm kind of like a soprano
in the choir.' " Soon enough Strum got slaughter a gig fronting the group Vinnie Vincent Invasion
through the mid to late 80’s. The band would would eventually lose their recording contract
with Chrysalis records after which the band called it a day. Apparently the label was not
happy with Vincent with Slaughter telling Classic Rock Revisited you know, Vinnie was difficult,
and the record company was not happy with some of his business dealings.” Lucky for Strum and
Slaughter, Chrysalis wanted to do business with the pair with Slaughter telling the LA Times
"Another guy got the job and made the first album but then he left.
I did the first tour and the next album. Vinnie didn't like my singing but the record
company did," "That's why they signed me after Vinnie's band folded." "God,
how I hated dyeing my hair blonde and being all made up and singing that music,".
"One of the happiest days of my life was Aug. 28, 1988. That's when I was through with that
band. There was only one good thing about it – it was my stepping stone to building Slaughter."
The pair would relocate to Las Vegas to write and record Slaughter’s first album and recruit
guitarist Tim Kelley and drummer Blas Elias. The album would be self-produced and the original
plan was for Strum to help record the album and then leave he group, but he ended up staying.
Slaughter’s debut record Stick It To Ya would be released January of 1990.
It resulted in Slaughter being one of the last bands from that hair metal era
to hit it big before alternative rock took over the following year.
Ahead of their debut record coming out,
the band’s label would hold focus groups with their label and play 20 songs in several major
cities for focus groups who would then choose the best songs to go on the album.
While some would claim this move was done to have a wider commercial appeal. Strum
disagreed saying to the chicago tribune. ''We`re proud that our fans helped pick our songs,''.
The band would prove to be one of the most successful bands of 1990
a huge feat considering the record label didnt market Slaughter a lot and had only played one
show as a group before their album hit a major milestone. The band’s first ever show was an
opening date for Kiss and Faster Pussycat on May 4, 1990 in Lubbock Texas. The band would be met
by representatives of their record label after the show with Slaughter recalling the Chicago Tribune
''We had never played live before,'' ''We had played in rehearsals where roadies watched us,
but other than that nobody had seen us. ''And we went gold as soon as we came off the stage: Two
guys from our record company, Chrysalis Records, presented us with gold records when we came off.
I could not believe it. You always dream of a gold record, and now we`re on the way to platinum.
So, how did the band end up so successful with only one live show under their belt?
Well according to the chicago tribune it would be several things working in the band’s favour.
They weren’t exactly unknown musicians as half of the group had played with vinnie
vincent & MTV was also instrumental in the band’s success. Their video for their single Up All
Night was one of the most requested videos for the month of April in 1990. In addition
to that their debut album produced two other successful singles including fly to the angels
and spend my life pushing the album to go double platinum in america selling over 2 million copies.
The record would be nominated for best new metal album at the american music awards the following
year. The band would also credit fans with getting the word out with Slaughter telling
Chicago tribune ''The fans kept us alive, so to speak,' ''They`d write to magazines about us,
and the magazines would respond. It kept a little ball rolling.''
The band seemed to have their priorities straight when it came to the business
with slaughter telling the LA Times in 1990 “We’re musicians--serious
musicians--who aren’t into glamour or being totally wild and out of control,”.
“I like fast girls and fast cars and all that as much as the next guy. It’s hard to play this music
and not live a bit wild. But you really have to focus on the music and the business end of things
if you want to make it. The fast lane is fun but too often it’s a fast lane to nowhere" he'd say.
To capitilize on the success of the band’s debut record their label released a live EP
titled Stick it Live by the end of 1990, which sold ½ a million copies
and a home video called From the Beginning,'' which sold about 50,000 copies,
. . The band’s second album 1992’s The Wild Life
would come out just as hair metal bands from the 80’s had fallen out of favour with the public,
but the record still proved to be successful peaking at number 8 on the album charts in the US.
To support the record, the band toured with both ozzy osobourne and ugly kid joe. Side note guys
i’ve done a whole video on ugly kid joe and their career. link is down below. But the band
ran into trouble on the tour with guitarist Tim Kelly recalling to the morning call newspaper“
We went on tour with Ozzy Osbourne and were very excited to be on tour with someone like him,""At
that time, Mark (Slaughter) had a vocal problem, a nodule on his vocal chord and had to go in
for surgery. A lot of people in rock had the same thing, so we weren't worried abut him recovering,
but it takes time. Six months later, his voice not only came back, it came back stronger!"
To accompany the second album a second home video titled the wild
life which documented the making of the record and featured interviews with the
band members would be put out. And that home video release went gold
In an almost unheard of move for an established act,
Slaughter open for Poison and Trixter with Strum telling the baltimore sun
"We had a couple of free weeks with nothing to do so we asked if we could just get on
the bill and play some shows,". "It sure beats sitting around and doing
nothing. The money wasn't in the budget to pay us and tickets were already being sold
so we decided to gamble that we'd earn enough in T-shirt sales at the show to cover our expenses."
A 1992 chicago tribune article on the band they would question the appeal
of the band writing “There`s no denying that this rather average pop-metal band
has carved out a far-from-average space in the hearts of fans. Guys like them. Girls absolutely
love them. Not since Skid Row has there been a metal band that has appealed to both sexes
and people ages 10 to 24 the way Slaughter does…Figuring out Slaughter`s appeal is not
simple: The songs are standard party tunes or ballads, and the guys are fairly boy-next-doorish.
So why is this simple Las Vegas quartet shining brighter than other heavy metal bands?
It just proves there`s no such thing as too big a party" they'd write.
The band would chalk up their success to how they interacted with fans. Slaughter would become known
for sleeping at fans homes, even playing a concert on the back of a flatbed truck parked outside
a taco bell and they were easily accessible to fans for meet and greats and to sign autographs.
Around 30,000 fans of slaughter from both their fan club and mailing list
would be sent a six song demo tape of their second record months before its release.
Strum would recall to the chicago tribune ''We sent out those tapes two months before the
record came out as our way of giving the fans something the regular public couldn`t get,''
''It was one of our dreams when we were kids; just think if Led Zeppelin had sent us a demo of `Whole
Lotta Love.` Wouldn`t that have been great! So that`s what we did. And three days later,
we got 2,000 letters of thanks and comments.'''After we sold a couple
million albums, everyone thought we`d become elite. Everyone was looking to the Seattle
bands, and they won`t deal with the fans,''. ''I`d like to see where Nirvana is five years
from now. I`d like to see how long Guns N` Roses fans are going to put up with them canceling shows
and not letting the fans get near them.'' The band would establish their biggest
base not in Los ANgeles, but in Chicago with strum telling the chicago tribune
''We`re from the Heartland, and the Midwest is the first region that took to us,''
''That`s because we`re down to earth and this is a down- to-earth area.''
Strum would take a shot at other big rock acts at the time when it came to songwriting telling
the tribune ''we’re the only self-produced, self-written American rock band there is.
Skid Row, Aerosmith, Motley Crue-they`ve all used outside songs and outside producers in
their careers. We have never done that. We even engineered this record and co-engineered the
last one. When the fans hear something by Slaughter, they know it`s ours." he'd say.
The band’s second album would go gold despite not having any top 40 singles. By 1993 the band looked
to enter the studio once again but guitarist Tim Kelly was arrested for drug trafficking
and sentanced to three years probation for being part of a national drug smuggling ring. He would
tell the Morning Call Newspaper in 1995 "It was a charge connecting me to something from 1987
and they didn't arrest me on it until 1993," "For me, it was either fighting the case in court
or pleading guilty and getting a probationary sentence and a halfway house for six months.
It's behind me now" he'd say. In addition to their legal problems bassist Dana Strum
would suffer a hand injury from a motorcycle accident further delaying the band's third album.
On top of their personal problems their label Chyrsalis would be absorbed into the company
EMI who was going through a corporate reshuffling and on their third president in just three years.
Kelly would tell the morning call "The new president at EMI had no
clue who we were," "He couldn't name a song ... He said, 'Let's just release it and see how it does.'
We worked too hard on the record to put it out like that. We wanted a marketing
strategy and he didn't have one." Since the band wrote and produced
all of its own material, they were able to exercise a clause in their contract
that allowed them to leave EMI for a fee. They would find a new home in CMC international who
had a roster of big 80’s bands who were now flying under on the radar. Ahead of Slaughter
releasing their third record Fear No Evil in the May of 1995, their old label EMI would issue a
greatest hits album witihout the band’s consent or involvement with Kelly telling the morning call
"We're probably the only band in the world with two albums who also had a greatest hits album,"
"The most upsetting thing was we didn't even get to pick the art work. This band likes to pick
art work for a reason. Even the order of songs on it is absolutely horrid. They even lifted
our autographs off our live EP and put it on the greatest hits, like we endorsed it or something."
Despite the change in popular music in just 5 short years, the band attempted to stay
true to their roots with Mark Slaughter telling the Morning Call where the band’s
head was at at the time saying Bands like AC/DC, Aerosmith and Kiss stayed true to their style,"
"Those bands always withstood the test of time by staying true to what it was they did,
which was play straight-ahead, driving rock 'n' roll. That's the way we feel about what we do.
Fear No Evil represented a sharp commercial decline for the band with the record peaking
at number 182 on the charts. Mark Slaughter would talk to
80’s metal recycle bin and look at how rough the mid 90’s were the band
and their peers recalling "In the grunge scene, they say that grunge killed our style of music.
No — it was people in the business that killed this music. What happened is the largest radio
station in the world, MTV, had a new president, who was the programmer of KROQ in California,
and he said to Billboard magazine, 'I will never play Mötley Crüe, Slaughter, Poison…' — he named
all the bands that were right on top at the time. And the next week, we were off all the playlists.
we were running around on a tour bus barely keeping the gas going. It was a very rough time
Slaughter would release their final two albums in 1997 and 1999 Revolution & Back to Reality
both of which failed to chart. The band would also be struck by tragedy
in 1998 when guitarist Tim Kelly would be killed on a highway in the arizona desert
when an 18 wheeler which was heading in the opposing lane of traffic crossed into Kelly’s lane
The guitarists car would roll over several times and struck a third vehicle. It was
said that Kelly died at the scene of the accident Kelly would be replaced by guitarist Jeff Blando.
The band would put out A live album titled Eternal Live in 1998 which featured the last performances
of Kelly with the band. Slaughter’s last studio album was put out in 1999
and the band has been pretty active on the touring circuit playing shows as recently as last year.
Strum and Blando would contribute to the 2010 vince neil album tattoos and tequilla
And Frontman mark slaughter would release several solo albums over the past half a decade
and move from LAto nashville and begin doing music composition for a variety of children’s shows
and fox sports. And he would also start doing voice over work as well. That does it for today's
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