Q and A: Brian Slagel (Metal Blade Records)

By BRENDAN CRABB

READERS craving an inside look at the formation of one of heavy music’s most prominent labels, not to mention the many key developments within the scene over several decades,   flocked to buy Brian Slagel’s 2017 book, For the Sake of Heaviness.

The book documented how a metal-obsessed California teen built Metal Blade Records into an industry mainstay. Slagel’s many tales seemingly couldn’t be contained within one book, with the follow-up Swing of the Blade recently released, and featuring a foreword by Slayer’s Kerry King.

Slagel talked to Hot Metal about the new book, why Armored Saint didn’t become a household name, his attempts to sign Korn in their early days, and plenty more.

Hot Metal: The music news of the day is the death of Tina Turner. Did you have any interactions with her?

Brian Slagel: I was lucky enough to see her live a few times back in the day actually, she was phenomenal. I saw her once actually at the Grammys with Beyoncé, when Beyoncé was first starting out. And I mean, in my opinion, Tina Turner just destroyed her (laughs). She was so good. I think Beyoncé might have been nervous. But yeah, she was in an incredible performer. And because of that, I saw her a couple times in concert, and she was spectacular.”

HM: Indeed. So, we’re here to talk about the new book. Obviously, there’s a lot of music autobiographies and biographies out there. A few high-profile managers and journalists have written books about the inner workings of the industry, but that unique type of insider view you had seemed to resonate with audiences. Do you think it perhaps filled a gap in the market – “the record label guy tells his story?”

BS: “Well, yeah, it’s kind of funny, because people asked me about writing a book before and I was like, ‘who’s gonna be interested in really reading about a record label?’ I’m not going to be salacious and tell crazy stories and all those sorts of things like you get in so many other books. So it got to be our 35th anniversary, and we were kind of figuring out well, what should we do? So I said, ‘maybe I’ll just do this book’. I thought I should write it anyway, just while I still have some wits about me and remember some of this stuff (laughs). So I just ended up doing it. And to my amazement, it did really well. So I was pretty happy. But yeah, maybe that’s part of it is people don’t get an inside look a lot of times about that sort of stuff. So it’s kind of fun to do that.”

HM: What was interesting to me is both books follow a similar pattern in that it’s pretty clear that you’re not looking to, for lack of a better term, throw anyone under a bus or settle scores. There’s no salacious stories, as you say. Was that the initial idea?

BS: “Yeah, I’m not that kind of person anyway. I would feel really terrible if I wrote something about somebody and they were really upset about it. It’s just not not my style, really. Plus there’s really not a lot of those stories. I mean, there’s probably a few here and there, but it really isn’t that many, and I find it from my perspective, just as a reader, I’d much rather hear the fun stories and the cool stories than the kind of salacious stuff. So that’s just kind of my interpretation. Plus you put out a book and you’re always worried somebody’s gonna see it the wrong way. In fact, when I did the second book, because I did a lot of chapters on a specific band, like, for example, Armored Saint or Fates Warning, or King Diamond/Mercyful Fate. I sent them the chapters just to make sure that, number one that they were cool with everything. And also just to make sure that everything’s accurate, because dates and times and things, everybody remembers things differently. And they probably remember their career better than I do. So there’s a few times where they said ‘yeah, this was actually at this time’ and that sort of thing. I just wanted to make sure it was as accurate as possible.”
HM: Interesting. You took that approach of not trying to get anyone off-side, yet after the first book was released, Dave Mustaine voiced his disapproval with what you wrote about attempting to sign Megadeth to Metal Blade in the 1980s. Were you surprised by that reaction?

BS: “(I was) shocked actually (laughs). It was this crazy story because I was in L.A, I think for the Revolver Golden Gods Awards. One of those award shows, I forget which one. But anyway, I was staying in a hotel next to the venue. I leave my phone on but I turned like the ringer and everything off, but the buzz thing was still on. And at like five o’clock in the morning I keep hearing this buzzing, and was like, ‘what’s going on?’ So there’s my phone, just blowing up all over the place and I’m thinking, ‘what on earth is happening?’ And it took on a life of its own where MetalSucks and all the sites were ‘Brian Slagel versus Dave Mustaine’ and yada yada. So I immediately DM-ed him and said, ‘dude, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think I was saying anything wrong or anything bad about it’. But he had a different perspective of it than I did obviously. We talked it through and everything was fine. And we’re all good now. And I took it out of the book, because he remembered it a lot differently than I did. And to be fair to him, I didn’t talk to him directly when we were talking about doing something with Megadeth… We were talking to a third party. So, same thing, I probably should have asked him first, like, ‘is this accurate?’ But the weird thing is that my book was like number one on (the) Amazon metal (charts) for a while. And of course, Bruce Dickinson put out his book, and rightly so was number one for a long time. But for about a day-and-a-half, because of all that publicity my book kind of went back up to number one. But we’re all good now. I talked to Dave recently, and it’s all fine. Because I felt horrible. Like, the last thing I wanted to do is make anybody upset.”

HM: Do you anticipate anyone getting upset this time around? (laughs) You just never know.

BS: “I mean, I tried to be really nice. It’s funny, because the first book, I sent it to our lawyer to read and he goes, ‘you’re being too nice in this book, like you should give some dirt’. I don’t want to be that guy. So like, 90 per cent of this book, I had approved by various band members that are in it. So hopefully there’s not any… Not yet so far, knock on wood. So we’ll see. ”

HM: Going through the book, it’s a mix of stories about your interactions with superstars like Metallica. And then there’s your lesser-known bands, like Omen, that didn’t ‘make it’. Was it important to you run the gamut like that, to have that contrast?

BS: “Well, the reason this whole second book exists is because of the feedback I got on the first book, and obviously, a lot of it was very positive and people really into it. And then the other thing was the questions about, we want more in-depth stories about all these bands. But we also want in-depth stories about like the obscure bands and the bands that didn’t do well, that didn’t make it. That was probably the number one thing that I got from fans was, ‘we want to hear about Omen’ and we want to hear about whoever it was. So I wanted to try to go through and talk about as many of those bands as I could and just give some information in there. And just to talk about that stuff. Because I think people are fascinated by that, I’m always fascinated by that. It’s like, when I was growing up in the ’70s, why didn’t a band like Angel who I loved become bigger, or Thin Lizzy, or all these different bands? And there’s always reasons why those sorts of things happen. So I tried to politely talk about that stuff because I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus, but certainly there are reasons. Sometimes it’s just luck, and not being at the right place at the right time too.”

HM: One of the more intriguing chapters of the book for mine was regarding Armored Saint. I get the vibe from what you’ve written and from other things I’ve read, that the band seemed destined for success. You discuss in the book Metallica trying to recruit John Bush to join their band in the early days at a time when Armored Saint had more going on in terms of a future. Are they one of the bigger surprises to you, with regard to acts that didn’t become major names when all signs indicated they would?

BS: “Sure, 100 per cent. When they were playing in the L.A scene in the early days, they were far above anybody else, including bands like Mötley Crüe and Ratt that were playing around the same time. Armored Saint was selling out 2000-seat theatres, they had this amazing stage act, these great songs, the fans would go crazy. And when they signed to a major label, obviously, they were the first band (in the scene) that we had that ever signed a major label, very early. We put out the EP, and then they signed very quickly after that, before Metallica, before anybody else did. And we all kind of thought like, okay, this is… We’re all just young, dumb kids, all in our early twenties. We don’t know anything; ‘they’re on a major label, they’re gonna be big’. And it just didn’t work out for a lot of different reasons. And as I talked about in the book, it’s kind of a famous story now. The band kind of broke up and unfortunately, their original guitar player Dave Prichard passed away from leukaemia. And so they were pretty much done. But they made all these demos that they were trying to get another deal with that I think was some of the best music they’d ever written. And I said, ‘we got to put the stuff out’. So that became (1991’s) Symbol of Salvation, which is still, probably to this day, my favourite Metal Blade record I was ever involved with because, just the story behind it and getting the music out there. And everything came together so well. The band came back, we had Dave Jerden produce the record who worked with Jane’s Addiction and Alice in Chains. Everything was all there for them to become really big. Only problem was, it was 1991. And I firmly believe if that record came out in 1989 before the grunge scene had crushed metal, I think they might have been that (huge band). But that being said, they still have had an amazing, long career. It’s like a marathon, not a sprint, right? It’s like, if they would have had a big record then who knows what might have happened. But they’re still around, they’re still doing great. They’re still putting out great music, they’re still playing live, they’ve all had great lives, they all have great kids and had family lives and houses and cars, and all this stuff that you would want somebody to have a good life with. So I’m happy that that’s worked out for them. And in the long run, they’re looked upon as one of the true metal legends. So in the long run it has been good. But in the short-term, we were all pretty frustrated.”

HM: One of the key chapters was when you talked about the nu-metal era. I’m nearly 40 and was the ideal age when that sub-genre became popular and saw its widespread impact at the time. You referenced how nu-metal was something you didn’t personally enjoy and didn’t want to sign those acts, whereas labels like Roadrunner embraced it. Was it a situation where there was pressure on the label to chase that trend because it was so lucrative?
BS: “We didn’t really have anybody within the company that was pressuring us, but certainly the outside, the outside world was, ‘how come you guys aren’t into this stuff?’ And the way I’ve run the label, and still do to this day, 40 some odd years later, it’s just, we want to work with bands that I like and that I’m into, and I just wasn’t a fan of that style of music for whatever reason. Actually, I think there were a couple reasons for me, like the ’90s were… My friend Kerry King has the best quote ever about the ’90s – “the ’90s were weird”. I go, that’s very true (laughs). But I always felt that the true metal, the metal that we all grew up on, that I grew up on in the ’70s and that came out in the ’80s, that stuff’s gonna return at some point. And that the nu-metal thing to me just seemed kind of like a fad. It just was all really commercial and the major labels were just spending tons of money on it, ramming it down kids’ throats and it didn’t seem really organic to me. This is a personal thing. And I know a lot… I’ve talked to a lot of people like you that grew up in that timeframe, which is great. And if that’s your gateway to getting into the good metal, that’s awesome. So I’m all for that. But yeah, it just wasn’t our scene so we kind of avoided that and just kind of waited around and thankfully, metal did come back around in the early 2000s. And we went from there. ”

HM: You mention in the book about seeing Korn early on before they were signed. But did you ever take a meeting with any other nu-metal bands and consider signing them to Metal Blade?

BS: “Well, Korn for sure. Korn was the one that they were (into) really early on. I don’t really know, I mean, they kind of got lumped into that nu-metal scene, but I’m not sure if they could really be categorised as that. One of the guys that works for us, Mike Faley who has been there forever, saw them in San Diego, playing like their second or third show at some convention. He said, “you’ve got to see this band Korn. They’re really doing something different and amazing”. So we went, they played their first show in L.A and it was in a club, there’s like maybe 200 people there. One of which was Monte Conner, who was the A&R guy from Roadrunner and was also a good friend of mine. So we’re both like, ‘oh my god, this band is incredible’. So we’re kind of all falling over ourselves to try and have a meeting with them. Maybe two or three months later, they played another show at the same club and this time it was packed, with like 500 people, and every other A&R person from every major label was there. Monte and I kind of looked at each other and went, ‘we’re not getting this band’. But other than that, that was it. I never met with anybody else or did anything else. It’s kind of a major label thing more than anything else. So obviously Roadrunner, with Slipknot or whatever, were in there too. But yeah, it’s just not my scene.”

HM: Shifting gears a little, are we likely to see a third book? I actually thought perhaps a book of you talking about your business philosophies or something along those lines. Do you see a third book in you at some point?

BS: “You never know. I mean, I didn’t see a second book either (laughs). The worst part about the book thing, honestly, is the audio book. So I had to do the audio book on the first one, and I only had to read half of it, because half of the first book is all the bands’ quotes. And originally, I told BMG who was our publisher, ‘I think I can probably get most of these guys to read their own stuff’. They said ‘no, too many narrators, you can only have two narrators’. So we hired John Bush of Armored Saint, who also is a voiceover guy. And so he read the second half of the book. So I had to read the first half, and it was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done in my entire life (laughs). It was really tough, but the outpouring of how many people love that audio book and, and listen to it over and over again, it blows my mind. So in about a week or so I’ve got to do the new book in audio book. I’m not looking forward to that. So that being said, you never know. I mean, it’s kind of fun to do that. I think if there were… I’m always taking feedback from what people say after they read the book and stuff. So it’s always interesting to see what people are interested in.”

HM: Well, it’s been good chatting, Brian. Just to wrap up, any famous last words?

BS: “Thanks for having me, of course. And thanks for everyone out there for buying the book and supporting metal. There’s so many great new heavy metal bands coming out now from all over the world. And I think it’s a really exciting time for metal. So seek out a bunch of this new stuff that’s happening now, it’s really cool.”