DANNY LILKER 'Regrets Nothing' After 40 Years In Extreme Metal

By David E. Gehlke

Veteran extreme metal bassist Danny Lilker joined ANTHRAX earlier this year for their South American live dates, an event that coincided with his recent withdrawal from the grind of touring. Considering Lilker got his start with the legendary New York thrashers (and teamed with guitarist Scott Ian and drummer Charlie Benante in S.O.D. ),it wasn't at all weird to see him onstage thrashing away to cuts from his sole ANTHRAX recording, "A Fistful Of Metal" and even some of the band's latter-day cuts. It was practically a full-circle moment for a guy who had spent the years since his 1984 ANTHRAX dismissal holding down the low-end in more extreme, decidedly less commercial bands such as NUCLEAR ASSAULT, BRUTAL TRUTH, EXIT-13, HEMLOCK and more.

Lilker is now settling nicely into a life of peace and solitude away from the road. And having just hit 60 years of age, his 2014 book, "Perpetual Conversion", saw its reprint, which includes a new foreword from AT THE GATES frontman Tomas Lindberg, as well as several new color photos. It was all the more reason for BLABBERMOUTH.NET to snag the bassist and his book's co-author, Dave Hofer, for a chat.

Blabbermouth: The second edition of the book not only coincides but ends with a picture of you doing the ANTHRAX dates in South America. Was that a bit of good luck or intentional?

Danny: "That was coincidental timing. The actual reason the second edition came out is because the first edition came out when I turned 50 in October 2014. I turned 60 a month and a half ago. That is why we timed the second edition to come out to be precisely ten years after the first. To spruce it up, we didn't do any more interviews, but to justify the second edition, we got a foreword written by an old friend of mine, Tomas from AT THE GATES. We also added a new color section to the book. Because I did those shows and had access to that picture, I thought it was cool to put a picture like that in because it's super-current. We didn't have any new interviews, or I really haven't done that much in the last ten years; that made it cool. That picture made it in…we've been trying to get the book out for a little bit anyway, talking to publishers. Even if that tour never happened, the book still would have come out since it was the tenth anniversary of the first one."

Blabbermouth: Was there any temptation to fix anything from the first edition?

Dave: "Not really, although I'm not going to lie—there was a typo or two in there. [Laughs] I felt, personally, very happy with how it came out. I felt like it really touched on everything that Dan had done in the last 30 years. I can't think of anything afterward where I was like, 'Oh. I wish that were included.' You can't interview everyone and everyone wasn't findable at the time. There were a few people afterward who said, 'Oh, I wish I would have known you were putting this together. I would have loved to contribute.' I'm very proud of how it came out. As Dan said, to do a second edition, I didn't know whether there was much more narrative to be added. To do a straight reprint—not that it's a selling point, but the selling point would have been, 'It's been out of print for five years.' You want some sort of update, so that's why we went for the photos and foreword by Tomas."

Blabbermouth: Danny, do you get a chuckle out of the letters you used to send to various magazines? They are in the book and are fascinating to read after all these years.

Danny: "I'm a pretty chill person, but once in a while, I get my back up about some stuff. The main thing about those letters was that I saw some hypocrisy when people weren't practicing what they preached. I wanted to call them out. I think, as I got older, I didn't care as much. I think in my youth, perhaps I got more head-up about that. It wasn't even a big thing; it was like, 'All right. I'm fucking tired of hearing people say this and do that and act in a different way.' In the hardcore scene, you had a lot of people who would get preachy. At least you could do is practice what you're preaching when waving your finger around all the time. I loved that fucking music and everything. That is why I did that. I had a passion for it. I wasn't just yelling at a bunch of people. It was something I really enjoyed and it would bother me when people did something hypocritical. These days, I'm sure it's much worse with the internet, with all sorts of people talking crap. I don't even bother."

Blabbermouth: Would you say you had a good sense of business? You went into detail about when several labels approached NUCLEAR ASSAULT and you had to make one of the first serious business decisions of your career.

Danny: "I don't know if I always had good business sense. Other people were better at that than me. Face it, that's what you have lawyers for if it gets to a point when someone is throwing a contract with legalese at you. No, I'm not going to sign it and sign my life away. You can have a basic good business sense, but once it gets into stuff when they start using terms that I can't follow, then it's time to give it over to someone else. Plus, I resented all of that stuff. I'm just someone who plays music from the heart. When you have to get involved in all that crap, you turn into a product, and it bums me out, to be honest. I would tend to stay away from most of that stuff if I could. I've done things on the road where if NUCLEAR ASSAULT in the middle of the 2000s, we didn't have a road manager, it was my turn to go back to the guy and get paid and make sure everything got taken care of and collect the guarantee, I could do that. But all that stuff about a contract that's going to affect you for half a decade, no, I'm not going to be responsible unless it's written on the back of a fucking matchbook."

Blabbermouth: Was the fact you were in bands that did well but were never huge a factor in all of that?

Danny: "Sure. The higher up you go, the more you're dealing with people who are not following what you're doing musically. You're just a product. Now, you're even a more remote product. If you do things either DIY or on smaller labels, the people who work at those labels are going to be more into what you're doing and more willing to work with you. So, yeah, I suppose that's a good point."

Blabbermouth: I was impressed, Danny, by your empirical knowledge of metal, which is demonstrated throughout the book with various facts and anecdotes. Dave, would you say Danny has that?

Dave: "I would say so, yes. It has to do with the fact that he was there from the beginning. I'm 45. I'm 15 years younger. You're just playing catch-up by default. As every year passes, there is more and more to hear and learn. It's impossible to know everything. I'm not suggesting that Dan knows everything, but like I said, he was there from the beginning, soaking it up as it was happening. He's got a great memory. That helps, too. Short answer: Yes. I'm sure Danny could tell you about some sub-genre that maybe he's not as familiar with, but I am always surprised by what he will bust out knowledge-wise."

Danny: "I think he's right. I never went out of my way to be a database for anything. Just by being there, people can hear about how all these things happened. I was around and saw fucking VENOM and METALLICA in 1983 in Staten Island. That's not bragging. That's just saying what Dave is talking about, having experienced all of that as much as I can remember. It's certainly given me the opportunity to amass much knowledge and dispense it as necessary."

Dave: "Going back to the letters, it was very obvious looking at his stuff and talking to him that he was involved. The guy would get 'zines, and he would correspond with people and write letters to Maximum Rocknroll. You can be there and sort of be a passive participant and gain knowledge, but he was a little more active than the average person. That also contributed to it."

Danny: "Even just looking at the pictures in the book, the pictures of me, Richard [Brunelle] and Pete [Sandoval] from MORBID ANGEL. What year was that? 1992?"

Dave: "I always thought that picture was from the S.O.D. 'Live At Budokan' show, but I could be wrong."

Danny: "Even just looking at those pictures, the pictures we provided for the book for people to see is kind of like a memory-lane thing. I have real scrapbooks, like old-school photo albums, where you have to rip open the plastic and put the pictures down and put the plastic back over it so they don't get dusty. Not just being a metalhead but a metal musician and getting to tour the world, I ran into a lot more people. It's true. There's a lot of other people who have done what I've done as long as I've done, but they might not have put a book out."

Blabbermouth: There are two eras of S.O.D. : "Speak English Or Die", then 25 years ago with "Bigger Than The Devil". Is there one you prefer?

Danny: "I prefer different aspects of both. When that first album came out, right out of the fucking starting gate, it shocked people, but we didn't get to do that many shows. Then again, that made it special. That whole thing, doing those shows and playing with SUICIDAL TENDENCIES and some other cool bands, was cool. But, when we put out the second record, it never had the same impact because it didn't have the same surprise attack. The advantage was that, for the first time, we played all over the States, Europe, and Japan. It was cool to play all of those places so we could finally do it. There are aspects of both of those eras that I have great memories of, just for those reasons. If we had toured the world on the first record, that would have been the bomb, but that didn't happen."

Blabbermouth: Do you still have the same misgivings about NUCLEAR ASSAULT's "Third World Genocide"?

Danny: "I have the same misgivings I've always had about that record. I think that at this point when we were doing that record, we were doing more shows, so we needed to do a record. Looking back, what we should have done was rest on our laurels and play the classic stuff that people wanted to hear. It was different when BRUTAL TRUTH reformed. We were more dynamic and writing faster grindcore. NUCLEAR ASSAULT was different in the mid-aughts. It was like, 'Well, we should put a record out.' There wasn't enough thrash on it for my liking. It's hard to describe. Maybe I wasn't inspired, so I wasn't writing much stuff. I think there really wasn't a big reason for that record. I don't hate it. I just think it wasn't necessary. That's the best way to describe it."

Blabbermouth: Do you have a sense of closure with NUCLEAR ASSAULT now that the band is no longer doing shows?

Danny: "I would say so. If I go here and there, it's like, 'Is there ever going to be another NUCLEAR ASSAULT show?' I'm like, 'Sorry.' That was the first band I got to tour the world with. The first band I was on multiple albums with. You had 'Fistful Of Metal' and 'Speak English Or Die', which was a one-off until 14 years after it came out. NUCLEAR ASSAULT was the first band I did multiple records and tours. It will always have a place in my heart. It came at a time when it came to its natural end. I'm totally good with that."

Blabbermouth: What's it been like being off the road after doing it for so long?

Danny: "It's great. I'm not going to lie. It's a 'been there, done that' thing. I regret nothing. I've been to all over the world, well, not all over the world. I never played in Africa. I have gotten to experience stuff that very few people get to, especially for free. I've been flown out to play fucking Finland. I can't complain. I've reached a point in my life where it would be nice to have some stability and serenity. The thing with age is you get a little more aches and pains. It's nice to have a nice, stable lifestyle. I don't know — maybe I'm lazy? I don't know what it is. I'm enjoying settling into aging gracefully and all that shit."