ANTHRAX Guitarist Talks About The ATHENS OPEN AIR Festival Disaster

ANTHRAX guitarist Scott Ian has penned a column for the Greek-language Metal Hammer magazine about the disastrous events that led to a partial cancellation of the Athens Open Air festival in Athens, Greece in early July. A partial reprint of the article follows:

"I will try to keep a long story short. ANTHRAX was scheduled to play on the Athens Open Air festival July 6 2004. The show had been confirmed for months. From the start we were having problems getting information from the promoter of the festival. Our agent was trying for weeks to get our flight and hotel information and nobody from the promoters office would respond. Finally we did get the flight and hotel info and airline tickets were sent to us. At this point, which was only about two weeks before the show (usually we would have this information two months in advance) we still had not received any deposit for the show. A deposit is 50% of the money that you are guaranteed in your contract. Usually if we do not get a deposit, we will not play the show. Well, this wasn't a usual situation. We had tickets to come to Greece and we really wanted to go and play in Athens. We talked with our agent and decided that it would be OK because the promoter wouldn't pay for all those flights and then screw us. If only we had one of those wizards crystal balls to see the future in!

"So the decision was made to go. Like I said, we were very excited to finally be playing in Greece after 20 years! We also figured that MOTÖRHEAD and DIMMU BORGIR and IN FLAMES were all going to be there so there was no way the promoter could screw everybody. Man, were we wrong.

"From the moment we landed in Athens, it was one problem after another. There was absolutely no organization and nobody knew what was going on. Normally, we would've been worried about it, but we were so happy to be in Greece that we just let it go.

"When we heard from MOTÖRHEAD how terrible the gig and the facilities were, we started to worry. Then we heard from DIMMU that they didn't get paid. Then we started to really worry. We could not contact the promoter and nobody knew where he was. We were told that Manthos, the only guy that had been helping us over the last few weeks with our arrangements, had been taken to the hospital for stress because everything was so fucked up and he was getting blamed for the whole huge mess and it was not his fault.

"Now we were freaking out. At this point we were just hoping to play the show. That's why we were there. I woke up on the morning of the show to a phone call from my tour manager saying the show was cancelled. The promoter was gone with all the money and the bands and fans all got fucked. I was really sad and angry at the same time. I wanted to play the show. I didn't care about getting paid anymore. I just wanted to play for our fans. We tried to organize a free club show the next night (thanks Harris!) but were not able to because there were no venues available. That was the biggest disappointment for me, coming all the way to Athens and not getting to play. I felt terrible for the fans. The night before the show was supposed to happen there was a group of fans outside our hotel that were cranking ANTHRAX on their car stereo and they were moshing around their car. My heart goes out to you. I will not let this affect how I feel about Greece in any way. I promise we will be back and I know that when we play in Greece it is going to be the sickest ANTHRAX show ever. We feel so strongly about this. We will return."