EXODUS's GARY HOLT On Financial Reality Of Being In A Metal Band: 'It's Not What People Think'

In a new interview with Germany's Metal.de, EXODUS guitarist Gary Holt confirmed that the band's classic debut album, 1985's "Bonded By Blood" is still his favorite EXODUS LP. Asked if that means he thinks EXODUS "never topped" "Bonded By Blood" with something else, Gary said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "No. Never topped it. That's blasphemous to even say. 'Bonded By Blood' is the album that started it all. So, it's my youth, it's my high school yearbook. It's the reason I'm still here. So it's always gonna be number one. And [late EXODUS frontman] Paul Baloff, despite only singing on one album, is always the voice of EXODUS. That's no insult to [later EXODUS singers] Zetro [Steve Souza] or Rob [Dukes]. It's just Paul started it."

Asked if he and his EXODUS bandmates have thought about a possible retirement or if they are just too "full of energy" right now to call it quits, Holt responded: "No, I'm not full of energy. I'm fucking tired. But we're gonna do this as hard as we can, as heavy as we can until we can't. And that's why we recorded so much music [for the next EXODUS album]. We figured, do it now while we are still able to. Who knows? I've had elbow problems, hand problems, shoulder problems now. Maybe in five years age will catch up and the arthritis will get bad and I can't do it. I don't know."

Regarding what he might do all day if he had to stop touring and recording with EXODUS, Gary said: "I have no idea. I don't know. Turn to a life of crime, maybe. I don't know. I haven't found a way to make money being charming, so I don't know what I'm gonna do."

When the interviewer noted that Gary has found a way to make some extra money by selling merchandise via his Holt Awaits online store, the guitarist concurred. "Yeah, it helps," he said. "People think, 'Oh, you're a rich rock star.' No. I sell shirts, and I sell them outta my fucking closet. All right. Pack this one up, label it, send it off. But no, that just helps. It doesn't pay the bills. It helps to keep pay the bills. It helped really a lot in the pandemic. But I don't know. If I honestly retired, I'd probably do more producing. I'd stay in music. But sometimes I daydream about not leaving the house. 'Cause I hate leaving — I hate getting on the plane to leave — but as soon as I arrive, I have fun."

Holt was also asked about EXODUS bassist Jack Gibson's recent comment that he and his bandmates are "traveling t-shirt salesmen". Gary said: "[Selling shirts is] where we make our money. We're lucky… If you're in a band where the money you're paid to play covers your expenses and the t-shirt money is yours, you're doing really well. Because everything, especially since the pandemic — tour buses cost way more money. Everything costs more. Airfare costs more. It's fucking hard. We do okay, we do pretty good. But then when you come home and you don't work for two months, that money you made has to cover, stretch out over all of it. So it's not what people think."

In a July 2024 interview with Danielle Bloom, Gibson was asked what advice he would give to musicians who are just starting out, as well as to those musicians who maybe are a little jaded at this point in their career. He responded: "I don't know what to tell young musicians today because I am jaded. And it isn't that I'm just jaded, it's that there's no music business anymore.

"When I was young, there was a path, there were steps to take," he explained. "You got your band together, you put your music together, you started looking for shows, and if you could draw people to your shows, then the next step was that label people would be interested. Then you had to get your promotional pack together to give to the labels that were interested. And then you tried to get signed and then you tried to make records and sell records And those steps don't exist at all anymore. Now the step is make a band — or not even make a band. Let's just go viral. I don't know to do that. Don't ask me how to fucking do that. I'm in my fifties. I don't know how to do that shit. It's totally a mystery to me. I don't know how things get popular now, other than just total luck. So I don't know.

"Here in Nashville [where I live now], young musicians, they ask me that all the time," he continued. "And I kind of feel like a dick when I'm answering, because I'm, like, 'Guys, I don't know.' I don't know what makes things tick. The bands that are real popular, I don't know why those bands are popular. And I'm not saying that they're not good; I just don't know why those ones are the ones that stand out from the other ones right now. It all kind of sounds the same to me. I guess it's probably because I'm just old. But I don't know what direction to give anybody."

When Bloom noted out that "we are living in different times" right now, Gibson concurred. "There's no business," he said. "Once they started giving the music away, there's no business. We don't sell shit for records. If we don't go out and sell t-shirts, we don't make money. I'm a t-shirt salesman. I'm not a musician. I'm literally a traveling tchotchke seller. That's what we do. We play music to try to get people to the store and sell them our fuckin' stuff with stuff printed on it. That's the business. If you can't fill up a room, 50,000 units moved on the Internet, then they don't wanna talk to you. And any day now, we're all gonna lose our jobs to these fuckin' robots. Once the A.I. figures out how to actually make music that people enjoy, they're not gonna pay us to do shit."

After Bloom expressed her belief that people will always be interested in seeing live music being performed by humans, Jack said: "Well, that's true. But at this point in time, most of the music business isn't that; most of it is licensing and commercial jingles and music editing and music recording. All that's gonna just disappear. There's gonna be 50 people out there who make music that people are interested in that can't be reproduced. And then the rest of it… Like, who's gonna pay somebody to write music for a movie? Or pay an orchestra, pay 60 people to come in and perform it when one guy can just go [punch a few commands into a computer] and it comes out. And we're not gonna know the fucking difference. Things are changing so fast that I don't really know what to say."

Souza joined EXODUS in 1986 after previously fronting the band LEGACY (which later became TESTAMENT). He remained in the band until their hiatus in 1993, but rejoined them for two years from 2002 to 2004. Dukes had joined EXODUS in 2005 (following Souza's departure) and remained until 2014, when Souza rejoined.

Dukes previously joined EXODUS in January 2005 and appeared on four of the band's studio albums — "Shovel Headed Kill Machine" (2005),"The Atrocity Exhibition... Exhibit A" (2007),"Let There Be Blood" (2008, a re-recording of EXODUS's classic 1985 LP, "Bonded By Blood") and "Exhibit B: The Human Condition" (2010).

EXODUS's third stint with Souza ended in January, with Dukes being welcomed back at the same time.

EXODUS played its first concert with Dukes in nearly 11 years on April 5 at the Decibel Magazine Metal & Beer Fest: Philly at the Fillmore in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Although EXODUS rarely gets mentioned alongside the so-called "Big Four" of 1980s thrash metal — METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX — the aforementioned "Bonded By Blood" LP inspired the likes of TESTAMENT, DEATH ANGEL, VIO-LENCE and many others to launch their careers and is considered one of the most influential thrash metal albums of all time.