SLAYER Drummer Talks 'Big Four' In New Interview

Mike Bax of Lithium Magazine recently conducted an interview with SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Lithium Magazine: I watched the footage on that "Big Four" DVD (featuring METALLICA, MEGADETH, SLAYER and ANTHRAX live together at the Sonisphere festival). It's thrilling as a consumer and a fan, but it's got to be pretty special to you guys back stage as well.

Dave: It is. It's amazing. I mean Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] and I have always gotten along. I never ever had any problems with Lars, and no, I'm not just kissing ass. After hanging out backstage, they come and visit us, we go on stage with him; I visit him behind his drum riser it's cool. And also seeing Trujillo [Robert Trujillo, ex-OZZY OSBOURNE bassist and current bass player for METALLICA], and having Gary [playing with SLAYER as a fill-in guitarist], Gary Holt from EXODUS, and the connection between Kirk Hammett [lead guitarist for METALLICA who left EXODUS to join METALLICA in 1983] and Gary. They [Holt and Hammett] had not played together in thirty something years until the "Big Four".

Lithium Magazine: Having your longevity in this business if you count back on the album dates, you must have a pretty unique perspective on the music industry and your place in it. Do you think that if you were starting off as a band in your genre right now, do you think you'd achieve the level of success that you have achieved?

Dave: No, because time is the way it is. Life has its own grid. Things happened at that time like the way they were happening in San Francisco with METALLICA, you know, with EXODUS, too, and us, too. It had to be something with the music that influenced us growing up, whether it was late Sixties or Seventies metal or hard rock. DEEP PURPLE, LED ZEPPELIN, JIMI HENDRIX, all those bands that were a little heavier than the norm like CROSBY, STILLS AND NASH, even JANIS JOPLIN was a little heavy at the time.

Lithium Magazine: All blues bands.

Dave: So I think maybe being influenced by that because kids today aren't getting influenced by music like that. That was our soundtrack so what is going to influence them to create in the future is going to be totally different but that's just evolution. But no, I don't think it could've been done.

Lithium Magazine: Even as early as three years ago, people who have been following the genre would've been like, There's no way those four bands would play together. The fact that it's happening, and I take a look at all the photographs that were taken backstage with all the players hanging out and having fun, its looks pretty fucking good.

Dave: It puts away any doubts that these bands can't get along, or any stories and all that shit, it puts it to rest. That's the thing that gets to me, if we can't all get on stage the one time I had to get a tattoo done and that was the only time I was able to do it. It was a four-and-a-half-hour session; don't get mad because I'm not up on stage doing the "Big Four" jam. Or if SLAYER doesn't make it, or Tom [Araya] doesn't make it. It is what it is.

Read the entire interview from Lithium Magazine.