“I’d be trying to play a solo while there was a fistfight going on around me”: Gary Holt on a life living fast

Were there to be a Hall Of Fame for the architects of thrash metal, Gary Holt would be among its first wave of inductees. As the only ever-present member of Exodus, his extravagant talents as a guitarist, both rhythm and lead, helped push (very) loud music far past the boundaries established by Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and (even) Venom. When the group’s founder, Kirk Hammett, left to join Metallica in 1983, it was Gary who amassed most of the writing credits on his group’s pivotal first album Bonded By Blood, from 1985.

More than four decades on, this week, Exodus release Goliath, their hulking and typically unrestrained new album (the quintet’s 13th full-length release). While rarely less than compelling, in the four decades that followed, the guitarist’s career has sometimes sailed on choppy waters. In a band that have recruited, and dispensed with, more players than the Harlem Globetrotters, the traditional pitfalls of drugs and unwise living have at times stalled momentum and clouded their thinking.

In the 21st century, though, the mission is clear: age be damned, Exodus gnash and thrash with an intensity that rivals even their feral younger selves. As if this weren’t quite enough, since 2011, the guitarist has also played with Slayer in place of the late Jeff Hanneman.

With Goliath hovering into view, then, Kerrang! caught up with the 61-year-old at his home an hour north of Sacramento, in California, to talk about his life in metal…

Can you remember the first time you heard the term thrash metal?
“I can’t recall the first time it was called thrash metal. My guess would be that it was taken from Metallica’s [song] Whiplash – you know, ’thrashing all around’ – but that’s just my stab at it. Because when we first started people called it speed metal, but that was a term for bands that were kind of fast but not real fast, kind of what we’d now call mid-tempo. They weren’t breakneck.”

The early Bay Area scene of which you were a part was incredibly fruitful. It also seemed to come together very quickly. Was that by accident or design?
“I don’t know. Exodus was founded in ’79, so technically we’re a ’70s band, but I wasn’t there for that. We were just a bunch of kids from the East Bay inner cities playing cover songs. But we had discovered Iron Maiden, and we were playing half that [debut] album at parties and people thought they were originals because no-one knew who they were yet. But the band was covering songs off the first Def Leppard album, Scorpions songs and stuff like that, and then we had originals. But we were an outcast in the backyard party scene because we were so much more metal than all the other bands in the East Bay.”

It isn’t widely known that Kirk Hammett actually founded the band…
“Kirk and Tom [Hunting, drummer] in the De Anza High School music room [in Richmond, California], actually, which was also the Alma Mater to Les Claypool [from Primus]. The first time I ever laid eyes on Kirk Hammett was when they came and played Richmond High music room and I was friends with the guitar player who was let go [Tim Agnello], and I eventually became his replacement. And that was also the first time I saw a guitar player who wasn’t onstage at a concert but was right in front of me. It was pretty fucking awesome, you know? It made me think that I could do that too.”

How sharp were your skills at that time?
“I didn’t play guitar at all.”

So, not very sharp.
“No. But the first time Kirk and I ever hung out, we went to see Ted Nugent and the Scorpions together [at Cow Palace] and we hit it off immediately. At his house, before leaving for the concert, he was the first person to play Uli Jon Roth era Scorpions for me. It’s because of [1976 Scorps album] Virgin Killer that I have a whammy bar in basically every song I’ve ever played. We became super friends right away. He was the one who asked me if I wanted to learn the guitar and he taught me a few chords and riffs. Six months later I joined the band.”

Were the formative Exodus shows at clubs such as The Stone and Ruthie’s Inn as wild as legend would have it?
“Well, it became wild later. The original shows were awesome and were wilder than most bands’ shows. But while Metallica was off conquering the world, Exodus were conquering the Bay Area. Basically, the whole thing crossed over into the punk scene and so we had punks come to our shows, metalheads going to punk shows, and our little entourage of friends – the Slay Team – were the ringleaders of the whole thing. But it was at Ruthie’s that the whole thing became insane. I’d be up there playing guitar in the middle of a fistfight, with one guy throwing punches at another guy on the other side of me while I tried to play a solo.”

Your debut album, Bonded By Blood, became, and remains, a classic of the thrash movement…
“Yeah. But it wasn’t easy. After the album was finished its release was delayed by a year, which probably hurt us. Recording it, though, was fucking lunacy. We sequestered ourselves at Prairie Sun Studios in Cotati, California. They have cabins there, so we lived there, and we just fucking raged. We raged on instruments during the day and at night we just partied – we were animals. The funny story is that when we did 2003’s Tempo Of The Damned album, which is the only other time we returned to the studio, the owner was worried about us coming back. He told me that we’d left a trail of destruction that had to be admired. But then the second time he told me that we left the place cleaner than we’d found it.”

Your singer, the late Paul Baloff, left the band before second album Pleasures Of The Flesh. Was he just too combustible a personality to be around full time?
“He was pretty combustible. Looking back now, under the lens of hindsight, you’d do things differently. You think, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t have fired Paul.’ But while we were becoming messes, Paul was an even bigger mess. He was having a hard time with the material we were writing, and his life was in a state of disorder. Because when we met Paul, he had a trust fund from his parents when they passed, and he burned through that and ended up living at our rehearsal room. I’m a guy who never tries to think about ‘what if?‘s because you’re on the path you’re on, but he was combustible as hell, and super-volatile, and his life was not together. He didn’t even have a home. So do I have some regret over his leaving? Yes, I do… But his life ended with him as one of my best friends, which I’m proud of.”

You had a fondness for crank, a form of speed, which is a pretty blue-collar drug. How did you get into, and out of, that?
“We got into it in the early ’80s. We’d get a bag of crank and everybody would do some bumps so we could keep drinking longer. We’d party and rage. In the ’90s we started smoking it, which meant I could consume 10 times as much. But I remember the first time I smoked it, my first words were, ‘I could get used to this’ – and I fucking got used to it. I got really used to it, which is the point where it becomes a real danger. In the ’90s we got into the crank they called ‘shards’ where it was so pure it looked like pieces of broken glass. It was no longer a bag of yellow powdery shit that stunk. But we did a tour in Europe where we smuggled over a big bag which we then consumed in the first two days and we were dope sick the rest of the tour. But then I gradually started feeling human again and every day that passed I felt like I was coming back. And then when I got home I had a huge rock of speed hidden in the rehearsal room and I traded it for a ride home. And that was the last time I held [that stuff] in my hand.”

And you’ve never looked back?
“I’ve never looked back.”

Exodus signed for Capitol Records for whom you released two albums, Impact Is Imminent and Force Of Habit, that weren’t your best. Do you consider that a squandered opportunity?
“I wouldn’t say ‘squandered‘, because the music climate had changed. I don’t think it mattered what album we made, Capitol wouldn’t have cared. Impact Is Imminent has flaws, but it’s also become a super-popular album [with our fans]. And it laid the blueprint for all modern Exodus. Force Of Habit would be a great album if it had some editing. The label never had any input in what we did, but if we’d cut the fat off it, it would have been better. But it’s a good album. People think it’s not fast, but it’s still faster than what Metallica or anyone else was doing at that time. It just didn’t start with a fast song, which makes people think it’s not fast. But the demos we did for the album were better than the album. They’re raw and super-nasty.”

In the 21st century, you deputised for the now-late Jeff Hanneman. Is that a gig to which you were born?
“Only Jeff was born to it. If I was born to anything it was to keep his seat warm until he could return, which unfortunately never happened [Jeff died in 2013]. My time in Slayer was awesome. Of course, I got to see a little bit how the other half live, and they treated me like family from the jump, which they still do. I had one job in that band which was just to go out and shred. I get to play the ‘guitar hero’ role because there’s a lot of solos in Slayer – a lot – especially on Jeff’s side of things. Back when it started, I thought it would only be a couple of tours, but it turned out to be almost 10 full years and now it’s the occasional show. In fact, we have two coming up this year. But we’ll see how it goes [for the future]. I think it’s a year-to-year thing. Coming back, I think the two most important things were: A) Are we going to be good? and B) Are we going to enjoy it? And we were killer. We had fun, too. Everybody was there for the right reasons.”

What challenges does a professional musician face today that they didn’t in the 20th century?
“Well, I have a side hustle. I sell Kardashian-based merch [Gary wears a T-shirt onstage bearing the words ‘Kill The Kardashians’] and if I’m home I’m the one stuffing every fucking T-shirt [into a package] because it’s extra fucking income. We’re travelling T-shirt salesman, like most bands are. It’s not an issue of ‘poor me’, but you’re doing really good if your [tour] guarantees pay for everything and the merchandise money is yours. That’s the case for us, but a lot of bands are dependent on shirts to put gas in the tank. And the costs are high. We ride in a [tour] bus because I’m 61, I’m not getting in a fucking van. I need to get horizontal, I like naps. Then there’s the crew and flights and all that shit. It adds up. But I’m really lucky. I’m a working musician who makes a living doing that. And I’m not alone. I have a ton of friends in bigger bands than me who have tons of side hustles.”

At last, we reach Goliath, Exodus’s new album. Please tell us all about it.
“It’s fucking enormous. We’re super-proud of this album. We knew we were making something super-special when we recorded it. I mean, I love all our albums, they’re like children, but I’ll put our run from Tempo Of The Damned [from 2004] up to now against anything. Every album has been insane. On this record it was the biggest collaborative effort we’ve ever done, and we were on such a creative explosion that Lee [Altus, guitarist] said, 'Let’s do two albums at once, we have the material and it’s all insane.’ But we came up just slightly short. We have eight done for the next album, though, and only need two more to finish the next one. We’ll probably write 10 more… But we knew we were making something special on this album.”

In closing, how have Exodus avoided the trap of running out of creative steam?
“Exodus lives and thrives on having the biggest chip on our shoulders. We’re paranoid, everybody’s fucking out to get us, everyone’s the enemy – so we go out there and we destroy. But we’re out to prove ourselves. Maybe some of that is because of lost time due to drugs and bad decisions and bad behaviour that makes us feel that we have ground to make up. Because we started this shit, you know? Why should I let somebody else take all the attention?”

Goliath is released on March 20 via Napalm

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