With the announcement of this memorial, a few questions came to my mind…. Who will be there? Will the Westboro Baptist Church dare venture in Hollywoodland? And should I go?
A public memorial for Jeff Hanneman, Slayer’s guitarist, has been planned at the Hollywood Palladium next week, and it’s totally free, but based on the usual first-come first-serve mayhem. I expect chaos and thousands of metal fans trashing the place! Or may be it’s gonna be quieter than I think, because after all it is a memorial. But the place is big, it can contain 4,000 people and Slayer is super-famous in the metal world, so the area should be quite populated by some interesting characters. This is what was posted on Slayer Facebook page:
‘DETAILS FOR JEFF HANNEMAN MEMORIAL CELEBRATION ANNOUNCED:
The Jeff Hanneman Memorial Celebration will take place on Thursday, May 23 at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles from 3:30 – 7:30PM. Hanneman passed away on May 2 at the age of 49.
The Memorial Celebration will be free and open to the public on a first-come, first-in basis (subject to venue capacity). All ages are welcome, and paid parking will be available around the venue.
Jeff Hanneman helped shape Slayer’s uncompromising thrash-metal sound as well as an entire genre of music. His riffs of fury and punk-rock attitude were heard in the songs he wrote, including Slayer classics “Angel of Death,” “Raining Blood,” “South of Heaven” and “War Ensemble.” Hanneman co-founded Slayer with fellow-guitarist Kerry King, bassist Tom Araya and drummer Dave Lombardo in Huntington Park, CA in 1981. For more than 30 years, Hanneman was the band member who stayed out of the spotlight, rarely did interviews, amassed an impressive collection of World War II memorabilia, was with his wife Kathy for nearly three decades, shut off his phone and went incommunicado when he was home from tour, did not want to be on the road too late into any December as Christmas was his favorite holiday, and, from the time he was about 12 years old, woke up every, single day with one thing on his mind: playing the guitar.
It was once suggested to Slayer that if they would write “just one mainstream song that could get on the radio,” they would likely sell millions of records and change the commercial course of their career, similar to what had happened to Metallica with 1993’s “Enter Sandman.” Jeff was the first to draw a line of integrity in the sand, replying, “We’re going to make a Slayer record. If you can get it on the radio, fine, if not, then fuck it.’
By the way, Jeff Hanneman died from liver cirrhosis, and not from that scary necrotizing fasciitis, flesh eating bacteria disease induced by a spider bite! It’s far less hardcore, but it is the truth.
The Memorial starts at 3:30 pm and since I work till 5, I may be late to the party. Of course, I would love to see the Westboro church morons picketing with their stupid signs and being slaughtered by Slayer’s fans. I am not a violent person at all, but this is a totally different story.