BREAKING THE LAW
Metal was never really meant to get on with the law. Here, some of our world’s biggest names open up on the times they’ve fallen foul of the police, or just been straight-up naughty
From Ministry’s Al Jourgensen dealing drugs, to Dani Filth and his infamous ‘Jesus Is A Cunt’ t-shirt, many rockstars have had run-ins with the law. Taken from Hammer writer Jon Wiederhorn’s new book, Raising Hell: Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends, these tales of drunkenness, pissing, mistaken kidnapping and, um, rotten meat prove metallers will always remain true outlaws. After reading this, you probably won’t wanna go round Glen Benton’s house for dinner…
COREY TAYLOR SLIPKNOT, STONE SOUR
“I had been throwing shot glasses at people all night at The Rainbow. They were on the verge of banning me from the club and I had no idea, I was so fucking out of it. So we left, and I was running down the street with my friend. We get to the corner of Sunset and Larrabee, right across the street from the fucking Viper Room. And we see a big window of this beeper shop, and he goes, ‘Man, I bet you could put your foot right through that.’ So I said, ‘Yeah?’ and then I kicked it to pieces. I swear to god, dude, it was slo-mo.
“I turned around. There was a cop sitting at the stoplight. And I just wandered over and put my hands on the fucking hood. I am not trying to run from LA cops, no fucking way. So they cuff me and sit me in front of the Viper Room and all these Hollywood people are coming up and laughing at me, so I started spitting at them ’cause I don’t give a fuck.
“They took me to the station and all I wanted to do was piss. So I kept making them take me to the bathroom, which was delaying my fingerprinting. In that time, my buddy manages to work out a deal with the owners of the shop that if I could pay for the window, they won’t press charges.
“So, I’m just about to be processed. I’m on the verge of LA County fucking jail and they get the call, help me put my clothes back on – because I was getting in the orange suit. I was going. They take me back down, uncuff me. I stumble across Sunset with a fistful of gnarly money and I drunkenly slur an apology. I go back home and pass out and I wake up and go, ‘Oh my god, what the fuck just happened.’”
VINNIE PAUL ABBOTT PANTERA, HELLYEAH
“In Pantera, one of our favourite things to do at the studio was this game called Twist And Hurl. You’d drink one of these little bottles of beer and guzzle it until you finished it, and then you had to spin and throw it at this stop sign, and if you hit it you won. We did that just about every night.
“And then one night in 1991, we did it and these flashlights popped up through the trees and there were, like, five cops there ready to arrest us. I don’t know how we talked our way out of it.”
MAX CAVALERA SOULFLY, CAVALERA CONSPIRACY, EX-SEPULTURA
“My wife and I went to see a Rage Against The Machine concert in Phoenix between the time Sepultura did Chaos A.D. and Roots. As we were leaving the show to go home, a jeep full of jocks started to give us shit.
“I’M NOT RUNNING FROM LA COPS, NO FUCKING WAY”
I screamed, ‘Fuck you!’ and they came back with guns and shot at us.
“I got really freaked out because my wife was pregnant, so I was trying to protect her. The police heard the shots and showed up. They grabbed my passport, which was Brazilian, and they said, ‘We’re gonna deport you, motherfucker.’
“I explained that these guys had shot at us, but it was like talking to a wall. The cops ignored me and came up with their own story. They blamed us and let these asshole jocks go. We spent 18 hours in jail and the whole time I was thinking, ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to write so much hateful shit!’”
HEIDI SHEPHERD BUTCHER BABIES
“We were on tour with Otep in 2016 and we woke up one morning in Lexington, Kentucky, to find the transmission had gone out in our bus. We were trying to rent a van to get to the next show in Knoxville, Tennessee. It was Labor Day weekend and the only thing available was a U-haul truck. So we rented a U-haul to put all of our gear in and our sleeping stuff, and we camped out in the back of a U-haul truck, in the box of the truck, for four days.
“We were in Alabama and [vocalist] Carla [Harvey] and I were sleeping in the back and we both woke up and had to pee. So we called to the guys in the front to pull over. We jumped out, peed by the side of the road, got back in and started driving. A couple miles down the road, a bunch of cops pulled us over. A cop walked up to Jason [Klein], our old bass player who was driving the U-haul and said, ‘So, what you got back there?’ ‘Equipment, a couple things,’ Jason said. ‘Anything else?’ asked the cop. ‘Nope,’ lied Jason. ‘Well, why don’t I go back there and take a look?’ the cop said. The back popped up and the cop goes, ‘Aha, equipment, huh?’
“Five or six cop cars came up out of nowhere and surrounded us. As it turned out, someone from down the freeway [had seen me and Carla peeing] and called the police and said Carla and I were two little girls that had been kidnapped and were in the back of this U-haul. They threatened to take Jason to jail because he lied. We told them we were a band and we were on tour, which was the truth.
“‘Sure you are,’ said one of the cops. ‘You’ve already lied once.’ We figured, ‘OK, we’re fucked,’ but it was right in the middle of Hurricane Sandy and all of a sudden there was a flash flood rainstorm. We were about four miles from the venue. And they said, ‘You know what. We have better things to do. Get in your truck and just go.’”
AL JOURGENSEN MINISTRY, REVOLTING COCKS
“I was dealing coke to pay my tuition and I had this dealer in Florida. I met these people that said they wanted to do a 20-kilo deal. I was like, ‘That’s above my head, I have to get permission for this’. So the guy I was dealing with flew up from Florida. That was the guy that was sending me the coke at my college, and I would distribute it to eight fraternities, an eight ball at a time. So I had a pretty good deal but then I got greedy, and this sounded good. They were going to pay me 20k just to introduce them, the two parties, and to count the money. But the one guy was a DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] agent.
“My lawyer claimed that this was a clear case of entrapment, so I only got probation. These days you could still be in jail for two kilos of coke. The caveat was that I had to finish college; I figured I’d graduate and teach music.
But then in my third year of college, Arista signed me and offered me a bunch of money, so they waived my graduation requirement and I got to go be a rock star and it got me away from my teaching career.”
GARY HOLT EXODUS, SLAYER
“After some of the guys in Exodus stole this gear from another band, our former guitarist Tim Agnello – who I replaced – ratted them out because he was so mad he was out of the band. There was bitter hatred there. The heist happened between the time Tim left in a rage and I got hired. So I wasn’t a member yet at the time of theft.
“Back then, I let them rehearse in my garage, so they stored the stolen equipment there. After they got caught, I got dragged out of a local show at Alvarado Park. My father showed up with a policeman, and my first thought was that someone in the family died.
The cop says, ‘You gotta come with me.’ He took me down to the Richmond Police Department. They asked if I helped steal from this band and I said I didn’t know anything about any stolen equipment, and I convinced them I was an innocent pawn in this whole chess game – until I got home and transported the remaining gear out of the garage and went and hid it. Someone saw me doing that, which cemented my guilt.
“I was a juvenile and so was [Exodus drummer] Tom Hunting so we had to do work detail. They had us shovelling roads to help clear these giant floods and mudslides. It was heavy fuckin’ labour and it fucking sucked. I was 17 years old.
“Kirk [Hammett, Exodus guitarist who later joined Metallica], [bassist] Jeff Andrews and our friend Mark were all adults, so they had to spend a lot of money to get off, but they didn’t do a day of time. I missed a day of work duty, and if you miss a day you have to go straight to Juvenile Hall. I had to do a night in there.
“That was the only night in my life that I spent behind bars, but that was enough for me. It sucked. Being behind a locked door is no fun. I’ve just never liked being confined in any way. And
GLEN BENTON
“IT WAS A SHALLOW GRAVE... SOMEONE CALLED THE COPS”
by the time I was locked up, I was in the band. We were playing a party the very next day, so I got picked up from Juvenile Hall and went straight to the party and partied very hard. So I guess the story sort of had a happy ending.”
DANI FILTH CRADLE OF FILTH
“We were doing a photoshoot at the Vatican in Rome, and one of us had an ‘I love Satan’ shirt on. Another one of us had a ‘Jesus Is A Cunt’ shirt, and our keyboardist was dressed as a priest, which is illegal in Italy. Also, you’re not allowed to do photoshoots in there.
“All these armed guards surrounded us with Uzis. The Vatican extols its own law, so they could have done anything to us. And the only thing that kept us from having a really good kicking in the cells for an indeterminate length of time was the fact that at the other end of town, 2,500 people were gonna riot if we didn’t show up at that evening’s concert. So they sort of weighed the pros and cons and let us go.”
GLENN BENTON DEICIDE
“In the early days of Deicide we really wanted to be different and extreme, so I would go to the butcher’s before the show and buy all sorts of animal organs and innards and throw them into the crowd. When we were up in New York, the club owner said, ‘If you bring any guts or shit in, you’re out of here.’
“I had to bury a whole 30-pound beef liver in the backyard of the place we were staying. It was a shallow grave and it attracted a million blowflies. So when someone saw all these flies swarming around this spot, they thought there was a dead body buried there. They called the cops and all these police cars swarmed in and dug out this giant beef liver.”
RAISING HELL: BACKSTAGE TALES
FROM THE LIVES OF METAL LEGENDS IS OUT ON JANUARY 7 VIA DIVERSION BOOKS