TBT – When Johnnie Met Kerry King from Slayer – And He Was a Nice Guy!

The new Slayer album comes out on Friday, September 11th, Repentless, and if you read the internet stuff about it, people are constantly slagging Kerry King. Some of it is pretty funny, some of it is idiots blaming him for every evil in the world, Dave Lombardo being let go from Slayer, and even Jeff Hanneman's death. All of which is dumb, but is Kerry really a bad guy?

I can only go by personal experience. I met him one day in El Paso, when he came to town for a guitar clinic. He stopped by the radio station to promote that night's clinic, and then I went and watched the whole show at the shop.

Not only was he pretty nice at the radio station, he was super cool with all the fans at the clinic. He even did something I haven't seen other guitarists do at their clinics, he let any fan who wanted to play, come up and play his guitar!

People wanted to know how to play certain Slayer riffs, and instead of just showing them, he let them come up and play what they knew, and he would give them tips on what to work on, show them the way he plays the riffs, and give them help. It was pretty freaking cool, actually.

We all learned that he plays very lightly, and he joked that people were "beating the s*** out of my guitar", when they'd come on stage to play stuff with him. The whole event was fun, and a lot of people got to get on stage and play his guitar, and work out Slayer riffs with one of the guys who'd written them.

Does he say things on the internet that piss people off? Yeah, and he admits that.

Is he as big an assh*** as people make him out to be? Probably not, and from my brief day hanging out with him, he was really cool with people.

Try not to take someone else's hatred online and run with it. Also don't take someone's approval online and run with that. Make up your own mind, based on your experience with something. Just sayin.

And yes, that really is me with hair.