Gary Holt recalls how Exodus would cut “poser” shirts into strips with knives during the ‘80s feud between thrash and glam
Gary Holt has reflected on the competition among metal bands that existed during the 1980s as he played with Exodus, sharing how segregation and rivalry among fan bases was a lot more prominent than in today’s landscape.
According to Holt, who’s played with Exodus since 1981 and as part of Slayer between 2013-2019 (as well as for their post-retirement festival shows), the competition among artists was rather beneficial in hindsight, though it did lead to some “poser shirts” meeting a tragic end with a pocket knife at Exodus gigs.
READ MORE: Gary Holt believes it “would have really been fake” if he’d tried to mimic Jeff Hanneman’s solo style in Slayer
In an interview with Ultimate Guitar, Holt opens up about the competitive drive among thrash bands at that time: “The competition was one-sided, because in the Bay Area, we were afraid of nobody,” he begins. “We were all friends, and we all hung out and drank together at the shows. But we all wanted to one up each other.
“I mean, Exodus was always on the winning end of that competition. Because nobody wanted any of this. Our crowd in the Bay Area was the most violent and most over the top of any of the bands. So, we had nothing to fear.”
As of the division among other sub-genres of metal, but particularly between thrash and hair metal, he says, “In the [Paul] Baloff era in Exodus, if someone showed up with a Ratt shirt, we’d pull out the pocket knife and cut strips of the shirt off. If you look at some of the old photos of Baloff, he’s got all these pieces of cloth, like, for three inches, tied around his wrist. Those are threads of a poser shirt!
“But, at the same time, us guitar players were secretly coveting every Warren DeMartini riff, like the sickest, greatest guitar player on earth with the best tone ever, him and Robbin [Crosby]. So, we were like actively sitting there listening to him and George Lynch [of Dokken].” He adds, “The segregation between the two genres – we were like mutual enemies. We needed one another. We both died out together, it seems, at the end of the ‘80s. Mutual beneficial enemies, y’know?”
Gary Holt’s memoir, A Fabulous Disaster, will be published in April 2025 – you can preorder it now. Slayer will perform at Louder Than Life festival the following September.
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
