BLABBERMOUTH.NET
During an appearance on the latest episode of
"The Ex-Man" podcast hosted by
Doc Coyle (
BAD WOLVES), original
SLAYER drummer
Dave Lombardo was asked if he felt any sadness or if he had any regrets about the fact that he didn't take part in the band's final tour. He responded (hear audio below): "When I was [still] in the band, I knew
Tom [
Araya, bass/voclals] wanted to retire. I knew he wanted to stop. Actually,
Kerry [
King, guitar] and I were gonna start a new band after
Tom's retirement. And we were actually scouting guitar players. And
SLAYER was playing
Hellfest [in France], and we said, 'Hey, let's go see
EXODUS.' And so
Kerry and I walked over to the stage where
EXODUS was playing, and we stood on the side of the stage, stage left, and were watching
Gary [
Holt].
Jeff [
Hanneman] was still in [
SLAYER at that point],
Jeff was still playing,
Jeff was fine. And I told [
Kerry], I go, 'There's our guy right there,'" referring to
Holt. "'That's the guitar player we need.' And it just turns out that, as life went on, we needed to replace
Jeff [and
Gary stepped in].
"We didn't tell
Gary — I don't think we had told
Gary that
Kerry and I were going to start a new band, but he was the first choice when that moment came [to replace
Jeff in
SLAYER],"
Dave explained. "And I agreed, everybody agreed. And Jeff agreed as well, because he knew — he knew.
"As far as I'm concerned, I played the first show with the original
SLAYER, and I played the last show with the original
SLAYER, and I'm happy with that,"
Lombardo added. "It was a brilliant band. We made some history. And I wish them well. But there's nothing, man.
"I'm happy in my world, man. The best way is just to keep moving forward. I look at the future."
Lombardo also talked about the fact that he was left out of the songwriting credits on most of the
SLAYER albums he appeared on, despite the fact that his drum patterns enhanced the music greatly.
"Fans really don't understand this one aspect of songwriting," he said. "If you're a drummer, and this is something I didn't learn until
way later in my career — if you're a drummer, and you walk into a room and you start writing music, and you start working with a guitar player, and you start working on parts, putting parts together… you basically wrote part of that song. Well, every
SLAYER album I've been a part of, I've been in the room with
Kerry from the beginning of that song. He may have written two riffs or three riffs and the drum beat is [hums generic fast beat], and then it goes into a double-bass [part]. All right, that's all he knows, but everything in between, he's not telling me to do. So technically, under songwriting copyright law, if you walk into a room with somebody, you walk in with a musician and you guys work on a body of music, you're basically co-writing.
"From day one, [the other members of
SLAYER] put into my mind that because I didn't have a stringed instrument, I wasn't a songwriter… When I got into
SLAYER and we started writing music, I was 17 years old, 16 years old. I was a kid. I didn't know
anything about copyright law. There's a lot of Internet
Rambos [who say], 'Oh, he didn't write anything.' You know what? I was there from the beginning on all those songs.
"There are some songs on the two albums I did [before my final departure],
'Christ Illusion' and
'World Painted Blood', I [am getting] publishing across the board on those records. It's good, and that was the one thing I asked when I came back to the band. It ain't much, but hey…"
The 55-year-old musician, who splits most of his time between crossover pioneers
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, horror-punk icons
MISFITS and hardcore supergroup
DEAD CROSS, was effectively fired from
SLAYER after sitting out the group's Australian tour in February/March 2013 due to a contract dispute with the other bandmembers. He has since been replaced by
Paul Bostaph, who was previously
SLAYER's drummer from 1992 until 2001.
Shortly after his dismissal,
Lombardo said that he discovered that 90 percent of
SLAYER's tour income was being deducted as expenses, including fees to management, costing the band millions and leaving them with about 10 percent to split four ways. While he and
Araya hired auditors to figure out what had happened,
Lombardo said he was never allowed to see any of the information obtained.
A few years ago,
King said that "when
Dave was in [
SLAYER] this last time, I figured I'd be on the stage with him until one of us fell off the stage, dead. Things change. He got some bad advice and listened to some bad advice, gave us an ultimatum ten days before we went to Australia [to do the
Soundwave festival tour]. And I said, 'I can't have this over my head.' And I feel bad for
Dave to this day; I really feel bad for him because he shot himself in the foot. Maybe he thought he had the upper hand, but you ain't gonna get me."
SLAYER played its last-ever show on November 30, 2019 at The Forum in Los Angeles.