In a new interview with Axe Lords, Kerry King recalled Jeff Hanneman’s influence on Slayer. King explained how Hanneman’s punk influence eventually affected his songwriting.
“I don’t think I would apply it like that. I think it was more like an influence kind of thing. He introduced all of us to punk because at that point in my teenage years, I was sitting on the Halfords, Ronnie James Dios, and Ozzys of the world,” he said.
“Then he started bringing the punk in and I didn’t get it,” the rocker then admitted. “I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve already got like the best singers on the planet I’m into, what’s going on with this punk thing and why are you into it?’ I’m not going to say one day it clicked, but over the time of being force-fed punk by Jeff Hanneman, it grew on me.”
“Then for years and years, he was incorporating it into Slayer material, be it more trashy riffs. Toward the end of Jeff’s time, it kind of flip-flopped and I was writing the punkier stuff and he was writing the moodier stuff. Our influences became each other’s influences. In the beginning, he would write punkier stuff and, in the end, I ended up writing punkier stuff,” he added.
King played rhythm guitars on songs written by Jeff Hanneman. The rocker even swapped his gear to Hanneman’s to keep the signature feel of Hanneman’s style. “In Slayer, when Jeff was still in the band and I did [the second track of guitar rhythms] on songs he wrote, I would use Jeff’s guitar,” he said in another chat with Guitar World. “So, any nuances from his rig or his guitar would still come through, even though I was playing it.”
The rocker was asked if he intentionally wrote certain parts of his solo album to match Jeff’s style. “That’s overthinking things. It didn’t occur to me once to write like Jeff. This is me. But I played Jeff’s songs and he played my songs for so long that our styles became kind of integrated,” he responded.
While Slayer is currently only scheduled to play in Louder Than Life Fest on September 18-21, King’s next solo show is scheduled to take place tomorrow night in Wisconsin.
