Ay ay ay, this Guitar World Jeff Hanneman issue is seemingly a never-ending pile of Slayer drama. We learned that Hanneman was in a deep depression before he died and earlier this week, Tom Araya questioned the future of the band without Hanneman, stopping short of saying the band should break up without him.
Today's quote comes from Kerry King, who discussed his relationship with his partner in guitar-shredding crime.
"[Any time we would finish a tour, Jeff] would just go home and detach," King says. "He might have lived only 45 minutes away, but unless you were part of his inner circle, it was hard to stay in touch with him. And it took me a few years to understand that. For a while I was just like, 'Why isn't this guy calling me back?' But as I got older, I just realized that that was who Jeff was.
"I don't think Jeff and I were ever best friends," continues King. "I think we were probably the closest in the band, but never best friends. To put it in a way that everyone could understand, Jeff and I were like business partners. Was he my friend? Of course he was my friend. But we didn't really act like that. The last time I was at Jeff's house was January 2003. We went to his place to watch the Raiders in the playoffs. And it sounds horrible, but it wasn't horrible. That was just how it was."
It's kind of a bummer that it got to that point with the band, but I guess when you work with the same people for 30 years, it does in a sense become a business relationship.
It seems that frontman Tom Araya had a closer relationship with Hanneman. On a perhaps more positive note, Araya stated in the same article that there is still some unreleased Hanneman music out there:
I had been texting with him, and he even sent me a song that he had been working on. So it seemed like he was doing okay. But when I got the call that he was back in intensive care, I became concerned. Eventually he stopped responding to my texts. It was like a one-sided conversation.
I'm sure that song rules. King had much more positive things to say about Hanneman during the memorial last month. Watch our video report and read our recap from the Jeff Hannmean memorial a few weeks ago.
You could read the whole story in the latest issue of Guitar World magazine.
[via Blabbermouth]
