Kerry King of Slayer at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater - more photos... photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer |
by jeff barringer
club kingsnake staff
Slayer
Hometown: Los Angeles, California
http://slayer.net
Slayer Concert Photos
Saturday, Sept 1, 2007
Verizon Wireless Amphitheater (Selma, Texas)
Also:
Bleeding Through,
Marilyn Manson
What a day.
It was 3:30 pm when I got the confirmation on my press pass for the Slayer/Manson show. Kerry came through on the Slayer side, but unfortunately I didn't get approved to shoot Manson. That turned out to be to my advantage in the long run.
I packed up the car and headed south to Moondog's house, then on to Jay West's house. Moondog would be shooting for the venue, Jay would be shooting for
Insite Magazine, and we decided to carpool down together. Slipping in the Zico Chain's new disc
Food, I cranked up the tunes, pointed my truck south and prayed for light traffic.
After what seemed a long hour in which I offered to stop at the Snake Farm several times for my passengers, we finally saw our exit off I-35 and headed off down some back road. Slipping in through the back way we snuck almost to the head of the line pulling into the huge parking lot. Lucking out, we ended up parking close to the ticket office. Moondog, being an old hand, quickly got us in and Megan and Howie of Live Nation got us all badged up. Just in time too -- we barely had a chance to draw a bottle of water before we were whisked down to the pit via an extra large golf cart.
Brandan Schieppati of Bleeding Through- more photos... photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer |
This would be a S.O.P. escort in, escort out gig with heavy security in the pit area to handle the moshers and crowd surfers. Limited to two songs from Bleeding Through and Slayer I would either have to surrender my camera after each band or sit out the balance of the set in the ticket office. Checking out the pit, the center of the stage sat fully 20 feet forward of the main stage, creating a T-shaped zone with two bottlenecks at the corners of its base. In those corners were possibly the two largest security guards in the whole crew. I could probably manage to squeeze through to shoot from both sides of the stage during the opening act, Bleeding Through, but with only two songs and the knowledge that security would be dealing with the surfers during Slayer, I wasn't going to chance it during their set.
It's rare that a member of a metal band can be labeled "cute," at least from the testosterone packing members of the audience, but Bleeding Through's keyboardist, Marta Peterson, is a babe. The rest of the band? Not so cute. They were certainly loud though, and mobile, too, with lead singer Brandan Schieppati jumping off the stage into the pit and then wandering off through the crowd, eventually emerging back on stage.
After a quick two songs we were escorted out of the pit area. While a few photographers surrendered their cameras and stayed for the balance of their set, I headed back up to the ticket office on foot to see if there was a back stage pass with my name on it.
There was! And a front row ticket as well. Knowing Kerry would probably be busy before his set, I decided to wait until after the Slayer set to go say hello. This turned out to be a mistake as later Kerry said if I had come early he could have worked it so I could shoot the whole Slayer set. DOH!
Cooling our jets, munching on fried zuchinni in the ticket office, it seemed like forever before the golf cart with our escort appeared. More photographers had arrived and the cart was way overloaded as we sped off down the hill to the stage area. After being unloaded backstage, we were ushered into the photo pit area and I glanced at the crowd. The mosh pit was packed as were most of the seats. A huge white curtain now shielded the stage, and there seemed to be three times the number of security in the pit area. I picked my spot on the right side of the stage, right under Kerry. The venue darkened and the band filtered onstage. The curtain dropped and then WHAM! SLAYER!
Kerry King of Slayer - more photos... photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer |
Smoke started pouring out, lights began flashing, and my compatriots and I snapped pictures as furiously as we could work the shutters. The smoke and strobes made it very tough to lock the focus and, frustratingly, I couldn't get my D200 out of display mode, slowing shooting. I switched to the D70 and would try to deal with the other camera during the song break. I was able to get some good shots of Tom and Kerry, but there was no way I could get any shots of Jeff without either moving to the other side of the stage or getting the D200 back in action. I fiddled with its settings and finally got it working; unfortunately it seemed right as Kerry noticed me and came up to play for my camera. With the D200 and it's 70-200 zoom and Kerry right above me I just couldn't neck it down to focus that closely, and by the time I got the D70 up to aim it Kerry had moved to the other side of the stage.
Way too soon, our two songs were up and the photographers were escorted out again. Grabbing some kingsnake t-shirts from my bag I surrendered my cameras, and headed off to find my seat and enjoy the rest of the show. Huge video screens on either site of the stage gave me great close up views of the action without having to deal with the moshers below. Slipping out to grab a coke, I ran into
Jason McMaster (Broken Teeth, Dangerous Toys). As he rushed back to his seat he yelled his greeting and "They're playing "Chemical Warfare" and I don't want to miss it." I must see Jason at just about every metal show I go to. After they plowed through "Chemical Warfare" and songs like "South of Heaven" and "Angel of Death," the set was over -- too soon for me, but almost to the minute right on time with the production schedule.
Tom Araya of Slayer - more photos... photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer |
Now cameraless and seated, I weighed my options. Do I try to go backstage now or do I sit here and watch Manson perform? With no camera or camera pass, the choice was pretty obvious. I am sorry I didn't get to see Marilyn Manson perform or shoot his set, but as it turns out I was destined to "bump" into him later, however briefly.
With my VIP pass in hand, I gingerly tried it at the main backstage door and to my surprise it worked! They let me in with nary a blink. As I wandered aimlessly, I came upon a group of hot babes under an awning feeding a cricket to a spider and cheering the spider on. I wondered if they were in the Slayer camp or the Manson camp, but they obviously were in one of them as most civilians would have found it creepy. One of them had taped a hand written sign under the web that said "Protected Species: Do Not Disturb."
Entering a side door to the snack bar, I paused for a few minutes before pigeonholing a roadie and asking him to let Kerry know I was here. A few minutes later he was back and said Kerry would be out to get me in fifteen minutes or so. I grabbed a lemonade from the dispenser and kicked back, watching some pre-season football. It wasn't long before Kerry's glaring visage was there and ushering me back to his dressing room.
Once we were in this small cave like room in the bowels of the theater and my eyes adjusted to the low light, I could see that the hot babes were there, as well as a couple other friends. Kerry iintroduced me to one of the women, who turned out to be his wife,
Ayesha. I had suspected as much earlier, as I knew one of the spider feeders was relatively experienced.
I wasn't in the room two minutes before I was slamming a tequila shot with Kerry and we were talking snakes. Manson started up onstage, 20 minutes late, as Kerry and I talked about his collection. Rock star and music journalist hats set aside, we were just a couple guys talking about their reptiles and reptile experiences. As Kerry stepped out to watch a Manson song, I put the journalist hat back on again and talked with the tour manager. We talked about the tour and other bands he had worked with. We had an interesting discussion going about AC/DC, comparing and contrasting Bon Scott and Brian Johnson, before I begged out to go grab a smoke.
Kerry King of Slayer - more photos... photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer |
Manson had gone over schedule, and blown the curfew as well, by 17 minutes. With a $1000 fine per minute it was costly to say the least. Standing out on the porch as he wrapped his set, I ran into Kerry's wife, and we stood there a bit smoking and talking. Ayesha got a call on her phone and had to go back in, but I stayed out long enough to finish my smoke. Once it had burned down to the butt, I snuffed it out, turned on my heel and headed back in. En-route I nearly collided head-on with a severely disheveled Marilyn Manson, being physically assisted off stage and back to his dressing room by his manager.
Back in Kerry's dressing room, the snake talk immediately started again, Kerry whipping out his new iPhone and showing me pictures of his pythons. With him beaming like a proud papa, we went through dozens of snake pictures before the crowd of post-show well wishers overwhelmed him. I thanked Kerry and Ayesha for inviting me out and then began my long hike back to my truck.
What a great night.
Tom Araya of Slayer - more photos... photo by jeff barringer - staff photographer
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