Slayer: The Tragic Death of Jeff Hanneman

Slayer: The Tragic Death of Jeff Hanneman

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Hailed as one of the most important and influential guitarists in heavy metal, Jeff Hanneman would be instrumental in giving Slayer their iconic sound, while also serving as one of their principal songwriters.But his time would be cut short due to an unfortunate set of medical circumstances that led to a downward spiral. That’s what we’re going to explore in today’s video.

Slayer’s origins date back to Los Angeles in 1981 when guitarist Kerry King was meeting a band holding auditions for a guitar player recalling to Guitar World
“As I was leaving, I saw Jeff just kinda standing around playing guitar, and he was playing stuff that I was into, like Def Leppard’s ‘Wasted’ and AC/DC and Priest. So I started talking to him and just said, ‘Hey, you want to start a band?’ I already knew Dave [Lombardo, drummer] and we had been playing together in his parents’ garage a bit, and so I brought Jeff in, then went to Tom [Araya, vocalist/bassist], who I was playing with in another band, and said, ‘Hey man, I have a different band if you’re interested.’ And that was it.”
Hanneman would admit to author Jon Widerhorn that he was initially intimated by King’s guitar playing recalling ‘I just remember I was scared shitless. I had been playing the least amount of time, so I sucked. I’d only been playing for like a month by the time I met Kerry, and after I saw him play I was like, ‘Oh man I gotta speed up the learning process’.”


Slayer would be influenced by british metal acts including judas priest, iron maiden and black sabbath. But apart from metal Hanneman was also influenced by hardcore punk, introducing the other members to the genre and giving the band a harder edge to their music than their contemporaries with Hanneman telling Loudersound “We weren’t schooled musicians,” “but we knew what sounded dark. If it sounds like I’m standing over a body that’s just been stabbed to death, then it’s perfect.”

Apart from king being the more technical of the two guitar players he knew well where his strengths lie and that was in songwriting going on to write the band’s best known known songs Angel of Death and Reigning Blood recalling in an interview ‘I tried to emulate what Steve Vai and Joe Satriani did and really grow as a guitarist,” Hanneman once mused, before adding, “Then I said, ‘I don’t think I’m that talented, but more importantly, I don’t care’.”

It was during the band’s early years that three of the four members had vehicles to get to and from practice. According to guitar world. Hanneman either had a series of DUI’s or never had a license at the time. Araya would tell Guitar World
“When we started the band, Kerry would pick him up from his house in Long Beach and I would drop him off after rehearsal,” . “That was the trade-off. So we spent a lot of time in the car together, usually drinking beer. I would drop him off, and sometimes I’d hang with him at his house with his parents.”

It was around the time Slayer released their first album Show No Mercy in 1983 that Hanneman would meet his life partner Kathryn. She would recall to guitar world “My girlfriend and I were getting tired of going to the movies every weekend, so we decided to go see this band called Slayer at a little club in Buena Park called the Woodstock,” “They were playing with a band called Leatherwolf. I begged my father to let us go to the show, knowing that I would be home later than my 10 o’clock curfew, and he was okay with that. There may have been 15 or 20 people at the show, so I was able to stand up front against the stage, on Jeff’s side. And before I knew it, he kneeled down, grabbed me by the hair, and started making out with me. I was blown away, and that was how we met.”


The couple would stay in touch and they would wed in Las Vegas in 1989.

In 1986 Slayer would release their seminal album Reign In Blood, which featured the hugely controversial song Angel of Death. AUthor Paul Elliott would recall how Hanneman told him how the song was written in a strange setting recalling @The last time I spoke to Hanneman, in 2009, he explained that Angel Of Death was written in a most unlikely setting – at the home of his girlfriend’s parents. He laughed about the bizarre nature of his creative process. “It’s weird. Whe