Founding member of metal band Slayer
Jeff Hanneman 49 a guitarist and founding member of the thrash metal band Slayer whose career was irrevocably changed after a spider bite died Thursday of liver failure at a Los Angeles hospital according to spokeswoman Heidi Robinson Fitzgerald.
Hanneman was born Jan. 31 1964 in Oakland and co founded the speed metal pioneers in Huntington Beach in the early 1980s. He and Kerry King played screaming guitars vocalist Tom Araya played bass and Dave Lombardo played drums (Paul Bostaph later replaced Lombardo). The group's first two albums Show No Mercy and Hell Awaits featured undiluted blasts of pure white metallic noise according to the Encyclopedia of Pop Music.
Rock 'n' roll was never supposed to be polite Hanneman said in a 1988 interview with The Times' pop music critic Robert Hilburn. Led Zeppelin Aerosmith weren't polite. They were against the grain. And that's what we want our music to be rude aggressive ... like real life.
That was two years after Slayer's breakthrough album Reign in Blood which featured such song titles as Necrophobic and Raining Blood.
We write the songs that we do because that's what we like Hanneman told Hilburn. But they are just stories not things we actually do or recommend anyone else go out and do. Take the song 'Piece by Piece ' about chopping up somebody. To us it's like a horror movie. It's fun because the songs and movies shock you. The kids get into it on the same level we do. They know it is just a story and just fun.
The guitarist had recently begun writing songs with the band in anticipation of recording a new album later this year. He had been slowly recovering from a flesh eating bacterial disease believed to be the result of a spider bite that nearly cost him his arm after he failed to seek immediate treatment.
Robinson Fitzgerald said it's believed that the 2011 spider bite contributed to the failure of Hanneman's liver but it is unclear whether an autopsy will be scheduled.
John Williamson a pioneer of the 1960s sexual revolution who operated Topanga Canyon's Sandstone Retreat from 1968 to 1972 offering seminars on human bonding relationships and sexuality in a clothing optional setting died of cancer March 24 at a Reno hospital his wife Barbara Williamson said this week. He was 80.
Los Angeles Times staff and wire reports
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