Sometimes a little cleaning can unearth big finds. During my latest attempt at restoring some order to the house of CDs I live in, I came across a stack of old CDR’s that contained the archives of my old radio show, Hellraiser’s Ball, at USC’s student run radio station, KSCR (1560 AM!). One of those discs was labeled “Jeff Hanneman interview.” I had been assigned the interview by a magazine that I wrote for at the time, Worldly Remains, which never paid me and then vanished from the face of the earth forever. This was done in summer 2003, before the release of the War at the Warfield DVD. I was the ripe old age of 20, and not super experienced with band interviews, so it’s… Rough. Not super insightful, shall we say. I like to think I’ve gotten better at interviews since then (and know a hell of a lot more about Slayer), but my editors can probably attest otherwise. At any rate, it’s worth listening to just to hear how patient he was with awkward me asking him questions he’d heard 1000 times before, and to get a sense of his legendary sense of humor. I no longer have the transcription I made at the time (and I’m sure not doing it again), but I thought I would share the audio just to make the record of the late, great Slayer guitarist’s time on this earth a little more complete.
