Kudos to the talent buyer who said, “Hey, let’s bring Anthrax to the Ryman.” The idea of thrash metal classics in such a hallowed and holy room makes me giddy. It would also have made my youth pastor’s head explode.
For four decades, Anthrax has been the thinking person’s thrash band, bringing sick riffs, goofy humor and sonic adventures by the bucketful. Anthrax is unafraid to shake up genre norms — they introduced Public Enemy and Joe Jackson to the heavy-music canon, after all — and their road to the Ryman stage has been a wild one. I caught up with guitarist and songwriter Scott Ian to talk about the band’s current tour, playing metal dating from the height of the Satanic Panic era in a church, and a little bit of Music City rock-show history.
How have the first few days of tour been for you guys?
It’s been great. The shows have been awesome. … We sold out the Palladium the other night, and it was insane. It was just such a great show. Feeling really good to be out here on our 40th, doing so well. … I was really surprised when I saw the Ryman on the itinerary, because — maybe in my ignorance, I just didn’t know that they did metal shows at the Ryman. It just seemed — is “incongruous” the right word? I just never expected that Anthrax would play the Ryman. So yeah, I’m really stoked about that. It’s just one of those historic venues. It’s just a really cool thing for us to get to do.
When was the last time you played in a room that has pews for seats?
How about “never.” … Obviously we did have plans for tour in ’21, or at the time when the actual anniversary was happening or would’ve happened — that was certainly the plan. And then of course that couldn’t happen. At some point in ’20, we already knew that odds are, “We’re not going to be able to tour around our actual 40th.” And that’s when we had this idea to do that documentary series that we were running on our YouTube channel, talking to all different people about the band, and what the band meant to them, and us all being interviewed about the history of the band.
Is there a challenge to revisiting your early material — to keeping up the energy and the excitement for those old songs?
No, no, not at all. For me, just getting to play is always fun. So no, it’s never a challenge to have energy to play Anthrax songs. That’s never been an issue. If anything, playing songs that we haven’t played in a long time, it’s like revisiting an old friend. Not to sound super cliché, but it’s very exciting when you play a song maybe you haven’t played in 10 years or longer.
The other day I was online and I saw a flyer for a show you played at a rock club in Nashville called Sal’s. It was in 1986. Was that one of the first times you had come through town?
Oh, for sure. Sal’s?
Sal’s. I had never heard of it.
That’s funny. … I’m pretty sure we didn’t play Nashville in ’84 when we were out with Raven. So yeah, ’86 would make sense that that was the first time, on the Spreading the Disease Tour. But I have no memory of that show.
Nobody else did, either. When I asked people — and I know some pretty hardcore metal nerds — if they knew if it was your first show in Nashville, everybody was like, “I don’t know, man.”
Right. Well, I do remember a lot of shows from back then in the ’80s. Just not Sal’s.
What’s the biggest change for you, when it comes to touring, between now and, say, a gig you definitely don’t remember 40 years ago?
With nothing but love and respect for the Nashville metal scene, there wasn’t much of one back in 1986, if I’m being honest. I have friends who live in Nashville, and they would always complain every time we’d be touring. Some of our biggest tours in the ’80s and ’90s, and then skip again into the early 2000s, Nashville would never be on the itinerary, and [my friends] would always be bitching at me. And I’m like, “Hey, you know, it’s not us. You gotta complain to the local promoters in your area to book a show.” And then slowly but surely, it started to build and build. And now there’s venues and there’s a real scene, and Nashville is always on, basically, the first run through when you’re just playing all the major markets. Nashville, for metal, has actually become a major market.
Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Thanks to reader Kelly Kerr for pointing out that there is a Facebook group devoted to Sal’s. The venue’s first incarnation was off I-24 at Haywood Lane; in the late 1980s, it moved to Division Street near Vanderbilt University.
