The History Channel Want to town a piece of Guns N’ Roses history? All you’ve got to do is track down this dude who has Slash ‘s driver’s license. Yep, some guy has Slash’s driver’s license, and the man claims it was given to him by a friend of his, whose girlfriend had been a longtime bartender at a joint where the classic Guns lineup used to go get sloshed. Featured on an episode of the History Channel reality show ‘Pawn Stars,’ a man named Travis entered Las Vegas’ ‘Gold & Silver Pawn Shop’ in search for some big bucks in exchange for Slash’s license. When asked exactly how he came to possess the driver’s license of Saul ‘Slash’ Hudson, Travis has quite a story to tell. “A good buddy of mine actually had it years ago,” begins Travis. “He got it from his girlfriend, who was a bartender, and she ended up being there serving these guys all long long. And the whole group were trying to get her to flash for ‘em. So she did, she flashed one, and he threw it on the bar. I took it when I was about 18 and used it for my fake ID until I was 21.” So how much is Slash’s legitimate driver’s license worth? According to Travis, the rare item is worth $50,000 … but the man’s projection was shot down by shop employee Austin ‘Chumlee’ Russell and the store’s owner Rick Harrison, who only offered Travis $1,000 for the license. “If [Slash’s] driver license was worth 50 grand, I guarantee you he would be losing his license once a month and showing up at DMV, ‘Ah, sorry, guys, I lost it again,’” Harrison remarks. “‘Cause he would be selling that many.” Travis refused to accept any less than $15,000 for the license, so no deal was made on the show. Check out the full episode of ‘Pawn Stars’ by clicking the button below. Skip ahead to the 8:40 mark to see the Slash drivers license negotiation in full! [button href=”http://www.history.com/shows/pawn-stars/videos/pawn-stars-sweet-pawn-of-mine” title=”Slash’s Drivers License Makes an Appearance on ‘Pawn Stars'” align=”center”]
Posts Tagged ‘driver’
Man Attempts to Sell Slash’s Drivers License for $50,000 on ‘Pawn Stars’
November 29th, 2012 
Metalkult 
Posted in News 
Tags: a-man-named, a-month-and, check-out-the, driver, drivers-license, girlfriend, harrison, lost-it-again, news, slash, travis, wtf 
No Comments »Pig Destroyer Talk ‘Book Burner,’ Nihilism, New Agoraphobic Nosebleed Music + More
November 1st, 2012 Metalkult Relapse Pig Destroyer are one of the most celebrated grindcore acts in modern metal. Having released definitive masterpieces of the 21st Century such as ‘Prowler in the Yard’ and ‘Terrifyer,’ fans salivated over a new Pig Destroyer album for over five years before ‘Book Burner’ dropped in Oct. 2012. Pig Destroyer also leave fans rabid for live performances, as the band almost never takes the stage for a concert, but thanks to MetalSucks, Metal Injection and 1000 Knives, the band turned up for an incredible performance in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Oct. 18. We got a chance to speak to the entirety of Pig Destroyer for a rare interview, where we discussed ‘Book Burner,’ the label of ‘nihilism’ following the band throughout their career, upcoming music from guitarist Scott Hull’s other project Agoraphobic Nosebleed + much more. Check out our exclusive interview with the grind-masters of Pig Destroyer! ‘Book Burner’ seems like a very different type of album title for Pig Destroyer. How did you end up choosing that for the title? J.R. Hayes: I had a song called ‘Book Burner’ on the record and there was a couple of references to that in the story that I wrote for the record. We went through a million titles trying to find the right one, and that was one we felt good about and we just went with it, probably mostly because we were sick of trying to come up with other titles. Scott Hull: It’s difficult to try and agree on titles. We go back and forth about that or what the artwork is going to be. You just sort of relent and go, “Yeah that’s good!” and if we have one better, “No that’s it,” but it doesn’t have any particular significance other than it shows up in his story. J.R.: There’s a couple of different ways to tie it in. You guys don’t tour all that much. What is it about tonight, here in New York, that brought you all the way here? Blake Harrison: We wanted to do a couple of shows for our record when it came out. I mean, it’s been over five years since we put a record out and MetalSucks, we really love the website; they asked us and it coincided with the time the record was going to come out. So we’re also doing this in Baltimore. J.R.: And it’s New York! Right up the street. Last time you were in New York, you guys played on a boat. What was that like? J.R.: That was one of my favorite shows of all time, actually. You get to get on a boat with Eyehategod and Goatwhore and a bunch of crazy fans and drink and just be merry. It was just a really rainy, nasty night too, so the fact that everybody managed to have such a good time I thought was really impressive. Harrison: I think that was one of our better shows as far as crowd energy and wildness goes, but I get horribly f—ing seasick. J.R.: Talk about having a captive audience though. [Laughs] We had them quarantined. The production for ‘Book Burner’ is interesting because again, with your other records, no two albums sound alike in its production. How did you choose this style of production for this record? Hull: For me, I wanted something that was very, very natural sounding. Not unproduced, but just very, very natural, sort of like the early Black Flag records or the early Melvins records; something that was just very honest and you can hear what the drummer’s doing, you can hear what the guitar player’s doing, and not oversaturate it with a huge wall of guitars. I just kind of wanted it to be rather ‘bare bones’ and let the music speak for itself in the performances as well. I wanted it to sound good and clean, somewhat, but I also didn’t want to overproduce it by putting in a bunch of triggers and stuff like that. There are no drum triggers?! Hull: There are some drum triggers in the kick to make them a little steady sounding rather than being overly dynamic, but no, there’s no triggers on anything else. It’s all this dude (Adam Jarvis) right here. The kick has a little bit of trigger mixed in but other than that it’s as we played it in the studio. With Pig Destroyer, the drumming has always been so focused. There’s always been a big spotlight on the drumming. Is it difficult to fill the void of Brian Harvey’s departure? Adam Jarvis: Yeah, learning all the new material plus learning all the old material … because when I first joined, we basically just started jamming on all of the new stuff immediately, but then we had to play a couple of shows so then I had to start learning all of the old stuff and just intermittently go back to the new stuff, so it was definitely a challenge. J.R.: We wouldn’t been doing it if it wasn’t a challenge. What has Adam brought to the band? Harrison: I think a nastier energy, man. It’s almost like a new band in my eyes. It seems like with the crowd reaction, they feel that way too. Hull: We’ve got another person in the band who’s pushing us forward, driving us and not to mention the fact that he has a different particular set of skills that we can capitalize on and move forward in areas that we haven’t been able to in the past. Jarvis: Scott was like, “So how fast can you blast?” I was like, “Uhhh … fast?” And he’s like, “Check out this song, it’s only at 300 beats per minute.” [Laughs] You had some of the Agoraphobic Nosebleed members come and do guest vocals on the record. Why was this the right time to experiment with those other vocalists? J.R.: I really wanted to have some people when we did ‘Phantom Limb,’ but that just didn’t happen so I ended up being the only vocalist on that record. So for this record, I wanted to bring in some other people just for fun. Just to try and mix it up a little bit because I don’t have the biggest range in the vocal world, so just to give it some dynamic and just to have some friends in the studio, you know? They’re all very close friends of ours so it was more of a family affair. Kat Katz is on the record and I’m a big fan of hers from Salome and Agoraphobic Nosebleed. I interviewed her a while ago, right before ‘Agorapocalypse’ came out, and she told me that in the studio she makes a “war face,” but she wouldn’t tell me what it looked like. Hull: [Laughs] Yeah, we push her. We just did a track for the Christmas flexi for Decibel. We did it last year and we’re doing it this year as well, and she came in and did vocals for that, and yeah, she brought her war face. So what exactly does the war face look like? Hull: When she’s gotten to that stage, when she’s ripping it, when you see her in the studio, she means it. You can definitely tell that somebody stepped on her d–k and she’s definitely not happy about it. J.R.: We try to get her to think about the B she got in Chemistry. That got her all worked up. [Laughs] Oh, right, she’s in college now. She got a B in Chemistry? J.R.: Yeah, that’s not acceptable for her. [Laughs] One term that has followed Pig Destroyer throughout your entire career is the term ‘nihilist.’ The term ‘nihilism’ has definitely followed you. What do you think about being associated with that term? Do you find yourself to adhere to that philosophy in any way? Harrison: Thumbs up! [Laughs] Wouldn’t a true nihilist have hated that? J.R.: I feel like I’m more of a cynic than a nihilist, but I don’t think those two things are really all that different sometimes. Hull: All the intellectual property of the band is definitely coming through him (J.R.) and the visuals and all that, so he tends to channel a rather dark side and that comes out as the face of the band. It’s an interesting and unique aesthetic and I think that fits us pretty well. I wanted to ask about the use of samples in your music. It seems like the samples are perfectly placed. There are so many metal bands that use samples and I think you do it really well. Is there ever a point where you are watching a film or you hear something and you think, “I need to use that line.”? Hull: Sometimes. Sometimes I hear other bands that use samples and I hear the sample and recognize the movie it came from. You would never have thought to take that thing out of that context because when you’re watching a film, you’re kind of engrossed in the story. So you have to step back from the movie a little bit and be looking out for stuff. But yeah, there are times when things pop out and I go “Oh, that’s pretty interesting.” J.R.: We try not to use anything that’s too obvious. You don’t want to drag all the other baggage that comes along, like if you put in a ‘Taxi Driver’ sample, you know what I mean? We want to use things that are a little more obscure that we can kind of appropriate. Harrison: A lot of it to me is that I like to listen to overdub stuff because the way the dialogue is delivered, it’s more stilted a lot of times. I try to take the piece of what it is and take it out of context. So like, I’m not using a James Earl Jones quote because you’re going to know it’s James Earl Jones and think, “Oh I love ‘Conan the Barbarian!” It adds a tacky layer to it. Hull: You remove the layer; the suspension of disbelief. You pull it out of the movie as it were, so a lot of the talky samples we really don’t get from movies so much as things like preachers and sermons that we find online, books on tape; things that come from different sources. What about the ‘Jennifer’ samples? Hull: That was a story he (J.R.) had written and I was trying to figure out a unique way to deliver that on the record and the way we figured out we were going to do that was to put it through a text-to-speech utility for people who are blind and want to use computers; they can just pump the text into this thing. So I just dialed in the right voice and that’s it. Harrison: I think it adds to the tension too. When we do that live, as boring as that is for us to sit through for the 800th time, it gets the kids f—ing wild; its crazy. It’s always good to see that explosion right after that happens; its killer. Are we going to get any new Agoraphobic Nosebleed stuff anytime soon? Hull: Yeah, that’s the next thing I’m going to work on. We got a little bit of relief from the flexis we had to do for Pig Destroyer, so I’m going to go back and start working on the ANb stuff. The next Agoraphobic thing isn’t going to be a single full-length CD, it’s going to be four separate EPs, each one based on a different theme from each member. One is going to be a Black Flag-type of hardcore record, one is going to be a Godflesh-type of industrial record, one is going to be a doomy record and I think the fourth one is going to be a proggy jazzy thing. So they each reflect the different aspects of each of the members. It sounds like a bit of an alarm at first, but I think that’ll sound good. Are you going to be releasing any more of those ‘Audiofilm’ three-inch CDs? I really liked that. Hull: Oh cool, thank you. I don’t know. I want to do more stuff like that, but it just depends on whether I have time. I have to juggle a few bands, a family and a job and stuff. I want to because I very much like that but we’ll see. When you guys released ‘Natasha’ it was definitely very different for you guys. It was real sludgy and I was kind of expecting that to be a bridge to ‘Book Burner.’ Was that ever something that was on the table? Hull: That was actually released with ‘Terrifyer,’ that was a bonus disk with ‘Terrifyer,’ but it was in a quirky, weird format so nobody really listened to it. The label figured we were going to take a long time with the next record, so they wanted to go ahead and release ‘Natasha’ on its own, so that was really kind of a bonus experiment-type thing. We do have some more material like that; that we’ve recorded that we’re actually going to put out at some point. We just don’t know when. [button href=”http://loudwire.com/pig-destroyer-piss-angel-top-21st-century-metal-songs/” title=”Pig Destroyer – Top 21st Century Metal Songs” align=”center”]
Baroness’ John Baizley: If My Arm Injury Was Any Worse, We Would Have Discussed Amputation
October 19th, 2012 Metalkult Baroness – Official Site Here in Part 2 of our exclusive interview with Baroness frontman John Baizley , the musician discusses the gravity of his physical injuries, as well as his daily rehabilitation routine. Baizley shares the incredible difficulties he now faces when attempting to perform simple tasks such as folding laundry or opening a bottle of water. The Baroness frontman also gives additional details about the terrifying moments knowing that the bus was about to plummet down a 30 foot drop, the moment of impact, the unthinkable amount of pain he endured and the current condition of the other passengers on the bus. When it comes to your physical rehab, can you tell us about your normal daily routine? Yeah, I mean, I’ve got a severely broken left leg and a crushed beyond belief right arm, but they’ve both been mended in such a way that at first I was in a cast, then I was in a brace, and now neither my arm or my leg has anything holding it in place externally. I’ve got some metal on the inside, but on the outside, because I injured two joints, in order to become functional again I have to move them. So in other words, like I was saying, if it hadn’t been an elbow and a knee, I’d be in a cast right now and I would able to do much less, but these were very serious traumatic injuries to my joints and if I don’t move them they will lock up forever. So against what seems to be logical to me, it would seem that you’d let the bones heal completely and then start working on things. I’ve broken plenty of bones before and that’s always been the case in the past, but with these two injuries, I have to move them. I can’t walk. By the end of it, it’ll be three or four months that I’ll have had to spend in a wheelchair, but I spend the whole day sitting there bending my leg over and over and over again and twirling my foot around like an idiot just to keep the blood flowing and to keep everything on the mend and with my arm, at this point, it’s all about stretching and starting to do small functions. Like as I said before, folding the laundry feels like running a marathon. I feel like I’ve been to the gym if I open a bottle of water or something like that. It’s humbling to see, relatively speaking, how strong I was and how we all were before the accident. The human body does all of these things and of course we take that for granted until it’s taken away from us and I spend each day seeing how much further I’ve come from the day before. So last week, I was unable to touch my face, and this week the big improvement that I made is that I am able to bend my arm enough that I can touch my face, and it does sound silly because what are you going to do when you touch your face? Last week, I learned how to put the phone down and scratch my nose with the good hand; it’s all degrees. The good thing for me is that I have a very supportive family and my 3-year-old daughter doesn’t understand how serious this injury is, so she still wants to play with me and what I do is that I do the best I can to be a normal guy and that helps me because I don’t sit there and wallow and get stuck in that rut of inactivity. I don’t have time to wait, I just don’t have time for anything anymore. I am ready to get through this and get moving again, and that was one of the big things that changed with that accident. I’ve come to a realization that we do have a relatively limited amount of time to do the things we want to do, and it can very easily be taken away randomly without any logic or sensibility to it. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have survived through the accident and to come through with injuries that can be fixed within reason. Yeah, my arm isn’t going to work the same again and neither is my leg, but I didn’t take a head injury, I still have a pulse, I still have all of my limbs attached and that didn’t necessarily need to be the case. I was told that if the injury to my arm had been any worse we would have been discussing amputation, so that’s a reality check in some ways. Be thankful for what you have because it’s much easier than you assume to lose this type of stuff. I’m not a spring chicken anymore and I’m not one of those people that thinks or has thought that I’m invincible, but now I’m sure of it. Now I’m sure of what we’re made of and it really is a thin network of meat and bones. You’ve got to respect that. It’s phenomenal that nobody passed away. I remember in your story, you were saying that moments before the crash, you were yelling at everyone and trying to wake them up to preparing for the impact. What struck me as interesting is that while you were trying to get everyone ready, you stayed at the front of the bus. Did that seem like the safest place to remain at the time when you were going over that hill? No, and maybe I can clarify; it felt like ages. There wasn’t enough time to do anything definitively and it was just enough time for instincts, to act on instinct. If I had knew that there were going to be an accident. If I was prepared to know we would have had a finite amount of time to deal with it, maybe something could have been done differently. But the fact is simple fact is, and I could put it very bluntly; we were screaming out of control down a very steep hill, in the rain, in a bus. There’s no seat belts on our bus. I don’t know if you ever seen European tour buses, but there are a lot of bands that in order not to loose money on tour, will rent older model buses. The bus was an older model but it was a German model, German driver, he owned and operated his own vehicle. There are very stringent vehicle laws in Germany so it really was up to code, it wasn’t like we were on the Beverly Hillbillies truck and we could just jump out of the back of it. I mean, how are you going to get out of a vehicle that’s flying down the hill? It would take a lot of rationale and I wouldn’t have done it anyway because my friends, my best friends in the world, are all on that bus and instincts told me that I needed to wake them and everybody who was awake needed to know what was going on in order to brace for impact, because the other thing about those type of tour buses, if there is something is considerably wrong happening up in the front, it doesn’t mean you know it in the back. Sound doesn’t travel well through those buses so screaming at the top of my lungs, I’m barely getting everybody’s attention. I think everybody woke up in time to have some brief moment of understanding of what was going to happen, and I’m not even sure about that. There may have been one or two people who just woke up in the hospital, but the simple fact of the matter was we were moving incredibly fast and we were going down a hill and the driver and I we were looking for something to do, we were looking for a way to stop it. We were looking for a road where we could have turned on, or a ramp we could have gone up or something that could have cushioned the blow a little bit easier and we never found it. There was one road we could have turned on, but it was almost like we would have to turn backwards, it was a very hard left and it was clear that the bus would have flipped. You flip in a bus, that’s it, good night. The only other option is that the bus runs into another vehicle. The only vehicle we saw was occupied, moving towards us and it had another family in it — that’s not an option, you don’t kill somebody to save yourself. So, by that time the crash was entirely inevitable and we had run out of choices. We saw the guardrail at the bottom and there was really nothing we could have done. We were moving so fast that nobody could have done anything. We tried everything, we tried using the momentum of the bus and turning to slow it down; that worked to a certain degree. We ran to the emergency brake, and the transmission was basically gone because we were going so fast you couldn’t downshift, and of course, there were no brakes, so we were mechanically … f—ed. [Laughs] Yeah, that’s the right time to use that world. Then we hit the guardrail and then there was a couple of seconds I spent in the air preparing myself for what seemed like an inevitable fate. Honestly, I’ve been living on the road for over ten years. I’ve come to terms with that on several occasions and none of them were even close or as serious as this. I was ready for it and I made my peace, I accepted it and I was ready for the end. That was the only option that was given to me. You know, at the point when our bus was fully airborne, there was nothing you could do but try to make peace with it, and I did. How surprised was I when I’m still alive? How f—ing overenthusiastically happy was I when that happened? Like I said, whatever physical pain there was, whatever mental trauma I’ve yet to suffer through, whatever nicks and bumps and scrapes and bruises we’ve taken from this, I’ll tell you what, it’s better than the other alternative we could have taken from that wreck. I guess that’s just that. You deal with the hand that is dealt. That’s what I gotta do. It’s better to do it and find something constructive and something positive. That’s what I think everybody’s doing and we’re really quite happy because I wasn’t exactly in a pleasant mood for a few days following that and I was trying to make sense of it, and thanks very much to the rest of the guys in the band and crew, thank you very much to our fans who offered support and our friends and family who were there or were keeping in contact with us and absolute f—ing praise and worship goes to the emergency team who responded, and you know the surgeons, and the whole medical team that dealt with us because they kept us alive, kept us in one piece and kept everybody positive. It felt like there was this huge extensive family who just tried to keep me and everybody okay physically, mentally, and in every way. I’m so grateful for that because a month after our wreck there was another bus that crashed 60 miles away from us that was carrying people from another music festival and that crash killed three people. That just got me thinking about how fortunate we are that we have fans that care about us, we have families and friends and everything and all of these people that care enough to be part of the story and to offer help with this. I’m just thinking of some of the people in the other crash, they might not have had that, they might have not had anybody interested in hearing what happened and they lost more. So, in perspective, it could have been worse. It could’ve been a lot better. [Laughs] It could have been a lot better, but it could have been worse. Can you give us an update on your fellow bandmates, friends and how the bus driver is doing? Yeah, I mean, everybody is going to be fine at the end of it. We all suffered different types of injuries and it’s pretty surprising the variety of injuries that were sustained. Just out of respect for the rest of the guys, they’ve all got their individual stories, so I’m not really naming any names, but there was some pieces of back, one guy was in a brace, somebody from our crew was bruised to the point where they had to be under constant medical supervision for fear of clots, and one of our crew looked like he’d been in the biggest street fight of all time. The driver sustained a number of broken bones, some people had minor scratches and scrapes and others as hefty as broken bones and backs. But the simple fact is, we will all be fine, absolutely fine in the end. It’s important, especially for me to hold onto that. We will be fine in the end. If we’re not fine already, we’ll be fine in the end. In the crash story you mentioned that you did suffer some burns along with your broken arm and broken leg. How long exactly were you laying in the bus before you were rescued? It was really quite alarming how fast that there was a crew on the scene. What happened to me specifically was I flew forward about ten or twelve feet and I went halfway through the windshield. The windshield flew out in one piece and it went flying and I hit it and bounced back in. I landed on the window frame where the glass had been. There was shards all around me and the burn marks were abrasion burns. It was a burn that went all the way around my arm and pretty deep into from who knows what. There was a ton of them, just big huge patches of skin rubbed off or burned off. I didn’t pass out, so I can’t say, “When I came too…” but once the bus settled, I was sitting and I was able to survey the area and able to take stock. If I was on the ground I wouldn’t have been able to do a number of things that I did, but I was sitting. That’s when, instinctually, and I believe we were all conscious while doing this, but we were looking around to make sure everybody was alive. I had this sense inside that nobody had died, and fortunately I was right there. I actually was relatively calm given the circumstance and I was just calling everybody’s names out and I think we were all trying to see where everybody was, and after about a minute, it couldn’t have been more than a minute-and-a-half, there were three people at the front of the bus. I had just pulled my arm almost 360 degrees in a circle, so I knew what was wrong with me. I was just sitting in the window of the bus like, “Get me out! Get everybody else out!” There was a window, I guess in the back of the bus that was broken as well. So everybody was either coming out the front or out the back and I believe they had to cut the driver out. Check back on Monday, Oct. 22, for Part 3 of our exclusive John Biazley interview, in which he talks about how he plans to move on from the accident + more. In the meantime, if you missed it, check out Part 1 by clicking below. [button href=”http://loudwire.com/baroness-john-baizley-bus-crash-isnt-going-to-stop-us/” title=”Part 1: A Bus Crash Isn’t the Sort of Thing That’s Going to Stop Us” align=”center”]
Baroness Frontman John Baizley Recounts Horrific Details of Bus Crash
October 2nd, 2012 Metalkult BaronessMusic.com On Aug. 15, Baroness were involved in a terrible bus accident in the United Kingdom. The accident that occurred that morning caused Baroness’ bus to break through a guard rail at 50mph, plummeting 30 feet off a cliff into a wooded area below. Incredibly, every passenger on the bus survived, and in a fascinating recollection written by Baroness frontman John Baizley, fans are now able to understand how truly lucky the band was to survive. No matter your personal religious convictions, or lack thereof, one word can be universally shared to describe the survival of each bus passenger — ‘miracle.’ In Baizley’s written account on his brush with death, which left him with a severely broken arm and leg, he shares with incredible depth exactly what happened, the moment of impact, insight into his near-death experience (which is oddly reminiscent of Woods of Ypres ‘ song ‘Death is Not an Exit’) and much more. Baizley writes: On August 15th, just before 11 am, Baroness and our crew were involved in a very bad crash while on tour. The brakes in our bus failed completely, on a notoriously dangerous, incredibly steep (12% grade) hill in Monkton Combe, UK, on our way from a show Bristol to another show in Southampton. Our bus went entirely out of control, and we had no choice other than hitting a perpendicular guardrail going about 50 mph at the bottom of the hill. The guard rail and the 20 or 30 trees we ploughed through snapped like matchsticks as we went fully airborne and fell down more than 30 feet off of a viaduct to the ground below. Half of the band/crew were asleep while we lost our brakes, and a few of us were awake and sitting in the rear lounge. I was up front with our driver, and I bore witness to the entire thing. Once our brakes failed, the bus could do little more than gain momentum and plummet down the hill. There was nothing anyone on the bus could have done during our descent to avoid the crash, and no one, the local residents, the police or any of us can believe we survived the impact. Most people who have been in accidents understand the pre-trauma sensation of time slowing down. There were almost two minutes during which I knew we were heading for a collision. It felt like two hours. I remember the sound of the air-brakes failing, and the panicked cursing of our driver as we slowly realized how desperate the situation was. I tried as hard as I could to yell and wake everyone up to prepare for impact. I remember the sounds of confusion from behind me as our collective terror rose. I remember seeing the guardrail split, then a cluster of trees smacking against the front windshield. While we were airborne my eyes met with our driver’s. I knew then that we each shared the same look on our face; and I won’t soon forget it. We had spent enough time in the air to appreciate, make peace with and accept a fate we thought inevitable, and we looked at one another with a horribly silent “goodbye” in our eyes. When the bus hit the ground, I flew like a missile into the windshield. I can still see the double-paned auto glass turning blue and the spider-webbing cracks spreading outwards from the impact my body made. I hit the glass so hard, that the entire windshield flew from the frame to the ground, and I bounced back inside the bus. I landed on the ledge of the windshield. This came with an immediate and overwhelming pain throughout my body. I surveyed the damage to see instantly that my left leg was very obviously and badly broken. Then I lifted my arms forward to see if either had been damaged. My right arm was covered in burns, blood and broken glass, but working well enough. My left arm was crushed beyond belief, broken in the middle of the bone in my upper arm (humerus), and hanging 90 degrees backwar ds, with many spurs of bone poking through muscles and sinew at the surface of my skin. The bone was shattered into seven free-floating pieces, and my wrist and hand were swinging behind my back, spasming freely. Instinctively, I reached behind my back, grabbed my wrist and re-broke my arm forwards, hugging it to my chest, where it remained for the next three hours until it was cast in plaster. Meanwhile, I watched as some of the band was able to get off the bus and help the others, many of whom were broken-up as well, and several of whom were unconscious. There was blood, glass and diesel fuel everywhere. We were all rushed to the hospital in Bath, and treated for our various injuries, broken arms, legs, vertebrae, bruises, cuts, etc. Our driver was air lifted to a separate hospital with many breaks as well. A few of us had to remain in the hospital for a few days, I was hospitalized for two weeks, following an eight-hour surgery in which my arm was rebuilt with the aid of 2 massive titanium plates, 20 screws and a foot-and-a-half of wire. The 15? incision took almost 50 staples to close up. I was left completely immobilized for the remainder of my hospital stay, able to do next-to-nothing on my own and in need of constant care. Following those excruciating first two weeks, I was quite literally stuck in an apartment for another three weeks with my family while waiting for my doctor to allow me to safely board an airplane, for fear of bloodclots and swelling. I have just this past week returned back to the US and my home, where I am wheelchair-bound for another several weeks of physical therapy, learning to use my arm and leg again. While I cannot lift a glass of water to my lips to drink with my left arm and hand, I am still able to play music with it. I picked up a guitar and played the day after I returned. Not without pain (for the time being), but the hand still acts out the creative impulses I give it. I’m told I was quite lucky to have regained any use at all of my hand and arm, though I have sustained quite extensive nerve damage. In spite of this and against my logic and reason, when I pick up an instrument, my hand remembers exactly what to do. It’s far from perfect, and will require a lot of therapy in order to recover mobility and strength, but I am encouraged by the ability I have been allowed. I do not believe in superstitious signs, but I am truly overwhelmed to have been granted the continued use of my hands. As a result of the crash, I feel encouraged not only to recover, but to move forward with Baroness, as we had been doing every day previous to August 15th. This accident has inflicted an injury which has left its mark on the band: physically, mentally and spiritually. In order to rehabilitate ourselves fully, we must work towards and then past the goals we had prior to the accident. I will consider our immediate recovery a success only on the day we plug back in to play another show. We cannot allow this accident, which I believe is unrelated to the band or our music, to slow down or stifle what has become so much more than a passionate hobby for the four of us. Through Baroness, we have discovered a method by which we may harness our drive to create, and channel all the emotion, anxiety and pain in our lives into something constructive. Music is the universal means of communication we have chosen to express ourselves. Our message has never been one of the absolute positive or negative, neither black nor white. True life occurs within the shades of grey, and I see this experience form that perspective. It seems only fitting to me that we continue working towards creating and performing again as soon as possible, as this band and its music are the vehicle through which we grow as individuals, artists and brothers. The injury the band suffered is an injury to my family and loved ones. Rather than allow it to become a wedge that forces us apart, I would like to see this experience become part of the glue that strengthens us. We have only begun to accomplish what we set out to do through this band. There is so much more to say, and though we do need to heal up a bit; we will not allow any of those things to be left unsaid. I have no regrets about touring. I don’t blame music or the touring lifestyle for my current physical state, or for the accident itself. It happened the same way all things happen: randomly. If I was a carpenter, and I was injured on the way to the job-site, I wouldn’t consider quitting my job. That is truly how I see this situation. Baroness doesn’t stop because we got hurt on the way to work. We love what we do much more than that, and we have chosen this path because it offers us an unpredictable adventure. With any adventure that involves travel, and with any real passionate pursuit, one will occasionally come face-to-face with the reality of living on the other side of the yellow line. I didn’t choose to be a musician in order to live a risk-free life, safely avoiding bumps and bruises. I didn’t choose to play music because it seemed like a simple opportunity to make some quick cash. Nor did I ever make the assumption that things would get easier as we progressed. We can do nothing but attempt to make something constructive and beautiful out of all this disaster, and we are well on the way to becoming active again. I have used this time, stuck inside my own head, to consider the importance of music and Baroness in my life. I can say, after nearly 6 weeks of reflection, that I feel more resolute and passionate about our music than ever. I have come to realize the importance of time in this particular equation, that is, I have none to waste and none to spare. There is no better moment than now, broken and in physical stasis, to devote ourselves more fully towards our art than ever. We cannot allow the traumatic fallout of our crash to cripple us internally. It seems simple: the shows we have cancelled we will reschedule and play in the future. It isn’t going to happen next week nor will it be next month. But it will happen. We will be back on tour as soon as we possibly can. There was one moment in the crash that cut me deeply. For one heartbeat and one tiny sliver of time, I became disconnected entirely. It was, specifically, the moment I impacted with the glass. In that barest heartbeat of a moment, I came face to face with the infinite. I didn’t see a light, or the tunnel or hear any music. Nor did I get a “best-of” montage of my life. Instead, I felt the tip of my nose brush up against the very same fate I had accepted moments before. I looked into a cold, unreflective mirror. It was the dark, silent, dispassionate logic of the end. I realized in that moment that life can be seen as a light switch: “on” or “off”. When the moment passed and I heard the screaming, felt the pain, and tasted my own blood, I was overcome with joy. I was ecstatic to be back amidst all that chaos and horror because it was alive and real. I finally glimpsed the relative importance of all things. The support of our fans, our friends and our families has real meaning to me now. I say that now honestly, without false humility. Thank you. Everyone. Till the wheels fall off . . . John Baizley & Baroness BaronessMusic.com BaronessMusic.com BaronessMusic.com [button href=”http://loudwire.com/baroness-march-to-the-sea-best-2012-rock-songs/” title=”Baroness: Best Rock Songs of 2012″ align=”center”]
