The snake met us in Columbia, SC in 1985, prior to the tour supporting Venom.As I recall, the snake was 17 feet long and lived in various places along our trip, but somehow mostly with me. On our way to New York we had like 4 days off in New Jersey, so Kerry and I went to either a Home Depot or a Rickels store and bought a bunch of stuff to build it a cage. Of course, there was no where to keep Mr. Snake while we built the cage, so I kept it at my house in my room under a couch.
On Day 3 my father found out that there was a 17 foot snake in the house; I had little sisters who were like 7, 9 and 11 years old at the time. As you might imagine my father lost his fucking mind and threw me out of the house, but only after going to look for the snake with a gun. He was ballistic!!! Good thing he didn't look under the couch.
So Kerry and I went and stayed at a hotel until we met up with Venom for the start of the tour. All good, first gig was at Studio 54 in NYC and then it was on to Montreal. As we're driving towards the border, we realized there might be a problem with the snake freezing in the truck, not to mention the border crossing. So we stopped the truck, climbed in the back, took apart one of Tom's bass cabinets, lined the inside with blankets, and put Mr. Snake in his new home for the border crossing. It seemed good enough since that's were we also hid the tour t-shirts so border crossing taxes wouldn't have to be paid on them.. The Old Days!
We made it into Canada, got the snake out, and Kerry was keeping it in the bathroom of his hotel room, which he shared with Tom. A couple of days went by and Kerry realized he needed to feed the beast, so he and Tom headed off in search of food for a 17 foot snake. But what?
They couldn't find rats or anything like that, so the two brain surgeons found an Angora Rabbit, full grown, like 4 or 5 pounds. They brought the rabbit back to the hotel, in Toronto as I recall. They figured they would watch Mr. Snake eat the rabbit. I did not actually witness the next part of the story.
Tom and Kerry played with the rabbit and then they let Mr. Snake out for the party. Kerry walked towards Mr. Snake and dropped the rabbit on the ground but, before he could back up, Mr. Snake lunged towards Kerry and bit him just below his balls on his inner thigh! Apparently Kerry had the smell of rabbit on his leg and the snake was not so bright, so the snake bit Kerry while the rabbit went hopping around the hotel room. Big laughs from everyone but Kerry. They got the snake to let go of Kerry and put it in the bathroom with the rabbit for a more serene setting for dinner. Apparently, nobody wanted to watch anymore.Kerry had this bite mark that was fucking huge, had to be 12 inches by 12 inches, it looked like someone hit him with a baseball bat. I laughed my nuts off. I suggested killing the snake, "Fuckin-A, that thing bites me, I'm fuckin' killin' it.."
Kerry would have none of that as he understood the snake's mind. However, every time I saw him in his underwear after that before the gigs I laughed like a retard. Tom didn't want anything more to do with the snake. It seemed like my father might have been right about it after all.
Anyway, every time we crossed the border we went through the same process with the bass cabinet. As we moved West it was getting colder and colder and the snake was getting cranky. We played Winnipeg one night but canceled a 2nd night because they were having a major snow storm. So we were on our way to The Kabuki in S.F.. Kerry said "I don't feel like driving all that way" and had his parents buy him a plane ticket to fly to San Francisco and we were stuck with the snake!
We crossed the border back into North Dakota where it was, like, seriously 20 below zero. We took the snake and brought him into the cab of the Ryder truck to stay warm. This did make him happier and he moved around the cab while Tom and I drove. HMMMMMM, interesting. An hour after crossing the border we got a flat tire. It took us all night to get the tire fixed and then we were off, nonstop, 17 hours to San Francisco.
By the time we made it to S.F., the snake was really digging the truck cab. When we got to The Kabuki I went to grab him and, of course, it was growling and hissing and did not want to be touched. Aw fuck. I had to go get Kerry to extricate the beast from my life, which he did and that was the last time we saw Mr. Snake. He lived another few years and died at Kerry's house where, of course, Kerry decided to freeze him and then skin him out sometime later. Interesting....Oh, did I mention that when a rabbit goes in a snake, an extraordinarily large turd comes out a few days later in your hotel room!!!!!!!! Fun fun fun with Slayer. Kerry was like a mad scientist..
Okay, Umlaut can hear the complaints from the Politically Correct already.. Like I said, if you're not down with the National Geographic Channel then don't watch it! Also, I'm sure others are simply outraged because it's Slayer... Like, "acceptable" musicians such as Radiohead or Bruce Springsteen have NEVER fed their animals while on tour? Yeah, right...
SLAYER.
