User:CrowzRSA/Sandbox/Sandbox 2/Slayer/Kerry King

Kerry Ray King (born June 3, 1964)  was born in Los Angeles, California and is best known as guitarist in the thrash metal band Slayer. Kings father, an aircraft parts inspector, often left his guitar around the house while Kerry was still growing up. Kerry began to play the instrument in his free time and would eventually try out for a band and meet Jeff Hanneman, both to be future guitarists of Slayer. He has a daughter named Shyanne Kymberlee King, and a wife named Ayesha King. King introduced drummer Dave Lombardo. to the band when Lombardo delivered pizza to King's house. In 1981, Slayer formed with King, Hanneman, Lombardo, and lead vocalist/bassist Tom Araya. With Slayer, King has had 15 albums released with the band.

King has performed as lead guitarist outside of Slayer as well, he performed on the Beastie Boys debut album Licensed to Ill. "No Sleep till Brooklyn" was to feature King in it's music video, but King preferred not to be in it. "Fight For Your Right (To Party)" featured King performing a guitar solo. He also performed with Pantera on their 2000 album Reinventing the Steel, performed on "Dead Girl Superstar" by Rob Zombie, and with Sum 41 on "It's What We're All About".

Biography
King was born in Los Angeles, California. His father was an aircraft parts inspector, and his mother was an employee of a telephone company. He had two sisters: Karen and Kathie. Although he wasn't interested in learning an instrument, he still would play on his father's guitar. King recalls: "The first clean riff I ever learned was "Children of the Sea" by Black Sabbath. I can still remember it today."

He divorced once; his current wife is Ayesha King, he also has a daughter named Shyanne Kymberlee King from his first marriage. In 1981 King was trying out for the position as a guitarist in a band. After the session was over Jeff Hanneman approached him and the two began playing Iron Maiden and Judas Priest songs with the session drummer. Hanneman mentioned "He said, 'Why don’t we start our OWN band?' [Laughs] I was like, '…Fuck yeah!'" King's trademark image, was praised to such a degree by Blender magazine, who included a tour of his body ink. King's acronym, KFK, was revealed to mean "Kerry Fuckin' King" in the January 2007 Issue of Guitar World. King currently resides in Corona, California.

Slayer
When King was 16, Tom Araya posed as his guitar teacher. Araya played in Tradewinds (later to be named Quits), and soon invited King to join as a seconds guitarist. King only played in a couple of gigs before the band fell apart. He was employed at a series of dead-end jobs like a miniature golf course and at a pet shop. He would scan the "Musicians Wanted" column of the local newspaper, The Recycler. King relates: "Sometime in '81, I went to audition for this band called Ledger, and man, they were fucking crappy—they were like Southern rock, Lynyrd Skynyrd-type shit. I can't even remember what happened in their." Hanneman recalls that after auditioning with Ledger, he, King, and an anonymous drummer started playing together.

Sometime later, King met Dave Lombardo, the future drummer for Slayer, when Lombardo delivered pizza to King's house. King relates: "This kid pulls up in his car an goes, 'Hey—are you the guy with all the guitars?' I was like, 'I've got some guitars—I don't have 'em all'. He said he played drums and lived right down the road." King responded by giving Lombardo I brief list of songs he could play. Slayer started with Tom Araya, Hanneman, King, and Lombardo in 1981. King has stayed with Slayer since.

Guest appearances
In addition to appearing on Slayer's albums, he has also made several guest appearances as lead guitarist. While lending production to 1986’s Reign in Blood, Rick Rubin was also helming production of the Beastie Boys debut album Licensed to Ill. Rubin felt the track "No Sleep till Brooklyn" needed a guitar solo, so he offered King several hundred dollars to lay down the part. King has since commented that his playing ability "certainly wasn’t that of a virtuoso". "No Sleep till Brooklyn", whose title was a spoof on Motörhead’s 1981 live album No Sleep 'til Hammersmith, was originally intended to feature King being knocked offstage by a gorilla in its music video though King refused. King replied, "If there’s gonna be anyone knocking anyone offstage, it’ll be me knocking the gorilla", which is what subsequently happened. King has reminisced that he thought the Beastie Boys were cool, although never having heard any of their music at the time. On Licensed to Ill, King also played the guitar solo on the song "Fight For Your Right (To Party)".

King contributed a lead guitar outro part to Pantera’s song "Goddamn Electric", which appeared on the 2000 album Reinventing the Steel. King’s rig was set up in Pantera’s bathroom backstage just after Ozzfest in Dallas, as the group still didn't have their own dressing room on top of not appearing on the festival bill. After King had finished the first take, Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell ran in and yelled "DON’T LET HIM DO IT AGAIN!" King tried again with the hope he would find a superior rendition, though the first take was used. King has also made several guest appearances in Marilyn Manson's "Rape Of The World" tour, joining the band to play classic tracks such as "Little Horn", "1996" and "Irresponsible Hate Anthem". Many fans noticed elements of King's own style used on these occasions.

Feuds
King has had well-publicized disagreements with several of his contemporaries, including a long-standing feud with Dave Mustaine of Megadeth, who attempted to persuade King to leave the "posers," "lame spikes," and "eyeliner" of Slayer behind and focus on Megadeth. Recently in GuitarWorld.com's Dear Guitar Hero, King "admires him to this day" as a guitarist, though he considers Mustaine a "hypocrite".

In 2009 Slayer co-headlined a small, four show Canadian tourl. In January 2010, Dave Mustaine and Kerry King were in a T.G.I. Friday's in Temecula, California, getting to know each other again. The feud between King and Mustaine was suggested by a Blabbermouth.net employee to have been dropped after a chance meeting at an airport.

The feud between Machine Head frontman Robb Flynn and King, who claims that King started "talking shit about us out of nowhere." King labeled Machine Head as “sell-outs” after the release of their 2001 album Supercharger. King continued to criticize the band stating "They're responsible for rap-metal", "they fooled me into thinking they're metal," "'they have no integrity left.". Flynn has since noted that King has "finally squashed the beef." King proposed a tour between the "Big Four" Thrash Metal bands; King suggested that Machine Head be included instead of Anthrax

In 2006, Slayer's producer Rick Rubin lent production to Metallica's then-untitled Death Magnetic album, instead of Slayer for their album Christ Illusion. King deemed this action a "slap in the fucking face," labeling Metallica as a "sinking ship." During an interview on drummers, King stated that Soulfly drummer Joe Nunez could not join Slayer because "his mother wouldn't let him", that Adrian Erlandsson "hits his drums like a fag", and that Raymond Herrera of Fear Factory "has no hands" in regard to his drumming abilities.

Musical style
Kerry King's first experience with a guitar was when he was still a child. Early albums, such as Hell Awaits and Reign in Blood, featured a "wailing style" and "demented soloing often mimicking the screams of the song's victims". Steve Huey of Allmusic described his (along with Jeff Hanneman) guitar solos as "wildly chaotic", and Thom Jurek, also of Allmusic, described his work on 2006's Christ Illusion as "create an intensely harrowing and angular riff that changes from verse to verse, through the refrain and bridge, and comes back again."

Discography

 * Slayer


 * Other artists