Exodus guitarist Gary Holt talks tour, memoir, Slayer reunion, late Iron Maiden singer

Playing thrash metal — a style of music rooted in speed and aggression — takes a toll physically, as Exodus guitarist Gary Holt can attest.

“I’m suffering from arthritis everywhere, neck down to my feet, literally just every joint in my body is (expletive) up,” he said. “But you just got to stretch a lot and deal with it. I’ve recently had a cortisone injection in my right shoulder. And I’ve had elbow problems, fingers hurt sometimes, knuckles are starting to show signs of wear, but that’s just part of it.

“I get on stage, it’s fine. Something might hurt a little bit; you just motor through it. Plenty of time to deal with that later when you’re not on stage.”

An hour of preparation beforehand plus preloading ibuprofen — his guitar tech keeps a pill case nearby in case it’s forgotten — helps to keep Holt going strong, as the Bay Area thrash veterans hit the road for their Battle of ‘24 tour with a Nov. 23 stop at Preserving Underground in New Kensington, with support from Havok, Candy and Dead Heat.

Holt said Exodus, which started back in 1979, isn’t a “retro throwback band” reliant solely on the past. And they’ll be in the studio in February to start recording even more new music.

“Our set is heavily loaded with new stuff because that’s what we wanna play. And we write songs for ourselves anyway,” said Holt, who has also played guitar for Slayer since 2011. “We don’t write it for anyone else, not for the fans, and that sounds like a (jerk)ish thing, but we’re our No. 1 fans. We’re the guys who got to be happy with it.

“Fortunately, Exodus and our fans want the same thing. We want super over-the-top, crushing, bone-rattling, thrash metal, you know? That’s why I still get excited about it. At 60 years old, it keeps me young.”

In a recent call from his home in northern California, Holt discussed the “Big Four” of thrash, his upcoming memoir, Slayer’s recent festival shows and his sole meeting with Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno.

Over the years, there’s been a lot of talk about the “Big Four” of thrash (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax). Do you think that it should be the “Big Five,” that Exodus should be in there? Is that something that you even care about?

No, I don’t really care about it. I’ve seen other guys in other bands that have a stake in that argument and openly lobby for it. But my answer is like, I know where I was when thrash was born. It was in the (expletive) ’70s when this band was founded. So a band who put their debut out in 1987, they don’t have a stake in that. Some people really want it. I just know where this band was, where we were as people. And I always lobby for the Germans. Someone asked me (recently) in an interview, you guys are in the big five: who else would add? And they named off bands that have rightful places in thrash metal, Overkill, Testament, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And I’m like, why does everybody leave out Destruction and Kreator? They were there before those other bands. It’s always like the big whatever has to be all American. It’s like the NFL. But the NFL has gone global and thrash always was global. And those guys in Sodom as well, they don’t get mentioned in there unless it’s by me. The Germans have every right to leapfrog some people into that conversation.

You have a memoir that’s supposed to come out next year. What can you tell people about that?

I had thought about doing a book for a long time, just my career arc is very different. Most of your rock books involve starting out, mass success, huge drug use and alcoholism and a spiral down, then redemption. Mine’s different. I had moderate success, completely out of music, complete drug addict, and then the redemption. It’s really close to the finished stages now. I read the latest version of it, it made me cry a couple of times. It made me cringe a bunch of times because there’s some really cringy (expletive) going on. And it made me laugh. It’s laugh, cry, on the edge of your seat, like any good movie, that’s all you could ask for.

Were there any stories that you’re like, no, this can’t go in there? Or was it important for you to give the whole unvarnished story?

I left out anything that would be horrible to a lot of people I know, because if I turned it into a tell-all, I know where all the bodies are buried in thrash metal. I could expose everything. But no one would tell me all that stuff anymore, because Gary’s a blabbermouth and he just shared it with the world. I peel the layers back on myself heavily, just like I always have. But I’m protecting the innocent to a large degree. I’m not going into detail about other people’s stuff. That’s for their own books. And that’s their own decision, whether they want to share some of that stuff. And anytime it did involve bandmates, I ran it past them. Some stuff is not a secret, the drug use and all that. … I left tons of stuff out, stuff that would have made the most riveting chapters on Earth, but it would’ve been damaging to people I care about. And I don’t mind damaging myself, because it’s my story.

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You had to switch gears recently for a few Slayer shows. How did those go, and are you always on call if they decide to do more?

You know, if they want to do more, they got my number and they know where I am. And it was awesome. It was surreal, it was epic. And we went into it nervous, just because five years had gone by. But we rehearsed really hard, full production rehearsal, which isn’t the way Slayer usually works. Usually, Kerry (King) and Paul (Bostaph) will rehearse in this little tiny rehearsal room down in Southern California. And I have, up until the final Slayer show, I hadn’t rehearsed with the band for eight years. I just did my homework and showed up prepared. And if Kerry wanted to play something new, I learned it. But this one, we all rehearsed and we rehearsed with the whole full production and everything. So that was awesome. That’ll get you excited. And it was killer. Tom (Araya) sounded amazing. Kerry and Paul kill it. I think Tom was more nervous than anybody because he’s the only guy who hadn’t played a show. Kerry and Paul had been out with Kerry King, but even they took years off. I was on tour two months after the last Slayer show. So I never stopped. Only the pandemic slowed me down. So playing a show was nothing I was going to be nervous about, although it’s a Slayer show, first time back. So that changed things a little bit.

Exodus started out playing Iron Maiden songs when the band first started. Did you ever have any run-ins with their original lead singer, Paul Di’Anno, who died last month?

Only once, on the Pleasures of the Flesh U.S. tour. We ended the tour in Arizona, and it was kind of a mini-festival indoor, but I remember Sacred Reich and Heathen played and Battlezone played. And Paul Di’Anno, that’s the one and only time I ever met the guy, and he was an absolute gentleman considering he was being fanboyed over wildly by Exodus and Heathen, like just Paul (expletive) Di’Anno, and he was so (expletive) nice about it. Exodus were covering the first (Iron Maiden) album, those songs at backyard parties when everybody thought they were originals. No one had ever heard them because our friend bought the album based on the album cover and the live photo on the back like, “This has gotta be killer. Look at this.” He bought it and changed my life, those first two Iron Maiden albums. And no disrespect to Bruce (Dickinson), those albums, “Number of the Beast” and “Powerslave,” those are phenomenal albums. They changed my life too, but those first two, especially the first one, music never sounded like that to me before. It’s like I never heard a guitar and a bass before. It was (expletive) epic. And Paul brought like a punk edge to it. Just his whole look, he almost looked more like a punk. Way too young. It’s such a sad loss.