BOOK SPOTLIGHT
"HEAVY TALES" PHOTO BY TASHINA BYRD
PHOTO BY GRIZZLEE MARTIN
INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR JON ZAZULA BY BRIAN O’NEILL
T
he most fascinating thing about Heavy Tales, the autobiography of Jon Zazula, the man who parlayed selling imported records at a New Jersey flea market into the label that discovered Metallica, is how it begins. The first chapter doesn’t recap the day he received the demo that changed life for him, Metallica, and millions of metal fans. It doesn’t recap his childhood in the Bronx with an abusive father. Those tales come later. Instead “The Beginning of the End,� as the chapter is called, recalls how major label vultures circled backstage at a sold-out 1984 show at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, looking to take Metallica away from him.
were talking and they were giving me their vision, the story ended there, and that's where my story had to begin.� Heavy Tales recaps the life of Zazula, who took on the name ‘Jonny Z’ so music industry folks would answer the phone when he called. When he had had enough of his father, he left home, and even slept on the streets. When he needed a job, he wound up on Wall Street. When he decided there was more to life than making money, he started selling NWOBHM rarities at a northern New Jersey flea market. He was so enthralled by a young band from San Francisco that he started Megaforce Records to release their music, because nobody else would.
“That was always my intention,� says the author. “I wanted to talk “I think I was too crazy to know I was about a very pivotal day in the in a challenge,� he laughs. “I just history of heavy metal. I was ap- felt that this is what’s next. I just proached by two different writers was driven.� to do biographies on me. When we
58 NEW NOISE
Zazula sits in the living room of ample, when Anthrax famously Maria Ferrero. As a teenager, Fer- fired vocalist Joey Belladonna, rero made the first purchase from they had Jonny Z tell him. Rock ’n’ Roll Heaven, the flea market stall that Zazula co-owned with “I was the guy who represented his wife, Marsha. “Metal Mariaâ€? Anthrax,â€? he shrugs. “Joey knew I went on to be the in-house pub- wasn't firing him. I told him that he licist for Megaforce Records and was fired by the band. He asked me Crazed Management. She was re- too, ‘why didn't the band call me?’ I sponsible for bringing Testament said Joey, that's the way it is, man.â€? to the label. All these decades later, she is still working for Jon- It’s hard to faze the man who spent ny Z. That isn’t surprising, since he a ton of money he didn’t have to spends most of the book crediting get an unknown Metallica across her and everyone else who helped the country, only to watch as they sent Dave Mustaine – who wrote him along the way. much of their early material – “Especially Marsha, my partner in back on a now-infamous Greycrime, 40 years now,â€? he says, smil- hound bus ride after he was fired. ing. “And especially God, who talked to me every two-thirty, three-thirty “I respected Metallica's young viin the morning, woke me up with my sion, and I actually trusted them pencil in my hand and said, ‘Jonny, very much in their artistic judgwrite this down.’ And that's how I got ments,â€? he recalls. “I understood what they were doing because I into all my mischief!â€? was witness to everything that went Even those aware of Zazula’s on. They were serious as a heart rags-to-platinum story will find attack about really being out previously unheard, and yes, there and blowing people away.â€? heavy, tales in this book. For ex- đ&#x;’Ł đ&#x;’Ł đ&#x;’Ł
