BOOK SPOTLIGHT - HEAVY TALES

BOOK SPOTLIGHT

"HEAVY TALES"

PHOTO BY TASHINA BYRD

PHOTO BY GRIZZLEE MARTIN

Zazula sits in the living room of ample, when Anthrax famously Maria Ferrero. As a teenager, Ferfired 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 Maria” Anthrax,” he shrugs. “Joey knew I went on to be the in-house pubwasn'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 retoo, ‘why didn't the band call me?’ I sponsible for bringing Testament said Joey, that's the way it is, man.” to the label. All these decades later, she is still working for JonIt’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 him along the way. sent Dave Mustaine – who wrote much of their early material – “Especially Marsha, my partner in back on a now-infamous Greycrime, 40 years now,” he says, smilhound 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,” he recalls. “I understood into all my mischief!” what they were doing because I 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.” heavy, tales in this book. For ex�� �� ��

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR JON ZAZULA T he most fascinating thing about Heavy Tales, the autobiography of Jon ZaBY BRIAN O’NEILL were talking and they were giving me their vision, the story ended there, and that's where my story zula, the man who parlayed sellhad to begin.” ing imported records at a New Jersey flea market into the label Heavy Tales recaps the life of Zathat discovered Metallica, is how zula, who took on the name ‘Jonit begins. The first chapter doesn’t ny Z’ so music industry folks would recap the day he received the answer the phone when he called. demo that changed life for him, When he had had enough of his faMetallica, and millions of metal ther, he left home, and even slept fans. It doesn’t recap his childon the streets. When he needed a hood in the Bronx with an abusive job, he wound up on Wall Street. father. Those tales come later. InWhen he decided there was more stead “The Beginning of the End,” to life than making money, he as the chapter is called, recalls started selling NWOBHM rarities how major label vultures circled at a northern New Jersey flea backstage at a sold-out 1984 show market. He was so enthralled by at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, a young band from San Francislooking to take Metallica away co that he started Megaforce Refrom him. cords 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 apfelt that this is what’s next. I just proached by two different writers was driven.” to do biographies on me. When we