Friday, July 8, 2005 | 8:32 a.m.
Slaughter doesn't play 200 shows a year anymore. The band has whittled its performance schedule to around 50 or 60.
The four musicians don't lug around their own amps these days. They're content plugging into whatever equipment the venues provide.
And they've left behind the giant tour buses, replacing them with airplanes ... and coach seats.
But frontman Mark Slaughter says the band's basic approach to rock 'n' roll remains what it was when Slaughter formed in Las Vegas in the late 1980s.
"Nothing has changed in our world," Slaughter said. "We're still the same people. We make music for a living, and we don't try to hide behind some false image of what people perceive us to be."
Echoed bassist Dana Strum: "Slaughter is and has always been a real, working-class band out there for the people."
Slaughter plays one of its infrequent Vegas shows at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Mardi Gras Ballroom at the Orleans, which is hosting its first major concert. Fellow heavy metal band Skid Row opens.
Technically speaking, it will only be a hometown gig for two Slaughter members: Strum, who runs a Las Vegas video production company; and Blas Elias, who drums nightly in the Luxor's Blue Man Group production show.
Jeff Blando, who joined Slaughter after the death of original guitarist Tim Kelly in a 1998 car accident, still lives in Orlando, Fla.
And Slaughter, along with his wife and his two boys, moved to Nashville, Tenn., eight years ago, where he writes and produces music and does animation voice-over work.
But the only member of Slaughter who spent his youth in Southern Nevada still holds the area dear to his heart, and looks forward to playing before family and friends again.
"My mom still lives here and I have friends here that I've known for many years," Slaughter, 40, said via telephone while waiting for a flight at McCarran International Airport on Tuesday morning.
"I'm very proud to be from Las Vegas. This is a great city."
During the 1980s, however, Vegas wasn't such a great place to live for aspiring rock musicians hoping to make it big.
"In those days, you high-tailed it out of Vegas as fast as you could to go be a rock star in L.A., New York or whatever," Strum said. "Coming from Vegas was almost comedy."
Slaughter remembers the music scene from his childhood years.
"When I grew up it was Liberace and Elvis and everybody else," Slaughter said. "When I was a kid, Elvis was playing the Hilton (then called the International)."
Birth of a band
Slaughter and Strum met when Slaughter drove to Los Angeles to record backing vocals for a little-known outfit called Sin, which was looking to market itself in metal-crazed Japan.
Strum, an established studio engineer who had already worked with ex-Kiss guitarist Vinnie Vincent -- not to mention introduced Ozzy Osbourne to guitarist Randy Rhoads -- was surprised to learn "Mark Slaughter" was the Vegas native's given name.
"I said, 'Mark Slaughter?' Well, my name is Joe Golden," Strum said.
Strum was even more shocked when he heard Slaughter sing.
"All of a sudden I hear this kid in the background sessions, singing, 'YAAAAAH' in that (upper) register," Strum said. "And I said, 'Hang on, do you always sing like that?' And he's like, 'Do you want me to drop down?' And I'm like, 'No, no, no. Is that an act or do you always sing like that?' And he says, 'Well, I'm kind of like a soprano in the choir.' "
Strum soon hooked Slaughter up with Vincent, and the three rockers toured together in the Vinnie Vincent Invasion in the mid to late 1980s.
But before long, Slaughter yearned to front his own band, and Strum relocated to Las Vegas to help him write and record.
"I wasn't gonna be in the band," Strum said. "I was gonna write the songs with Mark, produce and then replace myself in the band."
It never happened. Strum stayed on board, and the duo tapped the Houston-based Elias and Philadelphia-based Kelly to round out the band. They even convinced them to move to Southern Nevada.
Highs and lows
The quartet's 1990 debut album, "Stick it to Ya," broke into the top 20 of the Billboard 200, went triple-platinum for sales in excess of 3 million copies and yielded hit singles "Up All Night" and "Fly to the Angels."
Follow-up studio disc "The Wild Life" also earned platinum certification, reaching No. 8 on the Billboard 200 in 1992.
But before long, alternative rock bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam pushed Slaughter and its pop-metal brethren off the airwaves, and the Vegas-based foursome spent the rest of the decade selling fewer albums and playing to fewer fans than in their early '90s heydey.
Slaughter's ride hit its nadir on Feb. 5, 1998, when an 18-wheeler struck Kelly's Hyundai on a highway near Bagdad, Ariz. (about 100 miles northwest of Phoenix), sending his car into a third vehicle. Kelly was pronounced dead at the scene.
The band's future had never been more in doubt.
"When we put Slaughter together, we never thought 10 years down the road," Strum said. "We never thought, 'What if the name Slaughter or the style of music isn't fashionable then?' And we never thought about band members dying."
But Slaughter persevered, adding Blando, Kelly's longtime guitar tech, to the lineup. And before long, Strum helped hatch a new concept to showcase bands from the so-called "hair-metal" era.
Billed as "Rock Never Stops," the tours packaged acts from that scene -- including Whitesnake, Vince Neil, Warrant, Ratt and Slaughter -- on single bills.
The idea worked, bringing out dedicated fans of the genre all over the country. "Rock Never Stops" is still going strong in 2005, as evidenced by a solid crowd for a recent tour stop at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel.
"Packaging the bands together was truly the savior of so much of this music," Strum said. "It's the same groups reshuffled in a new deck."
Founding fathers
Aside from electronic duo the Crystal Method -- who left Vegas for Los Angeles before signing a record deal -- the Killers are the first act since Slaughter to earn a significant worldwide fanbase while based in Southern Nevada.
When Strum reads of the Killers' success, he feels pride at proving rock 'n' roll existed in a town primarily known for lounge singers and showroom headliners along the Strip.
"It absolutely makes you feel unbelievable that you pioneered something that people said wasn't possible at the time," he said. "In a place that was known for its older entertainment, and for not having a rock scene at all, we managed to do it."
Slaughter, who even taught guitar to the Crystal Method's Scott Kirkland at one point, sounded a bit uncomfortable with the idea that his band helped spawn a scene or turn the industry's eyes toward Las Vegas.
"I think it was only a matter of time," Slaughter said. "The way the city has grown is mind-boggling."
For Las Vegas' most famous rock 'n' roll son, it's more about the lessons learned growing up near the Strip, and observations that have helped his band soldier on for more than 15 years.
"Growing up in Vegas, I was around a lot of jazz musicians who improvised." Slaughter said. "And part of that whole mentality to me is that there are no rules. A musician can plug into any amp and still do what they do musically.
"It's not about having the security of this button does that or whatever. You should be able to make your music on anything. Our mentality is just go, get in there, play music and rock out."
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