Kerry King

Kerry Ray King (born June 3, 1964) is an American musician, best known for being the co-lead guitarist and songwriter of thrash metal band Slayer. He co-founded the band with Jeff Hanneman in 1981 and was one of two members to stay with the band for its 38-year existence, along with lead singer and bassist Tom Araya. Biography Early life The youngest of three children, King was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His father was an aircraft parts inspector, and his mother worked for a telephone company. He started learning guitar at the age of thirteen at his father's urging, saying "...my dad was trying to get me out of the wrong circles and give me a hobby." King attended three different high schools and had very good grades, even winning an award as his school's top math student in junior high. As the youngest child in the family, King says he was "spoilt" growing up. He learned guitar on his father's Gibson ES-175 and later had a Fender Stratocaster which he traded for a BC Rich Mockingbird, beginning a long relationship with BC Rich guitars. The first song he ever learned was Ted Nugent's "Cat Scratch Fever" and he soon became a major fan of Van Halen and Judas Priest, which had a major impact on his guitar playing. Slayer King formed his first band with another guitarist who had been teaching him lessons, and this guitarist introduced him to Tom Araya. He discovered that he and Araya lived only a block away from each other, and they agreed to start jamming together. "Everything began from that point", King has said of Slayer's origins. In 1981, King was at an audition for a southern rock band which Jeff Hanneman was also auditioning for. King heard Hanneman playing guitar near the reception desk and approached him, soon learning that they liked a lot of the same music, and they decided to jam together. The pair enjoyed playing together and decided to start their own band with Araya and a neighborhood drummer named Dave Lombardo, which would soon evolve into Slayer. King, along with Araya, remained in Slayer for the entire length of the band's career, from 1981 to 2019.