Band members and Jeff's wife are opening up on his cause of death:
SLAYER's KING: 'I Don't Think We Should Throw In The Towel Just Because JEFF's Not Here' - June 23, 2013
The surviving members of California thrash titans SLAYER have opened up to Guitar World magazine about the passing of the band's founding guitarist Jeff Hanneman, who died on May 2 from alcohol-related cirrhosis of the liver, a result of a lifetime of drinking.
"Jeff was always a drinker," former SLAYER drummer Dave Lombardo tells the publication for its August 2013 issue. "He always had a Coors Light tall can in his hand. Always."
"Jeff and I always drank," SLAYER guitarist Kerry King adds. "They called Steven Tyler and Joe Perry the Toxic Twins. We were the Drunk Brothers." He laughs. "The difference being that I don't wake up in the morning and need a beer. Jeff didn't know how not to drink."
"I would express my concern [about his alcohol intake], and he would back off for a few months — but then he would go right back to drinking," says Kathryn Hanneman, Jeff's wife of 24 years. "A few years before his dad died in 2008, I did notice that Jeff was relying on alcohol to start off his day. But I couldn't say much at that point, because I just knew we'd wind up in a verbal confrontation about it. And I'm not going to say I didn't drink with him — I did drink with him, sometimes quite heavily. I figured if l couldn't beat him, join him. But eventually I realized that I couldn't go on like that, and that if l stopped, I might be able to help him get away from it too. But I couldn't. He just relied on it too much to get him through the day."
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