Thursday, June 26, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Cover Story: The secret of my success

Slaughter reigns as the local band that made it big

By Andrew Kiraly

More than a decade after its platinum breakout success, Slaughter is still the golden yardstick for Las Vegas bands making it big. Made up of four hard-working longhairs-next-door who blew up with their 1990 single, "Up All Night," Slaughter rode the snorting hard rock steed through an often rough '90s musicscape of grunge, punk, indie and techno.

Not that leadman Mark Slaughter is one to gloat. In fact, as the band prepares to pile in the van once more for the 2003 Rock Never Stops tour--a where-are-they-now roster featuring Whitesnake, Warrant and Kip Winger that hits Vegas July 26--Mr. Slaughter is happy to offer up chicken soup for the rocker's soul that's as basic and solid as a power chord. Attention, local bands that ever made a wry crack about Slaughter being Vegas' unfortunate blip on the national music radar: Sit down, shaddap and drink deep of Slaughter's rockin' wisdom.

"The bottom line is be true to who you are," he says from Nashville, where he now lives and works. "People can see right through lies. We just musically stuck to our roots the whole time and never ran away from where we came from. Heck, we were the first ones to wave the Las Vegas flag from end to end. Maybe it's a hometown thing, but I could never see ourselves living in L.A. Not only is Vegas an awesome town, but it's great to do business out of. We'd just go to L.A. to take care of business, fly back on Southwest and come right back into it."

That business involved inking a 1990 deal with Chrysalis that resulted in the multiplatinum-selling Stick It to Ya, the cover of which depicted a lingerie-clad vixen strapped to a circus knife-thrower's board. Following up in 1991 with the platinum-selling The Wild Life, Slaughter fairly stood shoulder to shoulder with other acts of that era. Mark Slaughter's take on success in the industry might be called The Elaborate Metaphorical Pie theory of music markets.

"It's all about having music that people can relate to," he says. "It's like there's a giant pie out there that everyone's got a piece of. What piece of pie does your slice fit into, and how many people are trying to fit their piece of pie into your piece? You can't be scared of taking chances."

Slaughter took a few of its own, the biggest being to dare to forge on as the '90s unfolded and the band dropped from major-label grace, going from tour buses to a Chevy Astro Van. By 1993, relations between Slaughter and Chrysalis soured. After four months of wrangling, the band was released from the label; soon after, it signed deals with CMC International and Japan's JVC Victor Records.

These days, band members make bread and butter in different ways. Mark does studio work in Tennessee, even occasional cartoon voiceovers, while bassist Dana Strum runs the Vegas-based production studio Nevada Grooves. But like so many rock acts that withered like bad perms as the '90s trudged in with so much flannel and angst, Slaughter still shored up some appeal, as evidenced by this summer's reissue of Stick It to Ya and The Wild Life by Capitol Records. Strum considers it an affirmation of a brand of lasting appeal that he sees fading from contemporary music.

"The fact that Led Zeppelin debuted at No. 1 [on the Billboard charts earlier this month with How the West Was Won] really shows that good-time hard rock still speaks to people," Strum says. "I think of a lot of musical artists today have to question whether 20 or 30 years later, or even three years later, they'll be recognized. Today, record companies aren't looking to break personalities. I mean, I know who Robert Plant is, but who is the lead singer of Blink-182?"