Robb Flynn shared an awesome interview with Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian, where Scott reflects on a pivotal moment in the band’s history — their 1986 Spreading the Disease tour. What started as a club-level run quickly escalated into something much bigger: opening for Black Sabbath and W.A.S.P. in arenas across the country.

“In 1986, Anthrax went out on the ‘Spreading the Disease’ tour. We spent most of that year on the road. We actually started the tour playing arenas, opening for Black Sabbath and W.A.S.P.

At the time, Glenn Hughes was singing for Sabbath, but during that leg of the tour, he was fired. They brought in a guy named Ray Gillen, who had just been hanging around, waiting in the wings, so to speak. It was a weird time. I mean, obviously, I wasn’t in the band — just an outsider looking in — but as a huge Sabbath fan, it was strange. I think they were even billed as something like ‘Black Sabbath featuring Tony Iommi’ or ‘Tony Iommi’s Black Sabbath’ because Tony was the only original member left.

Danny Spitz’s brother, Dave Spitz, was playing bass. Tony was super nice to us, and Glenn was amazing too. Glenn Hughes would be the first to tell you he was deep in his substance abuse issues at the time. That tour actually came right before he got sober, and he’s been clean ever since.

We played some big venues, including the Meadowlands in New Jersey — our first hometown arena show. W.A.S.P. was also on the bill. It was a blast hanging out with Chris Holmes. The guy was hilarious — we were never short on laughs around him.

The shows weren’t completely sold out, but we were still playing to crowds of 4,000 to 5,000 people, which was insane for us at the time. We were used to playing clubs with 400 people. So yeah, these were big shows for us, and we were incredibly thankful to Tony for having us — even though, at the time, I don’t think he had a clue who we were or how we got there. But he was always kind to us.

One funny memory from that run: Billy Milano was out with us — I think he might have been driving the RV — and at one show, backstage in either Connecticut or Rhode Island, we had the dressing room at the end of the hallway that led to the stage. So anyone heading out to perform had to walk right past us.

Billy decided to wait outside our dressing room as W.A.S.P. walked by to go onstage. He yelled some… not-so-nice things at Blackie Lawless. I remember the word ‘poser’ being shouted very loudly. And when you’ve got an angry-looking skinhead yelling at you, well, let’s just say Blackie didn’t say anything back.

Later that night, our tour manager told us, ‘Your guests are no longer allowed in the hallway — they have to stay in the dressing room.’ Billy was working for us, but we were politely asked to make sure he didn’t yell at the other support bands anymore.”

Scott also shared his memories of seeing Black Sabbath back in the day:

“The first time I saw Black Sabbath was on the ‘Never Say Die’ tour, and Van Halen was opening. It’s all true — during that period, Van Halen was the best band on the planet. They were opening for Sabbath, who were at the tail end of the Ozzy era. I stayed for Sabbath’s set, but man, I’d never seen a band get blown off the stage like that. The only thing close was when Dokken played after Metallica on the Monsters of Rock tour.

Just to be clear — I’m not comparing Sabbath to Dokken — but Van Halen was insane. Everyone at Madison Square Garden was there for Van Halen, and they just crushed it.

But then a year or two later, Sabbath dropped the ‘Heaven and Hell’ record, which I absolutely love. I saw that tour twice. I was already a huge Dio fan from his Rainbow days. That show was incredible — and the ‘Mob Rules’ tour was just as good. Talk about a band redeeming themselves. Holy crap.”
[via No F’n Regrets]

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