Exodus guitarist Gary Holt is lovingly setting the record straight on some of the wild, larger-than-life myths surrounding the band’s late, iconic frontman, Paul Baloff. In a recent interview promoting his new memoir, A Fabulous Disaster, Holt revealed that Baloff, the ferocious voice behind the 1985 thrash classic Bonded By Blood, was a master storyteller who fabricated elaborate tales about his life—myths that even his own bandmates believed for decades.
The most outlandish of these stories was Baloff’s own origin myth. He claimed his birth name was Pavel Nikolayevitch Balchishkov, that he was born in Russia to rocket scientist parents, and that his family had escaped the country by fleeing on horseback.
“We bought it up till his death,” Holt admitted (as transcribed by Ultimate Guitar). The truth, he discovered, was far more mundane. “I have his death certificate. He was born in Highland Hospital in Oakland. He’d never been to Russia in his life, and his mother was Dutch.”
The band only learned the truth after Baloff’s passing in 2002, when they finally met his sister. “[She said], ‘We were born in Oakland.’ This ruined the whole mystique,” Holt recalled with a laugh. Yet, the power of the legend endures for him. “To me, he’s always that guy headin’ out of Russia on the back of a horse.”
Holt explained that fans still approach him with tall tales they heard directly from the singer, forcing him to play fact-checker. “Other people come up to me with their tales of Paul, and they tell me, ‘Oh, Paul told me this thing.’ And like, that’s such bulls**t. That never happened,” he said.
One such story involved a supposed confrontation with Mercyful Fate frontman King Diamond. As Baloff told it, he snuck a peek at King Diamond without his signature makeup, which resulted in Exodus being thrown out of the venue. The reality was far less dramatic.
“No, we were there. I was in the dressing room with him without his makeup on,” Holt clarified. “He showed me how to open a beer with a Bic lighter. King Diamond wasn’t like KISS. He didn’t hide himself.”
Ultimately, Holt believes the fabrications were part of what made the frontman such a unique and compelling character in the burgeoning thrash scene. “Paul would tell these stories just to keep people interested, I guess,” he said.
Paul Baloff joined Exodus in 1981, having connected with guitarist Kirk Hammett at a party the previous year over their shared love for punk and heavy music. Baloff served as the thrash band’s initial lead vocalist. He was reportedly fired in 1986, a year after the release of Exodus‘s landmark 1985 debut album, Bonded by Blood, allegedly due to substance abuse.
Baloff also returned as frontman when the band reunited in 1997 after a four-year hiatus, though this reunion was brief, with Exodus disbanding again in 1998. He was once more part of the 2001 reunion, but his tenure was cut short when he tragically passed away from a stroke in 2002.
