EXTREME CONDITIONS DEMAND EXTREME INSTRUMENTS: OWN DANNY LILKER’S BRUTAL TRUTH BASS

“Works fine, but looks a little beat up due to being my main bass during Brutal Truth’s career in the early 90s.”

So reads the no doubt understated Ebay listing for the US-made B.C. Rich 4-string bass extreme music trailblazer and living heavy metal legend Danny Lilker — revisit our “Better Living the Danny Lilker Way” for a reminder of the man’s unquestionable supremacy — deployed on such landmark Brutal Truth grinders as Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses and Need To Control as well as S.O.D.’s 1992 Live at Budokan

An instrument, in other words, which helped summon forth “Chaos, destruction, and feedback in a haze of weed smoke” — as Lilker puts it when asked to briefly describe this era of aural liberation.

Intrigued? So were your good pals at Decibel so we hit up the always convivial paradigm smasher for the inside scoop…

What prompted you to part with the bass now?

Our cats are now considered ‘senior’ in age and are having various ailments that are adding up to a lot of veterinary bills. As my wife and I did not have children, they are our children and we need to make sure they are taken care of as much as we can so they can live out the remaining years of their lives in the best health as possible.

Are you at all melancholy/nostalgic over doing so?

Sure, that bass meant a lot to me and definitely played a huge role in the early BT days, but I have a Warwick endorsement now anyway…

In addition to verifying PayPal payment are you going to verify buyer’s grindfreak status?

Ha! Maybe I should make the buyer pass a quiz or something!

There’s also that sweet leaf on there. Is this a contact high situation?

Again I must say Ha! Well, that bass was certainly around for some intense partying but unfortunately there’s no resin caked on it, sorry. It was just a visual example of my interests.

In addition to the guitar and its original case, people are getting some pretty classic metal stickers: Cathedral! Only Living Witness! The under-appreciated Mindrot! You still jam/endorse/advocate for any of that stuff?

Hmm. Well, I’ll always enjoy the recordings of those bands as well as the memories of playing with them, but besides occasional contact with Mr. Dorrian, I guess, no, not really. This was twenty-five years ago, mind you.

Any other details you’d like to share about the guitar and your adventures with it?

It used to have another knob but it got cleanly sheared off when I used to use my mic stand as a “slide” at the end of our sets. I had it restored recently and rewired to compensate.

You can hear it at the very end of Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses at the end of “Unjust Compromise” — I tuned it down so low that the strings were almost coming off.

It’s indestructible. Another end-set maneuver was to lean it against the amp with the volume pegged, whip the strings with a towel and kick it. It  fell over like that numerous times, but never broke.

I meticulously cut out that weed sticker and placed it in the sweet spot on there. So you know, using a scissors on adhesive material can be tricky work!

Check out Lilker’s Ebay listing here.