Mastodon‘s Brann Dailor says a shared obsession with an 80s movie saw him run up an $800 phone bill texting quotes from the film to late Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison.
Dailor loved 1986 crime drama River’s Edge – partly because it featured Slayer on the soundtrack and followed a “bunch of metalheads with no future”.
Mastodon’s new album Marrow Deep features a sample from the film on the track Poisonous Weapons.
When Mastodon and Slipknot were on the The Unholy Alliance tour together in the mid-2000s, Dailor struck up a firm friendship with fellow drummer Jordison.
And when Jordison casually dropped a line from the film in conversation, Dailor immediately followed up with the next line from the movie – beginning a playful back-and-forth that would cost him a small fortune.
Dailor tells Full Metal Jackie: “I memorised that whole movie. It’s one of my favourite movies of all time. It had Slayer in the soundtrack and just seemed it was a bunch of metalheads but with no future.
“And when I first met Joey Jordison, when we were on tour with Slipknot and Slayer over in Europe, I saw this little guy watching us soundcheck, and I had never seen Joey’s actual face before.
“But I was like, ‘I think that’s Joey.’ Then when we got done soundcheck and I went over to him. We made very fast friends.
“You could see across the street, like past the buses and the trucks, the loading dock door was open and there was like six cop cars over there with their lights on.
“And he looked over and he said, ‘Somebody fuckin’ parked.’ Now that’s a line from The River’s Edge, and I did the next line.
“I said ‘duck down, goddammit. You wanna get yourself caught?’
“So me and Joey became best friends in that moment.”
The pair eventually sent so many mobile text messages to each other quoting the film, that it cost Dailor $800.
He adds: “I got home at the end of that tour and I had a $800 phone bill. My wife at the time said ‘is this because you were texting River’s Edge quotes back and forth with Joey?’
“And I was like, ‘yeah.I’m sorry. But I can’t let Joey know, I can’t let him think that I don’t know what the next line is.’
“It’d be like 3 in the morning. We’re on different buses. We’re in Germany somewhere, and he’s like, ‘somebody fuckin’ parked’, you know.”
River’s Edge was released in 1986 and stars Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye and Dennis Hopper.
Joey Jordison died in 2022 at the age of 46.
