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Friday, January 17, 2014

WHAT TO DO WHEN A ROCK STAR ASKS YOU TO HAVE HIS BABY...GIVE HIM A Z!!!

     1992, April, or thereabouts, Max was feeling fatherly one night and out of nowhere, asked me to have his child.  I wasn't surprised, or shocked or spooked...I just flowed and smiled.  As our bus crossed into Italy a few days later, unknown to me, I was carrying his son.  I guess it was fate.  It was like the end of a good book whose ending you can predict.  It just fit.

     Max went insane looking for a name, scouring books, wracking his brain, searching on the horizon and everywhere in between.  I had settled on Genghis, but our friend Shane from Napalm Death got so petrified when he heard the rumor, he petitioned us daily to keep looking!  "Something normal, please Gloria.  Something normal, please!!!"   Max finally cornered me one day as he does when he has the name of a new record and said, "His name will be Zyon, with a 'y'."  I was impressed!! He had done it!!  Max had found a name that was nothing but original, cool as all hell, and fitting of a Max son.
Zyon w/ Napalm Death
Zyon w/ Mike Patton
     When Max first peered into those big brown eyes, the addiction began. Soon our little Sepultura mascot was one of the gang.  Never crying, always even tempered, he would forever be a positive force in our life.
Zyon and Carnival Jim at the Sacred Reich making of the Crawling video
    In the first year of Zyon's life, he went with us to record Chaos AD and also bussed around the world on all the tours.  He became the star at all the concerts, stealing the limelight from his father, when no one thought it possible!
letter and photo of Z with Dave Grohl
      Andreas especially loved Z from the moment of his first cuddle.  There was magic in Zyon's smile.  Andreas said many times he was Z's Godfather.  Even when we all flew, Zyon never cried one time.  While the other children on the plane were screaming bloody murder, Zyon was content with reading, happily playing, and doo-doo-dahing.  He had a beat going in his head at birth.
Max, Z, and Me
     I look now at our 21-year-old son, headphones on at a beat machine 24/7, making beats all day long.  He is not only a natural born drummer, but a beat maestro extraordinaire.  They flow through his brain like the riffs flow through his father's and his brother, Igor's.  There are beats in there no one has dreamt of.  They are just waiting to burst out!  And I recall his youth, standing in the bus lounge arranging pillows as snares and cymbals, pulsating to Bored by the Deftones, with his brother, Dana, bouncing next to him.  The legacy flows through Z; the Uncle Iggor stick of dynamite is always lit.

     His time has come, slowly creeping in, no way to go but to stay on the path that was predetermined by his ROOTS.  Who knows the future?  No one.  Who can imagine the future?  Everyone!

Happy birthday, Zyon!!  You are a locomotive!!!


Soulfly - "Bloodshed" w/Zyon on Drums 

Lody Kong - "mOnkeys alWays Look" w/Zyon on Drums



Class dismissed...