Below you can watch SLAYER‘s Tom Araya say goodbye at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
SLAYER‘s longtime manager Rick Sales spoke about the band’s decision to embark on its farewell tour in a new interview with MassLive.com.
“The band has always had a lot of integrity,” he said, adding that “there are a couple things that go on. I totally get that they made a decision to stop touring. That doesn’t mean the end of the band. It’s just the end of touring. I always thought of it as, ‘You go out on top.’ They made that decision. They’re not milking it. From that standpoint, I get it and they made the right choice.”
SLAYER‘s management has told Pollstar that the band has already sold $10 million worth of merch on their farewell tour, with final trek yet to start.
Barry Drinkwater, who runs Global Merchandising comments: “There are only a handful of bands on the planet that are that iconic. They’re very focused on the quality of the products, between Tom [Araya] and Kerry [King], and very into the design and development.
“We have a lot of input from them — how they want the graphics, everything from the color and depth of the saturation. It’s great to have so much involvement from the artists themselves.”
Kristen Mulderig, who works with SLAYER‘s management company, Rick Sales Entertainment Group, says there will still be more stuff from the band in the future.
“We’re in legacy mode. which is a lot to do, even though they won’t be making records or on the road. They still have their endorsers, there’s still merch and branding to do — sync licenses and who knows? Maybe coming up with some sort of event that is SLAYER-based. This is all stuff we’re thinking about and talking about. SLAYER lives on, absolutely.”
SLAYER‘s final tour ever has kicked off this past weekend in North Carolina, and it will wrap up with two shows in the band’s home town of Los Angeles. Tickets for remaining dates are available here.
Check out the video of Tom Araya addressing the New Your crowd here (via Loudwire):
