Kerry King collaborated with Sum 41 after his Beastie Boys joint effort put pressure on him.
The guitarist recently chatted with Ernest Skinner of Canada’s Border City Rock Talk and talked about his work in Sum 41’s hit ‘What We’re All About’:
“It’s funny. I just ran into [Sum 41] in Europe a couple of times. They were on the same festivals with us, and I hadn’t seen them in a long, long time. So they made a way to come out and say ‘hey’, which I was happy about, ’cause I hadn’t seen them forever.”
King shared what his record label told him at the time:
“How that one happened — I remember I turned it down for months and months and months. I’m, like, ‘My fans won’t get it. My fans won’t get it. My fans won’t get it.’ Then the guy from the record label — here’s another funny story, kind of full circle of what we were talking about — he comes up to me and he says, ‘Well, you did the Beastie Boys.’ And I went, ‘Motherf*cker!’ [Laughs] So I’m, like, ‘You’re right.’ So I did it.”
King’s Sum 41 Collab Was Related To Slayer’s Success
In Spring 2002, Sum 41 got King to feature on their song ‘What We’re All About’ for the ‘Spider-Man’ soundtrack. King explained in an April 2024 interview that he accepted the offer to improve Slayer’s image among fans:
“Any time I do something like that I’m hoping to better Slayer in a world perspective. Maybe kids seeing Sum 41, you know, can see me play and say, ‘Hey, who’s that guy? Where’d he come from?’ and maybe they’ll check us out for the first time. So that’s why I do stuff like that.”
He also previously told Metal Hammer:
“So, yeah, I played on the Beastie Boys record and I played on the Sum 41 record. I mean, those weren’t choices for me, those were just career choices I made. Some people may agree with them and some people may not.”
King collaborated with the Beastie Boys’ 1987 track ‘No Sleep Till Brooklyn.’ Kerry will be a special guest on the upcoming Lamb of God and Mastodon North American ‘Ashes of Leviathan’ tour. The tour runs from July 19 in Grand Prairie, Texas to August 31 in Omaha, Nebraska.
You can listen to the rest of his chat below.