Luke Brewer joined Rotting Corpse on lead guitar in 1988, replacing Roger Gallardo, and stayed to the end of the original run. When the band came back in 2005 he was there for that too. He died before the band’s fourth decade; the reunion lineup that played the Memorial Day Massacre tour was the last one he was part of.
A Small Town In Oklahoma
Brewer’s route into metal started with one record, in a place with nobody to share it with.
“I got Black Sabbath’s Live Evil when it came out, that set it for me. I lived in a tiny town in Oklahoma at the time and I was a bit of an outcast for listening to that ‘satanic stuff.’”
From there it was the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, more or less wholesale — “UFO, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Accept, old Scorpions and Judas Priest.” He had time for the guitar playing coming out of Los Angeles in the same years but not much for the scene around it: “that scene was so shallow compared to the European mentality of metal.”
The Leads On The Sinking Boat Tape
The band’s third demo, cut at Pantego in 1988 with Vinnie Paul at the board, was four hours of work that was never mixed and never meant to come out. Most of it is gone. What survived, survived partly because Brewer went back and put fresh leads on the two salvageable songs. Those two tracks — “Emotional Scars” and “Evolvement” — are the only reason that session exists on record at all.
Asked what the band’s songs were actually about, he gave the most useful answer anyone in the band has given: “The song ‘Rotting Corpse’ is a rip on the 80’s hair metal posers of the time, but there are also tales of jaded Vietnam war vets, schizophrenia…” Read them →
Trying To Quit
When the original run ended in 1990, Brewer meant it to be the end.
“By 1990 we were done. I was really disillusioned and worn out by the start and stop nature of the band, and the music scene in general. I tried to get away from it by joining the Marines and going to college, but if you’re a musician, it’s impossible to not be one. You gotta let your freak flag fly.”
He came back for the 2004 jam at Steve Murphy’s wedding weekend — the one that restarted the band by accident — and played the whole run that followed. Murphy has said Brewer called him almost every day for twenty years.
On What The Shows Were For
Brewer had a clear idea of who the reunion crowds were, and why they came.
“MTV made metal popular and hip in the 80’s, then tried to kill it off in the 90’s. Our shows are like reunions of metal survivors, young and old — people that reject being ‘programmed’ as to what they should be listening to.”
On how the band played live, he was just as direct: “Live, we do all kinds of crazy shit. We’re not contrived — we take chances.” And on whether he had a solo project in him: “I plan on doing a solo project at some point, but I’ll be doing Rotting Corpse as long as it holds together this time. I’ll play these tunes as a one man band if I have to.”
He signed off that interview the way he seems to have meant most things — “Thanks for keeping the scene alive!”
