In the sprawling history of Exodus, few figures remain as simultaneously revered and enigmatic as the band’s original frontman, Paul Baloff. Equal parts thrash pioneer and mythmaker, Baloff‘s legacy has long been intertwined with wild stories, some true, some wildly embellished, and some, as guitarist Gary Holt recently revealed, pure fiction.
At a recent book event for his memoir “A Fabulous Disaster: From the Garage to Madison Square Garden, The Hard Way”, Holt took a moment to reflect not just on the music but on the man whose life had become legendary in more ways than one.
“We bought it up till his death,” Holt admitted (via Ultimate Guitar). “Other people come up to me with their tales of Paul, and they tell me, ‘Oh, Paul told me this thing.’ And like, that’s such bullsh*t that never happened. But he did it to us, too. You know, the whole, ‘I was born in Russia, and my parents were rocket scientists,’ and they immigrated out of Russia on horseback with him and his sister.”
These fabrications weren’t just whispered tall tales; they became a kind of unofficial folklore among fans and even bandmates. Baloff claimed his birth name was Pavel Nikolayevitch Balchishkov. “So, you know, those were always our nicknames,” Holt said. “We never called him Pavel, or Kirsh. Those nicknames stuck.”
But the truth was far less exotic.
“I have his death certificate,” Holt continued. “He was born in Highland Hospital in Oakland. He’d never been to Russia in his life, and his mother was Dutch. But he was half Russian.”
The house of cards fully collapsed only after Baloff died in 2002, when Holt and the band finally met Baloff’s sister, someone they’d never been introduced to while he was alive.
“Then, when we finally met his sister, whom we had never met the whole time, until after his passing, and [she said], ‘We were born in Oakland.’ This ruined the whole mystique. To me, he’s always that guy headin’ out of Russia on the back of a horse [chuckles].”
The anecdotes didn’t stop there. Another oft-repeated tale involved King Diamond and the claim that Exodus had once been thrown out of a venue for catching a glimpse of the iconic Danish singer without his makeup.
“One dude came to me one day and goes, ‘He told me about the time you guys first met King Diamond, and Paul snuck a look at him without his makeup through a dressing room window, and [King Diamond] had you guys thrown out of the venue.'”
But Holt was quick to set the record straight: “Like, ‘No, we were there. I was in the dressing room with him without his makeup on. He showed me how to open a beer with a Bic lighter.’ King Diamond wasn’t like KISS. He didn’t hide himself. And, but Paul would tell these stories just to keep people interested, I guess.”
These recollections paint a bittersweet picture. Paul Baloff was a character, a storyteller, a man who blurred the lines between legend and life. And while the facts may now be clearer, the aura he created continues to linger, not because of where he was born or who allegedly threw him out of a dressing room, but because of the larger-than-life presence he brought to the world of metal.
