“Every time I slid my hand down the neck, a splinter of wood would stick in my finger and I would start bleeding”: Sepultura co-founder Max Cavalera looks back on his first-ever electric guitar, “Rotten” – and the moment he discovered metal

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Before co-founding what would become Sepultura with his younger brother Igor, Max Cavalera made a discovery that would change the trajectory of his entire life: metal music.

“In 1981, when I was 12 and Igor was 11, we lived in Belo Horizonte near all these shady long-hair characters who were wearing Judas Priest shirts, and we went, ‘Yeah, we want to be like those guys!’” Cavalera relates in an interview with Guitar World.

“We made friends with a couple of them, and they had cool record collections. That’s where we first saw the Judas Priest live album, Unleashed in the East. I saw the cover and thought, ‘Man, these guys look amazing!’ That’s how we discovered Priest, Iron Maiden, and other great metal.”

It wasn’t long before he picked up his first guitar, an old acoustic that belonged to his dad, and one that he decided “to pimp out like KISS”.

“I broke a mirror and superglued shards from the mirror onto the guitar [to resemble Paul Stanley’s guitar],” Cavalera remembers. “I did a horrible job, and the shards stuck out and cut my hand. It was total ghetto, but it was bad-ass. I wish I still had that.”

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However, it was only when he and his brother witnessed Brazilian thrash metal band and pioneers Dorsal Atlântica in action that Cavalera became hooked on the genre and decided to make the switch to electric. It wasn’t a painless transition, though.

“[They] were real aggressive and kind of sounded like Venom that I turned to Igor and said, ‘Hey, those motherfuckers are from Brazil. If they can do it, we can, too.’

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“That’s when I bought my first electric guitar,” he reminisces. “There was no brand. I called it “Podrido” which means the rotten [in Spanish]. Every time I slid my hand down the neck, a splinter of wood would stick in my finger, and I would start bleeding. It was a piece of shit, but it was so cool to have an actual guitar.”

Last year, Cavalera revealed that there’s no longer any need for a classic-era Sepultura return, despite fans’ wishes for the Cavalera brothers to take part in the band’s farewell tour.

Guitar World’s upcoming interview with Max Cavalera will be published in the coming weeks.

Janelle is a staff writer at GuitarWorld.com. After a long stint in classical music, Janelle discovered the joys of playing guitar in dingy venues at the age of 13 and has never looked back. Janelle has written extensively about the intersection of music and technology, and how this is shaping the future of the music industry. She also had the pleasure of interviewing Dream Wife, K.Flay, Yīn Yīn, and Black Honey, among others. When she’s not writing, you’ll find her creating layers of delicious audio lasagna with her art-rock/psych-punk band ĠENN.