Dave Lombardo was born in Cuba.
Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo played two shows in his hometown of Havana, Cuba, with his current band, Suicidal Tendencies . The performances took place in May.
In an interview at the Graspop Metal Meeting, Lombardo was asked about what it was like to return to Cuba after five decades. “It was magical… I went there [first] in January, and I took my mother, she’s 85 years old, she was all stiff when we got there, but after a week in Cuba and walking around, she said, ‘Oh, okay, let’s go, I can walk by myself, let’s go, let’s go.’”
“I left when I was 15 or 16 months old – that’s when I left Cuba. And we went to California. So I hadn’t been there since then. And I came back, and I was able to see the house where I was born and meet the people who live there now, who have lived there for 50 years, and I saw my father’s butcher shops and an apartment that my mother and father were thinking of buying, two blocks from the Malecón, which is a famous promenade you can take in Havana.”
In a 2012 interview with Noisecreep , Lombardo spoke about how his Cuban roots influenced his musical upbringing. “Living in a Cuban home, my parents would go to these Latin clubs when I was a kid,” he said. “I remember being there and seeing the men playing dominoes, drinking coffee, and talking about the old country. It was a really family-oriented kind of thing. But what I remember most were the dancing.”
He continued: “My mother would try to get me out and dancing for the big live bands that would perform at these parties, but I would be backstage, sitting on a piano stool and staring at the band members. That’s where my fascination with being a musician began. My mother would get so angry and say, ‘Come on, Dave! There are some beautiful girls out there who want to dance.’ But I was more interested in watching the band.”