NEWS

Jon Zazula, who co-founded Metallica’s first label Megaforce, has died at age 69

Longstanding metal mogul Jon Zazula – best known as the co-founder of Megaforce Records, which propped up the careers of acts like Metallica, Anthrax, Testament and Ministry – has died at the age of 69.

Variety confirmed Zazula’s passing through a representative of Megaforce, though a cause for his death was not confirmed. It’s reported that he died in Florida yesterday (February 1), with his brother, daughters, granddaughters and friends at his side.

In a statement posted to her Facebook overnight, Zazula’s daughter Rikki said the famed executive “lived a life as fast, hard, heavy, powerful, and, impactful as the music he brought to the world”. She made mention of her late mother Marsha – who launched Megaforce alongside Zazula, and died of cancer last January – calling the couple “a powerhouse partnership in love, life, and business”.

“Together they believed in the unbelievable,” Rikki continued, asserting that the pair’s “passion, rebel perspective, and persistence built an empire from a box of vinyl in a flea market – into a multi platinum selling record label, management company, and publishing house”.

? The world lost a true legend today… Our Dad lived a life as fast, hard, heavy, powerful, and, impactful as the music…

Posted by Rikki Zazula on Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Better known by the nickname of “Jonny Z”, Zazula’s storied career began in East Brunswick, New Jersey, where he and Marsha ran a record store specialising in new wave and metal. After hearing Metallica’s ‘No Life ‘Til Leather’ demo, the pair were spurred into launching a label of their own. Megaforce was officially launched in 1982, with Metallica’s studio debut, ‘Kill ‘Em All’, putting the label on the map.

Metallica stayed with Megaforce for 1984’s ‘Ride The Lightning’, around the same time the Zazulas were gearing up to kickstart Anthrax’s career with ‘Fistful Of Metal’. Thanks in no small part to those records – as well as others by the likes of Manowar and Raven – the buzz surrounding Megaforce made them heavyweights in the metal scene, and the couple behind it soon linked up with Island and Atlantic for distribution deals.

In a 2020 interview with Variety, Zazula said: “It’s all a blessing when you work hard, stay smart and go into the game, and then eventually something comes your way and you’re ready for it, and you’re able to jump upon it and ride it. We were very fortunate, Marsha and I, to choose a band that became the biggest band in the world – not to mention a bunch of other great bands that made history.”

Though he dialled back his role with Megaforce in the 2010s, Zazula remained prolific in his later years, releasing a memoir titled Heavy Tales: The Metal, The Music, The Madness in 2019, and hosting the Cranium Radio show Jonny Z’s Defcon 4.

In a Twitter thread paying tribute to Zazula, Metallica wrote: “Heavy music lost one of its great champions today when Jonny Z left this world far too soon. In 1982, when no one wanted to take a chance on four kids from California playing a crazy brand of metal, Jonny and Marsha did, and the rest, as they say, is history.

“He was a mentor, a manager, a label head and a father figure to us all. Metallica would not be who we are or where we are today without Jon Zazula and his wife, Marsha. Our love and sympathy go out to Jonny’s children and his grandchildren, whom he cherished and brought to our shows from the time they were in diapers.”