Daron Malakian

Daron Malakian was born on July 18, 1975 in Hollywood, California, the only child to Armenian parents Vartan and Zepur Malakian. Vartan is a painter, dancer, and choreographer from Mosul, Iraq, and Zepur Malakian is a sculptor who instructed college-level sculpture earlier in her career. At an early age, Malakian got into heavy metal music; his distant cousin played him a Kiss record when he was age 4. Malakian started listening to Van Halen, Aerosmith, Def Leppard, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead and Ozzy Osbourne. He always wanted to play the drums, but his parents got him a guitar instead because "You can't turn the drums off." Daron first picked up a guitar at age 11, saying in an interview "For the first year and a half, I learned how to play by ear, and did alright. After a few years I gained a reputation as being a guitar player in high school. And by 16 or 17…