by Drew Fortune
Since I had agreed to play our first show in six years, I was all set to the task of assembling an official lineup for the gig, as Guided By Voices had just been a loose conglomeration of whoever decided to pop in during a recording session to that point. The lineup ended up being Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Kevin Fennel, and Dan Toohey. We had the look, at the time, of a fairly typical, generic Ohio garage/punk band. We had started to garner some acclaim from the indie rock press and obscure cognoscente as these mysterious, lo-fi weirdos with an affectation for the Who/Beatles/British Invasion/Flying Nun Records. Our look was not only incongruous within the infrastructure of the band but also with most anything going on in the indie rock scene at the time. Some of us had long hair, some of us had short hair, one or two wore baseball hats. There may have even been dreadlocks or a mullet.
The show was at CBGB, and we were third of a five-band Scat/Thrill Jockey Records showcase. As I mentioned before, I was horrified almost to the point of physical sickness. It was a total schmooze fest in front of the club with indie rock luminaries, label people, and press co-mingling. Sonic Youth and Pavement were there. I was greatly concerned that we were about to be revealed as the clueless, talentless Midwestern hicks that I thought we very much had the potential to be labeled, as there was a reason for not having played live in six years. At the merchandise table, we sold a pink tank top with a purple octopus on the front (which to my surprise, ended up selling very well). Indigenous New Yorkers showed up wearing checkered shirts and cuffed jeans, anticipating what they thought might be the current, in-style trend for Southern Ohio lo-fi weirdo recording artists.
Before the show, during the aforementioned jerk fest, our drummer, Kevin, told me that he had approached Henry Rollins and said, “Hey, Henry—” to which Henry interrupted with a very angry and forceful “What!” Nothing against Henry, but I was like, “Why the fuck would you want to talk to Henry Rollins?” It just made me even more nauseous.
So we come on at around 10:00 p.m. with our baseball hats, Les Pauls, and white corduroys and gave it a go. I knew of only one confidence builder other than the alcohol I had been drinking all day and that was the fact that a few of us—at least Mitch Mitchell and I—were pretty decent athletes. We could move, jump, kick…drink. We both had a heavy-metal background, having been in a band in high school called Anacrusis.
So that’s what we decided to do. Drink more. Move a lot. Kick out the set at a very brisk pace (I think it was a forty-five minute set) without much time between songs. Only the count—very Ramones style. I wasn’t focusing on the crowd, just sort of gazing over the top of their heads at the exit sign in the back of the room because that’s where I initially wanted to go. They seemed to be getting into it. What weirded me out and caused a huge surge of insecurity and paranoia was, about two-thirds of the way through the set, a pretty large portion of the crowd, maybe forty or fifty of them, began raising their cigarette lighters and yelling. I mistook it as a possible form of mockery or big city snobbery. A sarcastic protest of our arena rock posturing perhaps. We had been jumping and kicking, and it was a pretty energetic performance throughout the entire set, mainly out of sheer nervous energy from stage fright. I was informed by a group of people that came backstage afterwards that the reaction with the lighters was a show of genuine appreciation for the songs and for the fact that we “rocked” instead of “shoe-gazed,” which was quotidian in indie or alternative rock.
The next morning, we met British rock press legend Everett True, who greeted us in our hotel lobby in a bathrobe and house slippers for our very first interview. In the piece that he wrote for Melody Maker (or maybe NME) he called us “The last great American underground rock band.”
That CBGB show started it all for us. We stayed in Manhattan for the next four days and got tangled up in the scene. I didn’t call anyone, including my friends and family, the entire time we were there. I was lost at Gonesville Station, and life would never be the same after that. We never became KISS or the next Nirvana, but we’re still kicking it out some twenty years later.
51
MOBY
Born Richard Melville Hall (his stage name based on the eponymous whale from his distant uncle Herman Melville’s Moby Dick), MOBY was instrumental in the early incarnations of house and dance music. In 1999, MOBY released his fifth album, Play, which went on to sell over ten million records. “Porcelain” ended up selling millions more—the opener on that mix CD you regret making in college.
My most embarrassing gig is not terribly dramatic, but it still pains me to think about it. I dropped out of college in 1984 and started a band with some friends. We were called AWOL, which was an acronym for Angels Without Light, because we were Joy Division-obsessed, gothic, overly dramatic suburban kids. We borrowed money from our parents and released this five-song EP, with the release party at a Chinese restaurant in Norwalk, Connecticut, called the D.C. Cafe. I have no idea why it was called that, but they were the only place that would allow us to set up equipment and play a show. I had a huge crush on a girl named Margaret Fiedler, who, oddly enough, has gone on to have a very interesting career in music. She was PJ Harvey’s guitar player, and now she plays guitar in Wire.
I really wanted to impress her, so I invited her to our album release show at the D.C. Cafe, which was in a strip mall. It was the lowest of the lowest rung of Chinese restaurants. We set up, with our little borrowed PA, in the far corner next to some vegetable crates. We had made hundreds of flyers to promote the show and put them up in every record store and venue in the area. I had visions in my head of hundreds of people filling the restaurant. Margaret arrived shortly after by herself. The owner demanded that, in order for her to sit and watch the show, she had to order food. My friend Paul arrived with his cousin, and they were told the same thing. And, that was it. Literally no one else came to our show. This was our big, triumphant, record-release show, and the setting was so sad. There I was, trying to impress the girl that I had this huge crush on, playing sad songs in an empty Chinese restaurant, while she ate food that she’d been forced to order. Thankfully, Margaret and I still keep in touch to this day.
The craziest gig is going to sound like I’m overdramatizing this, or indulging in hyperbole, but I promise I’m not. With most shows, there’s a little bit of chaos. But for this one, it was so insane that it was almost like scripted chaos. This was in 1997, and I was playing a festival at Leeds in the north of England. This was at a very low point for me professionally. I had just released an album called Animal Rights that no one liked. I was still playing the occasional festival, and I would try and play some of my new punk rock songs from Animal Rights, but in order to get paid, I had to play dance music, because that’s what I was hired to do.
We started playing, and the audience was weirdly chaotic. It seemed like they had been drinking and taking drugs for a few days, which was probably the case. I played Woodstock ’99, and this had a similar vibe of things just being wrong. Early into our set, I jumped into the audience. One of the security guards, who was either mentally ill or simply didn’t realize that I was an artist, just started punching me. He was huge, and the audience was trying to pull me into the crowd while security was trying to pull me towards the stage. It didn’t make any sense, because even if I was some kid who’d stage-dived, the security guard had no reason to start punching.
My arms were immobilized by the audience, and the security guards had my legs, while this guy was punching my head and back. Finally, I was somehow released, and I screamed in the guy’s face. He hauled back to punch me again, and I ran back on stage. This has never happened before or since, but at that moment, I swear to you…my amplifier caught on fire and exploded. I’m not sure if it was a Firestarter moment, where my chaos and rage caused the amp to blow up, but there was fire belching out of the amp. I was muddy, bruised and bloody, and I started berating the violent security guard from the stage. He tried to get on stage, and my tour manager and the other guards literally had to wre
stle him to the ground. Immediately after the last note of our set—and I swear I’m not kidding—the heavens opened up, and it was the biggest thunderstorm I’ve ever seen. It was biblical, and it felt…perfect.
52
WYCLEF JEAN
Did you know Wyclef is an accomplished mixed martial artist? Or that he performed with a lion on stage? Well, read all about it! One time, or two times.
One of the most embarrassing was with the Fugees. It was our first time playing Japan, and we were playing this huge stadium. We were introduced to sake. I didn’t know what it was, and to me and Pras, the shit looked just like water. We drank sake until we couldn’t drink sake no more and totally underestimated its power. The stage for our show was elevated about ten feet off the floor, so the crowd was below us. We opened with “Ready or Not,” and I was looking for Pras, who was nowhere to be found. He was so drunk that he had fallen off the stage. I was dizzy, wobbly, and felt like hurling. Lauryn didn’t drink. She was the smart one. There was no worse feeling, but I couldn’t escape. I had to keep it going with the crowd, who were going crazy because they thought Pras tumbling off stage was part of the show. I was about to throw the fuck up all over that stage the entire set. It was the worst, but also kinda cool.
There’s been violence at our shows. We got into a scuffle in Germany, and I had to fight. I’m a really nice guy, which makes me a great fighter, because I fight calm. This was sometime in the early ’90s when promoters would pack shows with 6,000 kids. Hip-hop had just started coming, and we were having problems with some skinheads that night. After the show, they came at us with a vibe on the street, and we got into it. I had to whoop some ass. I grew up watching Royce Gracie, and I fell in love with the UFC when I was nineteen, before it was even the UFC. I love the art of fighting and mixed martial arts. I will never instigate violence unless it’s in the act of self-defense. That night in Germany, I felt that we were being threatened. If you watch my video “The Ring,” you’ll see how I fight. They hit the fucking ground.
I’m a showman. I play with a sixty-four-piece orchestra. People don’t know that I performed off-Broadway when I was younger. I love theatrics and putting shows together. One of my craziest shows as a soloist was when I was working with the artist Canibus, who was a battle rapper. He said to me, “I wanna be the hardest rapper. I want people to fear me.” I said, “That’s cool. In order for them to fear you, we gotta show up on stage with an uncaged lion. If you’re rapping fearlessly with a lion, it doesn’t get more hardcore than that.”
I got introduced to big cats by Mike Tyson, who was moving with three cats at the time. They were in his house. When I was younger, I was obsessed with the circus. I was flipping off trampolines, doing gymnastics, and breakdancing. That was my culture. I was also obsessed with animals and had a sensitivity towards them. I felt like the fucking Jungle Book with them. For the song, “2nd Round Knockout,” we brought the lion out on stage with no cage. We didn’t sedate the lion or anything because I love animals. When I say cat, I’m not talking about a baby Siamese. This was a full-blown, massive lion.
This was on the Smokin’ Grooves Tour in 1998, and I always believe in bringing the arena the show. Even during the Fugees, I was always the one who would coordinate the show because I have big vision and imagination as a showman. That was one of the most memorable on-stage memories. If you talk to Busta Rhymes or Q-Tip for this book, they’ll be like, “Yo, Wyclef came out with a fucking lion. Ain’t no topping that.” We had two trainers on stage for the lion. One night, the lion got loose, but my bodyguard Beast was able to control it. The lion was a little frustrated, but we were able to contain it. The lion was totally cool most of the time.
This was a professional show lion, so it wasn’t like I went to the jungle and snatched him up. I don’t know if PETA is against brothers, because it was just like watching the circus or going to the zoo. Every level of proper code was followed. You don’t just bring a wild lion to a venue, so we respected and followed every protocol. No one was offended because the lion was not used in any way that was cruel or dealt with in any way that could be considered animal cruelty. It was the circus on stage. It was dope.
53
BRANDON BOYD
(Incubus)
Apart from my lack of talent, I could never be in a touring band. I have enough trouble falling asleep in my own bed, let alone tour buses and motels. I also curl up in a fetal position when sick and avoid the world. Brandon Boyd has one solution to fighting illness: alcohol.
Thankfully, for the purposes of this book, I have a lot of horror stories. One of the worst for me was when we did the Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco in 2009, a huge event in Golden Gate Park, with about 50,000 people. It was our first time playing the festival. We were so excited to do it, and we had just come off a super duper, and very well-attended, US tour. One of the worst things that can happen to a singer is to get sick, and there’s a long history of hypochondriac lead singers as a result of the paranoia of getting a common cold. The day before the fest, I came down with a really nasty cold. I sort of felt OK, but my voice was completely trashed. I did everything in my power the day of the show to not freak out, but when I went to warm up my voice, there was just nothing there. I could barely talk. It was one of those situations where I wanted to just run away. I was praying for a UFO to abduct me or just something to get me as far away from that festival stage as possible.
I started to feel a panic attack coming on, thinking that I had less than an hour before I had to go out in front of all these people. Our bass player saw me pacing in the dressing room and asked if I was all right. I pointed to my throat and croaked, “I got no voice.” Just before we went on stage, he grabbed a fresh bottle of wine, handed it to me, and said, “All right man, it’s time to get drunk.” For a lightweight like me, I downed a bottle and was properly drunk halfway through the set. I still couldn’t sing a note, but I just didn’t really care. I think at some point I announced to the crowd, in a drunken stupor, “Sorry Outside Lands, I’m fucking sick.” I knew in my heart that it was one of the worst concerts I’d ever performed, and I could see by the tens of thousands of faces that they knew it too. They picked up on my I-don’t-care-let’s-get-drunk vibe, so people weren’t booing. I don’t remember much, but I do remember having fun, which was amazing considering how completely panicked I had been.
The catch is that we travel all over the world and make our living by touring. Out of all the shows we’ve done, the one I get the most feedback about is that goddamn Outside Lands show. I’ll meet someone and after explaining that I’m the singer in Incubus, they’ll say, “Oh, I saw you one time in San Francisco.” I’ll ask, “Oh cool, at the Warfield?” They say, “No, it was at Outside Lands.” That happens everywhere we go. I’ve met people in Abu Dhabi who saw the show. For the rest of my life, I’ll have people coming up to me, saying they saw the worst show of my life.
In 2001, we put out an album called Morning View, and we had two sold-out dates set up at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City to start the tour. It was a really exciting time for us, and there was all this lovely momentum coming off our last record Make Yourself. I woke up in my SoHo hotel room on September 11, which was just a few blocks away from the Twin Towers. We were close enough that when the planes hit the building, all the car alarms were going off below us, and my hotel window was rattling. It was viscerally shocking before I even had any idea what was going on. It was the most frightening experience I can remember having in my life. We played a show in New Hampshire on the thirteenth, and there was a strange, solemn mood the entire show. The next two shows were scheduled at Hammerstein on the fourteenth and fifteenth.
We were really uncertain about what was the right thing to do. We wanted to be there and play but also to be as respectful as possible. We considered canceling, and we asked the promoter what was going on. He said, “Everyone’s canceling, but we’re not telling any of the bands to cancel. We think some people may want to take
their minds off things right now and come together.” They ended up being two of the most memorable concerts in my professional life. There were moments where it was solemn and moments when it was extremely sad, but for the most part, there was a feeling of incredible unity and solidarity. I’m still really grateful that people came out, and a lot of people didn’t show up. Both nights, the room was about three-quarters full, which was surprising, given the circumstances.
I’ve never heard an American audience sing as loud, or emote as freely, as on those two nights. It still sticks with me. It felt like the first step in a massive healing. Now, it seems like every couple of months, some nightmarish tragedy occurs at concerts, like the Vegas shooting. We had a residency lined up in Vegas at that time, and we did end up canceling that. It’s such a strange feeling now to be a traveling entertainer in a world where weird, fucked-up stuff happens all the time, and I have to make that a part of my reality. I have this kind of hyper-vigilance now, and the shock and reality of these mass shootings doesn’t wear off, nor should it. I don’t want it to, and I don’t want to normalize this reality. I don’t want to resign myself to thinking, “Oh, well, people die at concerts now.” I can’t do that.
54
MERLE ALLIN
(GG Allin and the Murder Junkies)
So, it’s come to this: The GG Allin chapter. His brother and former bandmate, Merle, is a really nice guy because, going in, I didn’t know what to expect. Hold your noses everyone, here’s a look into the brutality, human feces, nudity, heroin, and death that was the GG Allin experience.
