by Lonn Friend
“Ghost Song,” a fitting ode to the other side, followed “Strange Days.” “Love Street” and celestial “Moonlight Drive” elevated the groovy vibe up to near freak-out levels. “Wild Child,” “Summer’s Almost Gone,” and “L.A. Woman,” the unsung hero of all Los Angeles rock gems, followed in perfect succession. Robby Krieger’s guitar cruised through each verse and chorus of the locomotive “Woman” like a ‘71 Corvette racing up Pacific Coast Highway.
“Light My Fire” provided the kindling for the blaze that never seemed to ash. The band literally looked like they were floating, especially Ian, who bellowed the final verse of the landmark hit with all he had to give: “Try to set the night on fire!” They had succeeded bravely in that quest. There was one more song in the set and that was “Riders on the Storm,” the hypnotic lamenting finale off the last official Doors masterpiece, 1971’s L.A. Woman. It was an apropos exclamation for the freakish faithful fanned out across the fairground.
The music was almost over, save a second time around for “Roadhouse Blues.” I’d only seen a band perform the same song twice in one night on two occasions in the thirty years I’d trekked the concert circus. Duran Duran repeated “Girls on Film” at their debut L.A. show at the Roxy and U2 reprised “I Will Follow” at their virgin L.A. performance at the Country Club in Reseda.
Ian, Ray, Robby, Stewart, and guest bassist Angelo Barbera took their bows and left the stage to a collective sense of gleeful accomplishment. Ian toweled off, grabbed a bottle of water, and waved me over. “This is just the beginning, man,” I said. “You pulled it off.”
That’s when he put his arm around me. “I’m glad you were here to see it, mate,” he said.
“Are you kidding?” I responded. “Soon as I’ve got some money again, I’m buying a Harley!”
12
The Screamin’ Prophet
AND LET THERE BE NO PURPOSE IN FRIENDSHIP SAVE THE DEEPENING OF THE SPIRIT.
—Kahlil Gibran
My first cover decision at RIP was Aerosmith. The shot featured the legendary Boston rock group’s lead singer, Steven Tyler, with a slightly sinful, Jaggeresque smirk on his face, holding a parrot. We were riding the historic rebirth of the band, ignited the year before by producer Rick Rubin’s groundbreaking “Walk This Way” duet with Run-DMC and sent in full motion by the band’s smash LP, 1987’s Permanent Vacation.
While I had no personal contact with the band members at that time, it was reported to me by representatives inside their label, Geffen Records, that everyone in the ‘Smith camp loved the issue, especially A&R executive John David Kalodner, a highly eccentric, immensely gifted music-industry player known for his Lennonesque white suits, burly beard, and frequent, freaky guest appearances in Aerosmith videos.
The peculiar and powerful industry veteran’s wedding-dress-clad cameo in the video for the hit single “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” put him instantly at the top of my list of people I wanted to investigate in my new job. Little did I know that John wanted to meet me as well. “RIP is published by Larry Flynt, right?” he asked on that initial phone call. “That’s great. Let’s have lunch next week! Have you ever been to the Palm?”
For the next two years, I became Kalodner’s favorite biweekly lunch partner. He introduced me to L.A.’s two most iconoclastic entertainment-biz eateries, the Palm on Santa Monica Boulevard and the Ivy on Robertson. The food was awesome but the conversation was better. Kalodner was a devout, unashamed devotee of erotic entertainment. He was fascinated by stories from my editorial days at Hustler and Chic magazines.
Before I was Lonn the metalhead or Lonn the grunge rocker, I was Lonn the porn guy. From 1983 to 1985, I wore the hat of X-rated film critic for the most influential sex magazine in America. Companies like VCA Pictures and Caballero Control Corporation were cranking out 35-mm big-screen erotica. A good review in Hustler could mean a million bucks in added revenue, which was nothing to sneeze at, since even the more ambitious films came in at under a hundred grand to produce.
“I loved how you wrote about porn,” Kalodner remarked during one of our first meals together. “It was so honest. Like you were really a fan.” He nailed it. I was a fan. And I had the keys to the kingdom. It was the era of VHS video and the titles were inundating my mailbox. I had so much masturbating material, it’s a wonder I didn’t go blind. I guess I can blame Hustler for my 20/300 eyesight. Kalodner was hip to my ribald résumé. He even pointed out what I considered my proudest journalistic achievement for Larry’s flagship rag. “I really enjoyed the Shauna Grant article you wrote. It was fascinating.”
That was her X-rated screen handle. Her real name was Colleen Applegate, and she was the subject of the last story I wrote for Hustler before jumping ship to RIP in July 1987. A sweet girl from a small town in Minnesota, she came to Hollywood, got mixed up in drugs and porn, and shot herself in the head on March 21, 1984, two months before her twenty-first birthday. Her last boyfriend—a forty-six-year-old coke dealer named Jake Ehrlich who resided in Palm Springs—sent a tape to the magazine of Colleen reading poetry she’d written. We bought the tapes from Ehrlich, and I made a road trip to the desert to interview him and see the house where the fallen angel had spent her last days.
I knew this was my swan song bit of adult reportage and wanted to go the extra mile and find out who this poor girl was and how things went wrong. I asked Ehrlich if I could spend the night at his place. We leafed through photo albums till all hours as he answered my questions about Colleen. When the tape stopped rolling, he showed me the plastered-over hole in the bedroom wall, six inches above the mattress. Three and half years after she’d blown her brains out, Ehrlich still hadn’t painted over the mark.
Borrowing an old marketing idea from the British rock mags, I had the poetry tapes edited into a four-minute vinyl flexi disc with a sexy photo of “Shauna” on the front and bound directly into every copy of the December 1987 issue. My story was called “The Last Love of Colleen Applegate” and carried the footnote, “An editor for Hustler since April 1982, Lonn Friend has recently departed us to take on the editorial reins of RIP magazine, a rock-’n’-roll monthly. We wish him the best.”
Every time Kalodner picked up the pricey tab for an afternoon’s magical munch, I popped a package in the mail to his office loaded with the latest prurient pulp and video fare. It wasn’t kissing ass so much as it was fostering a relationship by utilizing the resources I had at my disposal.
Throughout 1989, Kalodner kept me in the loop while Aerosmith tracked their next album, Pump, giving me early hints on song titles, release date schedules, and most important, clues to who these five musicians were, as both artists and people. “Steven is going to love you,” he said to me.
Steven and Keith Garde, from Collins Management, soared into my office in August of that year for my first-ever interview with the “lips that launched a million tight hips.” I was told I only had twenty minutes to do my thing, but I wasn’t worried. The minute I shook his hand, I felt something, like a shock of electrostatic energy followed by a warm sensation of familiarity. Maybe Steven had this effect on everyone. My bet was he’d been briefed by Kalodner, just as I had been.
I shut my door but didn’t roll tape straightaway. Instead, I sat him down on my floor in front of my VCR. “You wanna see something kinky?” I asked.
“Hell, yeah!” he replied as I cued up a scene from Rain-woman, featuring the geyserlike ejaculatory vaginal acrobatics of Fallon. We watched like two teenagers that had snuck into a Pussycat theater. After her initial watery burst, Steven jumped up and cried, “Oh, man! Show me that again!” Which, of course, I did. With five precious minutes now evaporated, I grabbed my tape recorder and vaulted into an effortless conversation about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.
The interview began with, “Okay, you’re recording an album and having a baby at the same time. Hectic?” Whereupon he responded, “Man, let me tell ya. We finished the Permanent Vacation tour in September. That month I bought a hou
se. October, we had off. November first, I went in the studio with [guitarist] Joe Perry and started diddling, you know, every day, just fucking around. I sat behind the drums, and Joe and I came up with eighteen songs. In the meantime, I’m getting an addition put on my house, so I’m living over the garage with my wife, Teresa, and her twin sister, Lisa. It’s crazy.”
Pump hit the world’s record stores on September 12, 1989— six days after Mötley Crüe released its deliciously vicious Dr. Feelgood LP—and rocketed up the charts on the back of ball-busting ballads like “Love in an Elevator,” “F.I.N.E.,” and “Young Lust.” But while Pump sizzled with enough sexual imagery to incite another Boston Tea Party (the cover of the album featured two old trucks humping), a pair of serious ballads elevated the LP to critical and commercial acclaim.
“Janie’s Got a Gun” depicted a young girl lost in a nightmare of sexual abuse. Director David Fincher (who went on to big-screen success with films like The Game, Fight Club, Seven, and Panic Room) created a powerful clip that lived on MTV for months.
Then there was “What It Takes,” a passionate, heartfelt refrain that hearkened the band’s signature effort, “Dream On” from their 1973 debut, in symphonic scope and emotional authenticity The video was shot in Dallas at an old biker bar. I was invited to visit the set during filming. Kalodner and I made a cameo appearance as a pair of deranged-looking drinkers who’re watching the band perform from behind a chicken-wire screen as redneck patrons pelt the stage with beer bottles. Our footage, sadly, wound up on the cutting-room floor, but the video soared to the top of the MTV playlist.
This was actually my second invitation to a Pump video shoot. “Love in an Elevator” was filmed about fifteen minutes from my house at a seaside Santa Monica high-rise hotel that boasted a showy outdoor glass elevator. Lots of downtime notoriously plagues video shoots. It’s boring for the artist, but it worked out well for a magazine editor who was always in search of new and exclusive content.
“Lonn, I’m loving those videos,” said Steven, walking me around the location grounds.
“I’m glad,” I replied. “It’s nice that those old porn connections are proving to be good for something.”
I saw no harm in sharing the wanton wealth. Hell, I was passing porn all over the industry. I singlehandedly built Rick Rubin’s and Goth crooner Glenn Danzig’s erotic collections. Rick loved adult entertainment. The first time I met him, when I was still on staff at Hustler, he was dating a porn actress. All the metalheads were into it, so whenever the opportunity arose, I gave out gift packages. To me, who had been surrounded by T&A since I walked into the Flynt building in April 1982, it was harmless, hedonistic fun. Dirty mags and vids were expanding the comfort zone between Steven and myself, and the closer I got to Steven, the tighter I became with the entire ‘Smith camp, and it was about to get way more—xxxciting.
“We want some special B-roll footage for the Pump home video,” said Keith, Aerosmith’s day-to-day management rep. “Do you think you can hook it up?” He went on to elaborate how Steven would dig a private performance by a pair of select adult-film stars. “He just wants to watch,” assured Keith. “Nothing shady or illegal.” We’re talking 1990 here, several years before pornography magically shed its evil stigma to become a mainstay of the Howard Stern Show, HBO, and hotel room pay-per-view menus across the globe.
“No problem, Keith,” I said. “It’ll put it together.”
A couple weeks later, I secured the Hustler photo studio in Culver City, where those infamous spreads were shot. Kalodner asked me if I could get the X-rated actress Viper to come down. Renowned in erotic circles for her body-length tattoo of a boa constrictor, she was a favorite of the eccentric record exec. Steven had requested a young starlet who went by the name Raquel, a waiflike creature with a diminutive ass and rocket-shaped silicone-enhanced breasts. Through the formidable influence of the Flynt talent coordinator, both girls were booked.
I decided to have some fun and make our little afternoon B-roll blackout a party by inviting a few fellow fans of erotica down to join the Prophet of Pump in his private peep show. By 3 P.M., the studio was buzzing with a three-man film crew hired by Keith, two naked female porn stars, Steven, Kalodner, and invited guest voyeurs Lars, Rick Rubin, Skid Row guitarist Dave “the Snake” Sabo, and Aerosmith tour photographer and RIP freelancer Gene Kirkland.
Steven pranced about the studio, peeking and grinning, while the rest of us muddled about rather clumsily. Truth be told, the whole scene was ludicrous and far from stimulating. But when it was over, Steven pulled me aside and thanked me for stepping up, going beyond the call of duty—for being a friend. As the town car was about to pull away, Kalodner rolled down the window and quipped, “Boy, that Viper is sleazy. This was great.”
It was August 1990 and I was on assignment covering the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington, four hours outside of London. The headlining act was Whitesnake, the big-hair, big-riff arena-rock phenom fronted by veteran crooner David Coverdale of onetime Deep Purple fame. Aerosmith was second on the bill, attesting to the ‘Snake’s immense commercial charm overseas. Like Aerosmith, Whitesnake fell under Kalodner’s A&R watch.
The phone in my ninety-pound-a-night West End hotel room rang early. It was John. “You should come by and say hi to the guys before we leave for Donington,” he said. “I have a surprise for you.” I’d stopped questioning him some time ago. Once John invited me to the Ivy for lunch without telling me that David Geffen himself would join us during the meal.
I hopped out of my black cab in front of Aerosmith’s upscale inn as the crew was loading up two giant tour buses. I said hello to the roadies, most of whom I knew by face, and waited. All of a sudden, three figures materialized from within the hotel’s revolving door. It was Kalodner, Steven, and Joe Perry. “Lonn Friend!” cried Tyler, all smiles. Joe offered a similar though less vocal salutation. I hugged Kalodner good morning and had chitchatted with the guys for a couple minutes when Tyler said, “So, Lonn, I hear you’re riding with us.”
This comment required a double take even though I was sure I heard him right the first time. “Uh, I’m riding with you?” I responded with giddy incredulity.
Kalodner had a poker face on. “Yeah,” Steven fired back. “This bus is for you, me, John, Joe, and Jimmy.” Before I had time to process that last sentence, the revolving door behind the guys spun, and out onto the cobblestone poured the one, the only, Jimmy “Fucking” Page.
Kalodner cracked the slightest smile. As the crew gently loaded Joe’s and Jimmy’s guitar cases into the belly of the bus, I inched next to John. “Nice surprise,” I said, still shaking.
“He’s going to jam with them tonight,” said the man in white. “It’s going to be historic.” What a brilliant way to upstage the headliner.
“Get on the bus, Lonn!” shouted Tyler. “Or we’ll leave you here with the rest of the press.” Up the bus steps I marched, my stairway to heaven.
Virtually no tape rolled for the entire four-hour trip with the exception of an hour when Joe Perry and I moved to a quiet section of the cabin so I could knock out a one-on-one Q&A with the reclusive guitar hero. “Anger has been the inspiration of some of our best songs,” Joe told me that day. How we got on the subject of anger I can’t recall, because I’d never been happier in my life than during those four hypnotic hours between London and Donington.
They rapped like four musical historians at a mobile think tank. Jimmy brought up the blues—Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Leadbelly and several artists I’d never heard of. These men all owed their musical legacies to the brave black men of sorrow and song who paved the way for every contemporary success story from Elvis to the Beatles, from Led Zeppelin to Aerosmith.
Jimmy Page is historically untouchable. He’s the elite of the elite when it comes to slinging the axe with alien skill and abandon. The best evidence of this inarguable fact was the 5.1 surround-sound audio production of How the West Was Won and the DVD simply titled L
ed Zeppelin, which were released simultaneously on May 27, 2003. “While I was searching through the archives for visual and audio material for the Led Zeppelin DVD,” wrote Jimmy on the inner sleeve, “I rediscovered these 1972 performances from the 25 June L.A. Forum and 27 June Long Beach Arena. This is Led Zeppelin at its best and an illustration of How the West Was Won.”
How the West Was Won is Jimmy Page’s ultimate tour de force. It’s like he has fourteen fingers. He is not human. No mortal creature given a Les Paul and a pick is supposed to be able to do this kind of shit. And just imagine, this was live, no overdubs, no Pro Tools, no soul-depleting hindrances of any sort. If you do not own this disc, you cannot fully comprehend the majesty of Jimmy and Zeppelin. In the rock library of live recordings, this one’s on eternal checkout.
Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John “Bonzo” Bonham invented a form of rock ‘n’ roll that permitted no format and begged no acceptance. Their breakout single “Whole Lotta Love” is a filthy, spread-your-legs serenade with a deadly locomotive hook much like another smoldering FM staple burning up the charts at the time, the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil.” Plant’s vocal did not just undress the ladies, it tore their undies to shreds and made no apologies.
The Immortal Ones are recognized by their catalog of great songs and a penchant for anthem composition. “Stairway to Heaven” is arguably the archetypal rock-’n’-roll anthem. John Paul Jones laid the perfect bottom and Bonzo Bonham crashed the kit with complete disregard for cadence or personal safety. He and Keith Moon were in a league of their own. To this day, they have yet to be surpassed as the purest rock drummers to ever wield a pair of sticks. But truth be told, Zeppelin marched to rock Mecca on the broad shoulders of the man sitting across from me on the bus.
About an hour from our destination, the cabin quieted down, and Steven looked over to me and said, “Lonn, don’t you have any stories to tell? C’mon, man. You work for Larry Flynt, for God’s sake!” Jimmy, Joe, John, and Brian Goode, Jimmy’s manager, all turned their heads in my direction. This was it; time for the fly to stop buzzin’ and start talkin’.
