Life on Planet Rock

by Lonn Friend

  They were hopping in their cars to leave for the airport when Tyler and I finally had a few moments to reconvene. “Steven, we gotta talk,” I said as the driver gunned the town car’s engine, signaling it was time to go. The rest of the group had departed already.

  “Yeah, we do,” he replied. What followed were twenty surreal minutes on a sidewalk forty miles outside of Motown. “Do you know who Marianne Williamson is?” he asked.

  “Of course I do,” I responded. Williamson is a writer and motivational speaker who based her career on A Course in Miracles, a New Age bible published in the early ‘70s.

  “She’s a very enlightened woman, Lonn,” vibrated Tyler. He got excited, pulled me closer, and started whispering in my ear. “She was just in my hotel room, performing a private Sunday-morning service for me. This woman has a direct line to God! We laughed, cried, and sang hallelujah.”

  He positively glowed. I told him about my pain, confusion, disgust with the egos of the industry, and desire to bring a revolutionary consciousness to rock journalism. I was venting, judging, making excuses for having lost my way. I had failed as a record executive. My return to journalism at KNAC.com had been short-lived. Now I was chasing the pipe dream of a VH1 TV show. If you can’t bitch to your friends, whom can you bitch to?

  Tour manager Jimmy Eyers, the accommodating British gent who has guided the band in and out of trains, planes, and automobiles since the mid ‘90s, loaded up the town cars and sent them off to the airport while Steven and I continued our conversation on the sidewalk. The regiment never pulls out until the sergeant is on board.

  “You know, I wanted you to write the liner notes for Get a Grip, but [former manager] Tim Collins nixed the idea.”

  That knocked me back onto the sidewalk. “Really, I never knew that.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about that period.” He smiled sardonically. “I’m saving it for my book.” Before departing, Steven gave me his cell-phone number. “You use this anytime. No barricades. This is how you reach me. I’m serious.” He held me close and told me to hang in there.

  “I’m coming out on the road to see you,” I said. “I don’t know when, but when I do, we’re gonna talk. Really talk.”

  He shook his head, grinned that Cheshire-cat Tyler grin, and disappeared into his chariot, the chains on his wrist jangling, the hair on my arms quivering.

  T.C. and I arrived in San Diego a little after 6 P.M. on a chilly day in January 2002, early enough to ensure that there would be plenty of time to talk. She was the only one I could find to make a two-hour trip south at the last minute to see a rock concert. T.C. used to be married to David Gahan from Depeche Mode, so nothing much freaked her out. I’d met her in a yoga class led by Guru Singh, a Kundalini master whose teachings were helping to hold me together while everything around me seemed to crumble. I had no designs on T.C. The fly just wanted a butterfly along for the voyage this time.

  Steven’s dressing room felt sensuous, sweet, organic, and fantastically alive. I entered as the rock star was having his faux tattoos applied by the band’s traveling makeup artist. The once multicolored, fuzzy-boa’d, fashion-flash-of-decadence past had given way to muted earth tones that evoked a tender Eastern serenity. Spacy New Age strains floated off a boom box as candles and incense burned.

  “Is that your war or peace paint?” I asked.

  “Both. And neither,” he responded. The small talk that so long ago concentrated on pornography and professional agendas had completely changed. Five minutes in his lair, the discussion moved to Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran and his 1923 masterpiece, The Prophet.

  “Someone told me a year ago to do this, and I did, and it was a spiritual experience,” he began excitedly. “Find a place— a beach, a forest, a solitary spot where it’s just you and Him— and read the book aloud. Every word. It will change your life. Trust me.”

  As he moved over to his dressing table, I replied without hesitation, “Oh, I’m going to do it. When the moment presents itself, I’ll know.”

  That was when he hugged me, like he did every time I happened to fly announced or unannounced onto his radar. Not an obligatory embrace either, but the kind that implies you’re reconnecting with someone who knows and cares about you. Steven wasn’t aware that I was coming that night until I rang his cell phone outside the back gate when security failed to buy the argument that I was a friend of the band. In fact, at 3 P.M. that afternoon, 120 miles away at home in L.A., I didn’t know that I was showing up. But something inside urged me on.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever shown you the preshow ritual, have I, Lonn?” he asked. The question was rhetorical. He was fucking with me and I loved it. “Come over here. I can’t believe you’ve never witnessed this. Now pay close attention.” On Steven’s dressing table sat a tiny cauldron of viscous liquid. In the middle of the goo, there was something small sticking up from the bottom.

  “When I was very young, at the beginning of my career, I met a soothsayer,” he explained. “This seer instructed me to perform this ritual before I took the stage. He told me to do this every night and I would have all the success I could possibly imagine. The ritual was for me to fill a pot with honey and place in the middle of the honey a rat’s tail and, before every performance, remove the tail from the liquid and bite off the end of it. Like this.”

  With that, he reached down into the liquid and pulled up the curly twiglike substance, placed it in his mouth, bit off the end, and swallowed. Then he replaced the remaining piece into the honey. “And that’s it. I’ve performed this rite before every show for the past thirty years.”

  There was a deep, pregnant pause, after which I blurted out, “That’s bullshit!”

  He looked me in the eye, raised his eyebrows an inch, and responded, “Okay, it’s gingerroot. But it’s a great story, isn’t it?” Then he kissed T.C. on the lips and dashed out of the room.

  We sat right on the stage, like old times, two feet from the ramp that Steven pranced upon like a cat the entire two-plus hours Aerosmith destroyed the San Diego faithful. It was the best I’d ever seen them. Joe Perry had found onstage Viagra, exploding out of a closet of cool into a cataclysmic tornado of confidence. He sang, danced, and did a six-string mambo far beyond anything ever attempted before. Aerosmith was at the top of their game, and the mythical man at center stage was positively radiant.

  I arrived home a little after 3 the next morning. It wasn’t just the concert that had my innards banging about like toys in the attic. I crept silently into the library room and pulled The Prophet off the shelf. “And the Orator said, ‘Speak to us of freedom,’” wrote Gibran. “You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief.” Then I lay down on the sofa, closed my eyes, and dreamed of a vacant beach somewhere.

  • • •

  It was a damp, windy morning on the Telscombe Cliffs of Brighton, England. The skies were violent, dark. All was in motion today. The air crackled with sound and flutter. My only concern was the book, keeping it dry. I tucked The Prophet into the pocket of my twelve-year-old Anthrax “Bring the Noise” Stussy overcoat and headed out into the mystery.

  Whether it was fate or destiny that brought me here, I cannot say. That is a matter of interpretation. I’d spent the past three years in therapy with Guru Singh, the shamanic Sikh, a bearded, musical, mystical sage whom Kalodner resembled in appearance and personal décor. They both wore white, but that’s where the similarity ended. Even facing down and beating thyroid cancer didn’t permit the jaded John a glimpse of the other side. Steven, on the other hand, had actually visited the guru, sat in that same tiny room in his Wilshire-district home, and received the same dose of Vedic wisdom and meditative instruction as I.

  I took my place on the lone concrete bench that faced out over the choppy English Channel. There wasn’t a soul in sight. The village people were either in their cottages, sipping tea, or at work. Only a fool would be out on a morning like this. I clo
sed my eyes, took some deep breaths, and settled into absolute presence. When I opened them, I saw a cosmic crack in the sky, a sliver of light ripping through the blackness. The rain had stopped completely, though the wind continued to blow strong and firm. The Channel spread out in front of me like slippery gray satin.

  Pete Townshend wrote, “Nothing is planned, by the sea and the sand.” Here by the water, I reverently digested that immortal lyric as I completed my reading assignment. I had spoken with uncustomary clarity and purpose, for in that moment they were not words, but ethereal fireflies that buzzed from my lips en route to nothing, and everything. If I could talk this way, I mused to myself, perhaps I might learn to walk this way.

  13

  Ballad of Jon and Richie

  IT IS ONLY WHEN WE HAVE THE COURAGE TO FACE THINGS EXACTLY AS THEY ARE, WITHOUT ANY SORT OF SELF-DECEPTION OR ILLUSION, THAT A LIGHT WILL DEVELOP OUT OF EVENTS, BY WHICH THE PATH TO SUCCESS MAY BE RECOGNIZED.

  —I Ching (Book of Changes)

  By 1990, RIP had taken up residence in the eye of a metal hurricane. Bands like GN’R, Metallica, Mötley Crüe, Whitesnake, Poison, Def Leppard, Warrant, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat, Ratt, Scorpions, AC/DC, Queensrche, Extreme, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, White Lion, Great White, and Megadeth were ruling the charts. If they were loud and had hair, they were selling records and RIP was covering ‘em. And that meant we were selling magazines.

  No group, however, during these unprecedented days of metal prosperity was more monstrous than Bon Jovi. I’d gotten to know the band professionally in 1989 and personally when principal players Jon Bon Jovi and guitarist Richie Sambora visited my office in the fall of ‘88. The brief but pleasant encounter planted the seed for what would grow into one of the most enduring, fun-filled, chaotic, and educational relationships of my career.

  I observed during that initial encounter what I’d previously only heard and read about: the dichotomy, the balance, the yin and yang of these two. Mick had Keith, Axl had Slash, Bono had the Edge, Tyler had Perry, Plant had Page, Eddie had Dave (and Sammy), and Jon had Richie. Through several astonishing adventures, I would come to know each of these men of music in a different way and, in the process, come to know myself a bit better as well. The first Bon Jovi escapade took me halfway around the world.

  “Dawn Bridges from Mercury Records is on the phone, Lonn,” shouted my assistant, Kristina. “She wants to talk to you about Bon Jovi!” Whispers from our peeps in the street said trouble had come to Jersey paradise.

  “You’ve no doubt heard the rumors,” said the fast-talking press princess. “I’ve talked to Jon and he wants you to do an exclusive feature dispelling the rumors. Fans think Bon Jovi is breaking up, and the band wants you to write a truthful, revealing cover story setting the record straight.” I began to smile. This was big.

  “We want you to go to Japan for a week,” she explained, her voice rising. “You’ll attend the New Year’s Eve show at the Tokyo Dome and then the Yokohama gig two days later. Hang with the guys, total access, get the truth, and report it to your readership.”

  The truth, huh? I chewed on that for a moment before responding. “Are you sure, Dawn, that they will tell me the truth?” I asked frankly.

  A pregnant pause ensued before Dawn responded. Record companies are very protective of their artists, forever spinning facts and figures to keep their stars shining in the brightest light. I was a trusted member of the press, yes, but we’re still talking about celebrities here.

  “They like you, Lonn,” she replied. “You’re a friend. They know you’ll write a great story. And there are no constraints, none whatsoever.”

  I would have been a fool to think twice. Bon Jovi over New Year’s in Japan? I’d been to Tokyo the previous November with White Lion and loved it. But they played the three-thousand-seat Sun Plaza Hall. This was the fifty-thousand-seat-capacity Dome, a different league altogether. The exclusive would be a huge coup for RIP, and I’d get to cross an ocean again on the company’s dime and write another big-profile rock-’n’-roll road story. “Domo arigato, Dawn!” I said. “When do we leave?”

  The New Jersey tour had culminated on February 17, 1990. The next ten months, the guys in the band barely saw one another, gathering but once in August for keyboardist Dave Bryan’s wedding. They had a gig scheduled in Red Bank, New Jersey, on December 23, a warm-up for their return to Asia, where they had last rocked Tokyo into a New Year on December 31, 1988. But time apart causes band members to drift, get back to normal lives, explore solo creative ventures, disconnect from the whole. That’s when the fragile threads that hold together a rock group—no matter the size—can fray

  Jon had released his first solo LP, modestly titled Blaze of Glory: Songs Written and Performed by Jon Bon Jovi, Inspired by the Film Young Guns II, on August 7, 1990. It was a big ballad effort that featured guest appearances by Elton John and Jeff Beck. The album peaked at number three on the Billboard Top 200 chart, and the single went to number one, giving the Jersey rocker his fifth number-one single in as many years: “You Give Love a Bad Name” in ‘86, “Livin’ on a Prayer” in ‘87, “Bad Medicine” in ‘88, and “I’ll Be There for You” in ‘89. The glory was great, indeed, but Jon celebrated the achievement alone, without his bandmates.

  During the final leg of the New Jersey jaunt, Richie dated Cher and began writing his solo record Stranger in This Town, escaping into frequent solitude. Drummer Tico Torres set up his easel and began to explore a new kind of artistic passion as a painter. Dave was recovering from a parasite that had eaten away a portion of his stomach and was tending to his new wife (or vice versa). Bassist Alec John Such broke his collarbone in a motorcycle accident.

  Things were falling apart at the seams in Bon Jovi land. Richie wanted to go home from the New Jersey tour early. Jon vetoed it. The last date of the campaign was originally slated to be a headline performance at the Moscow Music Peace Festival in August—the rock extravaganza organized by Doc McGhee, as a plea bargain for his pot bust, that was also featuring Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, Skid Row (all managed by Doc), and Ozzy Osbourne—but New Jersey continued to climb the charts like a chimpanzee. The album spawned five top-ten hits, eclipsing its multiplatinum predecessor, Slippery When Wet. So the tour was expanded.

  When the band hit Europe in December 1989, a five-date run quickly swelled to thirty. An extended Christmas break went out the window, and the tour continued. Richie spoke up for the guys, who were complaining of exhaustion, but Jon wasn’t listening to anything but the roar of the fans and the sound of his wallet stretching. I was being invited to Japan during one of the most tumultuous times in any band’s history.

  I wanted, I needed to be there, feel it, cavort unencumbered through the backstage shadows, get down with the fans in the pit, break bread with the natives, and wallow in the excess and access that becomes fame and fortune.

  In Tokyo, Richie opened up about the trappings of success and the speed bump he knew his relationship with Jon had hit. He was a bit sarcastic—maybe jealous is a better word—about Young Guns II and spoke to me of his Stranger in This Town solo project and how much it meant to him. As independent a musical creator as Richie was, he looked to Jon for affirmation. Why wouldn’t he? Just check out what they’d built together.

  Jon was preoccupied most of the time, either by the logistics of the shows or with entertaining his family. His mom and dad made the trip overseas, so he was being a good son. Our conversation time was limited. One afternoon in his hotel room, I tried to get inside his head, find out what was causing the friction between him and Richie. He said he was exhausted from touring but offered no revelations about his relationship with Richie, or the rest of the band for that matter.

  Bon Jovi was such a close-knit bunch, when their leader was disconnecting, the fear of complete dissolution weighed over the organization like a thundercloud over Mount Fuji. I asked Jon if he enjoyed Japan (he’d been there six times by that point), the Eastern energy, the Zen gardens. He replied
that the only view of the country he’d ever had was through the window of a tour bus.

  Here I began to see a man suffering from burnout that no amount of success could soothe. Jon had no intention of connecting with me. What I learned in Japan from Jon Bon Jovi was perseverance and the power of performance. No matter where this man was at in his own head, when it came to getting onstage and doing his job, he delivered and would not leave the stage until both band and fan were completely exhausted.

  Jon, Richie, Dave, Tico, and Alec rocked the Asian faithful and rang in 1991 with a volcanic blast that put a collective Buddha smile on every fan’s face. The big anthem numbers like “Lay Your Hands on Me,” “You Give Love a Bad Name,” and “Livin’ on a Prayer” brought fifty thousand Japanese fans to their feet.

  Jon was in high sermon from the rock pulpit. He jumped, screamed, crooned, hurdled, boxed, kicked, and worked his ass off. While most of the eyes were on his blazing front-and-center eminence, I bounced my peepers back and forth to his sidekick, the soulful shredder, hitting the notes with prideful perfection, balancing the aura with his cool. You’d have never known that until a week before, they hadn’t seen each other or jammed together for almost a year.

  The offstage friction, however, was undermining the strength of the performance. The ride to Yokohama—the next date on the Japan excursion—was long and, for the most part, painful. Jon and Richie weren’t talking. I didn’t engage in substantive banter either, because I sensed no one really wanted to talk shop. Richie and I were both reverent fans of Peter Gabriel, and we started singing his songs. “Dreaming of Mercy Street, wear your insides out.” Our harmonizing seemed to make Jon uncomfortable. He gazed out the van window, watching the gorgeous, emerald-green mural unfold, and acknowledged nothing but what was clanging around in his own noggin. He’d never tell me what was really up, so I just played along, getting most of my story from Richie. On the record for a feature or off the record to let off steam, that was the case for years to come as Richie and I remained great friends. When it came to coughing up the truth, Jon was a sound bite. Richie was a conversation.