Life on Planet Rock

by Lonn Friend

  I saw P.O.D. a couple more times over the next three years, and they always greeted me with kindness. In light of the huge success of Satellite, which broke them worldwide with the massive hit “Alive” and the even more gigantic anthem “Youth of the Nation,” I half anticipated a customary increase in attitude. But at the Universal Amphitheatre in 2002, it was nothing but genuine respect. I walked into their dressing room with Slash, one of their heroes, and we took some photos together.

  On November 4, 2003—when I was in L.A. gathering some personal items and meeting with divorce attorneys—I joined members of P.O.D., MxPx, Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone, and Dave Mustaine from Megadeth for a private screening of Mel Gibson’s work in progress, The Passion of the Christ. The controversial film that went on to gross a half billion dollars worldwide didn’t even have a distributor at the time. It was, to say the least, a surreal experience, watching an immensely painful motion picture, while I was emotionally hemorrhaging, with a gathering of born-again rockers and the filmmaker himself.

  Mel Gibson was there, seated directly to my right, taking feedback from the assembled panel. “I’m a Jew,” I said, compelled to speak. “Am I wrong, but isn’t the theme of this film forgiveness? And isn’t that a spiritual rather than a religious concept?” It was a strange wall, and the fly wasn’t exactly operating at full wing speed.

  “Thank you,” replied Gibson. “That is the message of the film and I hope it resonates with people of all faiths.”

  Back on the sands, I emailed P.O.D.’s manager, Tim Cook, requesting the hookup for the kids and me. Just before Thanksgiving, we headed out into the Vegas night, en route to the Thomas and Mack Center. I’d made mention to Tim in the note that I was writing a feature for Las Vegas Weekly, a story about the kids, their bands, meeting their heroes, and being able to do what I’d done for so long—talk to the artists about their music. We had four laminates waiting at the box office and none of us— including camp counselor Lonn “Dewey” Friend—knew just how far this field trip was going into the valley of rock.

  We hit the backstage and were immediately ushered into P.O.D.’s dressing room, where privileged family and friends were drinking sodas, Red Stripes, and Coronas and taking hits of cherry tobacco off a giant exotic hookah. It was all legal. No contraband on this conscious bus. I caught an instant of déjà vu in the hallway outside the band’s backstage enclave. I’d last walked these halls in 1993, when I spent the night with Metallica. Best I can recall, Lars Ulrich and I saw the sun rise at the Olympic Gardens gentlemen’s club the next day. Another lifetime ago, it seemed.

  Singer Sonny Sandoval and drummer Noah “Wuv” Bernar-dos greeted me, my daughter, and my nephews with hugs and bottles of water, welcoming us into the comfortable room covered with red sheets and posters of Bob Marley and Steel Pulse. Sam and Aaron were wide-eyed and beaming. Megan, my princess, who’d slinked into the inner sanctum with her old dad many times over the years, was excited but more reserved. I pulled out my fifty-dollar Sony tape recorder and handed it to Sam. “Okay, you’re the rock journalist now,” I said. “Ask Sonny some questions. Don’t forget to hold the mike end up to your mouth when asking and up to his mouth when he responds. Go for it.”

  Sam froze for a second so I escorted him into the conversation. Sonny was easy to talk to; his disarming way settled the kid’s belly in an instant. “So, Sonny, where did you find your drummer?” asked the virgin scribe, his brother and cousin looking on.

  “He’s my cousin!” the dreadlocked rocker responded with a grin. “We grew up together, me and Wuv. His mother and my mother are sisters. He’s more like my brother.”

  Aaron made a comment about track six on the new P.O.D. record. “That’s my favorite! ‘Revolution’!”

  “Yeah, man,” replied the rock star to the rock student. “But you know, it’s not a song about violence or uproar. We’re talking about a peaceful revolution. It’s not about politics or religion. I wore this shirt while we were recording, a Bob Marley T-shirt that says, ‘It takes a revolution to make a solution.’ So this is about an inner revolution, you know, like every day saying to yourself that this is going to be a good day, and I’m gonna spread some light and good and maybe make somebody smile, be nice to somebody.”

  Sonny was not patronizing the youth. He would have offered the same commentary to a writer from Spin, Rolling Stone, or RIP. Megan then asked, “Is Bob Marley the most influential artist in your life?” I was beaming with pride at that one.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, passionately. “But I also love Bono and Hendrix and Carlos Santana and Sting from his Police days.”

  We chatted with Wuv for about ten minutes, after which class broke for recess as the guys needed to do their preshow warm-ups. That’s when Wuv blew my dedicated skin-bashing nephew’s mind. “So, Sam, you’ll sit with me tonight, next to my kit, onstage,” he blurted matter-of-factly “You okay with that?”

  At thirteen, Sam already has a rock-star swagger and smile. “Are you kidding?” he vibrated. There’s no messing around when you’re behind the lines that few get to see. If this is not higher education, what is?

  The world needs more conscious rock groups like P.O.D. Our kids are being bombarded in this moribund millennium by so much crap, it’s a wonder they can see straight long enough to do their homework, play their sports, practice their instruments, and maintain healthy relationships at home and in the classroom. P.O.D. is loud, hard, powerful, reggae-tinged, hip-hop-grooved rock ‘n’ roll. Their music speaks to the youth of the nation. When they performed the song bearing that lyric, the audience became part of the play as twenty kids were brought onstage to sing the chorus in front of seventeen thousand of their peers.

  Aaron Friend was part of the chaotic chorale. He roared, “We are, we are/the youth of the nation!” with pride and conviction as his little brother watched from the drum riser, fists and senses soaring. Megan stood at the side of the stage with her dad, proudly watching her cousins have their golden moment. She doesn’t seek the spotlight. Her brilliance is acute, her courage immense, her strength far greater than mine. My daughter performed the miracle of pulling straight As in her eighth-grade French private school the season her father left home. That rocked harder than anything in my career ever did.

  Back in the hallway after P.O.D.’s stirring set, I gathered my students for phase two of the field trip, having reconnected with an old friend named Mike Amato, who just happened to be Linkin Park’s tour manager. He was a veteran of the big-arena touring wars, and we’d known each other since the Mötley Crüe Dr. Feelgood tour of 1989-90. For the past several months, he’d been the man in charge of Linkin Park’s triumphant traveling circus.

  “At the tail end of the Linkin Park meet and greet, around 7:30, I’ll come get ya by P.O.D.’s dressing room,” instructed the affable Amato. “I’ll make sure the kids get to spend a few minutes with the band.” Thirty minutes later, we were hightailing it from one end of the backstage area to the other for our serendipitous encounter with the most successful contemporary rock band in America.

  The room set aside for fans to meet the members of Linkin Park was now clearing out. The boys in the band sat behind a long table like they were at a press conference without microphones. The line was being monitored by an immense fellow (rock-security guys often resemble professional wrestlers), meticulously checking what each fan wanted to have signed. And one by one, the band that’s been speaking the loudest in the world to this generation smiled, shook hands, and scribbled their John Hancocks. Rob, Joseph, Brad, Mike, Chester, and Phoenix, in street clothes or stage clothes, were approachable, human. Most of the room emptied and Megan, Sam, and Aaron waited to take their best shots.

  “Guys,” Amato announced to the band, “this is Lonn Friend, an old pal of mine. He used to run a magazine back in the day called …” before he could finish the sentence, guitarist Brad Delson chimed in gently, “RIP magazine. Hey, Lonn, I grew up on RIP. How’s it going?”

  I was spee
chless for a second, taken aback by the unscheduled recognition. In front of my flesh and blood, a solid prop from a hero of this day. We talked for a minute. “Where’d you grow up?” I asked. “My seventy-five-year-old father, the piano player, thinks you must be from Lincoln Park, Chicago, around the corner from where he was born.”

  “I went to Agoura High,” he said.

  “No way,” I fired back. “That’s five minutes from where my mom lives. I went to Grant High in the Valley.” Out of the corner of my right ear, I could hear Sam engaging Chester, the high-octane co-lead singer with the most accomplished, earsplitting banshee wail since Rob Halford.

  “Chester, how do you do that with your voice?” asked Sam the amateur scribe.

  “Well, Sam,” replied Chester, “it’s indescribable, really. Strictly modern science.”

  Sam smiled. His response was perfect. We chatted a while longer, then headed back toward the stage while the band prepared to go on.

  As the clock approached 10 P.M., the arena throbbed in anticipation of show time. “Dad, I really love Linkin Park,” yelled Megan over the drone of the PA blaring the last bars of intro music. “I listen to Meteora every day. I’m really excited to see them live. This is cool.” As the lights went down, the arena erupted into a din as alive and authentic as any I’d ever witnessed.

  “Meg!” I screamed. “Here we go!”

  And so a thousand and one Chesters chanted through scratched tonsils, “Yeahhhhhh!!!!!” I saw their faces and knew what they were feeling: “Bring it on, make us move, make us mosh, make us surf, hit us between the eyes and ears, drive a stake through our rock-’n’-roll hearts.” Okay, my words but their emotions. Here were six men—young, creative, awakened— and their musical machines embarking for ninety minutes on a futuristic starship of riff, lyric, and electro-scratch jump with absolutely no bullshit.

  Meg was right. The kids were hip to all the songs and after tonight, so was I. “With You,” “Runaway,” “Papercut,” “Points of Authority,” “Don’t Stay,” “Somewhere I Belong.” One dynamic dose of rhythm, rhyme, and tempo after another, and every one connecting. I observed the pierced tongues as they mouthed the words to the anthems. “Lying from You,” “Nobody’s Listening,” “Breaking the Habit,” “From the Inside.” They stood so tall, so loud, yet unlike the heroes of my day, they built no wall between themselves and the audience. Robert Plant didn’t talk to the crowd. Alice Cooper never left character. It was a different show then. They were not human to us, but aliens; their music made contact, but they never did.

  Chester and DJ/MC Mike Shinoda stalked the stage and touched the children, the screamer and the rapper in breathtaking balance. The material was so strong, it resonated within the DNA of every fan, kicking them back into the cathartic electric chairs that’d been charged and juiced for their temporary salvation. “Faint,” “Numb,” “Crawling,” “In the End,” “My December,” “Pushing Me Away,” “A Place for My Head,” “One Step Closer”—existential hymns for a population on the brink.

  If RIP were still around, it’d be kicking some serious ass. Bands like Shadows Fall and Killswitch Engage are tapping into an aggressive, expressive youth brigade bent on “metal core,” the modern hybrid of traditional heavy metal and hard core. The explosive and crafty Avenged Sevenfold, Aaron and Sam’s new faves, bring back a bit of the GN’R/Mötley Crüe diesel-powered decadence. I’ve felt my own metal blood boiling again thanks to two imaginative European acts, Germany’s Masterplan and Italy’s Lacuna Coil. Brave new life sprouts aloud in molten homage to the metal gods of old. Rob Halford and Judas Priest and the immortal Iron Maiden—these legends continue to tour, deliver, and inspire. The next generation has found the crack in Planet Rock and shoved a stake in. You don’t have to get it, but if you’re a parent, it wouldn’t hurt to at least try and understand it.

  My g-g-generation created immortal rock ‘n’ roll. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young serenaded me with the prophetic ballad “Teach Your Children” from the stage of the L.A. Forum at the first concert I ever went to, in the summer of 1972. That night changed my life forever. My brother and I have tried to teach our children well. And now they are teaching us. No, they are saving us, because my generation has also brought the planet to the doorstep of Armageddon.

  Okay, I better wrap it up. I’ve got some wiseasses waiting for me in detention. Don’t worry. I’ve got today’s punishment cued up and ready to rock: Avril Lavigne and Britney Spears, back to back. By sundown, they’ll be begging for Van Halen I. Class dismissed.

  Afterword

  LIKE A ROLLING STONE

  The moon was beyond full; it was swollen like a giant, celestial white-headed pimple about to burst. Kirk Hammett and I were standing beneath its glow outside the band’s trailer behind San Francisco’s SBC Park. Eric Burdon—lead singer of the ‘60s group the Animals—would have deemed this a “warm San Franciscan night,” as it was unusually balmy for late fall. Metallica’s lead guitarist and I were waxing spiritual, catching up on the past few years, translating the gentle winds of change off the Bay into words of recollection and connection.

  “I’ve spent almost the entire past year the band has been off in Hawaii,” he said. He told me that he’d become a student of Tibetan Buddhism and had been devoting considerable energy to surfing. I’d been watching Kirk’s transformation for some time. At a 1999 rock festival in Copenhagen, I gave him an au-diotape of author Ursula Le Guin reading the Tao Te Ching. “I still have that tape, Lonn,” he smiled. When I asked him if he’d read The Power of Now, he looked at me with a grin and said, “Rick Rubin told me about that book. He says it’s amazing.” I affirmed that sentiment and, trying not to be overly dramatic, told him that this book had kept me alive during my first year in the desert after I’d left Los Angeles.

  Wholly embracing the present moment as the only authentic reality is what German author Eckhart Tolle’s insightful volume professes. It’s old-school Zen in a brilliantly coherent new context. And just as we were discussing the power and importance of the moment, feeling the moment, savoring the moment, the moment shifted and out of nowhere—as if he’d just materialized from thin air—appeared Mick Jagger, striding directly toward us. Before either of us could acknowledge what was happening, Mick had his hand extended toward the member of his opening act. “Have a great show, man,” he said with a broad, disarming grin. And then he was gone.

  “Dude!” I said to Hammett. “That was awesome.” I’m not certain which one of us looked more like a deer in the headlights, but the feeling that we’d just experienced a sincere and transcendent moment was mutual. Kirk Hammett—the flame-fingered six-string hero of the near-hundred-million-selling-LP, global-touring-monster future Hall of Famers Metallica—had just been reduced to a spellbound kid, a fan. And right then it occurred to me that you can’t be a hero, a rock star, or an icon unless you are, at the core, a fan.

  The tale of Kirk’s brief encounter with Mick made its way through the Metallica camp as the preshow festivities continued. But for me, this wasn’t a party so much as a reunion, a chance to see old friends, an opportunity to give a hug to the drummer who’d stepped up so huge and delivered the words that open this book. And I had not seen or spoken to James Hetfield since the L.A. Coliseum show of August 2003. “I hear you’ve been through some changes,” he said with a familiar grin. Having watched their courageous 2004 documentary, Some Kind of Monster, I knew the man I once dubbed the Mighty Hetfield on the cover of RIP so long ago didn’t require a blow-by-blow account of my season in hell. He’d been there himself. Substance abuse, family problems, troubles with the band. If there’s anybody who knows anything about tribulation, it’s the Mighty H.

  “I never got to tell you how brave that documentary was,” I said. When James walked away from the band and the St. Anger recording sessions to face down his demons, he spent several months in a clandestine halfway house four blocks from where I lived on the west side of Los Angeles. I didn’t find out he was th
ere until long after he’d gone. On this evening in November 2005, all of that seemed like water under the Golden Gate Bridge. James had saved his band and his marriage. I had (mostly) finished this book and was breathing a bit easier after working hard to make things right with my ex-wife and daughter.

  “We’re an opening act again,” laughed James. “It’s fun. And we’re right in our own backyard. Plus it’s a nice kick in the ass to get us working again. Can’t stay on vacation forever. Hee-hee. You look really good, Lonn—came through the storm okay.” I’m not sure I fully realized how true that was until those words escaped his mouth. As curtain time approached, I hugged James and wished him a good show, but there was another reason for my being here, on the road, with no direction home, like a complete unknown.

  The Rolling Stones came into my life via the radio. In grade school, they were as ubiquitous on the airwaves as the Beatles. Songs like “Satisfaction,” “Ruby Tuesday,” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” made you bob your head and tap your feet. Even my mother liked the Stones, which was odd because most parents were terrified of them. Mick was out to screw the daughters, and Keith aimed to get the sons drunk and stoned. My mom was oblivious to the group’s scandalous image. She liked the tunes, and I think the music helped her forget about my dad, the divorce, and how hard it was raising two boys on her own.

  The instant the Beatles broke up, the Stones seemed to take over the world. Their creative recording output, commitment to touring, and professional and interpersonal longevity has been unprecedented. With every new release, they’ve taken it on the road and reconnected to the fans, an exponentially growing throng that has followed them anywhere and everywhere. As the years and decades passed and the greatest show on earth got bigger and more expensive to attend, the people kept coming because the band kept rocking.