Down in New Orleans, we found ourselves in the wrong neighborhood in the wrong hotel but were too dumb to know. We kept partying.
One night Dean drank too much and got sick all over the RV. Robert came waltzing into the hotel room with the new Stray Cats record and said, “Now I know why they called it Choo Choo Hot Fish.” Dean spent hours cleaning up his puke.
Little by little, the record started catching fire until we got word that MTV’s Headbangers Ball wanted to interview us. That’s when Dean and I bonded big-time. Rather than be interviewed, Dean suggested that he bring his acoustic guitar to the MTV studios in New York so we could perform an acoustic version of “Plush.”
We were overstimulated from touring and, to sleep on the plane, we took a handful of powerful pills—my first—that coated our brains and numbed out the world. When we got to the fancy hotel in New York, I vomited in the lobby. Dean barely made it up to the room before he vomited all over the bathroom. When we got to MTV at six that morning, we were high as zombies, and yet …
Dean played his most heartbreakingly soulful version of “Plush”—and I sang it with more relaxed feeling than ever before or since. It was chill and it was mellow, an acoustic statement still being played on radio stations some eighteen years later. This is a story that seems to have a somewhat happy ending. It is a false ending, however, because my story only became more painful.
WHEN CORE FINALLY BEGAN TO FLY, it soared, generating four top-five hits, two of which went to number one. I remember management or the label or someone in a suit coming to us and saying, “It’s happened! The big break is here! Aerosmith wants you to open for them!”
I looked at Dean, Robert, and Eric, and saw the same expression on their face that was on mine.
“No,” we said. “That’s the worst thing that could happen to us. We’re not opening for Aerosmith.”
FREEZING-COLD LONDON IN THE WINTER OF ’93.
Core had blown up beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. We were nonstop traveling, promoting, selling records.
This was our first tour outside the United States. It had been many months since I’d seen Mary. She was now seventeen and emancipated from her parents after having left them in California. I hadn’t forgotten her, but I had disciplined myself not to call. Suddenly my discipline collapsed. I called L.A. I learned she had switched agencies and was working in Paris but, miracle of miracles, she happened to be in London at this very moment. My mind went crazy. This couldn’t be coincidence. This was fate. Fuck cupids! We were brought together by Aphrodite herself.
I called her and asked, “Would you come to my hotel?”
“Yes.”
Mary arrived wrapped in wool. She glowed. She kissed me on the cheek. The hotel had a private bar, small and intimate. Our chitchat was small and intimate. She explained how she had sued for her independence from her parents and was completely on her own. Mary looked sensational. In the year since I had seen her, she had traveled the world. She had done shows in New York, Tokyo, and London. She was confident, she radiated sophisticated energy, she was irresistible.
“You’re a whole new person,” I said.
“You are too. You’ve become a star.”
Her words were still few, but they were all the right words.
She asked me if I wanted her to walk me to my room.
“You can stay over if you like,” I said. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
She stayed, and I didn’t sleep on the couch. Our sexual connection was even more powerful than I had anticipated. We became one. The heavens opened.
“Go on this tour with me,” I said. “Stay.”
For five days she stayed with me as the bus bounced through the hills and hedgerows of England and Germany. At the end of the fifth day, she had to go back to work.
“I am in love with you,” she said.
I was in love with her, and I told her so.
“What will happen now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
As Kiss: Eric (Peter Criss) Scott (Paul Stanley) Robert (Gene Simmons) Dean (Ace Frehley)
I DIDN’T GET HIGH —not seriously high—till the next summer. We were back in the States, still promoting Core, this time on tour with Butthole Surfers, Flaming Lips, Firehose, and Basehead. This was the Barbecue Mitzvah Tour. By then we were the hot band—the majority of the fans were coming to see us—but out of respect for the alternative founding fathers Butthole Surfers and Flaming Lips, whose current hit was “She Don’t Use Jelly,” we only co-headlined.
The tour was drug-heavy and sex-heavy. I couldn’t see myself passing up the delicacies that came with being a rock star—cocaine, alcohol, Lady Lay. So we rolled into New York, where we stayed at the Royalton Hotel. There was something deadly decadent about the place. What the Hollywood Hyatt House—the one called the Riot House—had been to an earlier rock generation, the Royalton was to ours. It was decidedly postmodern, low-key, high-energy sleek, a place where herointhin models melted into the dark walls and mirrors. Everything about the hotel made you—made me, made all of us—want to get high.
Mary was in New York. She had been befriended by the magician David Blaine. She had turned eighteen. We hadn’t seen each other for a while. That afternoon she came to the hotel. Her mere presence excited me, renewed all my feelings, had me wanting to be with her and her alone. We went shopping for vintage clothes. I spotted a scarlet dress at a boutique in SoHo. When she tried it on, we drifted into a noir from 1947.
“I’ll wear it tonight,” she said.
“Perfect.”
Back at the hotel, I told her good-bye, arranged for her tickets to the concert, promised that we’d meet afterward, and took a nap.
That same day, a few of the musicians had put in their orders for bags of China White. I had never shot or snorted heroin before. But I had studied heroin culture. The truth is that I loved heroin culture. I was intrigued by it.
I had a friend in high school who was a junkie. I loved the work of William S. Burroughs and the brilliance of Charlie Parker. I loved the aesthetic of the Rolling Stones. I knew about John Lennon’s heroin period. In the mideighties, I had been greatly influenced by Perry Farrell and Jane’s Addiction.
I associated heroin with romance, glamour, danger, and rock-and-roll excess. More than that, I was curious about the connection between heroin and creativity. At that point, I couldn’t imagine my life, especially now that I was entering into the major leagues of alternative rock, without at least dabbling with the King of Drugs. So I put in my order.
That night, just for the hell of it, STP dressed up as Kiss. We had the one-piece suits, the black wigs, and the makeup applied by a former Kiss employee. Before hitting the stage, I snorted the China White. The opiate took me to where I’d always dreamed of going. I can’t name the place, but I can say that I was undisturbed and unafraid, a free-floating man in a space without demons and doubts. The show was beautiful. The high was beautiful.
The thing about heroin, at least for me, was that I used to be afraid or ultra-self-conscious when I walked into a bar or club. But on dope I could be Superman or any man. I didn’t care what anyone thought of me. Dope was my savior. The ultimate equalizer, or so I thought.
After the show, I didn’t want to talk to or see a single solitary soul. It’s not that I didn’t want to see Mary in her scarlet dress or didn’t want to revisit our noir movie. I simply had to be alone with this feeling.
“What should I tell Mary?” my roadie asked. “She’s waiting for you.”
“Tell her I have food poisoning.”
It was a shitty excuse, and Mary knew it was a lie. Mary always knew my lies. There was this karmic thing between us. We were drawn to each other like shipwreck survivors. I had never heard a woman speak so openly of depression, for example. When Mary spoke that way, I was riveted by the sadness; I was riveted by her extreme moods, riveted by her needs, her fears, her beauty, her hunger for me, my hunger for her.
Mary herself, by t
he way, never admitted to a lie. She had a motto for it: “If you get caught, lie lie lie!”
IT WAS AT MY FRIEND RICH CONKLIN’S APARTMENT that a sympathetic woman heard me complain I was coming down with some sickness I couldn’t name. A veteran of the “wars,” she simply said, “Oh, honey, you’re dope sick.” So I left the party in a hurry and drove downtown. That’s where I scored a package with an intriguing design: a smiling baby riding a dragon through the clouds while a group of angelic ladies looked on with wonder. The package contained China White. The design became the cover of Purple, the second STP record.
This was the first and last time I ever found white dope in L.A. The heroin was always black tar from Mexico.
Not such a good state
IN LOVE WITH MARY FROM A DISTANCE, living with Jannina up close. Guilt was my best friend, my worst enemy, my motivator, and my tormentor.
Free from time, suspended in space.
Purple was recorded outside of time and space, inside Atlanta, where I found a drug dealer down in funky town. She was twenty-five and, unfortunately, HIV positive. Her boyfriend was a death rocker with a death wish. Kurt Cobain was still alive. Grunge, as they labeled it, was still king—of music, social awareness, and even high fashion.
I was living to score because my habit had me sick and the downers and barbiturates weren’t getting me well. The girl with AIDS was my key to heroin health. I got my bags of good shit and my clean rigs; I was cool to record. We cut and mixed the whole album in less than a month. Then it was back to L.A., where my fucking habit, begun on the Barbecue Mitzvah Tour, had grown up into a big black monster.
Jannina and I had moved into a house in remote and rustic Topanga Canyon, a world away from the nasty streets that sold the stuff I craved. I had to stop. I planned to wean off. By the second day, though, I failed and was flying high. I knew I needed bodily health, knew I needed to detox. I found a rehab place in Marina del Rey called Exodus. Just as I was about to check in, I was told not to. Kurt Cobain and Gibby Haynes were there.
Gibby was my Butthole Surfer buddy from the Barbecue Mitzvah Tour, where we had gone off the rails. My business manager didn’t think it was a good idea for us to be together, so I went to a treatment center in Pasadena where, two days later, I learned that Kurt had left Exodus. Four days after that I was told that Kurt was dead. The news frightened and devastated me, driving me into more dark solitude. The news had me searching all the silent places in my brain for explanations and comfort. This was April of 1994.
Confusing matters more was the sensational success of Purple. After trashing Core, the critics finally came our way and embraced Purple, validating STP as a legitimate rock band with an artistic attitude all our own. The public also dug it. When the record dropped in June of that same year, it debuted at number one. “Interstate Love Song” was a huge hit. So were “Vasoline” and “Big Empty,” which said, “Too much walkin’, shoes worn thin … too much trippin’, and my soul’s worn thin.”
We went on tour. Europe was cool, but Germany was freezing cold. We were set to fly back to the States and do MTV’s Spring Break in Florida. Hungry for sunshine, we planned on arriving a few days before the show. But our manager pushed back our departure date due to our obligation to do major press in Germany. But we eventually made it to Florida.
The big thrill there was a woman I’ll call Alison. She was an edgy photographer. Dean and I were both drawn to her. She was blond, sexy, a little older, and a hard-core junkie. No, there was no three-way. I did, however, form a bond with Alison that lasted quite awhile.
Alison was an intriguingly talented hot mess. She could hang with the boys and talk trash. She was big fun for the funksters, with no strings attached. Alison had a longer relationship with dope than I did. We barely crossed narcotic paths; our get-high times together were few. She was a far more advanced student of the scene. I learned from her in many ways. She lived at the fertile crossroads of art and dope. Miraculously, though, Alison got clean while I stayed stuck in the mud and murk for years to come.
Now it was 1995, the year that should have been the best year of my life. It was the worst. I was busted for possession. I faced a trial for drug possession, where I got three years suspended sentence and five months in drug jail. And STP fell apart.
Headlining at Madison Square Garden—Aerosmith joined us onstage
I LIKE PURPLE MORE THAN CORE. For all it strengths, Core was a little bit of a production compromise. Because we knew what we were doing in terms of song stylings and studio sounds, Purple was more honest and more autobiographical. It was also more heartfelt and heartsick.
“Vasoline,” for example, is about being stuck in the same situation over and over again. It’s about me becoming a junkie. It’s about lying to Jannina and lying to the band about my heroin addiction. “You search for things,” I wrote, “that you can’t see. Going blind, out of reach, somewhere in the Vasoline.”
“Unglued” hits the same theme. I’m hooked. “I got this thing,” I sing, “it’s coming over me. Moderation is masturbation … this confusion is my illusion … all these things I’m sick about … I kick about … always come unglued.”
“Pretty Penny” is still another drug story, a mother-daughter junkie team who are “blown away and lost the pearl and price [they] paid.”
“Interstate Love Song” was written about the phone calls I had with Jannina. She’d ask how I was doing, and I’d lie, say I was doing fine. Chances are I had just fixed before calling her. I imagined what was going through her mind when I wrote, “Waiting on a Sunday afternoon for what I read between the lines, your lies, feelin’ like a hand in rusted shame, so do you laugh or does it cry? Reply?”
And yet I sincerely missed her, sincerely felt for her. Those romantic feelings were expressed in a song for Jannina I called “Still Remains”: “Pick a song and sing a yellow nectarine … take a bath, I’ll drink the water that you leave … if you should die before me, ask if you can bring a friend, pick a flower, hold your breath, and drift away.”
The record also reflected my feelings about the mish-mash state of the music business. Everyone seemed to be living or dying but making real money.
When the record was finished, a music writer asked me, “Why did you call it Purple?”
“Because it sounds purple,” I said. “Besides, that’s a stupid question. Why is your rag called Spin?”
AFTER PURPLE WAS FINALLY FINISHED, I came home to Topanga Canyon emotionally distraught and incredibly needy. I needed something steady; I needed to be cared for. I took Jannina down to the beach and asked her to marry me.
She said yes and suggested that the wedding take place in her aunt and uncle’s beautiful home in San Marino, the exclusive old-money section of Pasadena where the streets are lined with mansions. The wedding was extravagant—family, friends, music moguls. I snuck off with the groomsmen to do coke in the limo. My friend Eddie Nichols, the singer for Royal Crown Revue, sang “Stormy Weather,” a good indication of what lay ahead.
Jannina and I went to the Greek isles for our honeymoon and stayed in an ancient white alcove in the side of a mountain. After a few days of drinking homemade ouzo, we flew off to Cancún and swam in the warm water. I was still in the process of kicking heroin and had enough morphine sulfate pills and Vicodin to get me through.
Back home, Jannina got really sick and wound up in the hospital, where they gave her a shot of morphine. At the time I was two months clean, but viewing her injection set off sirens in my head, especially when I saw such peace and calm come over her face. I left the hospital to look for my dealer. An hour later, I was loaded.
Nonetheless, we pursued the dream of domestic happiness. From her aunt and uncle, we bought the home in which we were married—Jannina’s dream home—and began to live a life of luxury, collecting antiques and cars.
A YEAR LATER, I GOT HOME FROM TOURING behind Purple and was promptly arrested close to my home in Pasadena for trying to score. I was getting sloppy.
Jannina bailed me out. “I’m dope sick,” I told her. “You gotta get me well. You gotta get me to my dealer. Then we’ll make a plan for me to kick, but first I’ve gotta get well.”
“No,” said Jannina. “Fuck that. I will not take you to your dealer. I hate that bitch!”
I got into our ’65 Mustang convertible with Jannina behind the wheel. I begged her to change her mind.
“It’s my medicine,” I said to her. “I need my medicine.”
Jannina wouldn’t budge. I was desperate. As the car made a right turn going 10 or 15 miles an hour, I jumped out, hit the ground, and started rolling. Jannina didn’t look back. Jannina had had enough. I was so sick I’d do anything to score—fuckin’ anything. I found a payphone and called my one hope, the lady who’d been supplying me. In my mind, I knew I had a fifty-fifty chance of finding her at home.
She picked up the phone! Fuck, I was relieved!
“You gotta come here and get me,” I pleaded. “You gotta pick me up.”
“No way. If you want it, come get it.”
I came in a cab. The fare, plus the cost of the dope, exhausted my funds. All I had left was an ATM card. Loaded, I made it over to the Chateau Marmont, the old-school Hollywood hotel where artists came to live or die. That’s where I ran into another one of my dealer’s best customers, Courtney Love. She was with Amanda de Cadenet, the photographer/socialite. As fate would have it, their room was next to mine. That night Courtney and I got high as she and Amanda dressed for dinner at the home of Jack Nicholson. For a while, Ms. Love inserted herself into my ever-more-erratic story. We were never lovers but were rather close at the start. She was this intriguing character who required constant attention. When, for example, she nodded out on dope, she never failed to do so sitting in a chair and spreading her legs wide. I kept hearing the Stones singing, “Oh yeah, she’s a starfucker, starfucker, starfucker, starfucker!”
Not Dead & Not For Sale Page 5
