by Scott Ian
And then Jim regaled us with the details of what was about to happen. The three ever-so-game ladies were going to remove their pants and undergarments and get down on their hands and knees. Jim and his assistants were filling enema bags with beer, and then they would administer—“Oh, administer sounds so clinical, and we’re all here to have fun tonight, especially our three beautiful girls partaking in this historic event” (Jim could talk). Jim and his assistants would help the three beautiful women enjoy their beer enemas, and then our three lovely ladies would do their best to hold the beer in as long as they could. Then Jim was placing what looked like cereal bowls underneath each girl so that when they couldn’t hold the beer anymore they would let go into the bowls. Then Jim filled each bowl with Fruit Loops.
If I stopped here, it’d already be quite a tale. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I wish someone would’ve said to me in that moment, “Hey, this is a weird scene. Let’s get out of here.” Would I have left? Hard to say. I was curious and drunk. The energy in the room was dark, uncomfortable, contagious, and building to a fever pitch. A sacrifice-the-virgins-at-the-altar kind of vibe. People wanted a show.
I remember thinking, Why is he filling the bowls with Fruit Loops? Jim would elucidate, “My friends, I’m sure you’ve noticed the bowls filled with a delicious breakfast cereal, Fruit Loops to be exact. Ahh the joys of youth! As each one of our enema angels releases, they will let go into the bowl below them. Then…”—dramatic pause—“our winning girl, the girl with the most secure sphincter, GETS TO eat the cereal!” Jim had a way of making the most disgusting, degrading thing I had ever heard almost sound fun.
And so it began. Jim and his guys gave the girls the enemas, and the girls did their job as best they could. A winner was crowned, and she had a bite or three of the delicious breakfast cereal after some cajoling by our master of ceremonies who was doing his best to keep everyone happy. It had turned into a tough room. Maybe it was just me projecting my feelings on everyone else, but the vibe had really gone negative, as it should have. And it smelled. The room smelled bad, like nervous armpit sweat and stale beer and ass. The initial excitement of being in that room, speculating what might happen, had just turned into a shitty juvenile gross-out fest being stared at by a bunch of leering pervs. At least that’s what I felt like. The three girls weren’t bummed out; in fact, they were all smiling as they got dressed and were handed drinks and being congratulated by people.
I bumped into Jim Rose on our way out, and he told me that it was his gig to set up some kind of scene backstage every night and that the enema thing was pretty standard. Where do you go from there? I thought.
Jennifer and I left the room and found a drink. We both felt like we needed a shower after what we had witnessed and just wanted to get drunk again and have fun.
Oh, by the way, I’ve been off Fruit Loops since.
WHAT IF WE WERE THE DICKS?
Late at night and Sunset Boulevard feels like Hopper’s Nighthawks painting as Charlie Benante and I walk back to the Hyatt on Sunset—or the Riot House, as it was affectionately known—after a postshow meal at Mel’s Diner. We were walking past the temple of 1980s stand-up, the Comedy Store, when I noticed a guy standing outside the main entrance having a smoke. I stopped dead in my tracks.
“Holy shit, it’s him!” I whispered excitedly to Charlie as I sneakily pointed at the long-haired beret-wearing dude standing there.
“Jeez, it is him! Hahaha, holy shit—what should we do?!” Charlie quietly exclaimed back.
“Fuck it! Let’s go say hello. We have to—it’s Sam Kinison!”
SAM KINISON.
The man was a hero to us. He had reinvented stand-up comedy in the 1980s, and we knew every one of his bits by heart. We loved Sam so much that we had sampled his trademark scream in our song “I’m the Man” two years before this chance meeting. And unlike most thieving artists at the time, we actually sent our song with the sample in place to his management for approval, and they said we could use it and that Sam was a big fan of the band. So we had that going for us as we nervously walked up to this larger-than-life pirate of hilarity.
Sam saw us walking toward him, and before he could turn and escape back into the club I reached out to shake hands and nervously said, “Sam, hey, how are ya? I’m Scott and this is Charlie from Anthrax. We sampled your scream on our song, and we wanted to thank you.” I could see a dim light bulb of recognition flicker in his eyes, so I repeated, “We sampled your scream in our song ‘I’m The Man.’ We’re in the band Anthrax.”
Then the dim light bulb turned into a flaming torch, and Sam was practically yelling, “Hey guys! Hey how are ya? Nice to meet you! Love you guys! It’s so cool that you used me in your song! Hahahaha!” he cackled with that amazing laugh of his.
Charlie and I were really excited now, our hero remembered us. “What are you doing here?” I asked and then immediately kicked myself for asking such a stupid question. He’s a comedian standing outside a comedy club. Duh.
Sam wasn’t bothered though, and said, “I’m just getting ready to get out of here.”
“Would you mind taking a picture with us really quick before you split?” I asked, figuring I wasn’t stepping over any boundaries and he did say that he loved us.
Sam pointed to a car in the parking lot and quietly said, “Hey guys, ya see that convertible over there?”
“Yes,” we replied.
And then Sam leaned in conspiratorially and asked, “And do you see that hot blonde sitting in the passenger seat?”
“Uh huh,” we replied.
“Well, I’m going to get in that convertible, drive that hot blonde up to my house in the hills, and fuck the shit out of her. Then I’ll drive back down here and take that picture. I promised her I would do this, so you guys just wait right here and I’ll be right back.”
Charlie and I looked at each other, not knowing if he was joking or what was going on, so I said, “Dude, that’s cool. Hell yeah, but can we just snap a pic real quick and…”
“DO YOU SEE THAT CONVERTIBLE OVER THERE?!” Sam yelled, interrupting me. Suddenly he was pissed off, red in the face, and aggro, “AND DO YOU SEE THE HOT BLONDE SITTING IN IT?!” Charlie and I were frozen, not knowing what the fuck was happening. All we wanted was a quick picture with our hero, and now we’re getting berated by this maniac. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Sam kept on it, spittle flying from his lips: “I’M GOING TO DRIVE HER UP TO MY HOUSE AND FUCK THE SHIT OUT OF HER! YOU GUYS WAIT HERE, AND I’LL DRIVE BACK DOWN AND TAKE THAT PICTURE! UNDERSTAND?” he said oh so sarcastically.
“Uh yeah, whatever dude,” I muttered, but Sam wasn’t paying attention. He was already heading toward the convertible and the rest of his night/morning/life with the “hot blonde.” Charlie and I walked off, heads down, not believing what had just happened. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d just told us he didn’t want to take a picture, but to yell at us and tell us to wait for him in front of the Comedy Store at 3 a.m. like a couple of jerks while he fucked some slut? Dick move, Kinison. I was bummed, but fuck it—I still loved his comedy. So he was a dick. A really funny dick. And that was that, end of story. Good night, Los Angeles.
A FEW YEARS LATER I woke up to the terrible news that Sam Kinison had died in a car crash. It was so sad and tragic. He had quit booze and drugs, and after a couple of shitty years his career was on the upswing again. I could imagine him screaming, “I stop doing cocaine and I stop drinking booze and I give up the sluts and I get married and then I GET KILLED IN A FUCKING CAR CRASH AH AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!” I put on his Louder than Hell record and laughed my ass off and thought back to that night when Charlie and I met him outside the Comedy Store and he wouldn’t take a picture with us.
And a dim light bulb of an idea started to glow in my head: What if Sam had kept his promise that night and did come back after fucking the shit out of the hot blonde only to find me and Charlie gone? And that light bulb glowed brighter, and I wondered, what if
he got back to the Comedy Store and had planned on hanging out with us, taking us for a ride in his convertible, and partying all night long Sam style with his heavy metal friends? To Sam, Charlie and I were rock stars, so why wouldn’t we wait to hang out with him? We’d understand that he was just going to blow a load and then come right back to really have some fun with his bros! We had all night to hang—of course we would wait for him.
Sam didn’t know that we didn’t hang like that. His scene was definitely not our scene, so we split. Now the idea was burning in my brain: What if he got back and saw that we didn’t wait for him and said, “Dick move, Anthrax.”
What if we were the dicks?
AH AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Illustration by Stephen Thompson.
EVERYBODY HURTS
NYC Suite, Part One
“Yo mosh, David Lee Roth is going to some party in Soho. It’s going to be off the hook. Let’s roll with him over there and check it out!” Dominick yelled.
“What did you say?” I yelled back, not hearing him over the din of indiscernible hip-hop and a hundred inane conversations. We were upstairs at Café Tabac, and on a blurry December night in 1992 we were at the epicenter of New York City nightlife fabulousness. Or douchiness, depending on how drunk you were.
Dominick DeLuca (who nicknamed me Mosh in the late 1980s) was my best friend, chosen family, and partner in crime. You may remember him from MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball.
Dominick and I were regulars at Tabac because we were friends with the door people, and that’s like having the keys to the kingdom. Learning this secret to the sanctum-sanctorum’s of New York City nightlife was the key to my Bukowskian lifestyle throughout the 1990s. We always had a table, but most importantly, we had free drinks.
“There’s some Christmas party at a loft in Soho. It’s supposed to be nuts. David Lee is heading over there with a bunch of people, and we can tag along!” Dominick exclaimed again louder this time so I could hear him over the Patrick Bateman look-alike who was yelling at the hostess because he wasn’t getting a table and “If he WASN’T TAKEN CARE OF THIS FUCKING SECOND, she would be LOOKING FOR A NEW JOB TOMORROW!” I nodded toward the stairs, and as we were walking out we purposely hip-checked past American Psycho as he was madly gesticulating over the table we had just left.
Protected by a layer of vodka, we stumbled out of the steamy Café Tabac into that get-in-your-bones cold that New York City does so well and grabbed a cab to Soho. I was feeling no cold—or pain, for that matter—and was really excited to be heading to some random party that David Lee Roth was going to be attending.
I had met Dave in 1988 when Anthrax and his David Lee Roth band were on tour in Europe as part of the Monsters of Rock Festival with Iron Maiden. It was a great tour for many reasons, one of them being we were pretty much playing stadium shows on the weekends and would have the rest of the week off to travel around Europe and eat, drink, sightsee, and trash a bunch of Mercedes (read my book I’m the Man for that story). So I’m walking backstage at some stadium in Germany, and I see Dave sitting in a folding beach chair outside his dressing room trailer. Next to him there’s a small tent pitched and the remnants of a campfire. Dave’s reading a comic book. That was all the icebreaker I needed (I am also a comic book guy), so I walked over and introduced myself. We talked about comics and the tour for a bit, and then I asked him about the tent. He told me that because we had so many days off between shows, he decided to travel on his own and would get to the festival sites two days early and just camp out backstage until the festival “came to him.” Of course this was all said in his inimitable Dave way, with his Cheshire cat grin practically lopping off the top part of his head. Over the next six weeks I’d see Dave, comic in hand, walking around backstage, and he always said hello. Cool dude.
The taxi pulls up to some nondescript old Soho warehouse building—this was 1992, and Soho then wasn’t the Soho it would become just a few years later. It still had a bit of the Wild West, anything-goes vibe about it, and loft parties were always an adventure. Dom and I headed up the five stories to the top floor. We were both sucking air when we got to the loft and made a beeline straight to the bar to regain the buzz we had lost on our unwanted turn on the Stairmaster.
We quickly did shots to catch up and then filled some Solo cups with vodka and cranberry and shouldered our way through the mob looking for Dave and his crew. I had my head down, eyes laser focused on not spilling my drink as we made our way through the giant loft space on our quest. I figured maybe we had beaten him there or maybe he’d found somewhere better to go. He was David Lee Roth for fuck’s sake. Wherever he is, IS the place to be.
Dom and I found a not-so-crowded spot to chill and drink our drinks. We made a “toast to the extras,” as we used to say, because that’s what going out in New York City felt like. Every night at some bar or club or loft filled with the same people having the same hubbub-hubbub conversations in the background like they were hired right out of Central Casting. I’d go home to Los Angeles for a few weeks and then come back to the city and go out and see the same people. A who’s who of who’s that, and everyone wants to hug you hello and shake your hand three ways like you’re best friends.
As much as Dom and I went out, we were never scene fixtures, just filling up space, programmed to entertain.
For us it was all about stick and move.
There was some commotion over on the other side of the party, and we could see some of the people who were rolling with Dave. We walked over to see what was up, and there was Dave holding court, regaling anyone within earshot with some too-good-to-be-true-but-it’s-Dave-so-they’re-all-true anecdote. At some point I caught eyes with Dave and stepped in to say hello. I kind of knew the guy, so I figured I wouldn’t be bugging him. Dave was all smiles as we shook hands and I said, “Hi Dave. Happy holidays! It’s been a while since we toured in Europe. Nice to see you!” Dave still had my hand and still had the smile frozen on his face when he said, “Nice to meet you man. Happy holidays to you as well!”
Nice to meet me? I was confused because we had met and hung out a bunch on that tour a few years earlier. Dave had already focused his smile elsewhere as I stood there already over the fact that Dave had no idea we had met before. I was just happy to be standing in his orbit, drinking my drink and stupidly musing on what it would be like to be David Lee Roth.
Our drinks now happily swimming in our bellies, we headed back to the bar for more. We figured we’d do a shot and then find somewhere else to blag free booze. Dom had already heard about some other party, so we made our way back to the bar and had two for the road. Each.
Dom and I laughed our way through the loft to leave, and on our way out I hear someone say, “Hi Scott!” I look, and it’s Michael Stipe. I didn’t really know Michael Stipe, but we had been introduced a few times and it was cool he remembered my name (and that is not a dig at Dave). I was happy to see Michael, and I was happy to be drunk. Really drunk. High tolerance for all things booze, be damned drunk. I was a stupid, stumbling, laughing, happy drunk. When I drank I was like the happy Hulk: THE MORE SCOTT DRINKS THE HAPPIER SCOTT GETS!!!
“HI MICHAEL!!! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!” I yelled back at him, and then I bro-punched him in the arm very hard. REALLY hard.
There was a stunned silence around us after I socked him. My brain was lounging in a five-star resort’s pool filled with vodka, and somewhere in there it understood that punching him like that was not cool. But like I said, I was the happy Hulk, and Bruce Banner was definitely not in control.
“Why did you do that?” Michael quietly asked as he rubbed his upper arm, clearly annoyed at me.
“BECAUSE EVERYBODY HURTS! SORRY MICHAEL STIPE! HAPPY HOLIDAYS!” I shouted as Dominick pulled me away and then out the door and down the steps and into the street and into a cab and off to some other spot, laughing our asses off ’til the break of dawn.
SORRY NEVER FELT SO GOOD
NYC Suite, Part Two
“You’re no
t on the list. No, sorry, you’re not on the list. Again, there’s nothing I can do because you’re Not. On. The. List.”
I took such joy in the words my friend Joe inflicted on people on a nightly basis, each word leaving a mark on its wincing victim as if the dead-calm delivery of his message was a tiny blade flicking at their skin.
As doorman at a place called Moomba in New York City in the late 1990s, Joe was one of the most powerful men in the city. If you wanted in to what was the place to be, to see and be seen, to rub shoulders with the glitterati, to hang with supercool Danny DeVito, to get hit on by Lauren Holly (Dumb and Dumber), to bump into Bruce Willis in a stairway and have him say to you, “Someone is going to get the shit kicked out of them tonight,” and you respond, “I hope it’s not me,” and he says, “No, not you, pal,” and then he smiles and offers to buy you a drink—if you wanted to get into that room and be able to brag to your friends the next day that you got in, you had to get past Joe. It didn’t matter if you were Mayor Giuliani, if Joe didn’t give the nod to unhook the velvet rope, you were exiled, relegated to the dreary nowhere of 7th Avenue South.
Moomba was one of those New York City nightclubs that burn white hot for a time and then, poof, it’s gone, leaving everybody with a story about how they used to hang out there with DiCaprio and a gaggle of supermodels. Well, you didn’t, because Joe wouldn’t let you in.
