by Scott Ian
Frustrated by this dramatic turn of events on an otherwise seemingly normal day on tour, Mr. Ian reflected on the previous night’s postshow activities and clearly remembered putting his underwear into the laundry bag. He was sure of it because the only underwear he wears on stage is manufactured by the brand Tommy John, and those were not in his travel bag. Mr. Ian questioned whether that evening’s show could go on without his Tommy John underwear. What kind of effect would different underwear have on my ability to play this show? he wondered. “Could I possibly perform without the correct undergarments? Must the show go on?” he asked his bandmates.
His question was answered with a nervous silence and heads nodding in empathy for Mr. Ian’s plight. Others had faced the horror of a missing sock or a shrunken T-shirt, but no one had ever been shaken to their foundation by a pair of missing underwear.
Mr. Ian, visibly upset by this disastrous turn of events, called for Mr. Jarvis, whispering, “Will, if they don’t find my underwear, I will need to wear my backup pair. Will you please retrieve them for me?” And then Mr. Ian cried, “The show must go on!”
Thirty minutes later, having completed his preshow warmup, Mr. Ian, standing side stage, wearing unfamiliar underpants that were caught between his buttocks, was about to step on stage in front of a ravenous German heavy metal audience when Mr. Jarvis suddenly notified him that he had located his Tommy John underwear and that they would be “waiting for him after the show in the dressing room.” The wash-and-fold had found them, and Mr. Jarvis had already deployed a runner to pick them up. Mr. Ian breathed a sigh of relief. He’d be able to soldier through that evening’s show with a wedgie, knowing that his Tommy John underwear was safe and on its way home.
When reached for comment, Mr. Ian said, “I would like to thank God for giving man the ability to create such comfortable undergarments, and I would also like to express my gratitude to Mr. Jarvis and all those who helped him through this dreadful experience. I don’t know what I would’ve done going forward without the extraordinary efforts made by Mr. Jarvis and others to retrieve this critical piece of equipment. Thank you all very much.”
TSUNAMI
“There’s a tsunami coming.”
I wasn’t sure I heard what Lani (Hammett, wife of Kirk) said correctly, so I asked, “What did you just say?”
Lani repeated, “There’s a tsunami on the way from Japan. I just got a text from my father—he’s watching the news. There was an earthquake off Japan, and a tsunami is coming our way.” My wife, Pearl, and I were at dinner in Waikiki with Kirk and Lani when she got the text. We were just about done with dinner, it was 11:30 p.m., and traffic was already insane with people trying to get out of Waikiki when it suddenly hit home that this could be serious.
Pearl and I were on our babymoon in Hawaii. A babymoon is our last trip with just the two of us for a long time. It was a great vacation, super relaxing, doing nothing but laying on the beach, lounging in bed, eating room service, hanging with friends, and now running from a tsunami. A fucking tsunami? I’m from Queens. All I know about tsunamis is the giant wave in Poseidon Adventure and the footage from the Indian Ocean tsunami from 2004. I’ve seen what a tsunami is capable of.
We hadn’t yet seen the Japanese footage from the tsunami created by the 9.0 Sendai earthquake, so at least we didn’t have that to scare the shit out of us. Kirk suggested we follow them to his father-in-law’s house inland, where we would be safe, but we decided to head back to our hotel on the North Shore because it was a safety zone for that area of the island. The tsunami was not expected until 3 a.m., so we figured we’d make it back in time; it was only a forty-five-minute drive once we got out of Waikiki. The only issue was that if they closed the road to our hotel that runs along the ocean for ten miles or so, we’d be fucked. Fucked meaning sleeping in our car somewhere inland on high ground but not drowned by a tsunami. We gambled.
We made it back to the hotel at 12:30 a.m. There were people everywhere; the lobby was packed. There were police and firemen giving directions to all the people who had evacuated from their houses on the North Shore. Hotel employees were taking groups of evacuees up into the hallways of the higher floors and were handing out blankets and pillows for them to camp out on.
Pearl and I got to our room and turned on CNN and saw the devastation in Japan. Unbelievable. Those images are still burned into my brain. After seeing the destruction caused by the sheer brutality of the tsunami in Japan we did start to worry. Would it really be safe here? The hotel is built up high on a rocky point and we’re on the fourth floor. Was it high enough? Could the wave wipe out the lower floors of the hotel, causing the building to collapse? I called the front desk half a dozen times asking these questions. I told them I had a pregnant wife with me, and they reassured me each time that we’d be okay. Shit, I just saw Japan get demolished like Godzilla came through town. I was scared.
The local TV news was tracking the wave as it made its way across the Pacific. When it passed the Midway Islands the reports were varying from a four-foot to a twelve-foot wave. I learned that they have buoys out in the ocean that they get readings from. There’s a big difference between a four-foot wave and a twelve-foot wave. Maybe someone needs to go check these buoys.
We just kept watching the ocean from our room, and we had a great view. At around 2 a.m. the hotel security announced over the PA that we had to close our balcony doors and shutters, leave our rooms, and move into the hallway. Pearl and I talked this over and decided to stay in our room. If something was coming at us, we wanted to see it. We figured we could make it into the hallway once we saw the wave. We were both amazingly calm considering that for all we knew a giant wave was barreling toward us at five hundred miles per hour.
I opened the door and saw that the hallway was packed with people from the lower floors. People had moved chairs and pillows from their rooms up with them to sit on. It was some scene—parents trying to get their kids to sleep in a hall packed with people and at the same time not freak the fuck out. I closed the door and tried to stay cool.
Pearl and I watched and waited. At 3:15 a.m. reports came in that Kauai got hit but no significant damage, as the wave was only three feet, though it could get bigger. We had about ten minutes until it hit. At this point I was really questioning whether we should’ve just gotten in the car and drove up the hill down the road from the hotel. How could I put my pregnant wife in danger like this? I was sweating.
Then we watched the ocean completely suck out about five hundred feet like someone rolling up a carpet.
It was nuts. All the water was gone, the ocean bottom and reef completely exposed, fish flopping around in the sand. We stood on the balcony waiting to see a huge wave come ripping toward the shore line.
And then it came.
A small wave maybe a foot high came speeding in, and then another and another on top of each other, moving really fast, flowing back into the empty space. This went on for a while, tiny wave after tiny wave. Pearl and I were nonplussed. Where was the tsunami? When it seemed like it had died down the reports on the news said that this was just the first wave and that the next wave could be twelve feet. I was starting to see a pattern here. I guess they have to scare the shit out of you in case it is bad so you take it seriously. Meanwhile at this point we’re on the balcony shooting video of the ocean sucking out again and the small waves ripping back in. That’s what happened over and over again for the next two hours. I looked out into the hallway to find it empty, and from our balcony we could see people leaving the hotel to go home.
At 5:45 a.m. we finally went to bed even though they were still saying “the big one” could come. We were very happy it didn’t.
We woke up the next day and found out there was some damage on the Big Island and some damage to boats in some of the harbors across Hawaii as a whole, but all in all a nonevent, especially when compared to Japan.
Pearl and I got back to babymooning.
MADONNA
“Scott
, Scott!”
Some woman was yelling my name from down the block on 53rd Street in New York City. I was standing outside the back door of the Roseland Ballroom with a bunch of friends after a Rancid show in October 1994. I kind of recognized the voice and could see by the stunned looks on some of my friend’s faces (they could see over my shoulder) that it was someone serious. I generally don’t turn around when someone is randomly calling my name from down the block, so I kept talking to my friends, and then again I hear her calling, “Scott, come over here!” By now my friend’s eyes were bugging out of their heads. My curiosity piqued, I turned around to see Madonna standing next to a limo, waving me over. I calmly turned back around to my friends, playing it cool, acting like it was no big deal. Oh, it’s just Madonna calling me over by my name to her limo, it happens every day, no big whoop. My poker face was holding on like the Alien face-hugger because on the inside I was having a full-on, pulse-pounding fuckaroo of a freak-out! H o l y c r a p i t ’s M a d o n n a h o l y c r a p i t ’s M a d o n n a h o l y c r a p i t ’s M a d o n n a h o l y c r a p i t’s M a d o n n a and she is calling. ME. OVER. TO. HER. CAR. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?
My friends were looking at me like I was nuts, and one of them said, “Dude, what are you waiting for? Get over there!”
I told them I’d be right back and tried to walk over as casually as possible, like I wasn’t walking over to Madonna, standing next to her limo, waving at me, and calling my name. I could feel my friend’s eyes on me as I approached her, my brain trying to deal with the mind-fuck of how do I greet her?
We had actually hung out once before, but this was Madonna. What do I do? Can’t just shake hands. Do I presume there will be a hug? Will we be some high-fiving motherfuckers? Maybe a Euro-style double-cheek kiss?
Nope.
She grabbed me and pulled me into her arms and gave me a big fat smacker RIGHT ON THE MOUTH. Then she took my hand and pulled me into the back of the limo.
My mind was reeling…
She just kissed me and she’s holding my hand and pulling me behind her into the car holycrapholycrapholycrap did my friends see all of this? (YES!) What is happening? Are we about to…
The End.
Hahaha, imagine?
Let’s all just slow down, take a breath, and flashback to…
Two years earlier, somewhere in midtown Manhattan, I was sitting in the living room of the apartment that John Bush and I were sharing during the writing of the Sound of White Noise album. It was around 5 p.m., and I was just starting to recover from the previous evening’s shenanigans when the phone rang.
“Hey, it’s Guy O. What are you doing tonight?” Guy O is Guy Oseary, manager of Madonna, U2, Amy Schumer, and a bunch of other household-name artists. At the time Madonna had hand-picked Guy to run her new record label Maverick. This is before he signed Alanis Morissette and Deftones. We’d been friends for a few years, and he knew what a huge Madonna fan I was. Is that enough exposition?
“Hey Guy, what am I doing tonight?” I replied.
“I’ll pick you up at your apartment at 6 p.m., then we’ll head over to her house and pick her up and then go out to dinner, cool?”
“Umm, her? Who’s her?” I asked ever so hopefully.
“Madonna. She wants to meet you.”
Trying to contain my sheer excitement I somehow quickly answered, “Cool. See you at six.”
I was not cool. I was far from cool. I was a stinking hungover mess. I had figured I had hours to get ready because, like a Spaniard, I hadn’t planned on going out until at least midnight. Now I had less than an hour to get my shit together to go and meet Madonna. MADONNA. I had been a fan since “Burnin’ Up” in 1983. I loved a good pop song, and it didn’t hurt that the lady singing it was hot. I was hooked. I got to see her at Wembley Stadium on the Who’s That Girl tour in 1987. I still have the T-shirt.
I got my ass in gear and jumped in the shower. As I was rushing through the three S’s I realized I had a date that night with this model I was “seeing.” Yeah, I was that guy back then, band dude dating a model. Sometimes you’re too blind to see the cliché. And by blind I mean “in my twenties.”
I called her, thinking it’d be no problem to cancel our date, that I’d just see her the next night and she’d be stoked for me because I was meeting Madonna.
“You’re fucking joking vis me,” she hissed at me in her Dracula-esque somewhere-from-Eastern-Europe accent after I told her what I was doing. “You’re blowing me off for… Madonna?” I tried to explain that it wasn’t a date, it was Guy and I going out with her and what a big fan I was, and all I got from her was an extremely sarcastic, “Vell, have fun, see you.” Click.
Normally I would’ve folded in a situation like this and called her back apologizing, not wanting to blow a good thing. But this was Madonna. I would’ve blown off Stephen King for this. Well, maybe not Stephen King, but it would be a tough decision.
Shitty phone call behind me, I got back to the business of getting ready. I was so nervous about meeting her that I was, for once in my life, actually worried about what I was going to wear. All I had on hand was my uniform: Levi’s, a black T-shirt, and a leather jacket, so that would have to do.
Guy got to my apartment right on time, and we caught a cab up to Madonna’s apartment on the upper west side. My nerves calmed a bit as we made small talk in the taxi. Guy was telling me our plan for the evening: dinner at some fancy-pants restaurant called Café Luxembourg, and then we’d head downtown to the Limelight to see Rage Against the Machine. Rage were still free agents and every label wanted them, and Guy was trying hard to get them for Madonna’s label Maverick. Maybe bringing out the big gun, Madonna, and the smaller gun, the guy from Anthrax, would help his cause. Shit, I was just happy to be there.
We were stuck in traffic heading uptown. Someone had left a newspaper in the taxi, and flipping through it Guy saw an ad for the strip club Flashdancers and how they had some stripper dancing there with size 42GGG boobs. We talked about maybe checking that out for a goof at some point that evening as we finally pulled up to Madonna’s building and headed up to her apartment.
As Guy knocked on her door all my nerves cooled off. Yes, I was really excited to meet Madonna, but the reality of my situation and surroundings put me into an almost Zen-like state of relaxation. She’s just a person, I thought, a woman living in an apartment in the city just like millions of other people, and we’re going to go out to dinner and chill just like millions of other people and then go see some live music just like… you get the idea. This wasn’t going to be Madonna from the “Vogue” video opening the door; it was just going to be Guy’s friend and employer Madonna. And then the door opened and
TITS.
Madonna’s perfect tits.
Right there two feet away from me, shining like two brilliant suns through the sheer black top she was wearing. My eyes were caught in her tittie tractor beam, unable to look away. Madonna’s boobs smiling at me as if to say, She’s just a person? She’s just some schmuck like millions of others in this city? What are you, an idiot? She’s fucking Madonna, you dummy. And look at us: Aren’t we awesome? Go ahead and try to act like you don’t notice Madonna’s tits right in front of your face, hahahahahaha! Her tits laughed at me like a supervillain who has just explained his whole plan to the superhero who he has trapped near the end of the movie and then, much like that old superhero movie trope, I broke free from the booby trap (hell yeah, I wrote that—I get a pass on that one!) and immediately refocused my eyes away from her tits and directly onto her eyes, which were smiling at me knowingly, I might add.
“Hi Scott, how do you like my tits?” is what my brain heard Madonna say, so I shook my head real hard like the Coyote in the old Roadrunner cartoons to clear it. What she actually said was, “Hi Scott, so nice to meet you. Guy has told me so much about you. Please
come in,” as she shook my hand and led us into her apartment.
Look at her eyes look at her eyes look at her eyes look at her eyes, I chanted over and over in my head. It would become my mantra for the evening, her tits always in my peripheral vision, taunting me.
Madonna offered us a drink and told us to make ourselves at home and then excused herself to finish getting ready to go out. “I’ll give you the tour of the place before we go,” she yelled from somewhere down the hall of her apartment. Apartment is really a deceiving noun for the space she lived in. Her “apartment” was five thousand square feet, much bigger than most houses.
A few minutes later Madonna came back into the living room, and much to my relief (and chagrin) she had put on a jacket over her sheer top. I could stop my mantra for the time being, her tits no longer shouting, “PAY ATTENTION TO US!” She showed me around her place, explaining to me how she had just purchased the apartment above hers and that she was going to break through the ceiling and put stairs in to create one ten-thousand-square-foot space. Ten thousand square feet on Central Park West. It’d be like living in Macy’s, or Bergdorf Goodman as it’s Madonna: Her place was incredible, immaculately designed and furnished—all that crap. I was especially fond of the original Dali she had hanging up.
Okay, I can hear you thinking, Less Architectural Digest, more Penthouse Forum. Get back to her tits.
Okay, okay, so we leave Madonna’s apartment and get into the elevator, and Madonna looks at me and says, “Scott, Guy has been through this before, so he knows the procedure.” I just nodded as she continued, “We’re going to take the elevator to the basement garage where my car and driver and security are. When we pull out onto the street you’ll notice three or four cars will pull out from in front of the building and follow us. They’re paparazzi. They wait in front of my building twenty-four-seven. They’re going to follow us to the restaurant, so as soon as we pull up in front of the restaurant you need to get out of the car quickly and go straight into the restaurant. Don’t look at them, and don’t engage them—that’s what they want and that’s what I have security for, got it?”
