Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

by Jon Wiederhorn

  STEPHEN PEARCY (Ratt): I moved to San Diego in 1971. Around ’75 we were playing a place called Straight Ahead Sound. Everybody went there, so you automatically played in front of six hundred to one thousand people. You would have Jake E. Lee’s band Teaser, [my band] Mickey Ratt [which evolved into Ratt], and Robbin Crosby’s band Metropolis. We’d all be competing.

  KELLE RHOADS (composer, brother of Randy Rhoads): Randy and I started out in a band called Violet Fox, with me on drums. But that didn’t last too long because I always wanted to bash his head in. We didn’t get along as teenage boys. Later in his short life I came to really appreciate him, and we formed a really tight bond. The period right up until he joined Quiet Riot was magical for him. If Charles Dickens was around and wrote a story about boys in the seventies going into glam and metal band, I think he would have chosen my brother as a model because it was a real period of discovery for him and he was really good.

  KEVIN DuBROW (1955–2007) (Quiet Riot): I was eighteen; Randy Rhoads was seventeen. He walked in and he had hair down to the middle of his back and a really long thumbnail. I didn’t hear him play, the first time I met him. Then the second time, I went to his mom’s house and I went there just as a joke, because I was playing with Stan Lee, the guitarist of the Dickies. Stan is the one who said, “You should go hear him play; it’s going to be funny.” You know, we did it as a joke. The joke was on me, because he was amazing. I heard him play and Randy says, “Okay, let’s hear you sing,” and I was like, “No, not going to do it,” and eventually, obviously, I did. But he was brilliant, he was gifted, he was hilarious and a wonderful person.

  BLACKIE LAWLESS: The very first show I played in LA was with [Arthur] Killer Kane. The first time we played the Starwood [Night Club], there was a band called New Order—this was half the Stooges and half the MC5. They were headlining, we were playing in the middle, and the other band was, at that point, unknown: Quiet Riot with Randy Rhoads on guitar. Looking back, that was one of those special nights. But that was ’75 and disco would start rearing its ugly head, and it was very hard for those bands to get jobs after that.

  KEVIN DuBROW: Van Halen got signed a couple of years before Quiet Riot [did, in 1977], and we thought maybe we were going to be the next ones, but we weren’t. We were the only hard rock band, pretty much, in town at that time. Mötley Crüe had just gotten started, so they were still in the clubs. We had been out there as Quiet Riot for a number of years. But a lot of bands then sounded like the Knack.

  BLACKIE LAWLESS: Van Halen was the very first band I saw in LA. They were the house band at Gazzarri’s. They were playing “Running with the Devil” then. I remember hearing that song for the first time and thinking, “That’s an okay song.”

  STEPHEN PEARCY: I used to watch them play in front of twenty people, and they would play like they were at [the LA arena] the Forum. I haul ass home to San Diego. I get tight with guitarist Robbin [Crosby] and we’re playing gigs. I tell Robbin, “There’s this band called Van Halen,” and he comes up to meet Eddie. I’m like, “Look, January 1, 1980, I’m moving to LA.” And I did.

  EDDIE VAN HALEN: Back in ’74, we were playing a club and the public bathroom was our dressing room. I’m changing my clothes in the toilet stall and the guy next to me goes, “Hey, Eddie. Great show. Want some dynamite blow?” I said, “Yeah, sure.” So he hands me this paper, and I took my guitar pick and went to town. I didn’t taste it first to see what it was. Ten minutes later, I barely made it 50 feet. Alex saw me collapse from across the ballroom and ran to me. I had overdosed on PCP. Thank God [bassist] Mike [Anthony] had a station wagon, because my body was so stiff they couldn’t put me in the car. I actually died on the table in the hospital, and when I woke up the doctor said, “Your heart stopped. If it was thirty seconds later, we couldn’t have brought you back.” I didn’t see any light, but I had a vision that I was onstage at the Forum before we ever played there, and when we did play there it was exactly as I imagined. The doctor even said to me—because I woke up with my ankles and wrists strapped down because I guess I was violent—he goes, “It’s funny, your fingers wouldn’t stop moving.” That’s the only time I ever did any drugs that heavy, and it was by accident.

  FRANKIE BANALI (Quiet Riot): I came to LA in 1978 or ’79, and I decided to stay and do or die. I took the drum heads off and put all my clothes inside the drums. I took the drums to Fort Lauderdale Airport, my mom dropped me off, and that’s when you could pay twenty bucks to get all the stuff on as luggage. I got to LAX, I got my drums, I’m standing on the white zone with my drums, $300 cash. That was my plan. I had no idea how I was going to get to Hollywood. As luck would have it, an SIR [Studio Instrumental Rentals] van comes driving by, and it stops, and this guy goes, “Frankie?” I say, “Joey?” It was a tech I had met in Chicago. He was now at SIR, picking up for some big famous band. He goes, “Get in!” We put my drums in the van and he graciously let me stay at his apartment.

  KEVIN DuBROW: Quiet Riot predated [Nikki Sixx’s] London by [five] years. London was around about the same time as DuBrow. But remember, Nikki Sixx auditioned for Quiet Riot, when [ex-bassist] Kelly [Garni] left in ’77. And those were long years, let me tell you.

  By the mid-eighties, LA was populated by wide-eyed, big-haired hopefuls pouring in from all over the country—indeed, from all over the world—lured by the promise of success and the accompanying fringe benefits. Hollywood was just a short commute from major venues like the Forum, Long Beach Arena, and Universal Amphitheatre, and it was home of infamous clubs like the Whisky, Starwood, Troubadour, and Roxy Theatre. Major record companies dotted the city and record stores lined Sunset Boulevard and LaBrea Avenue. A lucky few future rock stars lived in the LA area, where, in the late seventies, they got a bird’s-eye view and a jump start on a scene that would overtake their city in a few short years.

  VINCE NEIL (Mötley Crüe): The first concert I went to was Lynyrd Skynyrd, with Black Sabbath opening. Then Foreigner, and Eddie Money, I think, at Anaheim Stadium. I was probably fourteen; friends who were sixteen had a car. Everybody was smoking pot. I remember looking around during “Freebird,” and it was a stadium, you could see, like, the concrete bending; or maybe it was just me being high, but it was a surreal experience, and that really got the music fired up in me. By the time I was sixteen, I was already in a band playing Gazzarri’s.

  LITA FORD (The Runaways): I used to hang out at the Long Beach Arena; that was my club! My mother, being from Rome, and my father from London—they were naïve to the bad things in life. It didn’t enter their minds. I never had any girlfriends really; I always hung out with the guys. In high school, I would hang out with all the black musicians. We would ditch school and go and jam. After school I’d bring home a half dozen black guys, and my mom would cook everyone dinner, and we’d eat and play music.

  DON DOKKEN (Dokken): In the late seventies I’d see George [Lynch’s] band the Boyz. Half the time he would pass out. I remember him being carried out at the Starwood; an ambulance came and they hauled him away on a stretcher. Hyperventilate, anxiety. He’d eat a big dinner before the show, get too excited, hold his breath, pass out. I’d be like, “Oh, there’s the Boyz, there goes George. They’re carrying him off the stage.” He passed out, then as they were carrying him out, he was waving at the audience.

  LITA FORD: In 1975 in the Runaways, it was hard to be taken seriously as a musician when you’re young and dressed like that. Plus, some of the girls were screwing off too much and I didn’t like that. I wanted to work, I wanted to jam, I wanted to get paid. I didn’t want to fuck off as much as they were. And when I got pissed off about it they would look at me and go, “What’s your problem? Why are you so mad?” They wouldn’t show up for photo shoots because they’d be too fucked up. Trying to get them off their butts or out of bed or into sound check was difficult at times. I mean, I was into sex and drugs and drinking, too, but it never got in the way of my work. We did well, but it wasn’t until after the Runaways that I wa
s really accepted as a musician, and especially a guitarist. I learned from the guys. I never followed any female guitarists because there weren’t any. I wanted to play lead guitar, and I put together a three-piece because I didn’t want anyone to forget that I was the only guitar player and those were really my solos; I could actually play. But I had to work hard in the vocal department because that wasn’t my greatest strength.

  TRACII GUNS (LA Guns, ex–Guns N’ Roses): I started seeing live music when I was about fifteen or sixteen. The first band I ever saw was at the Troubadour. I was a lot younger than those bands I was seeing, but Starwood gigs were more of the beginning of the LA punk rock scene. I saw the Crowd and the Weirdos at the Starwood. Rock bands that were happening played Florentine Gardens and clubs like that. Then I saw White Sister, London, Mötley Crüe, and Sarge, Angelus, Dante Fox—that’s my whole rock-and-roll education as far as what went into putting LA Guns together. We came out around 1983, ’84, and those bands were all around since ’79, ’80. Then there were the bigger ones before LA Guns, like W.A.S.P. and Ratt. By the time we put Guns N’ Roses together out of LA Guns, we perfected this kind of heavy, but bluesy, but a little bit punk attitude ingredients to make this perfect cake.

  SLASH (Velvet Revolver, ex–Guns N’ Roses): [Ex–Guns N’ Roses drummer] Steve [Adler] started me on guitar. I met him in my early years of junior high and I wasn’t doing really well, and he wasn’t either, so we started ditching Bancroft Junior High in eighth grade together and hanging out. I went to Steve’s house one day, and he had an amp. I didn’t know what lead guitar was, but I always wanted to do something musical. He had some KISS records, and the amp and guitar, and we blasted all of it at the same time. I decided I was going to play bass and he was going to play guitar, then somehow we switched and I started playing guitar, and he started playing drums.

  STEVEN ADLER (Adler’s Appetite, ex–Guns N’ Roses): [In my teens] I was the one guy hanging at the Starwood. I was there every day because it was two blocks away from my house. I would hang there for sound check, and that’s where I learned to play drums. I never took a lesson until recently. I learned from the drummers in the bands playing there.

  SLASH: Steven and I used to get into clubs. I saw Nikki Sixx’s band London back then, I saw Snow and Quiet Riot. I never saw Van Halen then, though. Simultaneously, there was this punk scene that was going on, so those were actually mixed, the beginning of the metal scene in LA was the tail end of the punk scene, so I was around for both of those.

  For young, impressionable musicians who aspired to rock stardom, Hollywood could be as intoxicating and dangerous as it was for hot eighteen-year-old actress wannabes just off the bus from the Midwest. Rockers rarely ended up in porn but were nonetheless taken advantage of financially, emotionally—even sexually. And if they had an ounce of talent and a taste for drugs and alcohol, their unhealthy appetites were easily sated.

  STEVEN ADLER: The Starwood was the first time I met Danny Bonaduce. I was on acid, and I walked into the office at the Starwood and he was doing a line of coke on the table. I was all, “Oh my God,” I’m just tripping on acid, and I’m like, “Danny Partridge, I love you.” I was young and naïve. I was a cute little boy hanging out with older people who wanted to take advantage of me, and there’s a lot of drugs and sex; it was Santa Monica Boulevard. Still, to this day, West Hollywood is the gay capital of the world.

  DON DOKKEN: There were piles [of cocaine] on the tables upstairs at the Starwood. Coke and quaaludes; you just snapped your fingers and it happened—it was free. David Forest was the booking agent. I ran into him years later. He put us with Van Halen and Quiet Riot. I thanked him and he said, “I didn’t really like your band, but you got a cute ass.” I would see young musicians go into the offices that were above the stage and come out an hour later really wasted on ludes and blow. As far as sexual favors happening, I have no idea, I wasn’t there—let’s just say a lot of crappy bands got gigs there. There would always be, in the private VIP section upstairs, KISS, Aerosmith, Ozzy, John Belushi on any given night; it was the place to hang, score drugs, and get laid.

  STEVEN ADLER: People would pull up beside me in their cars and ask me if I wanted to smoke a joint. I’d be like, “Hell yeah!” The next thing you know, you’re completely baked and they’re touching you all over and you don’t know what the fuck’s going on. All you know is that an orgasm feels good. Anybody can make you come, and in that state, I didn’t have the presence of mind to give a damn. I was used, abused, whatever. Let’s get high, let’s party. One time I was walking along Santa Monica Boulevard and ran into two clean-cut guys who must have been in their twenties. We started talking and they said they had some bitchin’ weed back at their pad, so I went with them to smoke. We arrived at this dumpy little apartment and there was another guy there, only he was in his forties, a completely scruffy-looking loser. Right away, I felt uneasy. I’ll spare you the details, but they hurt me pretty badly. Part of my mind just kind of shut down, and that day my reality became a bad dream. They didn’t beat me up, but they did everything else and it was pretty devastating. I was just fourteen at the time.

  KEVIN DuBROW: We did a show at the Starwood and someone said, “You wanna do some blow?” I said “Sure, fuck it.” But my use of cocaine was no greater than any members of Mötley Crüe or Van Halen. It was less, if anything.

  DON DOKKEN: I remember Devo were playing at the Whisky and they came to our show at the Starwood. I asked them why, and they said, “We love Dokken because you’re the epitome of what we don’t want to be.” I didn’t know they wore saucers on their heads at that point.

  VICKY HAMILTON (ex-Geffen A&R, manager): I cocktail-waitressed at the Starwood when I first moved out from Indiana. That was right when that whole thing went down with Eddie Nash and the murders and Laurel Canyon. [In 1981, Starwood owner and reputed gangster Eddie Nash was charged in connection with the bludgeoning deaths of four people at their home at 8763 Wonderland Avenue in Laurel Canyon. Nash’s friend, porn star John Holmes, allegedly helped organize the robbery in an effort to pay back a drug debt to the leader of a crime syndicate.] I can’t remember if it was the FBI or what, but they pulled bags of quaaludes from the safe at the Starwood. I lost my job because they closed down the club. [Nash was acquitted of planning the murders but pled guilty to related charges.]

  Nash’s arrest didn’t slow down the LA metal scene, which was growing larger and flashier by the day. In addition to dramatic stage productions, bands featured an ever-growing stable of talented players—most notably lead guitarists—who spent most of their waking hours learning how to play fast, flashy solos. Their early influences included Ritchie Blackmore, Tony Iommi, and Jimmy Page. But the new breed of guitar heroes also bowed at the altars of Van Halen and Randy Rhoads, who had pioneered a variety of lead guitar techniques, including whammy-bar dive bombs, and, more notably, tapping, where fingers on the right hand are used to tap frets like piano keys while the left hand continues to play as normal, creating a rapid succession of notes that varied greatly in pitch.

  EDDIE VAN HALEN: I saw Led Zeppelin back around 1970, and Jimmy Page had his arm up in the air, and he was lifting his fret finger off of the string, and I said, “Wait a minute.” And I took my right hand and used it to tap on the frets. I just moved it up and kept going up the neck, creating all these different sounds. It developed from there, and I worked with it until I could do it really fast on songs like “Eruption,” and it became sort of my thing.

  KELLE RHOADS: In the 1840s, Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin did the same thing that Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads did. They took the instrument to another dimension. The two piano players ushered in an era where the piano became a solo instrument and was used in recitals even without an orchestra. What Randy and Eddie did was they took the guitar, which ten years earlier was mostly a rhythm instrument, and they put it into the perspective of virtuosity. Now you have guitar being extremely important, sometimes, as with my brother, being almost
the most important aspect of the song. Like Steve Vai said, Randy didn’t only raise the bar, he painted it, too.

  STEVE VAI (ex-Whitesnake, ex–David Lee Roth): Guitar is the greatest instrument in the world and it’s not that hard to play; some people are just intimidated. Now, if you want to be an elite rock virtuoso, you might have to put some more hours in. But you should shoot to be much greater, much better than the people who are inspiring you, so that the cycle continues.

  As Van Halen and Ozzy gained popularity, any guitar player worth his distortion pedal learned to finger tap. The technique fit well with metal’s emphasis on showmanship, and flashy solos became a highlight of any metal song. Most bands took extended breaks during their sets to showcase their guitarists and sometimes their drummers. Upping the ante on Van Halen and Rhoads, Swedish-born Yngwie Malmsteen applied classical music theory to his lightning-fast leads and a new breed of players known as shredders developed.

  Whether for rising glam acts like Poison or accomplished burners such as Vai, most LA-area clubs in the eighties had a pay-to-play policy, requiring bands to purchase hundreds of dollars’ worth of tickets in advance for the privilege of performing. Groups sold the tickets themselves or, just as frequently, gave them away to ensure there was an audience at the shows. While the practice isn’t as commonplace as it once was, some clubs still require baby bands and local groups to pay for the right to play.

  CARLOS CAVAZO (Ratt, ex–Quiet Riot): Whoever started pay-to-play shouldn’t have, because it just isn’t right. A lot of people who are extremely talented will never have the chance to become famous because they don’t have the money to pay to play.

  CHINO MORENO (Deftones): Our first-ever show in LA was pay-to-play. But we went over well because we didn’t play shows for a long time. We’d just practice and practice. So when we finally debuted in LA we were tight as fuck and people loved it. But yeah, the idea of the whole thing really sucks.