Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

by Jon Wiederhorn

  JAN KUEHNEMUND (Vixen): I believe we paid to play at the Whisky, the Troubadour, and possibly a few other popular clubs. I also remember something about having to “rent” microphones at one club. Pay to play was an awful policy because the clubs weren’t hiring bands on the quality of their music and their performance necessarily; [it was more like] whoever had the most money or could pay the most, got the most gigs. We had moved to LA from the Midwest, where we had been paid to perform at every show—what a concept, ha ha!—and we had also played the South, Southeast, and Northwest before moving out to LA, and we always got paid everywhere else—and sometimes quite well. So you can imagine our shock when we ran into this! It had a negative effect on the scene.

  RIKI RACHTMAN (Cathouse founder, DJ, VJ): The Cathouse was never pay-to-play, except one case. I’ll never forget [manager] Pete Angelus calling and saying he had a band he wanted to play, and he sent me the CD. He said, “I’ll give you $400, and we’ll put them on before 10 p.m.” I liked the CD and said okay. It was the Black Crowes. I was always really strict on who played.

  TOM MORELLO (Rage Against the Machine, ex-Audioslave): Pay-to-play wasn’t the only surprise I discovered when I moved to LA. I tried to join bands using the Music Connection. This really speaks for that particular time. A metal bass player and I had a good vibe on the phone. I was going to come jam with them. Their manager calls me up and he had a very important question. This guy was all business. He asked, “How long is your hair?” I was like, “It’s not that long, but I would like to jam.” He says, “Look, we got a lot of interest from agents and we’re looking for a specific image.” I said, “Let me jam with the band, I mean, I might suck, but I might be the best guitar player you’ve ever seen.” He’s like, “Would you be willing to wear a wig?” I said, “I don’t want to wear a wig, I just want to jam.”

  GEOFF TATE (ex-Queensrÿche): We started in 1981 and we were lumped in with the commercial metal thing. We were loud and we could play, but we were from Seattle so we weren’t a part of the LA scene. I think that’s one of the things that set us apart. We liked some of the same bands, probably, but when we first started out, the progressive bands like Yes, Genesis, and Rush were pretty inspirational. Iron Maiden mixed with Black Sabbath was another area we had interest in. We loved music. We were never into partying. That was never an attraction. The excesses were usually conducted by very young people who were just getting started and also by people that were pretty mentally challenged, honestly.

  Ratt was part of the first wave of rock/metal bands to launch the eighties LA scene. Its cutting, trebly guitars, high-pitched melodic vocals, and whirlwind solos, along with a penchant for wild times, epitomized the Sunset Strip. While less over-the-top in image and makeup than Mötley Crüe, Ratt was nonetheless grouped under the “hair metal” umbrella, which also covered Faster Pussycat, Cinderella, Poison, and Winger, as well as latter-day entries like Pretty Boy Floyd and D’Molls.

  STEPHEN PEARCY: When Mickey Ratt moved from San Diego to LA, it was a slap in the face. Suddenly we were playing for nobody in these tiny little clubs. I just wanted my name in the paper, and no one wanted to know from us.

  WARREN DeMARTINI (Ratt): I moved to LA in the fall of 1982. The late seventies commercially was a pretty hard time if you liked rock. New Wave and disco were selling the best, at least in San Diego. The first change was going to see Mötley Crüe and there’d be lines way up the block on Sunset. You got a feeling you were seeing something that was about to explode. It was fun because at that point it was only LA that knew about them and they were doing so well on their own, in spite of the snobby attitudes of record companies at the time, who felt that rock wouldn’t sell.

  STEPHEN PEARCY: It started out with Robbin [Crosby] and I. Warren’s band opened for us. [Guitarist] Jake E. [Lee] was in the band, Jake E. leaves [and eventually joins Ozzy Osbourne’s band]. I ask Warren if he wants to jam, and the rest is history. That was 1982. At the time, I had the members of Rough Cutt, except for [guitarist] Chris [Hager], in my band: [bassist] Matt [Thorr], [drummer] Dave [Alford], and Jake E. Lee made up the first incarnation of Ratt. The scene was still new wave, and Van Halen had just slapped everyone around silly. Then the climate changed. We became this house band at the Whisky [a Go Go] and started our attack on the Strip.

  JAKE E. LEE (ex–Ozzy Osbourne, ex-Ratt) [1986 interview]: Stephen [Pearcy] was mainly why I quit Ratt. He was getting ridiculously drunk onstage and announcing songs we’d just played and forgetting words. He was embarrassing.

  STEPHEN PEARCY: The first incarnation of Ratt was more metal. The [1983] EP was really aggressive. It made Mötley take notice, and we became great friends. We were a little harder back then with Jake in the band. We wore the studs and chains. Then Robbin [Crosby] pulled in, and he was way metal, introducing Priest and Maiden. [Mötley and Ratt] started this street gang called the Gladiators. Everybody had a name. Robbin was King. I was Ratt Patrol Leader. Vince [Neil] was Field Marshall. Nikki [Sixx] was Leader 6. We fed ourselves, took care of each other. They had their place near the Whisky, we had Ratt Mansion West on the west side of LA, and we’d get into a whole lot of trouble. There was a lot of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was a good era.

  WARREN DeMARTINI: We nicknamed our place Ratt Mansion West as a total oxymoron to the fact that it was a one-bedroom apartment and there were three of us. Sometimes our crew would sleep there, too. Things were pretty lean. Top Ramen, and pick a wall. We weren’t arguing over who got what room, we were arguing over who got what wall to put your stuff against.

  NEIL ZLOZOWER (photographer): I was working with Van Halen at the time Ratt were doing their first EP. [Future video vixen] Tawny Kitaen was Robbin Crosby’s girlfriend, and she introduced me to Robbin. He’d always give me a tape of Ratt, and next time, he’d be like, “Did you listen to our tape?” He must have given me that tape ten times. I finally took it home and it kicked me in my fucking ass. I thought it was incredible. I called and said, “I want to work with you guys.” They came to my studio and did the photo shoot for the Ratt EP, with the rats crawling up the girl’s legs. Those were Tawny’s legs. That was before she was the famous MTV girl in the Whitesnake videos.

  WARREN DeMARTINI: Too Fast For Love broke things open for Mötley. The same thing happened for us. We got attention at Atlantic Records because “You Think You’re Tough” made its way onto Joe Benson’s LA radio show [on KLOS]. I’ll never forget Robbin Crosby running into the apartment. I could hear him from almost a block away yelling, “Turn on the radio! It’s on!” He busted through the door and by that time we were trying to get the stereo on. Then we just all sat there in silence listening to our song on the radio for the first time. It was a really indelible moment.

  STEPHEN PEARCY: “Round and Round” was written on a tape recorder by me, Robbin, and Warren in the front room of Ratt Mansion West. You can’t get much less glamorous than that.

  BLACKIE LAWLESS: When everyone started coming out [to LA] in ’81 and ’82, people thought these bands came out of nowhere. They didn’t realize they’d been around forever in sweatshop garages writing their little songs. So when the moment was right they exploded. The movement was ’82 or ’83 but it started in, like, ’76.

  Mötley Crüe were California locals and couldn’t have been more aptly named. Their quest for kicks was legendary, as evidenced by such songs as “Kickstart My Heart,” about bassist Nikki Sixx’s heroin overdose, and “Girls Girls Girls,” the band’s paean to strip clubs. Formed by ex-London bassist Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, an alum of band Suite 19, they were soon joined by guitarist Robert Alan Deal (aka Mick Mars) and lead singer Vince Neil Wharton (ex–Rock Candy). The band would eventually sell twenty-five million albums in the United States alone, but like most rock stars, their beginnings in the LA clubs in early 1981 were humble at best.

  DON DOKKEN: Mick Mars was in a band called Vendetta, and he lived in the South Bay, and he played the beach bars, Top 40, five sets a night. The whole band lived
in one house. You’d go there at three in the afternoon, and it was pitch black. They had every single window covered in tin foil. Mick sectioned off part of the living room and had his Marshalls and flight cases to build a wall, and that was his invented bedroom. He said he was trying out for this band Mötley Crüe, going, “I don’t know. I’m a little older than these guys.” I was like, “Eh, don’t worry about it. Give it a shot.” Mick always looked like he does now: dark hair, pale face, very vampire.

  VINCE NEIL: Rock Candy was a party band that played a few times on the Strip. We weren’t a big giant band, and Nikki never knew me. Mötley had already found Mick, so the three of them came to see me at the Starwood, and that’s when they actually asked me to join the band. The very first day, the very first rehearsal, we wrote “Live Wire,” which turned out to be a big hit. So yeah, we clicked completely right away.

  STEPHEN PEARCY: Mötley was our only competition, and not really, because they were our friends. They helped us out a lot. We’d open up for them in LA. Nikki and Robbin ended up being roommates. Their big thing was after being successful in LA, Mötley went to the Ozzy [Osbourne] tour and did that. Right after that, we went to the Ozzy tour when the Crüe started headlining. We shared a lot, including girlfriends.

  VINCE NEIL: Girls would go in the front door and out the back windows because their boyfriends snuck in when they were there. There was a lot of craziness. One time we were sitting on the floor with David Lee Roth doing coke and the police kicked in the door and it hit Dave in the head. Our door was kicked in so many times we had to use cardboard to jam it shut. I stole a Christmas tree and decorated it with needles and underwear and beer cans and burned it in the front of the apartment.

  JOEY VERA (Fates Warning, Armored Saint): We saw London, with Nikki, then we saw Mötley Crüe’s first gig opening for Y&T [originally Yesterday and Today] at the Starwood. Mötley Crüe were awful at their first show. Musically, they were all over the place, not tight, not good, but you could tell that something was there. I remember seeing London and thinking it was kind of spectacular, but this had even more of that. You could tell that something was going to happen.

  VINCE NEIL: [As far as umlauts] went, probably nobody else was dumb enough to use them, before us—except Motörhead. They were the first. Ours came from us drinking Löwenbräu and we wanted to seem European. We wanted to have a worldly vibe, even though we’d never been outside of LA.

  GEOFF TATE: The umlauts [in our name] absolutely weren’t because of Mötley Crüe. They were [guitarist] Chris [DeGarmo’s] idea. He thought it looked kind of cool and dramatic, and we were just out of school and didn’t have a worldview yet and didn’t realize that umlauts actually had a purpose. For a long time, because of the way we spelled the name, and because it wasn’t a known word in the English language, people didn’t know how to pronounce it. I think we spent the first ten years correcting everyone’s pronunciation of the band name.

  In the early days of the Strip Scene there was a camaraderie among many bands that later diminished. Established musicians offered tips and even equipment to start-up groups, having no idea that the newbies would soon become major competition in the game to land high-profile gigs and record contracts.

  VINCE NEIL: David Lee Roth helped me out a lot, personally. He would come to all our shows. We’d be playing at the Troubadour, and there’s Dave—and this was in his heyday. A couple years earlier, when I was in Rock Candy, I was bootlegging T-shirts outside Van Halen concerts at Long Beach Arena, wanting to go in to watch them, but I didn’t have enough money. But Dave came because we always had tons of girls. Our audience was 80 percent women. He’s a big star, and I’m just a nobody singer, and he said, “Hey Vince, meet me at Canter’s on Fairfax, I want to talk to you.” I borrowed someone’s car and there’s Diamond Dave with his black Mercedes with a skull and crossbones painted on the hood. He sat me down and went through all the aspects of the business of rock and roll. He said, “You need distribution, and this, and watch out for this, and be careful of this.” He’d go, “Okay, when you find out what your best side is, always use that side [for photos].” For him to take the time to sit down with just some dude, that’s pretty cool.

  BLACKIE LAWLESS: Nikki didn’t steal [our pentagram logo]; I gave it to him. That whole setting himself on fire thing—I gave that to him. Nikki and I had played together before. W.A.S.P. was just being put together, but we didn’t do shows together. I looked at Nikki like my brother. The pentagram came because I’d left a [Satanic] cult and afterward I didn’t want anything to do with it. He came to me after and asked if I was going to use it. I said, “Nope. You can have it.” But I warned him he’s messing with very bad stuff. Everyone I know who messes with that stuff, tragedy has fallen on them at some point in life. It’s just not something you want to be a part of.

  VINCE NEIL: We only used the pentagram for one album, and it’s called Shout at the Devil—so you use a pentagram! Nobody’s really into the devil. It’s showmanship, it’s whatever image you’re trying to project. It’s all a bunch of bull, really. Ronnie [Dio] was not a devil worshipper, but he loved medieval history. Same with Ozzy. He is the furthest thing from a devil worshipper I’ve ever met.

  Mötley Crüe earned their bad-boy title with little effort. Even before the overdoses and near-fatal car crashes that could have ended the band’s career, they lived for the moment, throwing caution to the wind in favor of cheap, and sometimes costly, thrills.

  JOEY VERA: After an Armored Saint show at Mt. Baldy Ski Resort [outside Los Angeles], Tommy Lee’s going to a party down the mountain with his sister and another girl who owned the car. Me, in a drunken state, said, “I’ll go to the party.” That’s the last thing I remember. We went down the hill, the car crashed, I cut up both my hands and my head, was in the hospital for a week. The worst thing was that I almost lost my thumb, my right thumb. Tommy was driving. I think he felt really guilty. It wasn’t like I held it against him. We were all drunk. I knew what we were doing. It’s not like he threw me from the car. I was like, “Dude, whatever, it’s cool.” But our friendship was done after that. What came out of this was that the girl had insurance, so I got money to pay for all the bills, and there was some chunk of change left—four or six thousand dollars—and with that money, I fronted Armored Saint the money to pay for recording a demo, which turned into the EP that we put out in ’83. Our [1982] Metal Massacre 2 track [“Lesson Well Learned”] is from that session, too. Had that accident not happened, we might not have been able to afford to go in the studio.

  DON DOKKEN: The first time I saw Mötley Crüe, we were playing with them, at the Roxy. We both were showcasing. Dokken had done Breaking the Chains; it was out in Europe. The whole scene had crumbled, all the rock bands had moved, the Starwood was gone, the Whisky had gone punk, everybody had moved to the Troubadour. It was the only club left. Gazzarri’s was waffling. Golden West Ballroom was gone. Clubs were falling by the wayside. I didn’t understand Mötley because they didn’t have a [major] record deal, yet they showed up in limos, brand new equipment, Marshalls, all these cool stage clothes, big-ass hair. I was like, “How the fuck did they afford that?” Mötley never did a gig with crappy gear. They came on the scene with full-on arena gear because they had [KISS manager] Doc [McGhee] backing them.

  VINCE NEIL: If you look at the Mötley Crüe progression of looks, they are all different. When we did [1981’s] Too Fast for Love, we just wore what we could, because we didn’t have any money. We basically shopped at the hardware store, got chains and made our own stuff. Then for [1983’s] Shout at the Devil, it was a theatrical leather look, not a biker leather look. Then we completely went to the other end and did the glam thing with [1985’s] Theatre of Pain; there was no leather at all. Then, when everybody started doing that, we changed to the motorcycle look for [1987’s] Girls Girls Girls. We never pigeonholed ourselves into any look. Entertainment is supposed to be an escape. It’s not supposed to let you know how miserable you are.

>   TOMMY LEE (Mötley Crüe): A lot of bands recently seem to have been there to make the crowd depressed. I could never figure that out. That, to me, is like sitting down at a bar and drinking to remember.

  In the early days of hair metal, new bands had to be resourceful to look good onstage even though their wallets were usually empty. For most, gigging and merch sales didn’t pay the bills, especially after pay-to-play became widespread. Girlfriends, strippers, or parents sometimes supported the rock star hopefuls. Often, however, musicians sold drugs or toiled at day jobs. One of the most common part-time gigs for aspiring rock stars was telemarketing—boiler rooms of musicians with fake names selling equally questionable goods and services. Tower Records Sunset and Aaron’s Records were other spots where Los Angeles’s long-haired and hungover could be found trying to earn a buck. The ubiquitous scenario spawned a standard joke. Q: “What do you call a musician in LA without a girlfriend?” A: “Homeless.”

  JANI LANE (1964–2011) (Warrant): [Drummer] Steven [Sweet] and I were living in Florida and had no money. We had a friend who was a bass player, Al Collins, and he talked his parents into buying him an old ’77 Cutlass. I sold my drums, and Steven and I worked at the merry-go-round to make enough money to move to LA. Another guy in Florida was trying to start his own line of children’s clothing, so we also worked in his basement making children’s T-shirts, like a sweatshop, for about two weeks to save up six hundred bucks between the three of us. We had a car and a U-Haul trailer and we broke down in every state on our trip to LA. Suddenly, we realize that we have $20 left and we’re almost out of gas. We get a room at a motel across from the Hollywood Bowl and stayed there for a week. We went down to the store every day and got a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread and put the peanut butter on the bread using a Social Security card. That’s how we lived the first week in Hollywood.