Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life in Rock

by Stephen Pearcy

  He looked confused. “Are we even in position to get signed?”

  “Dude, we have to be thinking constantly about the next step. Do you think Van Halen would let themselves live down here, and potentially be missed by the music industry?”

  Chris shook his head and sighed. “No,” he said, finally. “That mighty band would never do that.”

  Mickey Ratt pressed onward. Our first drummer was gone; with his new replacement, our beat seemed steadier. I wrote constantly, using my own anxiety and desire for fame and recognition as the best kind of songwriting inspiration. Slowly, we began to get booked at larger venues: the Plaza Hall, Bing Crosby Hall, and then, finally, the Del Mar Fairgrounds.

  “Fuck, this is amazing!” Chris cried. “Half a year ago, we were playing to fifty people! I think there must have been fifteen hundred there tonight!”

  “Cool,” I said. “But we’re still small-time.”

  “Stephen,” Chris said, “you’re starting to worry me. Be happy with what you have. We’re one of the biggest bands in the whole town.”

  I knew I should be more grateful. I should have felt lucky to even be walking, after my accident. But it was tough. As the months went by, the small city felt more and more confining. Through my accident settlement, I was able to buy my first car, a green Datsun B-210, and I used it to venture up to Los Angeles almost every weekend that we didn’t have a gig.

  “Are you cheating on me?” Tina asked one day.

  “No,” I said, surprised. “Why?”

  “Because you’re always gone. You’re always up there. . . .”

  But it wasn’t another girl who had stolen my heart: it was the Strip itself, and my vision of us as a part of it. As 1978 turned into 1979, I found myself constantly standing outside the Troubadour, or Gazzarri’s, or the Whisky a Go Go, thinking to myself, I should be playing here, not the goddamn fairgrounds. San Diego was close enough to L.A. to nearly be a suburb of it, and we had a hell of a lot of good musicians down there. But as far as the record industry was concerned, we might as well have been in Oklahoma.

  “Nothing’s going to happen for any of us here,” I insisted to Robbin. “The guys in your band know that, right?”

  Robbin shrugged. “I love it down here. So does Tawny.”

  “So you’re just gonna play music, go to the beach, and fuck your brains out for your whole life?”

  “Hmm,” said Robbin, thinking for a moment. “That sounds about right.”

  It was absolutely staggering to me: Nobody seemed to get what I was talking about. Open your eyes, they all said to me. We got a sweet deal here. We live in paradise, and we’re pulling the best chicks in town. Dude, we just played to fifteen hundred people!

  I began to have trouble sleeping. My hair, always my pride and joy, began to frizz from the anxiety. I stood in front of the mirror one afternoon despondently, holding a pair of my mom’s kitchen scissors. Shit, I thought. If I look cool in a crew cut, maybe I’ll enlist.

  One afternoon, I got a phone call from Eddie.

  “Hey, dude, I need a favor! We’re playing the San Diego Sports Arena tonight. Listen, it’s a much bigger place than we normally play, and we’re low on equipment. Can you help us round up some cabs?”

  “Hell yeah, man,” I said, snapping to immediate attention. “We’ll be right there!”

  I got on the phone like a man possessed. “Robbin!” I yelled. “Ed’s playing the Sports Arena. He needs some cabinets. Get a stack from your boys!”

  “I’m on it!”

  “Tommy—remember that band I told you about, Van Halen? Well, they’re playing the Sports Arena tonight. They need cabinets.”

  “Right on, Pearcy, sure thing, as long as they get me backstage after the show. . . .”

  I organized an obscenely huge pile of equipment for the band. All day long, we trucked it back and forth, using Robbin’s van and my Datsun for the mission, even enlisting the services of Chris’s tiny Peugeot. That night, Van Halen played on our Marshalls, using our Vox heads, in front of a crowd of thousands, including the entirety of the San Diego hard rock music community.

  And they just blasted us.

  “I told you. I told you!” I yelled, over and over. “Man! Now do you guys understand?”

  “Wow,” Chris said, utterly amazed. “Yes. I understand.”

  Van Halen was electrifying, explosive. They were as fun as Aerosmith, but more musically complicated, maybe more adventurous. They were as charismatic as Zeppelin, but less mystical and more grounded in a California party vibe. Really, they were their own beast, with their own unique sound. But one thing was abundantly clear: They were big rock.

  I drove home that night from the arena feeling more content and more convinced regarding my own destiny than I had in months. Being part of the show, even just as a glorified roadie, was tremendous fun. I was so puffed up on adrenaline, I almost felt like I’d played the arena myself. But it was more than that: The band that I’d been bragging about for months and months really was something special. They were going to be huge—everyone who’d seen them that evening knew it. And I’d called it.

  “I guess you do have pretty good taste,” Chris admitted the next afternoon, when we met over at my mom’s house for practice.

  “That band’s going somewhere, man. Meanwhile, we’re stuck right here, going through the motions.”

  “San Diego’s not that bad . . .” Chris began.

  “I’m in my twenties, Chris,” I said. “I live with my mom.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “Things have to change. And they have to change soon,” I said. “We’re about to be in the nineteen eighties.”

  “So?” Chris laughed. “What does that even mean?”

  “Things change when decades change. Tastes change. The seventies gave us soft rock and disco. I think that’s all about to be over.”

  “What kind of music do you think is about to hit?” he asked.

  “Fucking metal,” I whispered. “The hard shit.”

  Chris began pacing the floor of my mom’s living room. “So what does that mean for us?”

  “It means we’re going to play on stages in front of thousands of people,” I said. “We’re going to make a ton of money, drive sports cars, and buy our mothers swimming pools. I want Mickey Ratt on the cover of every rock magazine, right next to Ozzy and Priest! But to really go for it,” I said, “we gotta leave.”

  “Okay. When?”

  “January first,” I said. “Nineteen eighty. We’re gone.”

  “But where will we go?”

  “There’s only one place to go,” I said. “The Sunset Strip.”

  OUT OF THE CELLAR

  IN A NEW CITY, you can feel reborn. New smells fill the air—such as the faint aroma of industrial garbage. New sights dot the horizon—such as homeless men in shit-encrusted jeans, punching one another in the face. New sounds caress the ear—such as the honking of desperate idiots trapped on side streets, hell-bent on their missions to nowhere.

  “I’m glad to be back,” I sighed, satisfied.

  Chris and our drummer, John Turner, moved with me into the two-car garage at my old friend Dennis O’Neill’s house, in Culver City, across from the DMV. Dennis was out on his own by this time, secure in his own apartment, but his mother remembered me from the old days. She said we were welcome to stay for as long as we wanted.

  “The only other people who’ve lived in here before have been cars,” she said, simply.

  We moved our gear into the small space and set up the three beds in a triangular formation. We were almost sleeping on top of our amps. I knew it was crucial that we treat our move as an opportunity to gather momentum and focus, and get down to business immediately. I dictated an ambitious practice schedule.

  “Nine o’clock a.m.: wake-up time,” I read from my notebook. “Nine thirty: a healthy breakfast. Ten o’clock: band practice begins.”

  “Can you book me time to take a shit?” Chris asked. “Mornings are g
ood for me.”

  I hadn’t had to share a room since I was a kid, so there was a bit of an adjustment period. Chris accused us of having poor hygiene habits. And none of us could turn a blind eye to the fact that John was a tireless fart machine.

  My mother reacted to the move with her typical generosity, never failing to shower me with enthusiasm and support. But when I really listened to her voice, I could tell she was missing me. So in those first weeks, I tried to call as often as I could, transporting fistfuls of nickels to the pay phone down the street, so as not to abuse my house privileges with Mrs. O’Neill.

  “Oh, I miss you, honey,” my mom said when she heard my voice. “See you soon, right?”

  “I’m going to be up here for a while,” I said. “This is the city I know best.”

  “But . . .” she said jokingly, “what if you break your legs again?”

  I laughed. “I’m not going to be drag racing, Mom. I’m going to be singing. I’m probably safe.”

  Little did I know our first gig in Los Angeles would get a hostile reaction from my own band members that made me fear for my life. It was to take place at an ice rink in Culver City.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, WE’RE . . . MICKEY . . . RATT!”

  Twenty or so fifteen-year-olds with earmuffs stared back at us blankly.

  “What the fuck is this, Stephen?” Chris whispered.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “But we had to play our first show somewhere.”

  I tried to be more selective after that, though I firmly believed that it was better to be playing at a venue that you hated than to sit at home and complain about the way that the booking gods had treated you.

  “Every gig we get, we get better and better,” I insisted. “Plus, there’s the money to think about.”

  “The ice rink only paid a hundred bucks,” John said.

  “Yeah?” I said. “Well, I didn’t see you giving away your share.”

  We had some serious problems in those early days, one being lack of a steady bass player. Tim Garcia, our main guy down in San Diego, had a baby on the way, and he had decided not to make the trek up. Once in a while he would show up to fill in. Tim was always the guy who remembered every song, every key, every nuance of our set. We relied on him to assist us in the things we couldn’t remember.

  One evening, we had a show scheduled and he couldn’t make it.

  “Fuck it,” I announced. “I’ll play bass. We’ll go out as a three-piece.” I borrowed a Travis Bean bass from a friend of Victor Mamanna’s, Victor Stolpey. I was in. I was playing bass.

  “Stephen,” Chris cautioned, “you can’t just pick up the bass and expect to know how to play it.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I sneered. “How complicated could the bass be? There’re only four strings.”

  To me, the main thing was getting out there to be seen and heard, not playing perfectly. I was like Steve Martin’s Jerk, who sees his name in the phone book and rejoices. Finally: I’m somebody now! I just wanted my name in the damn phone book.

  “Gig tonight, dudes,” I announced, coming home to Mrs. O’Neill’s, after a long day of trekking back and forth from café to café, club to club, in my B-210.

  “Oh, thank God,” said Chris, relieved, as he lay back on his cot. “We need to make some cash—I haven’t eaten all day.”

  “I told you guys I’d get us playing before you knew it,” I said, shaking my head. “No one ever listens to me. Now, shit, we gotta get our set list ready: We’re doing the Bla Bla Café at nine p.m. sharp—and those guys are going to pay us fifty bucks, so we better be good.”

  We only had half a dozen really good songs, so making a set list was easy.

  “Now what?” Chris asked.

  “Let’s get drunk,” I suggested. We pooled together the last of our money and walked down to a Vons market, where we bought a few huge bottles of their cheapest wine. The sun was lowering in the sky.

  Chris, John, and I polished off our first bottle in Mrs. O’Neill’s garage as we selected our costumes for the night.

  “Bring the intern uniforms and the surgical mask for ‘Dr. Rock,’ ” I said. “Just like we did in San Diego!”

  “Very cool, very cool,” said Chris, his excitement mounting. “Oh, L.A., you’re gonna learn just how it feels to get fucked!”

  “Right on!” yelled John. We piled into the B-210 and took off for the Valley. “There better be tons of chicks there.”

  “There will be,” I assured him. “Bla Bla is world-famous for its chicks. And these won’t be any San Diego country bumpkins, either. We’re talking sophisticated city girls.”

  We arrived in the Bla Bla parking lot two hours before the show.

  “Fuck,” I said. “We’re kind of early.”

  Chris shrugged. “We brought that wine, right?”

  We stood around the parking lot, swilling supermarket wine, laughing, growing more and more idiotic as the night grew darker. Meanwhile, the club was almost empty.

  “Looks kind of slow tonight,” I admitted.

  “We’ll rock their asses anyway,” slurred John.

  The time rolled around for Mickey Ratt to rule. We unloaded our gear, hoisted it onto our backs, and made our grand entrance. By this time, a bit of a crowd had congregated. I jumped onstage.

  “Hey there, freaky people of the world,” I said. “We’re Mickey Ratt, and we want to fuck your eardrums tonight. Enjoy.”

  Immediately, we thrashed into the opening bars of “Dr. Rock.” “You want to take a break,” I screamed. “We’d like to take you there.”

  John, plastered out of his mind, bashed his drum set with reckless abandon. Chris, a surgical mask strapped around his face, looking like a murderous maniac, began to play his guitar as loudly as humanly possible.

  “You want to travel the world,” I shrieked, “I know about these things. . . .”

  As we reached the chorus, we really started to cook. But just then, I opened my eyes and saw the club’s proprietor waving his arms desperately.

  “STOP!” he shouted. “STOP PLAYING.”

  Confused, we stopped. We stared dumbly down at him, our instruments still echoing.

  “Guys,” he said. “I’m so sorry. You’re not who we thought you were. You’ll have to go home.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said, still confused.

  “You’re too loud,” the manager explained.

  “Are you kidding?”

  “We’ll still pay you, all right? But you just have to come down off the stage.”

  I frowned. “How do we know you’ll pay us?”

  “I promise,” said the manager.

  “I think we’re going to keep on playing until you pay us,” I decided. “Chris? John? Let’s go!”

  We burst back into song as the manager dug furiously in his pocket to find our fee.

  “Fucking totally embarrassing,” Chris mumbled the next day, as we attempted to stave off our terrific hangovers with a grease-laden breakfast of hamburgers, pickles, and eggs.

  “At least we got paid, right?”

  “They paid us to stop.”

  “Things will get better for Mickey Ratt,” I said. “Meanwhile, have some of this delicious meal that I’ve prepared with money we earned from gigging.”

  I was ruthless with our schedule, the determined leader of a crack band of musicians. Granted, practice didn’t always begin at ten in the morning—or rather, it never did –—but we managed to play for several hours almost every single day. We knew we were reaching the correct volume when complaints began to roll in from all the neighbors.

  “Egg cartons are the way to go,” I told my buddies. “You staple them up to every surface, and you’d be surprised—they work better than professional soundproofing equipment.”

  Chris eyed me. “Okay, but where are we going to get all those egg cartons?”

  “Victor,” I said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. My old buddy Victor Mamanna works at a meat mar
ket, for Christ’s sake! If anybody in this city has access to egg cartons, it’s him.”

  Immediately, I hopped into my car and zoomed down to Mamanna’s, where I explained my problem to my friend.

  “Sure, Pearcy.” He laughed. “Go back in the stock room. We got plenty of what you need.”

  I left my friend’s shop that afternoon with great treasures: about a hundred stinky egg cartons, not to mention two heads of romaine lettuce, a pound of pastrami, a pound of sliced ham, two loaves of white bread, and an oval of Muenster cheese, just past expiration.

  “I’d eat the cheese by tomorrow morning,” Victor advised me, “if I were you.”

  “I really can’t thank you enough.”

  “Just play your music. You guys are going to be so great.”

  The next few days were a blinding flash of staple gunning, weed smoking, and purposeful grilled-cheese eating. Our labors complete, we resumed practice, thrashing even harder than before, working tirelessly to extract the maximum amount of power from our instruments. We were working on our band’s identity as much as our songs, and, like everyone in the hard rock community at the time, we believed that rebellion, joy, anger, and enthusiasm were all best expressed at full volume.

  But not everyone was down for the cause. The force of nature who lived two doors down, Mrs. Schwartz, believed that egg cartons, even those that had been tacked up with true gusto, weren’t worth much of a shit when it came to noise insulation. Soon, she sent over her son, a goofy, awkward guy about my age, to investigate.

  “Guys, I’m so sorry about this,” he pleaded. “But my mom’s going nuts. . . .”

  I sized him up. An obvious virgin, in desperate need of a blow job. But clearly not a bad guy.

  “What’s your name, man?” I said, coming over and snaking an arm around his shoulders.

  “I’m Phil,” he said, grinning hopefully. “Phil Schwartz.”

  “Well, Phil,” I said, friendly as could be, “I’m Stephen Pearcy. And we”—I motioned to the other guys—“are Mickey Ratt.”

  Phil surveyed the scene for a moment, taking in the tapestries, the drum set, the amplifiers, the microphone stand.