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

by Stephen Pearcy

  I said, Let me talk to the father—meanwhile, I want you to get them out of that fucking room. I don’t even want them in that room.

  The dad was livid. He was a huge guy, and he was really upset that his daughter went to this concert behind his back. Now they’re in the fucking hotel room, with the lead singer? I said to him, Listen, girls are going to be girls. I have your daughter coming downstairs. More than that, I really don’t know what to tell you. I said, Please, don’t beat your daughter. Things like this are going to happen.

  I finally got them out of there, but Stephen was shitting. Everywhere he went, he had to have girls. There’s not a single place we ever went that he didn’t get laid. Not one. It was every fucking night.

  Another phone call came in: another pregnant chick. This time I felt kind of sad about it. But I did the exact same thing. I got my lawyer, Judith, to clean up the mess.

  “Stephen,” she said, “I’ll take care of this. But you need to start being a little more careful.”

  DUKE VALENTI:

  Pearcy fucked this girl before a show in his dressing room, and that night, during the show, he’s onstage and he keeps trying to get my attention. I look over at him, and he’s pointing at a guy in the audience. Keeps pointing at this one guy, over and over. Finally, I go to the other side of the stage so I can take a better look. And this guy is down there going, “FUCK YOU! YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU FUCKED MY GIRLFRIEND! I’M GONNA FUCKING KILL YOU!”

  I got the venue security to get rid of him right away. He was ready to slit someone’s throat.

  I got the message: Maybe cut back on the boning just a tad. I’d kind of had my fill of strange by this point, anyway. I was trying to keep a steady girlfriend. So to entertain myself, I talked many girls into letting me give them a shave. I got good with my Schick razor. Steady hand. I’d ask them, “What do you want, a landing strip, a design, a star?”

  “Wow, that’s amazing. . . . Now, how do you want me, baby?”

  “I don’t. But please enjoy the show.”

  As the tour progressed, Bobby kept adding to the mountain of monitors behind his drum set, so he could hear every rattle and smash perfectly.

  “Do you need that big of a setup?” I asked him. “I’ve never seen a drummer with that many monitors, man.” I think it was more of an ego trip than a hearing issue. The fucker was on a drum riser twenty feet high.

  “Do your fucking job,” was Bob’s response. “And let me do mine.”

  It got so bad we were pushing and shoving in our changing booth, backstage, and beers were being thrown at each other. I was thinking to myself, This is fucking insane.

  That very night, Bob launched into a rage, throwing sticks at the monitor guy, convinced his sound had been miscalibrated.

  “Get it right!” he screamed. “I’m gonna fire your fucking ass if you don’t.”

  It was terrible, really, how many monitor guys we lost that tour. One night one of our monitor guys snapped and charged at Bobby. He got close to killing him onstage, but was held back. We had no choice but to let him go.

  We were trapped on autopilot, locked into a mode that we’d long since outgrown, and none of it was fun anymore. We were forced to deal with guys whom we not only didn’t care for, but whom we were beginning to actively hate. I withdrew from the band as much as I could. While they rode the bus, me and Duke took a plane. Was that a prick move? Perhaps. Maybe I was turning into a prick. Just like the rest of them.

  DUKE VALENTI:

  I liked Stephen. Really, I did. Only once did me and him actually have a feud. We were in Atlanta. We got in at one o’clock and he wanted to go to last call somewhere. I took him down to the pier area, and we got a drink. And I don’t know if he took a pain pill or something, but he started to get really fucking stupid. I said, Let’s go. Time to go.

  And as we’re walking through the lobby of the hotel, what does he do? He punches a fucking picture. Rips his knuckle and he’s bleeding profusely. I rush him to the bathroom, tell him to put some towels on it, and tell him I’ll be right back.

  Now, it’s kinda breaking my fucking balls that he punched a framed fucking picture. I’m like, You gotta be fucking kidding me. I’m trying to help you? You can’t be breaking shit.

  Security comes down, all pissed at me, wanting to know what happened. So what do I do? I lie. I tell him my guy was drunk, and he slipped and pawed at the picture to stop his momentum. I said, I’m going back to the restroom, he’s bleeding profusely, I gotta get him to a hospital.

  He ended up getting seventy-five stitches in his hand. They had to cut one of his rings off to give him the stitches.

  We were beat up, fried, hating life, hating the road, hating each other. After seven years, we weren’t the flavor of the month any longer. My vocal cords began to feel irritated all the time. I’d done literally thousands of shows, screaming for hours on end, and now my body was starting to scream back at me. I’d get a cortisone shot before some shows, to relax the muscles in my throat, but I tried not to go overboard with it, as cortisone eventually thickens the cords. Luckily, I found a shitload of Jack Daniel’s numbed me up just as well.

  “We sounded like crap up there,” Bob said, after one particularly lackadaisical effort. “And hey, here’s a news flash for you, singer guy: We’re not in New Orleans, okay? We’re in fucking Texas.”

  “As if it mattered,” I mumbled.

  “Man, if that’s how you feel, Stephen, you should just quit! I’m dead serious. Do us a favor and get the fuck out of here.”

  “I’d love to,” I said. “I’ll be honest with you, man. At this point, I’d love to.”

  “Fine,” said Blotzer. “When this tour is over, man, you should. Go your own fucking way, Stephen, and let’s just cut our losses.”

  “Why wait?” I shouted. “Why delay the inevitable? We suck anyway.”

  “You suck. Not us: you!”

  “No one gives a shit! No one cares, Bob! I’m going home, man. And I’m going now.”

  “The hell you are. We have eight more shows to do, you imbecile!”

  “No, we don’t,” I said, looking around for my shit. “I’m gone. I’m taking us off the road.”

  OUTTA SIGHT, OUTTA MIND

  HAVING ABANDONED THE RATT ship, I came home and slept for a week. Every single nerve in my body was shot. My own bed had never felt so good to me. For the first time in years, I drew myself a bath, lit some candles, and settled my aching body inside. Smoking a joint and looking up at the ceiling, I tried to figure out where and when things had gone wrong.

  “Mom?” I said on the phone. “Mom . . . I think I quit my own band.”

  “Really?” She sounded concerned. “Are you sure that this is the right thing for you, honey?”

  “I was totally fried.” I felt like a stepped-on potato chip.

  “What about your friends? Aren’t they upset with you?”

  “I’m really not sure we’re friends anymore, Mom,” I admitted.

  After another week of hibernation, I drove south and retreated to my house in San Diego. It was an enormous property in nearby La Costa that resembled a castle more than anything else.

  “Do you really need all this space?” my mom had asked me when I first bought it. “This is a very vast home, honey.”

  “Probably not.”

  It was a ridiculous, overblown house. My mom was right: I didn’t need half that space—after all, I was so used to living in tiny rooms and bouncing from hotel to hotel that I could have bought a 4,500-square-foot home with a kiddie pool and a microwave and been nearly as satisfied. But something inside me told me to go big. Go gaudy. Go dumb. I needed help to transition back into civilian life. After almost a decade on the road, I had a bad case of rock fever. I was suffering from ego-phobia—so surrounded by arrogant pricks at every turn that I could no longer be sure I wasn’t one of them. The castle would be my solid foundation.

  Of course, things never turn out like you want ’em to. The first week I wa
s there, the quiet prickled the hairs on the back of my neck. My new home was eerie and uncanny: an immense nightmare with turrets and towers. I hated it. But then I heard someone across the street playing a Metallica song in his garage at full volume. Relieved, I leaped out of bed and ambled over to check out the sound. A teenage kid with long hair was bent double over his electric guitar, playing along with Kirk Hammett note for note.

  “Sounds great!” I yelled. “All right, man! Master of Puppets! I’m a huge fan.”

  “Hey,” he said, stopping the strumming immediately. “Who are you?”

  “Stephen,” I said. “What’s up, man? Dig the music.”

  “Cool,” said the kid, examining me. “Hey, wait. I know who you are. Aren’t you that Ratt guy?”

  “Used to be,” I said. “Now I’m just Stephen.”

  He stuck out his hand. “Erik Ferintinos. I play guitar.”

  “Listen, Erik, I got a problem,” I said. “I just moved in across the street, and I don’t know anyone around here. I’m kind of losing my mind, to be completely honest with you.”

  Erik stared at me. “So?”

  “Well, you know, man,” I said, fixing him with a smile. “Got anything to smoke for a new neighbor?”

  He promptly stuffed us a bongload, and we soon commenced getting high. Erik had big dreams of success, and as I listened to him I remembered fondly the days when I had that kind of idealism.

  “I got a band,” he declared, “and we’re gonna make it, dude.”

  “Well, hey, as it just so happens,” I said, “I got a brand-new recording studio built into my house. You should come by sometime. Maybe one of my friends could engineer some shit for you and your guys.”

  “Serious?” He looked surprised. “That would be . . . so cool.”

  “No problem,” I said. “By the way, my lawn’s gigantic. How would you feel about mowing it every once in a while?”

  Erik had a pretty cool gig for a teenager. He’d come over, we’d get high, and then I’d gas up the lawn mower for him. He’d do the grass, tending to concentrate mostly on the patch of ground out by the pool, which just happened to be fifty feet away from where my girlfriend would sunbathe topless. You could see the longing on his face and had to assume he was pushing that mower with his chubster.

  “Stephen, baby—who is that?” my girl asked me, covering up one of her tits with her hand.

  “Be nice,” I answered, pulling her hand back. “Give him something to dream about, okay?”

  Some deep part of me was ready to retire from music altogether. I pictured myself trying to be a normal kind of guy, with normal friends. Here’s Stephen Pearcy, heading to the grocery store for a pint of vanilla ice cream and a bag of cherries, to eat in front of the TV. Or maybe start my drag racing career, a little late. Maybe the best plan was to lie back in the cut, wait for the right moment, then reconcile with the band.

  But my brain was corrupted by fifteen years in rock. I realized that I just was not cut out for the simple life. I needed fresh tits and new riffs and a stage under my feet. And since retiring wasn’t in the cards for me, I had no choice but to look around for another kind of musical enjoyment. Fred Coury, the drummer from Cinderella, had just left his band. He and I began to talk about forming a group together.

  “I’m only willing to do this if we can make something that rocks hard,” I insisted. “No power ballads. No two-minute cock-rock guitar heroics. None of that hair-metal nonsense, seriously. Let’s go lean, mean, and stripped down, or let’s not go at all.”

  “Absolutely,” Coury said. “I’m right there with you.”

  FRED COURY, DRUMMER, CINDERELLA AND ARCADE:

  I met Stephen for the first time in Germany, at one of the Monsters of Rock shows. Cinderella was playing on the same bill as Ratt and Bon Jovi, and we kinda hit it off. He goes, “Let’s go out and have some fun tonight.” I was freaking out. This is the guy from Ratt! So I get this knock at my door, and I look through and I see it’s him. Oh my gosh, I thought. It’s the guy from Ratt!

  I open the door, and I friggin’ get hit with this fire extinguisher full in the face. He blew up my whole room. We looked like ghosts. He was laughing like a maniac. It cost us three grand in damages.

  We pulled some chicks that night, though, some German honeys. Mine had really hairy legs. Hot.

  I ended up getting canned from Cinderella in ’91 or ’92. I’d been with them since 1986. We’d sold six million records by then. It was a really scary moment for me. I called Stephen and told him, “Hey, dude. I just got fired.”

  And he goes, “Yeah, you and Vince Neil and C. C. DeVille and Jeff Cease.” All of us got fired in the same week.

  He goes, “Hold on, I’ll call you back.”

  I’m like, Hey, dude, I want to cry to somebody! And he hangs up on me. Unbelievable.

  But then he called back. “I just quit Ratt. Let’s do this.” And a month and a half later, we had a deal on Epic, for our new band, Arcade. It was unbelievable. Almost like dreamy, how it happened.

  Arcade featured solid musicians Donny Syracuse, Frankie Wilsex, and Michael Andrews. Grunge was winning in the early ’90s. Our hard-rock brothers were starting to panic. Maybe Arcade could save us all.

  Or maybe it would just save me. I found it such a relief to be with guys who didn’t hate me, I just wanted to sit back and soak up all the fun. From moment one, we were a hard-partying, hard-playing band—booze-oriented, strip-bar obsessed. Frankie Wilsex, in particular, shared my passion for the cheaper clubs.

  “Frankie! Let’s party, man! Should we head to the Tropicana?”

  Frankie shook his head in the negative. “I’m in more of a Jumbo’s mood.”

  Jumbo’s was a destination where fat girls danced in jean shorts and vinyl bras. As legend had it, David Lynch used to write some of his best scripts there. It never really mattered where we began, though, because we were on a strip-club world tour and would take in up to ten clubs a day. Before the show, we’d head to a bar, toss back a drink or five, get nice and hammered, then head to the next. We’d repeat our formula ad infinitum, until ten minutes before showtime, when we’d haul ass to the club, play the show, yell at the crowd, sweat out the booze, and, as soon as we’d showered, head right back to the club. It was a joyous, repetitive, disgusting way to live, and it felt right for that particular moment in time.

  When Arcade’s first album came out, we charted two singles, “Nothing to Lose” and “Cry No More.” I was pleased with our success.

  FRED COURY:

  When he was sober, he was the most incredible guy. When he was not, he was kind of a nightmare.

  One night we were at the Troubadour and some chick was giving him shit from the front row. So what does he do? He engages her. “Hey! Before the show I butt-slammed your dad!” Me and Frankie looked at each other like, What? Did he just say that?

  My wife at the time was standing next to Gene Simmons, and he just went, “No! No no no no!”

  If I was a bit of a dickhead in the Arcade days, to my bandmates or to the strippers with whom we fraternized, then I must apologize. Increasingly, I was just pretty drunk a lot of the time. Sometimes my days would begin in pain, and I’d have to guzzle down a brew or two just to get my hands steady. When you’re drinking beers in the shower, that’s generally a bad sign.

  Arcade toured constantly, and with the help of my beer and my dancing girls, I generally managed to stay one pace ahead of feeling much emotion. I had little to no contact with Warren, Bobby, or Juan. Robbin and I saw each other only intermittently. He was heavily into his abuse, and his marriage was falling apart. His wife tried to kick him out of his own house, and after a while he gave in and got a place of his own. None of it was pretty.

  Like most guys going through a divorce, Robbin was bummed and cynical; making it worse, though, was the fact that he was so hopelessly addicted, a two-time failure at rehab. I went over to his apartment a couple of times just to visit him during the divorce time, and in
every drawer that you opened, there was foil and tar.

  “Hey, man,” I said one day, after having a couple of drinks. “Is it cool if I try some of this?”

  “Well, sure,” Robbin said, sounding a little surprised. “You got a lighter?”

  “Yeah, I’m equipped.”

  Smoking heroin is very simple. You start by placing a small piece of tar on some sort of flat surface with low heat capacity—aluminum foil is ideal because it gets hot right away and cools down almost instantly. Then you light a flame below the foil with a Zippo lighter or a candle. A Zippo works better because it won’t leave soot. The heat from the flame vaporizes the heroin, and you just suck the smoke into your lungs, using either a straw, a tube, or just your mouth, with big, greedy gulps. Simple as that. It’s more economical to use a tube—you waste less—but some rock stars just feel weird with a cardboard toilet paper tube around their lips.

  I remember sitting there after having smoked, with Robbin in the next room puttering around, and feeling perfectly empty. Just like, a cool, ethereal zero. That’s when I realized exactly what the attraction of heroin was. It was like, I got it: Ohhhhhh. THAT’S why he does this shit. For the first time in what seemed like fifteen or twenty years, I didn’t want for anything. I had every single thing I needed and wanted right there inside me, all tied up in pure sweet calm and understanding.

  Suddenly, I was struck with how much I loved Robbin, really cared for him. He was my brother. And yet I lacked the inclination to share that information with him. That would involve speaking. I felt far too perfect and far too peaceful to risk squandering my buzz on idle talk.

  Tell him you care about him, a little voice inside of me spoke. Now’s the time, man. . . . Tell him you’ll help him get sober, if he wants. . . .

  I stared up at the cheap ceiling of Robbin’s apartment and found it somehow beautiful. I felt so physically blissed out that my spine felt nonexistent, my tongue feathery, and even my underarms were coolly perfect pits.

  But his life is falling apart, I thought. You’re just a visitor in heroin land, but he fucking lives here. King’s hands are all swelled up like balloons. . . . He’s out of shape, out of mind, out of body, out of spirit.