And I think the most upset people got, you know, like, the thing that really pissed a lot of people off was that like, before Mandy even went and visited some of the families of the victims—like, before she even went and saw all the people who were still in the hospital—she went and visited the mother of the guys who had done it.
They were two brothers, and they grew up in Germany, but, you know, they had all this family in Yemen. And they weren’t even particularly religious or whatever—like, the mom said that they weren’t even that conservative—but a year or two before the attacks happened, a bunch of their cousins got killed in a drone strike for like, apparently no reason at all—like, apparently, they were just walking down the street one day, and then: BOOM. They were gone—and the mom told Mandy that this thing really did a number on her sons. Like, apparently, it was all they could talk about for a while. And the mom didn’t know it—or like, that’s what she says. There’s a lot of people in the newspapers and online who think she’s full of shit—but the mom said at least that she had no idea that like, in the time between their cousins dying and the sons carrying out the attack, they were just getting completely indoctrinated online. And anyway, they were able to get their hands on some guns and get tickets to the concert and somehow get through the security and then, like, you know, that was that.
And I mean, obviously, Mandy wasn’t coming out and saying that she SUPPORTED what these guys had done. Like, obviously, Mandy was totally horrified by all this stuff, and she thought that what these guys did was the worst possible way to respond to all that horrible shit that had happened to them and their country and their family, but still like, I think Mandy was sort of determined to use this thing as a way to grow as a person, you know, and to understand the world a little better. One of the first things she did was to come out and plead with people to see this thing in its larger context. She posted this thing online that said like, this didn’t happen in a vacuum, and if we want to condemn this act of violence, we need to all examine all of our individual and collective roles in perpetuating violence around the world. And at the end of the post, she pleaded with the German government to go easy on the brother they were able to capture and try to actually rehabilitate him and understand him, you know, instead of just punishing him.
And I mean, you know, Mandy wasn’t about to pretend like she was an expert on all this shit, but I think it’s kind of crazy that even her attempt to understand, you know, like, even her suggestion that maybe there was something a little deeper going on here than just “these dudes were crazy” was met with such backlash and resistance. Even Mandy’s own family, like, practically disowned her. Not her mom, obviously. Kelly would never do something like that. But Mandy’s grandpa, like, went on air and did an interview where he was like: This is not the granddaughter I loved and cared for. This is not my kin. And it was just like: Whoa, man, WTF?
But, you know, Mandy was just sort of like: Who gives a fuck? I mean, really, all of this shit sort of unleashed this amazing well of strength in her that I had never seen before, because she was just like: Who cares what people are saying about me? We live in a fake world. We’re part of a fake world. I’m trying to talk about something real.
The same Mandy who, just a few years ago, was afraid of being associated with Bob because of all the shit he had said about gay people was now, like, playing shows in refugee camps, and going to antiwar protests, and wearing a bandanna with the Palestinian flag at her concerts, and posting all these interviews she’d conducted online with like, all of these sort of radical intellectuals from around the world, and it’s like, yeah, she’s definitely lost a few fans, but it’s been kind of amazing to watch how all these new people have come out of the woodwork, like, all these new fans who never used to give a shit about Mandy who are now all of a sudden so excited to hear about what she’s doing. She’s been getting interviewed in all these magazines—like, the same ones that call Bob “the most dangerous man in America”—and it’s just like: Wow, you know? Who would’ve predicted this?
And, you know, nobody really knew that Mandy had tats—like, I don’t think people even really knew about the seagull that she had above her heart because she kept that shit really private: Her image was still so clean and so pure, and like, her people weren’t sure that tats were a good fit for that—but when she started getting all these tattoos in Arabic and people were freaking out about it, I was just watching it all unfold, and one day, I was like: Fuck it. What’s the big fucking deal?
And so I went out and called up Optimus, and I was like: Yo, do you know anyone who speaks Arabic? And Optimus was like: Nah, not really, but I could look something up. And I was like: Hold on a second. Let me call Mandy.
And so I called her, and I was like: Hey, come to Optimus’s place and let’s get matching tattoos.
And Mandy came by, and we sat in the chairs, and she didn’t even tell me what our tattoos meant until after the ink was settling in. I didn’t even ask. She just gave the template to Optimus, and he did the tats on both of us, and then when he was done, Mandy looked at me, and she said: Love & Justice.
And I was like: Dope.
And then a few days later, my skin was still healing as I got on the plane with Chris and Trick and we took off for the start of the Roses and Mud tour.
And everybody knows how that went.
LOL.
* * *
I guess we might as well get into it.
At first, you know, it seemed like we were off to a good start. The press and the excitement and all of the love and exposure we were getting for the album was pretty cool, and Chris was really enjoying it, you know, like, he was sort of happy to have a chance to feel what that was like again: to be on top of the world again, not as some twenty-one-year-old from Portland, but as a fully grown man with a family and a home and some perspective on everything. And, at first, like, he was just really grateful for the opportunity to be playing new music again and to be caught up in the energy and the excitement of having made something that people were responding to.
I remember at one of the early shows, Chris was just so surprised by how nice everything was, you know? He was so surprised by, like, how well everybody took care of themselves. Like, I remember before one of our big early shows—I think we were playing some festival in the UK—we were backstage, and Chris was just looking around at everybody, and he was like: NO ONE is high. Like, it hadn’t even occurred to me that that was weird, but Chris was looking around at all of these people with like, their coconut waters and their yoga mats and like, their vegan quinoa bowls, and he was just like: How the fuck can this be a music festival? And I looked around a bit, and I saw the Pizza Boyz, and I was like: What about those guys? Those guys are blazed as hell. And Chris was like: Yeah, those people are stoned, but nobody’s HIGH. Nobody’s off the fucking ground. Twenty years ago, this place would’ve looked like a war zone.
And he was right. I mean, I guess by the time I got into the game, the scene had already changed completely from Chris’s time, but these days, no one is getting trashed before a show. Like, that’s just not really something that you can do. If Mandy came out onstage totally trashed or like, if I came out onstage totally trashed, people would just be like: WTF? You know? They’d just be like: What happened to you? But for Chris, I mean, when Chris was coming up, that was just par for the course. People were smoking—like everyone, even the singers were smoking three packs a day—and like, people were snorting coke off of toilets and shooting heroin in between sets, and like, it just would’ve been insane to imagine that twenty years later, there would be a yoga tent and a juice fridge and a meditation room. Like legitimately, at the festival we were playing, there was a tent just for the artists where, like, the festival had hired a yogi to come and lead classes every day, and Chris just thought that was the funniest shit ever. And like, even some of the harder dudes I know—like, even Scaggs or MURDER or Flip Dragon—like even those dudes are taking vitamins and drinking tea and
like, resting their vocal cords before a gig. The scene’s just changed a lot—it’s become a lot healthier. And that’s not to say that people don’t still lose it a little bit. Like, there are people like KETO or like, Abbi DiFranco who just totally go off the deep end, but when they do, it’s not like some proof of how hard-core they are. Instead, it’s like, this really sad and pathetic thing that they need to go get HELP for. People are WORRIED for them, you know? And I think Chris was a little shocked by that. I think he was expecting—maybe even hoping for—a little bit of the old danger that used to follow him everywhere he went.
And so, you know, for the first time in my whole career, I found myself doing shots before gigs. It started out pretty harmless. It was sort of like this big joke: like, Chris would make fun of me and Trick and the backup singers and the road crew for being such little pussies, and he’d say shit like: Come on, it’s just one shot. I thought you were musicians. And so we’d all do it and laugh about it and it would be fine, but as the tour went on, like, one shot turned into two shots and two shots into three shots, and pretty soon the rest of us were like: Chris, we can’t keep up with you. You do whatever you want to do, but the rest of us just can’t perform like this. And I think that made Chris feel a little isolated.
It’s not like it all turned into a problem immediately. Chris is a pretty champion drinker—I mean, those aren’t virgin daiquiris at the Seaside Club—so at first, like, yeah, it was a little worrying how much he was putting away before the shows, but he was still able to make it onstage and do his thing and give a great performance and hit all the notes and be in good enough shape at the end of the night to make it back to his hotel room and call his wife and pass out. But somewhere around when we made it back to the U.S.—we started the tour in New York, and then went to Europe and Asia and then we headed back to do, like, a coast-to-coast tour before we left again to play a few more dates abroad—sometime around when we made it back on home soil, the whole flavor of the thing started to change, and Chris just really started to go off the deep end.
Honestly, I think it had a lot to do with the fans. For the first couple shows—for the New York show and the Europe shows and the Asia shows—it was mostly still my fans who were showing up—like, it was mostly still people who were there to see ME—and like, yeah, a lot of them had heard of Chris, but he wasn’t like, this God to them in the same way that he was to my dad or my dad’s generation. And then as the tour went on, I guess word started to get around that Chris was back—that like, Chris was back to his old ways—and so people started showing up with this really different energy. People started to show up expecting a replay of their experiences from twenty years ago, and Chris just started to feed off of that in the worst possible way.
The first sign that things were really taking a turn for the worse was when we played our show in Portland, and for the first time all tour, the makeup of the crowd was almost half mine and half Chris’s. We were expecting that there’d be a big turnout for Chris—obviously, he’s a major deal there—but we weren’t expecting that they’d come out in droves, you know? And I’ve been pushing boundaries and doing some crazier shit for a while—like, it’s been a long time since the Be My Baby days—but you’ve gotta remember, like, there’s still this big core of my fan base that’s made up of teenagers and their parents. I mean, there’s a lot of people showing up to my concerts who are seeing a concert for the first time—it’s like twelve-year-olds, ten-year-olds even—and I love that about my shows. I’ve always loved that the shows belong to everybody. But Chris’s fans showed up with this energy of Us versus Them, you know? Like, they really seemed to feel like Chris was THEIRS, and like the whole concert was THEIRS, and they weren’t going to be happy unless they were able to take over the whole space.
And I mean, I’ve played shows for sort of rowdy crowds before. Like, at Summer Jamz or whatever, things can get pretty crazy, but these people were throwing things up onto the stage, you know? That had happened to me once before, like, when I was playing this show with Scaggs in Detroit, but the worst anybody did was throw up a joint or like, throw up some panties, which, like, Scaggs’s security guys would pick up and take backstage in case he wanted to check them out later. But at this Portland show people were throwing little baggies of cocaine, you know? People were throwing up heroin. And like, fifty-year-old women were flashing their tits and vomiting in the aisles, and I was just like: Whoa. This is not a vibe that I ever wanted to be a part of.
But, you know, Chris was loving it. I mean, he was already pretty hammered, but like, once he was out there and he saw how crazy the crowd was getting, he just got this look in his eyes, like—I mean, it was like this thing had been awakened in him, you know, this like, ancient, evil spirit—and I just didn’t even recognize him anymore. He just summoned his old self—like, he fully brought back the mid-’90s Chris Jeffries—and he let that guy take the steering wheel entirely.
And at the top, he was still doing a pretty good job—like, he was still playing all the notes and remembering all the words to the songs—but as the night went on, he just started to do whatever drugs people would throw up there. Like, someone would throw a little baggie of coke, and Chris would do that, and then like, someone would throw up some pills and Chris would do that. And, like, me and Trick and the rest of the band were just standing there watching all this like: What the fuck are we even supposed to do, you know? I mean, we couldn’t stop the show or pull the plug or whatever, because there would’ve been a riot in the auditorium, so we just watched this crazy shit unfolding. And at a certain point, like, people started throwing up drugs that Chris didn’t even recognize. Chris would look at the baggie and stop the song and speak into the mic, like: What’s this one called? And the person who threw it up would yell “Animal Brains” or whatever, and Chris would do it. And Chris picked up this one baggie, and when he looked at it, he got this smile on his face like: I know what THIS one is. But he spoke into the mic anyway, and he said: What’s this one? And some crazy person out in the crowd was like: HEROIN! And Chris just, like, smiled this crazy smile and then put it away in his pocket.
And, that’s the only time in my life when I’ve ever had to issue a formal apology where, like, I actually meant it, you know? I’ve had to apologize for some pretty stupid shit over the years, but after that show in Portland, I WANTED to issue an apology. It was like, I was the one who called my publicist and was like: What the fuck should we do here, you know? You can imagine how horrified some of these parents were who brought their kids to this show. I had no idea a human being could even take so many drugs.
And so the next day, we had like, a big conference, like, a big sit-down with Shari and Bobby and the rest of the managers and the publicists, and we were all just like: Chris, this shit can’t happen again. This was completely insane. And Chris was just, like, laughing, like: Of course, of course, I was just having a little fun. Just keeping Portland on their toes. Like, he was acting totally fucking crazy. I bet he was probably drunk at that meeting.
And so over the next couple shows, Chris started getting more and more hammered before each time we’d go out there, and sometimes he’d clearly be on something, you know? Like, sometimes he’d be all coked up, and sometimes he’d be sort of zonked out and eventually, like, Trick and I both decided to call Chris’s wife, because, I mean, we weren’t even sure if she knew what was going on with him, you know, and so we were both just sort of like, this is out of our depth. We need to bring in the big guns. And so we called up Deborah and we were like: Yo, Debbie, Chris is out of control, you gotta come down here.
And, looking back on it, that was probably the worst possible decision we could’ve made. LOL. Once Debbie got on the bus, that’s when shit really hit the fan, because like, apparently she was itching to get back to her glory days too, and so the two of them just started enabling each other like crazy. If I had paid a little more attention to that part of the Thunderbums story—like, if I had read through some of t
he biographies or watched some of the documentaries—I probably would’ve known that what we were doing was stupid, but at the time it felt like: If anyone can slow Chris down, it’s his wife.
And, you know, the tour basically came to a screeching halt when we were playing a show in Tampa, and Chris was late for the sound check again—this had been happening pretty much the entire time we were on the road—and at this point, like, me and Trick were fucking fed up with it, you know? We were at the end of our rope. And so I was just like: Whatever, I’m going to the fucking hotel and I’m getting that motherfucker and I’m bringing him to sound check. LOL. I was becoming a pretty angry person on that tour.
And so I go to the hotel, and like, I knock on Chris’s door, and obviously there’s no answer, so I call downstairs to the front desk, and I’m like: I need you to come unlock this shit. And they resisted a bit, but I was like: I paid for these rooms, they’re all technically my rooms, open it. And they did. And I went inside, and Chris’s room was just a mess—I mean, every place we stayed, Chris and Debbie would just trash it completely. It was really disrespectful. There were bottles all over the place, and like, fast-food wrappers, and pills, and I think Chris must have peed on the couch, because the whole place smelled like piss—and the whole time I was in there, I was calling out like: CHRIS? DEBBIE? WAKE UP, GUYS! IT’S TIME FOR SOUND CHECK! But I wasn’t getting any answer. And so, finally, I made my way into the bathroom, and at first I didn’t see them in there, but then I finally looked down at the floor, and I saw the two of them, like, slumped over on top of each other, leaning up against the shower, passed out with needles in their fucking arms.
And that’s when I decided to pull the plug. I called an ambulance and had them rushed to the hospital, and I checked them into a rehab facility, and I called Chris’s assistant to make sure the kids were being taken care of, and Trick and I just played the rest of the shows without him. We just kicked Chris off the tour. I mean, we were getting toward the end of the American leg anyway, so most of the people we were gonna be playing for at that point didn’t really give a shit about Chris—you know, he wasn’t that big of a deal in Japan—but the whole thing was just really fucking harrowing.
Famous People Page 14
