“I love you, Dad.” I won’t stop telling him this.
“I know,” he says, again and again.
But I won’t stop. The speed in my veins will not let me stop. I keep him on the phone and I will not let him get off. For a long time. The sun is coming up over the horizon. I just keep telling my dad how much I love him. Or the speed keeps telling him.
After a while, my dad could not help but tell that I was out of my mind. On something. His tone went from being appreciative of me calling and telling him that I loved him to being a sad dad concerned for his son, all that way away from home. When he first answered the phone, he was happy to hear from me. After withstanding me spout my gibberish, he was just worried about me. Thinking back on it now it disgusts me.
I have put a lot of people through a lot of pain with my behavior. No one more than my family and loved ones.
I really didn’t like speed. It burned my nose and made me act weird and I couldn’t sleep. The only other time I can remember being aware of doing it, was once with Lemmy from Motörhead. We were hanging out at the Rainbow. Across the street from his place. We went back to his apartment and he laid out a couple of lines of speed. There were a couple of girls in there with us, but not room for much else, as it was a very small space crammed full of World War II memorabilia. Knives, grenades, Nazi insignias next to dishes and Corning kitchenware.
After we did some speed, Lemmy got out one of his lyric books. I obsessed over one particular verse, in one particular song, that he had written. I read it out loud over and over again for an interminable amount of time. I could not stop telling him how much I loved it, and I loved the words he wrote, and the alliteration, and his attention to the rhyming and phrasing in his lyric writing. I would not shut the fuck up, and it went on for hours and hours. This is what speed did to me.
The next night I was at the Rainbow again. After sleeping a couple hours, maybe from noon till 5:00 p.m. or something, Lemmy was there as usual. I said, “Hey Lemmy! Thanks for last night!”
“You were out of your fucking mind,” said Lemmy.
That was what speed did to me.
No Rings, No Strings
1989
MTV Awards
Los Angeles, California
We had a week or so off on the Bon Jovi tour, coinciding with the 1989 MTV Music Awards, which we were invited to. I went to the awards and sat in the third row as Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora performed what many consider to be the prototype performance of what eventually became the MTV Unplugged format. As they did “Wanted Dead or Alive,” Jon, in his black leather silver-fringed jacket, stared straight into my eyes and smiled. We had been through a lot together that year. At the time, bands playing acoustic seemed like kind of a new thing, after the bombast and spectacle of the ’80s rock scene. As if for a little bit of reassurance, I smiled back and gave him the thumbs-up sign. It felt good to see my friends up there, without the band, singing and playing great. They set the standard that night for the plethora of Unplugged performances for years to come. Most people cite this night, this performance, as the very first MTV Unplugged.
That night was also memorable for another incident that occurred. Vince Neil was there, along with Izzy Stradlin from Guns N’ Roses. Vince had heard that Izzy had either hit on his wife, or actually hit her. I can’t exactly remember which, many decades later. Nevertheless, I was standing with Vince as he stood there waiting for Izzy to come off stage, after jamming with Tom Petty. As soon as Izzy stepped off the stage, Vince punched him, coldcocked him without warning. As Vince’s fist landed contact into Izzy’s face, Vince’s solid gold bracelet flew off his wrist, onto the floor, at my feet. I bent over and picked it up, as Vince was being picked up himself by security and escorted out the door.
A couple of weeks later, I saw Vince. I brought his bracelet, to give it back to him. I told him the story that it flew off when he punched Izzy. Vince just laughed.
“Dude, because you did that? You picked up my bracelet and brought it back to me? You can have it, man!! That’s your bracelet now, dude!” We high-fived each other, in exaltation.
Vince and I always got along great. Except for years later, when we didn’t. And then, we did again.
After the MTV awards show, I took my fully stocked limousine to the after party, which was held at Universal Studios. Ian Astbury from The Cult came with me. I was drinking my drink of choice at the time, Jack Daniel’s whiskey. As I stumbled out of the limousine, I poured the Jack with some Coke into the ubiquitous red cup that was always on standby, always near us, at all times. So we could swill our whiskey in public.
Ian and I walked around, amongst the music business elite gathered at Universal. I thought it was hilarious that he refused to do any pictures or sign any autographs. I had always been “Mr. Accommodating” in that respect, yet every time someone came up to Ian, he wouldn’t stop. Almost as if he was going to walk right over people. I laughed and kept on guzzling booze.
Gene Simmons was there and I walked right into him. Back in 1989, out of makeup and stripped of codpieces, KISS was a bit uncool. Yet I never stopped singing their praises to the press, the fans, the public, anyone who would listen. I don’t change who it is that I like depending on the mood of the critical mass. If anything, I find it to be fitting in the spirit of rock ’n’ roll to rebel against what is usually currently popular. Gene, in particular, has always thanked me for this. Back on this night, way back in 1989, Skid Row was a much bigger band than KISS. Yet Gene is as unwavering in his character as am I.
“Hey Gene!”
“Sebastian. What is that in your cup? What is that that you are drinking?”
I said nothing as he snatched my cup out of my hands. He put it up to his face and took a sniff.
“This is Jack Daniel’s. Alcohol?!?!” I was busted.
Gene has always been known as a teetotaler. Talk about a major buzz kill. Wandering around getting fucked up and running into Gene Simmons was like being sent drunk to the principal’s office. It sucked.
He condemned me, admonished me, with no hesitation.
“How can you put this poison into your body? How can you do this to yourself? You are so talented, so gifted, such a powerful and attractive man.”
Yes, he used to say that all the time even back then.
“You have been given a gift and you are throwing it away. With this garbage.”
Zzzzzzz. Snore. At my age, I thought it was so uncool, so corny, that it was cringe worthy. Now, when I look back, I realize he was only looking out for my best interests. Gene Simmons genuinely seemed to care about me, and what path I would take in the crazy world I was now inhabiting.
I apologized to Gene and grabbed back my cup. Went back into the crowd.
Moments later, I turned and was immediately struck by the look of a beautiful girl. Her name was Christina Applegate. As the sixteen-year-old star of Married . . . with Children, she played the role of Kelly Bundy on one of the highest-rated TV shows in the country.
She was totally gorgeous.
“Hi. What’s your name?” she said, with a twinkle in her eye.
“My name is Sebastian. What’s your name?”
“Christina.”
“Christina! How’s it going? Hey, do you want to get the fuck out of here?”
Christina and I hit it off immediately. We exchanged numbers. I really liked her. She was very nice, very beautiful, and very famous. Part of me thought that it would be good for the band if I hooked up with her. I thought of Maria back in Toronto, but we were not married.
No rings? No strings.
Christina and I kept in touch, as I went back out on the road with Bon Jovi. We talked on the phone and planned on when we would see each other again. She organized a trip out to see me on the road with the band. It was somewhere in the Midwest, when at sound check, I turned to my right and there she was. On the side of the stage. Beautiful. Long, blonde, gorgeous hair. Tight jeans and black leather jacket. “Come fuck me”
pumps. This was the girl on the biggest TV show in the USA. Flying out to see me. Watching my band from the side of the stage. I wasn’t even aware of where I was. Somewhere in Middle America. Somewhere in my dreams. I was very happy to see her.
She was eighteen years old.
We spent the night together in my hotel room. The next day was a day off. We went to some outdoor restaurant that had all sorts of kitschy furniture, sculptures, bric-a-brac. It was about 1:00 or 2:00 in the afternoon, and we were eating lunch. I was drinking beer. Could not have been happier. Living the dream. I had a wonderful afternoon with her, and she was so nice. I really enjoyed her company. I liked her genuinely, for her personality . . . and the fact that we laughed a lot. She was a lot of fun to be around and a very sweet person.
As we got back to the hotel, we got noticed by some fans who took some pictures of us. I was worried about Maria back home seeing the pictures, with our newborn son, and how much it would hurt her. Even though we were not married, I was in love with Maria. I had just met Christina, and as much as I liked her, I was not in love with her.
I told Christina to wait at the elevators as I went back to the fan with the camera. He was freaking out to meet me, as I told him to give me the film in his camera, one of those “disc” negatives. I took it out and destroyed it. On that film were the only pictures I can think of, of me and Christina. We went back up to the room.
The next time I was in LA, I went to stay at her house. She lived in Jim Morrison’s actual apartment, near Laurel Canyon Country Store. It was mind blowing to be lying in bed with Christina, as she explained to me the history of the apartment, and knowing that Jim Morrison himself slept exactly where I was sleeping that night.
We did not have crazy, wild sex. She was very young. We talked a lot, and had a lot of fun, cuddled and made out. But, sorry to say, dear reader, we did not make love. I was very attached to Maria back home and Christina was very young. I remember thinking it was somewhat unusual that a girl her age would have her own place. She was one of the most famous actresses in the world, but she was still only eighteen years old. She lived there alone. We had a fun night together, and then I was back out on the road.
Skid Row had just been informed that we were going to be touring Europe with Mötley Crüe in a couple of months’ time. So, Christina and I agreed to rendezvous on the Crüe tour, in Paris. We were very excited to see each other again, only this time in French.
End-of-Tour High Jinx: Sinister Turn
The Bon Jovi New Jersey tour ended in somewhat spectacular fashion. There was a whole stupid thing back then where bands were expected to play “end-of-tour hijinks” on one another. Maybe some musicians thought this was fun, but I always hated this, and thought it to be goofy. It seemed to be just something that bands did at the time.
Popular examples of this would be: dumping flour on the band, greasing up drum pedals and/or drumsticks for the drummer, dousing the lead singer’s microphone in Tabasco, etcetera, etcetera. The audience rarely knew what was happening on the stage, but it was ridiculous trying to put on a performance with the other band dousing your microphone in Tabasco sauce or whatever (which actually did happen to me, thank you, NOT Pantera). More on that later.
The end-of-tour hijinks on the Bon Jovi/Skid Row tour took a more sinister turn than the antics I had read about in Circus or Blast magazine. Maybe it was some of the road crew’s assumption that we had somehow made it only because of Bon Jovi helping us out. Or, because of Bon Jovi’s friendship to Snake. Maybe the crew thought that Skid Row hadn’t paid their dues enough. Which may or may not have been so, but the fact is people loved our music. People weren’t buying our records and radio wasn’t playing our songs just because we knew Bon Jovi. Maybe the following incident occurred because of the growing tension within the bands. But for one reason or the other, one night of presumed hilarity crossed over into the dark side, and was anything but fun.
I walked to the stage at 8:00 p.m. sharp, as I had done previously for months. It’s always a long walk from the hockey/football-style dressing room into the cavernous arena crammed with tens of thousands of screaming fans. There is nothing I love more about playing live than the feeling I get when the house lights go to black, and the roar of the crowd erupts into the darkness of the arena. I get goose bumps every time.
But on this night? Umm, not so much. I walked down the ramp of Rupp Arena, in Lexington, Kentucky. Underneath the steel grid of the stage. As the house lights went down, I could not comprehend what was happening to me. Three of Bon Jovi’s road crew grabbed me and held my hands behind my back. I could not see who it was. They were laughing the whole time, but also attempting to be quiet, as if they were trying to disguise their voices. As they proceeded to pull my head down, as I was held, one of them poured a vat of freezing-cold ice milk over my head, as the intro tape for our show began to reverberate through the packed arena.
Ha ha ha, this is really funny, I thought to myself. They let me go and I stood up and shook my head around. I had vertigo, like when you jump in the water when it’s too cold. My skull was rattling along as I heard the guitar riff for the first verse of “Makin’ a Mess” kick in on the stage above me. Without me on it. I was about to miss my cue, due to being held down and soaked with freezing-cold ice milk. This night was going to be hilarious for sure.
I looked around, trying to get my bearings, and then ran under the side and up the stairs onto the brightly lit stage. My band members stared at me with an expression that seem to say, “Where in the fuck were you, dude?” I grabbed the mic and started screaming.
I was pissed. Wouldn’t you be? I was mad that somebody (other than the band) messed up the performance. I was not seeing the humor in the situation. I asked our roadies at the side of the stage, Chris Mohr and Ronzo, to go into catering and get me two cartons of eggs. Theirs was not to question why. They said “okay” and ran backstage to procure . . . retaliation.
A song or two later, Chris and Ronzo returned to the side of the stage. With two cartons of eggs. Twenty-four total. I ran over to the monitor console and picked up the food, leapt back to the drum riser, and carefully placed the eggs behind my glasses of water and Gatorade, which I drank every night during the show. The eggs weren’t there to help out my voice, however.
Fred Saunders, my dear friend, was Bon Jovi’s head of security on the New Jersey tour. He was standing in the pit in front of the stage with some other of Bon Jovi’s roadies. Laughing. Gloating. They were elbowing each other in the side of the ribs and looking at my wet hair, doused with milk. But they would not be laughing much longer.
I pranced around the stage in my high-heeled boots, casually stopped at the drum riser, and reached into the carton of eggs, with a delightful feeling. With what can only be described as sheer glee, I did a quick, triumphant pirouette and rifled the egg, like a fast pitch in a baseball game, right at my buddy Fred Saunders. He couldn’t believe his eyes as he saw an egg whizz by his head. I missed him that time, but I had twenty-three more shots. For him. And the whole Bon Jovi road crew. Eggs. It’s what’s for breakfast.
In between songs, I was a complete nightmare. I taunted Bon Jovi, on his own stage, and made fun of his name. At his own show. And what was wild was that the crowd was on my side while I was doing this. I really don’t want to go into detail as to what I said exactly to the crowd that night in 1989, because I certainly do not feel that way today. I was young, dumb, and full of cum. In some ways, I felt that to be my job description.
We all had to laugh when we saw the Bon Jovi road crew disappear for half a verse, only to then come back wearing cut-out garbage bags over their heads. They each had a carton of eggs. The war was on.
When I write about this now, I am laughing. It is truly ridiculous. But I was mad as hell that night, for sure. And I was about to find out I was not the only one.
This ended up being the only show in history I can think of where an audience watches a band being splattered with eggs, as said band th
rows eggs back into the pit at the same time. You could’ve made a Denny’s Moons Over My Hammy with all of the food flying around at the gig that night. It was like a tennis game, with eggs. I would run, and get hit. Splat. I would throw eggs and pelt the crew members with breakfast à la carte. The show went on for another forty minutes or so.
Ha ha ha, that was hilarious, I thought as the show was over. The lights went back on and Terry Sasser, our tour manager, escorted me from the stage to the bottom of the ramp at the back of the arena. I thought, the show’s over, time to get my drink on.
Wrong.
As we walked up the ramp, we laughed about all the crazy shit that had ensued on the stage that night. But, as we walked more and more up the ramp, Terry turned to me and said, “Hey Sebastian . . . I think we got a problem here.” He looked up the ramp.
We saw about sixty people coming towards us. Leading the pack was Jon Bon Jovi himself. Flanking him, on side to side, was his dad and his brother Tony. Behind them was the full Bon Jovi road crew. Led by Head of Security Fred Saunders and his auxiliary contingent. It was like the movie 300. Only there were three hundred of them. And two of us.
We kept walking, and I attempted to stammer out some words. As I did this, Jon Bon Jovi kept coming at me and said, “I heard what you said on my stage, motherfucker,” or something like that. He then took a swing at me. I ducked. He missed. As Terry started screaming at the ensuing throng in self-defense, Fred and the Bon Jovi security guys grabbed me by the back of my stagewear, and held me by both arms, as I was most unceremoniously escorted back to my dressing room. When we got there, they slammed me up against the concrete wall. Fred Saunders, surprisingly, then whispered into my ear the immortal phrase: “Motherfucker. I don’t know whether to kiss you . . . or kill you.”
Good times!
18 and Life on Skid Row Page 10
