Death Punch'd

by Jeremy Spencer

  DEDICATION

  In loving memory of Josh Wright

  EPIGRAPH

  Plato says that the unexamined

  life is not worth living.

  But what if the examined life turns

  out to be a clunker as well?

  —Kurt Vonnegut

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  THE DREAM

  2005

  CHAPTER 2

  IN EXORDIUM

  1973–79

  CHAPTER 3

  THE WAY OF THE FIST

  2005

  CHAPTER 4

  INFLUENCES

  THE ’80S

  CHAPTER 5

  FIRST TOUR

  2007

  CHAPTER 6

  THE AWAKENING

  1986–87

  CHAPTER 7

  SEX, MORE SEX, AND A LITTLE ROCK ’N’ ROLL

  2007

  PHOTO SECTION

  CHAPTER 8

  ROCK ’N’ ROLL REBEL

  1987–89

  CHAPTER 9

  NEVER ENOUGH

  2008–09

  CHAPTER 10

  REHABBA-DABBA-DOO

  1989–91

  CHAPTER 11

  THE ANSWER . . . WAR IS HELL

  2009

  CHAPTER 12

  GO WEST, YOUNG MAN

  1991–92

  CHAPTER 13

  INTO THE DESERT, THEN BACK IN THE STUDIO

  2010–11

  CHAPTER 14

  DECADE OF BROKEN DREAMS

  1994–2004

  CHAPTER 15

  THE BEGINNING OF THE END

  2010

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CREDITS

  COPYRIGHT

  ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

  PROLOGUE

  Lying in a king-size bed in an executive suite at the Mandalay Bay, I was shaking uncontrollably. My heart repeatedly skipped beats and I was about to check out . . . not from my room but from my life. Out the darkened window, the dazzling panoply of multicolored lights stared back as if to say, “In Vegas, even death is shrouded in glamour.” Glamour . . . what a joke. The glitz might as well be a CGI creation, for nothing in Vegas is real except the potential for loss. People flock to this desert oasis, hoping to leave a “winner,” to escape or salvage their lives, to right the sinking ship or somehow validate their existence, but if they stay long enough, the odds are guaranteed they’ll end up losing: the next mortgage payment, life savings, homes, family, self-respect . . . maybe everything—including the will to live.

  That’s when I started thinking of my parents and how crushed they’d be if their son, who’d left home at nineteen, with $150 in his pocket, no job, and no prospects to pursue his dream of being in a successful rock band, died from a cocaine overdose.

  That’s when it hit me. ENOUGH! I’d been up for two fog-filled sleepless days. For the last seventeen frenetic hours, when I wasn’t fucking and sometimes even when I was, I had a cup of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a straw in the other. The chick I’d flown out for the weekend had ingested so much meth she lay—nude and unconscious—next to me. Like a crazed dog, I’d indulged in sex, booze, and cocaine to a point that I was now clutching my heart to keep it from exploding from my chest. It was fibrillating, skipping beats . . . and for a drummer, that’s some scary shit. Still, all I cared about was snorting the last of my cocaine and getting more.

  I mean, if there was any coke left, I had to do it. Need a visual? Try this: if there was a Close Encounters of the Third Kind mashed-potatoes pile of cocaine left, I had to do it . . . all. In case you’ve never seen the movie, what I’m saying is . . . it was a fucking huge pile of blow, similar to the mountain of mashed potatoes Richard Dreyfus compulsively sculpts into the Devil’s Tower on his dinner plate while his family looks on in abject horror.

  I’d had numerous parties, far too many, but this time the party had me. After snorting shitloads of coke and meth, my body finally gave out. Struck with the force of an electroshock current to the brain, I began convulsing and feared I couldn’t stop.

  This was it: The End.

  All of the late nights had finally caught up with me. I was on top of the world with my third smash-hit album, and at that point, the coolest thing about gold records was you could snort cocaine off them.

  CHAPTER 1

  THE DREAM

  2005

  I’d had enough of the music biz.

  For over ten years, I’d tried everything to break through, believing success was just round the corner. Band after band—some that had deals and lost them, others right on the cusp, and still others without a prayer—I’d experienced every kind but one that succeeded. All the while, I’d watched from the sidelines while gimmick bands or carbon-copy bands or flavor-of-the-month bands got deals, snared the gold ring, and hit the big time—knowing none was any better than some I’d been a part of.

  It had taken years, but I suddenly realized the Golden Rule was a hoax and that hard work didn’t always pay off. I hadn’t done to others anything comparable to the shit that had been dealt my way. And furthermore, “the best” doesn’t always win: not the best song, the best singer, the best musician, the best painting, the best artist, the best film, or the best actor—far from it. In fact, if the best does occasionally find itself in the winner’s circle, it often has more to do with a behind-the-scenes payoff—whether a payback or a greased palm—or with sheer luck rather than brilliance. Unquestionably, luck appears to be way more important than talent. And fairness has little or nothing to do with how the game’s played. As the saying goes, “It’s not who you know, it’s who you blow.”

  I’d recently had a close call of being a member of the venerable shock-rock band W.A.S.P., who peaked back in the mid-’80s. Not exactly my dream gig, but after the close calls and disappointments I’d faced, W.A.S.P. was at least a bona fide band of heavy metal’s glorious past. After a grueling audition process, I was hired by the founder and lead singer, Blackie Lawless. I was so happy I told everyone I knew and quickly quit my data-processing job to begin rehearsing. But, just days before we were to go on a big European tour, Blackie fired me—telling me their old drummer wanted the gig back. After years of disappointment, I decided my lifelong, fantasy-filled dream had dragged on long enough. I was over it. I called Dad in Tennessee and told him I’d given it my best shot, endured all the frustration I could withstand, and now—with the added humiliation of misinforming all my friends that I’d be touring with W.A.S.P.—I was more than ready to come home.

  “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “What do you mean? I’ve been out here grinding away pretty much since high school.”

  “Jeremy, you’ve almost always played in bands you either didn’t like or you weren’t really into. You’ve played music you hated or music you found lacking, and never once have you played the music you love . . . metal.”

  “The metal scene’s dead, Dad.”

  “I’m not talking about selling quadruple platinum, I’m talking about finally allowing yourself to play music you care about.”

  “So what are you saying? You don’t want me to come back?”

  “You can come back anytime you need to, but in the long run, I don’t think you’ll be happy until you do what you were intended to do. Try to find some like-minded people, get together, and do your own thing. If it comes to nothing, at least you’re playing music you’ve always been passionate about.”

  I hung up—thinking, Great . . . that all sounds good, but it’s not gonna happen. And, knowing I couldn’t exist another week without a paycheck, I faced further humili
ation by having to call my old boss to see if I could have my mind-numbing data-entry job back. I felt both relief and complete defeat when she said yes.

  The more I thought about it, the more I knew Dad was right. After nearly a dozen years, it was time I finally played in the right band, a band I helped form, playing the kind of music I loved: METAL.

  As for the current metal scene, I’d been listening to Killswitch Engage, Trivium, and Shadows Fall. I liked those bands, even though their style wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted to be part of a band that had great songs with powerful melodic vocals, cool rhythmic guitars, and shredding double-bass drum. As opposed to a single bass used by most rock drummers, with the exception of Cream’s Ginger Baker, Rush’s Neal Peart, and a few others, the use of two bass drums hit its stride when the ’80s head-banging bands emerged. If I had an edge as a drummer, it was that my double-bass playing sounded like a machine gun on a toxic dose of Dexedrine. I went to the Music Connection website, where musicians place wanted ads, and punched in “Shredding double-bass metal drummer.”

  In the past, when something really good was about to happen, I would notice a red-tailed hawk circling in the sky, sometimes swooping low overhead. Sounds mystical, I know, but it had happened enough times that I took it to mean an omen of good things on the horizon. However, there was no hawk flying over me this time, or if there was, it was obscured by the ever-present LA smog. Instead, a response to my ad appeared from a guy named Zoltan. Wow, it sounded like the name of the magic wish machine Tom Hanks discovered on the Boardwalk in Big: Zoltar Speaks. Maybe this Zoltan would turn out to be a magic man. That was my earnest hope, anyway.

  I fired off a reply e-mail with a track I’d originally recorded on my longtime friend Jason Hook’s solo record, Safety Dunce. Immediately Zoltan answered back, saying he liked my playing, but he was looking at a few other guys including Jon Dette, who’d played with Slayer. I quickly responded, assuring him I was the guy, and we should get together—that there was no need to waste his time trying to find someone else.

  It turned out that Zoltan Bathory, the former bassist with U.P.O., a band I was unaware of but that had minor success when they morphed from a late-’90s post-grunge-rock band into part of the nu-metal wave. Zo, who toured with U.P.O. briefly in 2004, had seen me play in another band, years before, and liked me then. I guess the brashness of my e-mail impressed him. He sent me some demos of his songs, and I dug what I heard. They had cool rhythm guitars, fast sixteenth-note-style picking, not unlike what I’d done with Jason. I thought, I could really add something to this.

  I invited him to an upcoming show. I knew I’d be playing a drum solo and could further sell the idea of being the right guy for his project. He arrived with a scorching hot chick. I assumed she was Latina and he was Brazilian. Turned out she was Chinese and he was Hungarian. Clearly, I would not be working TSA airport security anytime soon.

  Zoltan spoke fluent English, laminated with a distinctive Hungarian accent. It took some real concentration on my part to understand everything he said. However, my takeaway from that first meeting was, This guy is smart and serious. So I made every effort to impress him, and it worked. We agreed to get together and start hashing out the material.

  As personalities, the two of us couldn’t have been more different. Whatever emotion I’m feeling, it’s on display—whether I’m on the highest mountain peak or in the depths of despair. (Bipolar, anyone?) Whether feeling anger or enthusiasm, I hold nothing back. Some people find this refreshing, others exhausting, and some—deadly. When feeling threatened or deceived, my vitriolic tongue can penetrate the toughest skin, locate—like a heat-seeking missile—the ego’s vulnerable G-spot, and verbally annihilate it! (Not proud of that defense mechanism; just trying to be honest.) I acquired that critical ability naturally, since I’d grown up listening to my family dissect plays, movies, music, and anything that tried to pass itself off as art but was less than perfect or just plain ersatz—like cubic zirconia being sold as genuine diamond. While the average family discussed their favorite TV shows or favorite potato-salad recipe, ours explored the psychological motivation for others’ actions and revealed those findings in language usually reserved for literary essays. Therefore I come armed with a vocabulary honed by masters.

  Zoltan, on the other hand, was a member of the Hungarian army at fifteen. He’s into martial arts and expresses himself physically. Beyond stoic, he occasionally smiles, but most of the time he appears expressionless. Growing up, my family was effusive, supportive, and loving. Zo’s was nondemonstrative, except when his mother was criticizing him, which he says she did relentlessly. My moods can shift with the phases of the moon; Zo is, for the most part, restrained and steadfast. Complementary, not opposing; yin and yang, the perfect balance . . . an indivisible whole. Early on, that’s who we were and what we appeared to possess.

  We moved through the material quickly, setting a date to begin tracking in the studio. This wasn’t a laid-back studio experience. This was a get-in-and-out quickie, necessitated by the fact that we didn’t have the cash to fuck around. We were serious and focused on getting it done right the first time. We tracked half a dozen things and I edited it all together. We both agreed it sounded pretty kick-ass. If the rest of this project proved to be as successful as those first tracks, we’d not only have something we could be proud of but also something unquestionably marketable.

  Our attention then turned to finding the right guys to complete the band. Zoltan had heard from some people about a bass player and a singer who used to be in a band called Deadsett, which later became In This Moment (once they added Maria). The singer possessed a heavy scream but lacked the type of melodic voice we wanted. Still, I hoped we could make it work. The bass player, Matt Snell, barely said two words when he first walked in, appearing less than excited to be there. However, when we played them some material, they both agreed to get together.

  After a couple of weeks of rehearsing, it was obvious the singer didn’t dig what we were doing. Matt, who had a caustic mouth that matched my own, had mastered a look of extreme boredom and didn’t appear to like it much either. But, when asked, he insisted he was into it. We decided to track the singer’s vocals to see how his lyrics and voice matched up. I had to work, so Zoltan and Matt recorded him. I anxiously awaited the results. Zo sent me the songs with the vocals, which turned out to be less than stellar. When I asked him to rate what he heard, he said they were about an 8. I thought, Oh, man, our rating systems are way off. But when he added, “An eight on the Richter scale,” I burst out laughing.

  Finding a great singer is always the hardest part of forming a band; I’d been through it many times. In order for us to have any shot at a breakthrough, we needed someone better than just good enough: we needed someone killer. We knew we hadn’t found him yet. When Zo told the singer we didn’t think the marriage was going to work, he agreed—saying he wasn’t really into our vibe anyway.

  The search was on again.

  Zo heard that Ivan “Ghost” Moody, from a band called Motograter, might be available, since they’d recently disbanded. (Great word, right?) He’d seen Ivan several years before at Ozzfest and said he was the real deal, a “motherfucker.” In addition to being a great singer, he had a reputation for commanding the stage and owning the audience. Matt and I were like, “Cool, let’s get him the fuck down here and see what he can do.”

  Getting him “down here” was a little more complicated, since Ivan lived in Denver. When contacted, he kept hedging, all the while saying, “Yeah, man, I’m coming down there.” Still, the delays continued for several weeks. Matt and I were starting to think it wasn’t going to work out after all.

  Zo insisted, “He’s great, be patient . . . it’ll be worth the wait.”

  He sent Ivan a few unmixed tracks to try his hand at writing lyrics. They were so poorly mixed you couldn’t hear my kick drums at all—only snare, hi-hat and crash. The first time I talked to Ivan on the phone, he asked, “H
ey, man, do you even play double bass?” I just started laughing and explained about the bad mix. I could tell he was relieved.

  After a few weeks, Zo got tired of Ivan’s stalling and booked him a flight to LA. We were finally going to find out if this guy lived up to his billing. I had high hopes, but I’d been disappointed enough times that I was withholding judgment until I could hear him in person. Though no one said it, we were all pinning our hopes on him.

  I’ll never forget the minute he walked into our rehearsal space. He looked like he was on the Ultimate Fighting circuit. He had a blond faux-hawk and a teardrop tat by his right eye. I didn’t know if he’d been incarcerated and lost a loved one, if it identified him as a gang member, or if it was just a fad. I wasn’t going to ask.

  What I did know for certain was that he’d stopped on the way to the audition and picked up a bottle of lemon vodka and a Sprite. I spotted that right away, and I was torn between wanting to hear him sing and having a drink. Ideally, I could do both.

  We introduced ourselves. Ivan acted really insecure and could barely make eye contact. We tried to put him at ease by making small talk, but when the conversation lagged, he said, “God, I’m nervous.”

  I thought that was great . . . and real. And man, how I longed for something real in a business usually as phony and trumped-up as the Hollywood sign and the Walk of Fame. We assured him there was no reason to be nervous. While he shifted from one foot to the next like a nervous schoolboy, Matt cued up a song through the PA—“Meet the Monster.”

  Please, for once, let this work, was all I could think.

  When the intro blared, Ivan turned his back to us—facing the wall. Self-protective . . . or just how it would be onstage? The anticipation was killing me. I was hoping for something amazing, but I couldn’t believe what I heard. In an instant, he transformed from a self-conscious guy into someone totally possessed. He wasn’t singing to a wall in a shithole rehearsal studio, he was performing at Ozzfest before twenty thousand screaming fans. He was in total command, and I’m not exaggerating by saying he blew us away.