Metal, Madness & Mayhem - An Insiders Journey Through The Hollywood 80s

by Michael J. Flaherty

I knew what he meant. Two weeks later when I ran into the original ‘Dr. Feel good’ at the Whiskey he had a cast on his arm, a broken nose and two black eyes. I never saw him around the guys again.

  “Got a sales report from Green world yet?” Coffman was understandably curious as to how we were doing product wise.

  “Yeah, they called yesterday and on their word alone, about a hundred or so stores have ordered at least a few copies each of ‘Too Fast for Love.’ They’re really hyping the KROQ airplay we’re getting to their buyers and it seems to be helping sales.” I suggested he order a second pressing from the record factory. He readily agreed.

  The afternoon of the Troubadour show, I was the first one there as I had agreed to meet the crew at load-in that was delivering the custom sound system that Alan had ordered for the night's show.

  I heard a young female voice with a deep Southern accent... “Do they serve food here?”

  I turned around and saw a skinny, dirty little blonde waif who looked homeless or at the very best a guest on the Jerry Springer show.

  “Huh? Who are you?”

  She proceeded to lay out her story. She had heard that David Lee Roth was performing that night with the Crüe, somehow all the way from Tennessee. How that news had traveled so far and so fast to this day I have no clue. Certainly, this was years before the internet was ever dreamt of.

  “I'm in love with David, but I’m hungry, he’ll buy me some food. Where is he? I just need to meet him.”

  I replied, “Look, I don't know where he is at the moment but I'm sure it’ll be at least a few hours before he’s here.”

  Later in the Troubadour balcony, I was forced to hear the rest of her sad tale of woe…. She was on a quest to meet Roth. She had left her Memphis trailer park home with only a very few dollars in her purse and started thumbing her way across the country to Los Angeles. Picked up by a trucker who allegedly raped her while in route, she neglected to mention to him that she was eaten up with gonorrhea.

  I took two steps back and suggested she mention that little fact to David.

  “I'm also pregnant, but I’m told can't have an abortion until the infection is cleared up. Do you know of a free clinic around here? Maybe Dave does?”

  I didn't know exactly what to say. “Well, I surely can't speak for David, in fact I’ve never actually met him, but I guess there’s one around here somewhere.”

  Meanwhile the poor thing looked like she was about to pass out at any minute from lack of food. Or perhaps the gonorrhea, pregnancy or God only knows what.

  Thinking about the beautiful gourmet dinner Dana had promised to have waiting for me when I returned home before we went back for the show, I began to sorry for the girl.

  I went into the club kitchen. “Can someone cook up a burger and fries?”

  I was answered by the bartender. “Maybe... I think we got a patty around here somewhere. Let me try and remember where it is...I'll check.”

  It just then occurred to me how the Troubadour got away with being an ‘all ages’ nightclub. They had a kitchen and were technically classified as a restaurant, at least from a legal point of view as I sure as hell never saw anyone eat there.

  A burger patty was found and fried and she wolfed it down like she hadn't eaten in days.

  “Can I take a nap here? I have no place to go until I meet Dave, I'm sure he’ll fall in love with me and take me home with him tonight.”

  Again, I didn't know what to say. “Well, I guess it’s alright... but I don’t run the club, I’m with the band. Maybe just lay down on one of the benches up in the balcony.”

  As she walked up the stairs, she turned and thanked me for the burger, adding “Be sure and wake me up when Dave gets here.”

  Driving home, I laughed to myself remembering those lyrics that Nikki had read me on the sidewalk in front of the Rainbow...

  ‘This Is Hollywood.’

  No shit Nikki……

  “Interesting letter here Hon, thanks for signing for it.” Dana had received a certified letter that afternoon. It was a response to my letter of inquiry to the then little known but emerging music cable channel “MTV.”

  “Yes, we would be interested in seeing a video of your band Mötley Crüe for possible broadcast consideration.”

  “Please forward a 3/4 inch video tape to our offices at...” and they gave me an address in New York.

  This could be our ultimate answer to national exposure, with or without a record deal. Now all we needed was a video. The correspondence received from MTV was a positive start to the evening.

  As I had predicted and hoped for, by seven pm the night of the show, despite a major rainstorm there was a line of people literally a mile long on the sidewalk trying to get in the club. It looked not unlike the Hollywood Christmas parade with barricades on the sidewalks and Sheriffs Deputies on motorcycles keeping the fans out of the traffic lanes on Santa Monica Boulevard.

  Parking was impossible. Dana and I decided to head back East to La Cinema Boulevard and parked at Barney's Beanery restaurant and take a taxi back to the Troubadour.

  It was a wise move.

  Once we finally got there my buddy Lyle was at the club entrance as usual, looking understandably stressed given the large crowd situation.

  “Everybody’s upstairs in the big dressing room Mike, the one with the fireplace.”

  “Thanks Lyle, see you later.”

  Walking in the dressing room, I was approached immediately by a very nervous and sweating Alan.

  “Hi Mike. I got to tell you, whatever you do don't speak to Roth, he’s in a bad mood and doesn't want to be bothered by anybody”

  “Bad mood my ass Alan! I've spent an hour looking for a fucking parking space and I’m in a bad mood myself and I want to meet the guy and talk to him about what he wants to do with us tonight on stage. Where is he? Cut the emotion, this is business.”

  Before Coffman could answer, I saw Roth standing by the dressing room fireplace holding court, and yes, the little gonorrhea waif had found him. I guessed that she had awakened from her balcony nap without my alarm clock service.

  Roth didn’t look like he was in a bad mood to me at all.

  “David, I’m Michael Flaherty and I’m with Mötley Crüe management, nice to meet you and thanks for coming down for us tonight.”

  He extended his hand and we shook, very cordially saying, “Nice to meet you too Michael, may I call you Mike? Please call me Dave.”

  If this was a ‘bad mood’ I'd like to hang around with him when he’s in a good mood. I liked this guy on the spot.

  “OK, Dave it is. What did you have in mind song-wise tonight?”

  Speaking in his usual charismatic ‘Roth-Speak’ he went on to suggest that he introduce the band, not unlike the way Gene Simmons had introduced the then unknown Van Helen to a Starwood audience not that many years previously.

  Nikki was proven right once again, this guy remembered how it must have been in the early Van Helen days.

  “I’ve talked to Vince and the rest of the guys about joining them on stage for an encore. We were thinking maybe Elvis’s ‘Jailhouse Rock’, it's a classic, Michael. Hush., sorry. ’'Mike’ right?”

  “Yeah, Mike.”

  “Well that sounds fine with me, David, hush… Dave. By the way, did you run this by Alan?”

  “No.” Dave replied firmly. “That guy looks like he’s in really bad mood.”

  It was soon after that Alan approached and asked me to join him in an impromptu meeting with someone who had just shown up downstairs.

  It was a forty-something year old lady with highly beached blonde/purple streaked hair and make-up that appeared to have been applied with a trowel.

  “Hi, I’m Strawberry Fields.”

  Immediately seeing that this was yet another Hollywood flake who wanted to get in on the Mötley Crüe bandwagon, I was tempted to ask her if she was the ‘Mrs. Fields’ of cookie store fame, tell her I like her brownies and then get back to taking care of
real pre-show band business back in the dressing room, but I resisted.

  “I’m huge in Europe. I’m starring in a feature film soon and I’d like to cast Vince in the lead. The rest of the band can write the soundtrack.” She went on and on with what was obviously bullshit.

  I kept a close eye on Alan during her sales pitch. Knowing how understandably desperate he was for the boys to ‘move up the ladder’ of success as well as a needed cash influx, he would have whipped out his pen and signed a tampon if she had pulled one out in front of him with a deal written on it.

  “OK, this all sounds very interesting Mrs., or is it ‘Miss’ Fields?”

  “It’s Miss Fields now. My divorce was just final last month. I was married to Peter Frampton for eight years. Matter of fact, we’re still friends and he’s shopping around for new management if you guys are interested. I’ll be happy to hook you up.”

  The woman was delusional. A big star? Mrs. Peter Frampton? I figured that at the most she was perhaps a Frampton stalker and hoped that he had a restraining order against her for his own personal safety.

  “Well, that’s very nice of you Miss Fields, and we’ll think about that too. But with regards to the film, we’ll need a lot more information before we can make an intelligent decision… that is financing the movie, production schedules, distribution, promotional plans and certainly most of all we’ll need to see a script. We’ll review all that and get back to you.” I then blew her off. “Here’s my card and thank you very much for the offer.”

  Alan was seething at me to the point where his face was turning red. With his lack of experience in the entertainment industry and particularly in dealing with the assorted lunatic fringe characters that come out of the woodwork, he probably thought that I had just told Steven Spielberg himself to fuck off.

  “Why the hell did you do that?” Alan yelled after Strawberry left. “And Peter Frampton? We could manage Peter Frampton!”

  Calmly as I could I stated the facts. “What the hell could we do with Frampton that hasn’t already been done and that he can’t do himself? We’re having enough trouble with what is essentially a local club act, at least for now. Furthermore, who the fuck is she? This is not how professional films are cast and she’s trying to scam us someway and I’m trying to protect the band. I just know it. You want to waste time on some bullshit like this then you do it yourself and count me out. Meanwhile I’d like to get back to the business of managing our band if you don’t mind. We’ve got a show to do!”

  Alan ignored my points and ranted on. “But this is a movie deal! You just blew it with your attitude!” As we sat alone in the middle of the Troubadour showroom, I again tried to calm him down. “Get a fucking grip Al! At this very moment we’ve got over 500 people waiting outside the club, Santa Monica Boulevard is practically shut down, Roth is upstairs waiting, lots of press and A & R people will be here tonight. We need to be with the guys right now. Will you please have a drink or something and relax?”

  Not that it mattered anyway, but that later proved to be a bad suggestion. The evening was about to become even more bizarre.

  Back upstairs, we found the guys hanging out with Dave and it was obvious that he was enjoying the attention from the young musicians who were quickly becoming his protégés.

  It wasn’t long before Michelle made her entrance into the dressing room, wearing a floor-length fur coat which she immediately removed. Underneath she was clad only in a two-piece clear-plastic bikini. Between the layers of the plastic were what appeared to be dead goldfish, at least from what I could identify between the hanging rolls of her flab. My guess was that they had been alive before she put the thing on.

  It was very hard on the eyes and the room went silent, except for her. “It’s my Dale Borzoi look! How do you like it?”

  More silence and even Roth was speechless. Then came some polite mumbling from around the room…

  “Hush, nice Michelle.”

  “Looks great Michelle…”

  I didn’t have to be a mind reader to interpret the look that Nikki shot me. He didn’t have to say anything as I knew he was thinking the same thing I was… ‘What the fuck is this?’

  I also knew something was up as Alan, now calmed downed from watching me ‘blow the movie and Frampton deals’ had a sinister ‘I’ve got a secret’ shit-eating grin on his face.

  We were all about to find out indeed what was up within an hour when that ‘eaten shit’ would hit the fan.

  I went back downstairs to the showroom. Although I considered every show a very important night this one was special and wanted everything to be absolutely flawless, yet I discovered a number of minor details had not been taken care of properly upon my inspection of the showroom and stage. The cases of ‘Too Fast for Love’ LPs as well as the band T-shirts had to be distributed to the roadies who would be hawking them in the audience were yet to be unloaded. The sound booth didn’t have a copy of the intro tape. The dry-ice fog machine had not been pre-heated. The white and black ‘Mötley Crüe’ backdrop had not been hung behind the drum riser as planned. The guest list was not at the box office.

  Again, all these were minor details but vital to presenting the band as a professional act. This shit was sloppy and unacceptable.

  ‘Who the hell is supervising our crew?’ I thought, standing in the empty, darkened showroom

  The answer was no one.

  It was nothing against the crew, headed by Stick. They were great guys that worked hard and professionally for little more than beer and burgers and really cared about the technical aspects of producing a good, tight show. But like any team, they had to have some direction and leadership.

  Alan was obviously too distracted to provide that element.

  With the assistance of a couple of the roadies we quickly got everything in order. I then went outside with Bobby and was pleased to see the line of waiting fans had grown even longer than before. Standing there, Bobby excitedly told me this was probably the biggest crowd ever in the history of the Troubadour, “Even larger than when Elton John made his American debut there many years earlier.”

  I then heard a familiar voice. “Hi Mike, I made it.” It was my former employer, Donald Sterling, whom I’d invited down just as a courtesy and had no idea that he would actually show up. Impressed with the mob scene on the sidewalk he asked if we always drew such a large crowd. “Yeah, and it gets bigger each show.” Sterling, who had just purchased the Los Angeles Clippers NBA team and was struggling with record low attendance at the games commented “Maybe I should have bought a rock band instead.”

  I started to tell him this one may be available soon but then thought better of it.

  Whether the crowd was there to see Motley, had heard Roth was performing or they were there to see both really didn’t matter to me. This was going to be a great night and give us more needed publicity. Someone, at some record label has to pay attention to us now, or so I thought wishfully.

  Back in the dressing room Alan said he wanted to have another minute with me in private.

  We went into the quietness of the showroom balcony where he dropped the bomb.

  “Mike, we’ve had a minor change of plans.”

  “Why, what do you mean?” I assumed it was something simple like the set list. “It’s a little late for any changes, the box office is opening in a couple of minutes and …”

  He interrupted me.

  “It’s really not that a big of a deal, it’s just that Michelle will go on stage with Roth and introduce the band, and then at the encore she’ll sing Jailhouse Rock with Vince and David.”

  Now I’m hardly ever at a loss for words, and probably even considered a loudmouth by some but for one of the few times in my life I didn’t know what to say and couldn’t have uttered a word if I had.

  “Wait, run that by me again, Al. Slowly this time…”

  He did. I had heard him correctly.

  “And Nikki and Roth know about this? What do they think?”

/>   “Well, like I said it’s really no big deal, I haven’t had a chance to mention it to them just yet and right now I’ve got to go pay the guy for the sound system, he’s waiting for me. Do me a favor and teller if you want…”

  He walked away as I sat there dumbfounded.

  ‘Teller if I want?’ What kind of shit is this? It had become a fucking circus.

  A few things were instantly obvious. First, he was scared to tell the guys himself about the new ‘staging schedule.’ Secondly he was suffering from a major case of pussy-whipping. Thirdly, he probably didn’t even want the guys to know the plan before hand as she’d just hop on stage at the right moments and have her fifteen minutes of fame. It then occurred to me that ‘that’s why she’s wearing the Goddamn dead goldfish outfit!’ Part of my management philosophy from even the early Images days was that a band should have to worry about absolutely nothing except their music and the performance. That’s what managers get paid for and it’s their job to protect the band from unnecessary bullshit, business or otherwise, especially right before a show or recording session. To say that this was not going to fly well with the band members, as well as Roth would be the understatement of the World.

  “Mike, where’s Al?” Nikki asked casually as I went back into the dressing room. Before I could answer he must have seen the look on my face… “What’s wrong?’

  “Let’s go to the balcony, Six.” That wasn’t a great idea as the box office had just opened and fans were streaming in and taking their seats in the showroom below.

  Shit.

  “Let’s go back to the dressing room, Nick.”

  “What’s going on, man?”

  Using Alan’s favorite line, I said “There’s no way to tell you this except to tell you, but Al’s planning on Michelle doing the intro with Roth and later doing the encore.”

  His response was measured at first. I believed he thought that it must have been a joke. “You are kidding me, right?”