Hollywood: Rock Of Ages

by Chris Solberg

  So how long’s your hair?

  It’s long.

  How long?

  Longer than yours.

  How do you know, you never met me!

  I’ll bet you $20 that when I show up, my hair will be longer than yours.

  That’s a bet that nobody ever took me up on, and one that I would have never lost. Another interesting sub genre in the ads were the “pros only” ads. These guys were very specific that you needed to be a “pro” and were very adamant about it. I figured at first that these guys were professionals who toured with national acts like Alice Cooper or Dio. Turns out they were just a bunch of older guys with pot bellies, flabby arms and bad wigs. Pros only dude!

  You see, as it turns out, you would have to weed through 90% of bullshit before you got to the 10% of bands who you’d really want to play for. So you would end up wasting your time 9 out of 10 times but that’s just what you had to deal with. Some auditions were a big party fest, where everybody was so wasted that they probably didn’t remember who showed up. Of course these guys were also too wasted to remember the songs either, so it was just as well. I remember talking to a guy over the phone who was telling me about how professional his band was, and how I needed to be on their level or I may as well just not show up. He told me this between choking on bong hits and watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon at a screaming volume. Ha-dat-da dat-da dah...da dat-da dat-da dah! Idee idee idee that’s all folks!

  Hollywood Bands - Vinnie Vegas

  Hollywood was completely different than San Diego. Hollywood was all about the glam “hair band” look and that was it. There was no heavy metal scene, the only guys still into that were the bands from Orange County who were ridiculed behind their backs for still wearing zebra spandex, wristbands, and bandanas. The look was ripped jeans with sleeveless concert T-shirts and tons of bracelets. There was a loose triage of style where some bands went for a more black leather style ala L.A. Guns, while some favored a slightly more punky feel with leggings, dyed day-glo hair and converse shoes. Most bands stayed in the middle with a semi Bon Jovi/Ratt look which ruled MTV at the time. Everybody wore leather jackets, adorned with tons of pins, buttons and chains. KNAC radio was the official trademark of the sunset strip and everybody got their rock gear at British Imports on Hollywood Blvd. British imports was an outlet filled with concert t-shirts, rock stickers, pins & earrings, as well as full sized British Flags. The bible of the scene was Rock City News which every band clamored hand over foot to be in. This “rock rag” featured all the clubs, and bands such as Legs Up, Ana Black, Hung Jury, Swingin’ Thing, Alley Kat Scratch & The Glamour Punx. To be featured in Rock City News was instant stardom because back in those days, you did not go on tour. Instead the people came to you. Can you imagine that?

  My favorite sect were the guys who favored the leather image. Their ads always included “early Motley Crue/LA Guns image” and “MUST HAVE LONG BLACK DYED HAIR.” These guys always had the worst singers. In Hollywood, 95% of the drummers could not play drums. Oh they could beat on them, they just couldn’t play them. I remember a sound that hit you when you opened the door to enter one of the clubs, that screamed local band. It took me awhile to put my finger on it, but I eventually realized it was the sound of drummers endlessly smashing the cymbals at all the wrong times with no pattern, rhyme or reason. I’m sure it still exists today.

  The Spaghetti incident - Cupkake

  I had just joined the band Slapkat and we decided to go out as a band for the first time. We had recently recruited Ernie as our drummer and everybody was in high spirits. We all got together at our apartment prior to heading out to the Sunset Strip for the evening. This included talking about chicks and music while quaffing down cold cans of Bud.

  It took us a few months to get into the routine of keeping a budget that made sense, but after we figured that one out, we stuck to it. This meant that we now had extra money to treat our friends from time to time. This particular night, Vinnie decided to prepare a large pot of pasta for everyone to share. Vinnie’s pasta was always really good, but he liked things spicy which some people found hard to swallow. He would spice up some generic bottled spaghetti sauce with a batch of unknown seasonings, and it usually ended up on the hot side of spicy. There was plenty of pasta for everyone to gorge on before leaving. Mix that with beer and other miscellaneous liquors and you have a very interesting evening! Vinnie had a chick up that weekend and decided to stay home while we were gone.I had polished my Ford Pinto wagon to a nice high gloss so we would be prepared to cruise the strip and gallivant about town. This Pinto was a really bright banana yellow with black interior. Most people these days would not be caught dead in this vehicle; it was quite the sight. That’s what made our group different than everyone else. We did not give a shit what anyone thought of us. We accepted just about anyone for who they are, not what they were wearing or what type of car they drove. After we were all stuffed with pasta and booze, we got into the Pinto and began our adventure to the Sunset Strip. I was driving and Vince Votel had won the ritual battle for shotgun that always erupted as soon as the elevator door opened into the garage. Ernie and David Angel were resigned to ride in the back.

  As usual, it was a busy Friday night on the strip and traffic was very heavy. The strip in the late 80’s was the most amazing sight you could ever see. It was always packed, and I mean packed, with people of all sizes, shapes, colors, and genders. It would easily classify as a freak show and this night was no exception. Ernie started complaining about the temperature in the back seat by saying it was too hot. The night was above average temperature for a mid-summer evening, but certainly not hot. Ernie said that he did not feel very well; he was starting to sweat and wanted all the windows in the Pinto rolled down. Vince Votel and I rolled our windows down, but the rear windows would only slightly pop out approximately three inches. That did not provide very good air flow to Ernie. We were right in front of the Roxy and Rainbow Bar and Grill when Ernie started to pound on the back of my seat. Ernie yelled, “Dude, you have got to pull over right now!” The Sunset Strip was in full swing and there was no place to stop or pull over. Ernie kept pounding on the back of my seat, screaming to pull the car over to the curb. I looked back at Ernie to see what his malfunction was, because at this point, I was starting to get annoyed. Ernie was ghost white and his eyes looked the size of black bowling balls. Just as I started to comment on his appearance, Ernie began to violently vomit out the small side window of the Pinto. As Ernie puked, he was yelling “Fuuuccckkk, fucking spaghetti... fuck! This is not cool man, not cool! Bastard! Shit!” I had never seen anyone able to yell the entire time they were vomiting

  The puke was not making its way out of the vehicle. It was spraying on the inside and outside of the car, and steaming up the windows. The vomit had a warm stomach acid stench, mixed with a portable toilet, and the reek of old, rotting seafood. And I swear he shit his pants while he was puking. It was the stench that could make a billy goat puke! The smell, with the spray of spaghetti vomit, mixed with warm beer triggered Dave to start vomiting out the right side window of the Pinto wagon as well. David was yelling while he was puking, but it was a little different. David yelled, “Fetus whore fuckin’ child!” I was laughing so hard because now I had two guys blowing chunks out the sides of the Pinto, swearing at the top of their lungs, in the center of the Sunset Strip.

  Votel could no longer take the foul smell of hot chunky, half eaten pasta, and warm alcohol. So guess what? Vince leaned out the window and threw up onto the street. Vince also yelled some sort of profanity as he puked. The best part was Vince was pulling his Farrah Fawcet hair away from his face with his left hand, while removing strands of half eaten spaghetti from inside his mouth. This was all new to me. Yelling while vomiting. Very interesting! I had never witnessed anything so violent, disgusting and funny all wrapped into one!

  Meanwhile, we had drawn the attention of the people on the Sunset Strip and surrounding vehicles that were also stuck in heavy
traffic. I was giggling, but that did not go over very well with the rest of the group. Everyone on the strip began to throw wads of papers at the car yelling all sorts of things at us, basically making fun of the barf-festival. What a sight we must have been. Can you imagine the scene? I wish someone would have filmed that incident, because the entire yellow Pinto was covered in vomit and wads of paper that were thrown at us and stuck to the puke. It was foul. The smell became so bad that I almost lost it! I was able to pull off the main strip and park the Pinto.

  Everyone cleaned themselves up by using a garden hose of some unsuspecting person that lived in a beautiful home adjacent to the rock clubs. This was not the first time we had used a beautiful home in Beverly Hills to shower off some type of debris from our clothes or shoes. Following the cleanup, we all went out for the evening as if nothing ever happened. Only in Hollywood!

  Somehow, I actually forgot to tell Vinnie about the pukefest the next day. So the next time he saw Votel and Ernie, he had no idea what they were talking about which may have saved some drama because Vinnie took his cooking very personally. After I retold the story, he was laughing so hard that everybody else started laughing as well. We all agreed that it was a funny story after the fact, so there were no hard feelings. This simply turned into another story that we could tell people and laugh about later.

  the lead guitarist - Vinnie Vegas

  Hollywood metal had it’s own distinct sound and style. It was a bastardized combination of late 70’s pop, fused with and early 80’s metal edge. The songs reflected the catchy commercial appeal of bands like Cheap Trick, KISS and The Bay City Rollers, but the difference was the emergence of the “lead guitarist”. The guitar hero was born in the late 60’s, but somewhere in the early 80’s the lead guitarist was born. It’s probably arguable as to who invented that idea, but as a holder of a doctorate degree in Heavy Metal, my studies tell me that it was KISS. Sure people like Jimmy Page played lead guitar, but he was the only guitarist in the band. KISS was the first band I heard use that term, it’s classic; Ace Frehley, lead guitar, Shock Me! Actually, after following KISS for years, I think that term was a marketing invention of Gene Simmons who wanted to give clear titles to each member of the band. This went along with the brilliant “four distinct personalities = one solid band” motif that was the center of KISS. And Paul Stanley being “rhythm guitar” player was actually a badge of honor rather than a slight. The reason that I bring that up is because that wasn’t the case in the 80’s and I’ll explain why.

  In the early 80’s, all sorts of Glam Rock/Heavy Metal bands burst on the scene as a counter attack to Thomas Dolby and Flock of Seagulls. The first bands came from England and were more Metal than Glam. But others started to pop up from Germany, Sweden and even Australia. America’s premiere band Aerosmith had somehow gone into hibernation, and even KISS was a mess trying to figure out what to do. This led to a power vacuum in America that needed to be filled. From around the country various bands started to pop up, there was even a band from Jersey called Bon Jovi that was singing about runaways and starting to make a mark. In California, we craved hard rock, and bands like Journey or REO Speedwagon were just not cutting it. All the guys taking guitar lessons were learning the blistering leads played by the English bands from the get-go, as well as new guitarists Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhoads. This took off like a steam locomotive, and once that genie was out of the bottle, it could not be put back in. Nobody even thought about learning all the different blues, reggae or zydeco rhythms, indeed they learned no rhythms at all, save the galloping Iron Maiden gait or the Black Sabbath chunk-chunka-chunk rhythm.This will go on to explain a lot of the Glam Rock/Heavy Metal style of music played in the 80’s. A few souls saw the wisdom of Paul Stanley’s choice of rhythm chops, and in Hollywood a band named Ratt decided to re-invent themselves as the Aerosmith of the 80’s. These guys took David Lee Roth’s ripped and torn look to the max, and took advantage of the vacuum that the sleeping giants had left. The result was the birth of a new style of metal that would reign supreme for the rest of the decade.

  Warren DeMartini became one of the the first LA lead guitarists to rise to fame out of the new Hollywood scene. He even solidified the “all lead guitarists must play Charvel guitars” theme that lasted in Hollywood until the end of the ‘80s. I know that Randy Rhoads came out before Warren and played Charvel guitars as well, but Warren’s style struck a nerve somehow, and became the lead guitarist’s template. Every lead guitarist after that copied his look, moves and style and they all played the Charvel with the stratocaster-style body. Throw in some red, black and white Japanese graphics and you’ve got the look! Charvel must have loved that, because these guitars soon went for top dollar! Warren adopted a “rock back and forth” move that paired with Jimmy Page’s upstrum, became the official lead guitar style that everybody emulated.

  The lead guitarists were notorious for being full of themselves, and were usually the first ones to quit a band in a hissy fit. They figured that the world was there to see them, and everybody else just got in their way. Back in San Diego, being a rhythm guitarist was almost a shameful thing to admit. Most people figured that you could play guitar, but you weren’t good enough to play lead. So nobody down there wanted to play rhythm, instead they would noodle in their rooms until they were good enough to play lead. This led to a ton of metal bands with bad songwriting, and LOTS of lead going on.

  Vinnie wakes up - Vinnie Vegas

  I remember the first time I heard the new LA sound while I was still living in San Diego. I had just graduated high school, and a few guys had grouped together to rent apartments which was our first taste of the great freedom that awaited me. These apartments became the first party pads we knew, and we spent most weekends there. Some of the guys had killer stereos with antennas powerful enough to pull in LA radio stations. LA had the stations KMET and KLOS the latter being the undisputed king of rock on the west coast. These stations played ROCK N ROLL! Judas Priest, and Rainbow with Ronnie James Dio, were staples on their playlists. These stations literally crackled with energy, which was a complete 180 to the lame Tom Petty and George Thorogood that San Diego stations still play to this day.

  Before I moved to LA, I was partying at my friend Weasel’s apartment, and I heard that LA sound for the first time. I bolted straight up from my chair, almost spilling the bong. “My God, who IS that?” I asked. The answer was Ratt, and the song was “You Think You’re Tough”. These guys didn’t even have a record deal at the time, and they were being played on one of the biggest rock radio stations in America. I can only imagine how that must have felt. The song was pure Rock N Roll, and I took to it immediately. That Summer, KLOS played that song on heavy rotation and they got signed not to long after that. Up until then, the people I played with were trying to learn complicated Rush and Yes songs that lasted 15 minutes. After I heard Ratt, it hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s where it was at, and that’s what I wanted to do. Come up with a simple kick-ass rhythm, and get it over with in three minutes or less. Boom, pow, it’s done! No more stopping in the middle of a song or throwing in complicated tempo changes. This was more like my beloved KISS and Cheap Trick, the bands that local musicians had chided me for liking, and I loved it.

  Ultra Pop ToUr, Cincinnati, OHIO - Cupkake

  Halfway through the Ultra Pop tour, we arrived in Cincinnati, Ohio. We were scheduled to play on a weeknight, so we did not expect very much from this town. The first case of business that we took care of was to drive right to the club and check out the area. We approached the club and it was approximately 11:00 am.

  There was a giant line that wound around an old brick building. We commented on the large number of people and asked each other what was going on. Well, we looked at the address on the building and realized that is where we were going to be playing. It did not really hit us yet, that all of

  these people were here to see us perform.

  We did not think these people were here for us, because
we were not scheduled to play until 10:30 that evening. Well if you do the simple math, that is over 12 hours from when we arrived. We estimated by a quick count that there were at least 200 people outside the club. We still did not realize these people were here for us until we stopped at the rear entrance of the building. Most of the people continued to stay in line, but a good 30 people rushed over to the vans, and started to yell and scream the bands name. I could see that most of them had some type of Ultra Pop item in their hand, such as a tee-shirt, poster or album. That is when it hit us. Oh my god! All of these people were here for us! Crazy!

  We had never had anything like this happen before. There were people everywhere going crazy and all of us actually got nervous because of the chaos that was occurring around us. Lizzie decided that it would be better if we pulled away from the crowd of people and return later, when we could have some security guards to assist us. Security... WOW! I had always dreamed of this day. On this day, I wanted time to stand still, because this was every bands dream come true. I was finally considered a true rock star. Lizzie called the club and contacted the manager. The clubs management was well aware of the large crowd that had gathered outside the venue. He told Lizzie that he was currently hiring security for our protection. That was the coolest thing I had heard to date.

  The band was in a really good mood, and every one of us ranted and raved about the large number of fans that were waiting outside the club 12 hours prior to the show. I loved it when the guys were in a good mood, because everything seemed to go very smooth and life was good when the guys were pleased. We went to check into the hotel and for the first time, Lizzie ordered four rooms for the band instead of two. This was a new event, because Lizzie was always trying so hard to save all the money we could. As we checked in, I asked Lizzie why the two extra rooms. He smiled and told me that it is time to celebrate and enjoy life. Lizzie mentioned that while he was on the phone with the venue’s manager, he said that the show was already sold out and according to our contract with the club, we would receive a bonus if this occurred. Well, I think that Lizzie realized that it was time to reward the band with some privacy and some breathing room before we all lost our minds. To date, I have no idea what the bonus was, but it must have been incredible, because suddenly we were eating better food also. No more peanut butter sandwiches!