Tattoos & Tequila: To Hell and Back with One of Rock's Most Notorious Frontmen

by Vince Neil

  Tami fuckin’ hated me. I was dragging him into this world where he was going to get a lot of attention. She wasn’t a bad-looking girl, but she wasn’t a great-looking girl. She had a lot of attitude and that may have been what attracted Vince. There were definitely prettier girls at school. Way prettier girls. Our school had some very beautiful women, some of whom probably would have never ever had anything to do with him because he was a stoner guy—a lot of the pretty girls were cheerleaders and that type.

  I remember when he found out Tami was pregnant. That was horrible. I remember him sitting on the curb just bumming out. He was sick for weeks. He was just physically sick. It was just bad. I felt so bad for him. He didn’t say much about it, though. Vince was an introvert. He really doesn’t talk much about stuff. But he thinks a lot about stuff and you could tell it was really bugging him. And I just remember thinking, Oh shit, he’s done. This is over. He’s done. Because I knew he wasn’t too serious about Tami. He wasn’t ever serious about one girl. I can’t even see Vince staying with one girl for any amount of time, ever.

  We played all the backyard parties and we really got popular. We made money and we had some experiences that to this day I think about and it makes me chuckle. I’ll tell people the stories about the lines of cop cars coming to bust our party, or all the bass players we went through, ’cause we went through quite a few, or how one of the guys got arrested one night. Our band ruined backyard parties in that area for any band after that. We’d have a thousand people at a backyard. One party we played in Covina, we were in this fair-sized backyard. By the end of the party, all the fences around the backyard were flattened. People had climbed up on the roof of the garage and fell through the roof. Somebody jumped off the roof onto my mom’s station wagon. When I walked out to go get in my car and start loading stuff, I remember looking down the street and seeing this line of cop cars rolling toward the house. I mean there must’ve been fifteen, twenty, thirty cop cars—a line of them that stretched all the way down. After we’d been playing around for a while, there was a rumor that whenever the cops found one of our flyers they’d put it up in their precinct station and mark “BYOB” across it, meaning “Bring Your Own Billy club.”

  I know Vince always says he never wanted to be a rock star, but he was pretty dedicated. I look back fondly on some of the things that him and I did to push that band forward. You know, we would cut class and go at lunchtime with a thousand flyers that we had made up—there was a kid at another school that would make them for us in his shop in his printing class. He would draw these elaborate flyers. We would drive all over the place, going to other high schools, plastering all the cars in the parking lot—every car would get a flyer. We were dedicated to making this work.

  In those days, I don’t remember him drinking or drugging much—he probably would have a beer or two maybe at some of these parties, but I never saw him drunk. I can’t even ever remember one time he was drunk. I would’ve frowned upon it, especially while we were playing. He was pretty serious. He wanted to succeed as much as I did.

  After the baby was born, Tami moved into my house with my parents and tried to make a go of it. I lived at home for a while and then I would leave for a while; I was basically crashing here and there. I just wanted to be out on my own. Sometimes I would go to my parents’ house for meals and shit, or to see the baby, but basically, I was outta there. Who said eighteen was a magic age of maturity? And it’s not like I moved that far away. I was literally just blocks away from my parents’ house. Like here’s the high school, and here’s the house I’m living in, and here’s my parents’ house. All I had was my clothes—everything that I owned was in a Henry Weinhard’s beer case box. That was it. That was sophomore year. By the end of the year I’d basically dropped out of school.

  My junior year, I really stopped going to school. For a little while I went to the continuation school—Tami was going there, too. Then for the start of my senior year I transferred to Royal Oak High School, which was the next school over. I was sweeping up this recording/rehearsal studio in exchange for Rockandi being able to practice there. It was through them that I got the occasional roadie gigs, too. I used the rehearsal studio address as my legal address, so all my official school mail went to the studio. My parents had no idea what was going on because all notices and report cards went there.

  As everybody knows by now, Tommy Lee was a student at Royal Oak. His name back then was Tom Bass. He was born in the Greek capital city of Athens while his dad was serving as a sergeant in the U.S. Army. The family moved to the States and settled in Covina while Tommy was still a baby. His mom had been a beauty queen and a model, Miss Greece 1957. They didn’t use the term MILF in those days, but she was one. When she and Tommy’s dad first began dating, the story goes, they could only communicate by drawing pictures. No doubt they found other ways, too. She cleaned houses now to help make ends meet; she didn’t speak very much English. Like my dad, Tommy’s father was a mechanic. For a time he worked for the LA County Road Department, repairing trucks and tractors.

  I’d known Tommy even before I transferred. He was in a rival band. They called themselves US 101, after the freeway that bisected greater Los Angeles. Later that band semimorphed into another band, Suite 19. When Rockandi started playing backyard parties, Tommy’s band was also playing backyard parties in our area. That’s how we met, how we first started hanging around. Eventually we also played the couple of clubs in the area. There was one called the Wood Sound in Monrovia—once or twice I think we even played on the same bill. We were like friendly rivals from two different bands. We would play one party and they would play another party. We were like the only two bands in the area.

  By the time I went to Royal Oak, I think I was already living with Tommy. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I decided to go there. Tommy and I were really close at that point. Really close. Literally. At first I was sleeping in his van. And then I was sleeping on the floor of his bedroom. What happened was his mom found out that there was some guy sleeping in her son’s van and she came out and said, in her broken English, “Why you don’t come sleep in house?” I will never forget her doing that. Her kindness is something I will always remember. In later years my mom and Tommy’s mom would become superclose as they circled the globe following our concerts.

  Tommy and I hung hard. We were tight. We’d ditch school and go to the recording studio and hang out or jam. We’d sit in his van with Highway to Hell cranked to the max. Another of our favorites was the Lovedrive album by the Scorpions. (“Another Piece of Meat” is covered on Tattoos & Tequila.) Tommy was a year younger than me. His mom made us meals. I thought of him as a sort of little brother.

  My relationship with Tommy is, well, um… it’s funny… It makes me a little bit sad thinking about this right now. ’Cause nowadays me and Tommy are so far apart. And I don’t really know any way to bridge the distance. Tommy’s an egomaniac. He has to be the center of attention; if he isn’t, he’ll leave. If he’s somewhere and there’s someone he thinks is a bigger star than himself and they won’t talk to him, he’ll leave. That’s why he marries and hangs out with the girls that he does. Think about it. Heather Locklear? Pam Anderson? He loves fame; if he didn’t have the fame he would slice his throat; he couldn’t live without Tommy Lee being Tommy Lee. Down deep he’s a fucking great guy, a sensitive, nice guy, but you really have to peel the layers that he’s built up over the years to get down to that niceness that he used to have when he was a kid, when we used to fuckin’ sit in his van and crank up the music. That was the cool Tommy. Now he’s the too cool Tommy. If you watch him through the years, he’s one of those guys that has to fit into every trend. He had to have a Mohawk when everybody had a Mohawk; he had dreads when everybody else had dreads. Whatever’s in, that’s what he wants to be. He’s a year younger than me, but he still tries to fit in like a teenager. It’s like if a mature lady walks into a bar and she’s trying to compete with the twenty-two-year-olds, she starts looking
ridiculous, you know what I mean…?

  Whatever. Another thing I wouldn’t have imagined in a million years: that me and Tommy would be estranged. If there’s some way back from the quagmire, I don’t know.

  From there, basically, my high school career sort of fizzled out. I just sort of stopped going. Between rehearsing with Rockandi, getting high, going surfing, hanging out with Tommy, and dealing with Tami and Neil, there wasn’t much time left over for classes. I was young, foolish, and headstrong. I thought I already knew everything. I was anxious to get on with life. The fact that I’d fathered a child was more than I could register—it was a nagging pain that needed to be blotted out. Thinking about stuff hurt, in other words, so I just tried not to think. I guess I summed it up pretty well in The Dirt, when I was quoted as saying this:

  I did not think that I’d ever get taught a lesson, because I had no use for lessons. I didn’t read, I didn’t write, I didn’t think. I just lived. Whatever happened in the past happened; whatever’s going to happen in the future is going to happen anyway. Whatever is happening in the present moment was always what I was interested in.

  Joe Marks Friend, Rockandi Roadie, Rockandi Bassist

  Vince and I went to Charter Oak High School together. He’s a year younger than me. I think his birthday is this week. I lived in Covina. My dad ran a drilling and blasting company—it was my uncle’s company and my dad ran a good portion of it. He was in charge of the crews and he did all the blasting. At the time, economically speaking, we didn’t know what we were. We all had enough, but none of us were spoiled.

  I was the kind of guy who was friends with everybody at school. I didn’t have any clique. I played some football, so I had those kinds of friends, but I also went to the park and smoked weed with all the stoners. But senior year I got kicked off the football team for—well, it was an indiscretion. I was taking a leak out on the football field and one of the cheerleaders walked by and they saw, you know, little Elvis. And that was the end of my football career, which I was kinda losing interest in anyway. By then I was really starting to get into playing my bass.

  Charter Oak Park, across from the high school, was like the drug capital of the world. That’s where everybody went back then and bought, like, five-finger lids for like five bucks, and everybody would go there and get stoned. I wasn’t a big stoner, but all my friends were, so I kinda went over there. I was more of a drinker. Vince was there. I’d run into him there a few times—I think we had the same PE class, too. We really didn’t start hanging out together that much until The Rocky Horror Picture Show craze got started. They used to play it at midnight every weekend at the theater downtown in Covina. I bumped into Vince there and that’s when we started talking. Rockandi had already started. I think they’d just done a gig at our school. I think it was the first time they ever played out in public and they played at our high school.

  And they had this bass player, he just didn’t fit in. Vince and James were these long-hair guys, and the bass player had a big ’fro of hair—he looked like an old hippie, you know? He kinda didn’t fit in.

  After I met Vince officially at The Rocky Horror Picture Show, we became friends. I said, “Hey, I like the band,” and he said, “Want to come down and check out the rehearsals?” So I did and I even started you know, helping with the equipment or whatever—whatever needed doing I’d help them. Finally, after they went through another bass player, I started playing with them.

  Vince and I became friends out of the band, too. At that time life was just absolutely nothing but fun. He skateboarded; I skateboarded; we surfed. We were the California guys. Vince was kicked out of Charter Oak and ended up going to Royal Oak High School. I had a Volkswagen Bug. It was a ’69. And I used to pick him up from there. I’d have both of our surfboards on my car. And then we’d just go straight to the beach and he’d miss school. Or I’d pick him up in the morning behind his house. And then he’d go home and he’d pretend that he’d been in school all day.

  The truck by then was broken down. He left it in his driveway forever and then he got the Z. It was like a 240Z. And he used to, he just tore that car up. The boy liked driving fast from like day one. He was like Ricky Bobby in the movie Talladega Nights. He always enjoyed driving fast. It was a little scary to be in the car with him. He handled the car well, though.

  Once we did a battle of the bands at the place that we used to rehearse. Rockandi played and Tommy’s band US 101 played. All they played was like Journey and Boston and Styx and stuff like that. We were more Van Halen, grungy, bluesy stuff—we were two different kind of bands. But I think Tommy really wanted to be in a band like Rockandi instead of US 101. He was having fun, but the parents were all in it. US 101 seemed like Little League.

  I kinda liked Tommy. We actually got along pretty good. He was like two years younger than me when we met; then I saw him play a couple years later and I started thinking, This guy’s pretty good, he’s improved a lot, maybe we should audition him. And so we did. There was this time when Robert Stokes, our drummer, wasn’t doing anything with the band—there was some sort of downtime. So we auditioned Tommy for the hell of it. He actually even helped us kinda write a song, but James and Vince didn’t want him, so they said no.

  And check this out: Tommy’s mom got so pissed off that Tommy was auditioning with us and possibly quitting whatever little church band he was with at the time, US 101, that she threatened to kick him out of the house. Tommy’s mom hated Vince. Vince had this reputation of being like a coke dealer or something. When he got kicked out of Charter Oak they all said it was because he was a coke dealer. But he wasn’t. All he was, was just a guy who didn’t show up to school and you know smoked weed at lunchtime. I think after his mom kicked him out; he was living in his van—I think she kicked him out and let him keep the van. I remember that he was kicked out of the house and he ended up staying up in the hills with Vince and his girlfriend Leah.

  Vince’s mom loves him the same as ever. From the first day I ever met his parents, it was clear they thought he was the greatest thing ever. They cherished him to death. They weren’t too happy with his choices as far as being in a band. And it was hard with him being a father and all. There was a time when his parents were saying either go back to high school or get a job. And if he couldn’t do one of those, he had to stop living in their house.

  So Vince and I both joined the carpenters’ union together. I guess Vince’s mom knew someone in the neighborhood who could get us into the carpenters’ union. We joined as apprentice carpenters. Our first day on the job was on a freeway build. It was like an overpass where they built these giant forms for the concrete. The company I think was called Kasler.

  On our first day, we were carrying scaffolding that had dried concrete on it. You can picture us with our long hair, our hard hats, our T-shirts with the sleeves cut off. We thought we were the shit. And the jeans. So we’re still rocking it, but we’re getting our ass kicked all day in the heat. I think we lasted about three or four days and then you know we were just wiped out. One day, I’m picking Vince up for work at five in the morning, and we just looked at each other, like, Do you even want to do this? And the answer was, Fuck no.

  We pulled over—I think we went to a Winchell’s Donuts, and we sat around and talked about it for maybe ten minutes. And then we agreed. We were like, “Fuck it, we’re done. We were so fucking done with being carpenters.” ’Cause we were swinging hammers up over our heads, trying to hit these nails that were above us; our arms hurt so bad we kept missing. The supervisor on the job was telling us, “Next time bring a skillet so you can hit those fucking nails.” You know, and we were just getting pounded all day—and we were just like, “Forget it. We’re done.” We waited for his mom and dad to go to work and then we went back to Vince’s house; we’d watch Green Acres and Vince would make fried-egg sandwiches. And then we’d just sit around and, you know, maybe a couple hours or an hour before his mom would get home we’d clean up the house and split.
Then we’d put on our construction clothes and go out and get dirty and then walk back in later, like, “Oh boy, what a rough day. Whoo!”

  I think that lasted a couple of days. And then Vince’s mom figured it out. She goes, “I’m done with you.” I remember she said that. She’s like, “You’re done, Vincent.”

  By seventeen, I was out on my own. At one point, me and the bass player, Joe Marks, got jobs with the Kasler Corporation, which built freeway bridges. We’d get up at four in the morning and drive to the site. Building freeway bridges is a lot of work. A lot of work. I mean it was a tough, tough job. Climbing up there. Lugging all this heavy stuff into place. It’s form work, you know, getting things precisely into place to pour the concrete so they can build these huge bridges in the sky. I was the guy building those things. It was dangerous work, man. We worked there for maybe a couple months.

  One day me and Joe got up at four in the morning, just like usual. Just like usual we went and got donuts and coffee. As we headed to the site, something hit us, like, simultaneously. Suddenly we both just looked at each other. And like, simultaneously, we both said, “You know what? Fuck this job.” I don’t remember what had happened, but something had. It was over. We just made a U-turn and went home. I went back to bed. I remember, I actually went back to bed. It was sweet.

  Around that time I met this girl named Leah Graham. I don’t remember how I met her, but I have to say one thing: Throughout my whole life, women have always been there for me, even though I have not always been there for women. It is my blessing and my curse, I suppose. Women have always done things for me. They have loved me and put me first. And in return, I have disappointed them in their expectations. But those are their expectations. Not reality. It’s always been complicated. There are two sides to every story, to every couple, to every coupling. No one tells the truth about themselves, not totally.