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

by Vince Neil

  Vince would try to tell you that it was night and not day. Like, one time, he was on TV. I saw the interview; it was live. And Vince was on TV talking about all the porn stars he’d banged. Now, Vince and I had an agreement—he was not supposed to talk about banging porn stars and all the women he fucked. Because at one point I said to him, “Look, I have a career. I kinda want to keep it untainted.” This was after Tommy and Pamela had had their blowout and Tommy beat her up or whatever and I didn’t want to be another actress, another Playmate, who got her ass kicked by a member of Mötley Crüe. So I tried to keep Vince out of like dumb interviews, unless it was positive. But then he goes and does an interview about his buddy Sam Kinison, the comedian who died.

  Vince was a good friend of his. They were doing like the E! True Hollywood Story and Vince really cared about him. Vince thought it would be a good idea, great, go. So of course, E! being E!, they start asking him about when he fucked Savannah. I don’t remember what exactly he said; he just said a couple lines that I thought were really rude about the girl. I mean, she was dead by this time, so I was actually angry that I was watching this footage on TV where he’s saying rude things about a dead girl that I didn’t even know. But it reflected on me, you know? How can it not? Plus, we had an agreement we’re not talking about chicks that he fucked in the past, especially porn stars. I remember I told him, “All you have to say is, ‘I’m not answering that question.’ Look, I am in the business, too. I know what you can say to a reporter or a journalist. You can say, ‘No, I’m not answering that.’ ”

  He says, “I didn’t say that about Savannah. That wasn’t me.” And it was like that was the kind of shit he pulled on other people, but he couldn’t play it with me. I go, “Vince, I have it TiVoed; you’re wearing a shirt I bought you.”

  “It wasn’t me, Heidi. I swear.”

  And this is on the phone, so I go, “I’m staring at you right now, you’re on TiVo. I’m watching you on your own television set. You have on an orange and yellow Hawaiian shirt I bought you. I’m looking at you.”

  And he’s like, “I swear, that’s not me.”

  In April of 1995, I was once again entered into the Long Beach Grand Prix, an amateur celebrity race. There were a lot of big people entered in the race, including the actors Cameron Diaz, Anthony Edwards from the TV show ER, and Matt LeBlanc from Friends. Everybody raced in identically prepared Toyota Celica GT Liftbacks; it was a ten-lap race.

  I finished in second place; I was totally stoked. There was a big party that night at the hotel where most of the drivers were staying. As you can imagine, I partook of the festivities full-heartedly.

  All in all, this was really a good time for me. I was living in this big house on the beach in Malibu with Heidi, the kind of woman who likes to please her man in every way. I was seeing a lot of Skylar—Heidi was great with her; it really helped to have the mother figure around to do the things that needed to be done for a little girl. I could tease hair and spray it with Aqua Net and I could dye hair with packaged color, but that was about the extent of my Barbie doll skills. Now that I’d been in Malibu for a while, I’d gotten to know my neighbors. As I said earlier, I loved hanging out at this place called Moonshadows—it was walking distance from my house, like a quarter mile. You’d see actors like Fran Drescher, Gary Busey, and Kelsey Grammer all the time; it was our own little version of Cheers. It sometimes felt like I knew everybody in Malibu and everybody knew me. At least all the barflies. Every time I came in, everybody would call out, “Vince!” I was like Norm. Everybody knew me.

  Around this time, Warner put me together with the Dust Brothers, thinking we could make good music together. They’d just produced a Beastie Boys joint; they’d also worked with Beck and Hanson. They smoked a lot of pot. They reminded me of Cheech and Chong. We didn’t connect well. It was like apples and oranges in a way.

  Somehow we ended up with a pretty good album—that nobody understood and nobody bought. If you ask me, it was way ahead of its time. Mixing rock guitar with rap beats—people were horrified. It makes me laugh now. Eight years down the road you’d get Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit. Even Lil Wayne just released a rock/rap album. Mine was titled Carved in Stone. Warner didn’t know what to do with it. After some delay, it would be released. Fewer than one hundred thousand copies were sold.

  After the album tanked, Warner released me from my contract….

  But none of that was on my mind as I partied in Long Beach after my second-place finish at the celebrity Grand Prix. About an hour into the party, I was summoned to a phone call in the lobby. I thought at first it was Heidi. Remember, this was a time before cell phones. I thought she was calling to find out how I’d done in the race.

  But it turned out to be Sharise.

  “Skylar’s in the hospital,” she sobbed.

  Sharise thought Skylar had the flu. She told her mom she had a tummyache and a headache and that she felt like she was going to be sick to her stomach. Sharise took her to the doctor. Everybody figured it was her appendix.

  I got to the West Hills Hospital pretty fast, thinking things were serious but routine. Anytime a child goes to the hospital it is scary. I told myself everything would be okay. She’d have her appendix out. She’d be healthy again in a few weeks.

  But her appendix turned out to be healthy and intact. The problem was a cancerous tumor, the size of a softball, wrapped around her abdomen. Some of the tumor had ruptured, spreading cancer all through her body. It was about as bad as it could be.

  When they finally let us into the intensive-care unit I couldn’t believe my eyes. My four-year-old was lying there surrounded by machines, all these tubes sticking out of her arms. I felt absolutely powerless. I didn’t know what to do. We’d given her a birthday party the weekend before. It was unbelievable. By the next morning, Skylar was looking a lot better. She wanted to know why she wasn’t at home in her room and what all this stuff sticking out of her arms was for. We explained to her as best we could. There was no way a four-year-old was going to understand something like cancer, so we said she had something growing inside her stomach, like a flower, that wasn’t supposed to be there.

  They transferred her to Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles. By then, Heidi had returned from Florida and she met up with us at the hospital. It was awkward and a little uncomfortable, but everybody acted like adults. The CAT showed that Skylar had tumors on both kidneys. An operation would be needed to remove them immediately. When the doctors got in there, they discovered that the tumors were so large that removing them would have killed her immediately. There was nothing the doctors could do except sew her back up. They recommended radiation treatment to reduce the size of the malignancy. Maybe then, they said, the tumors could be removed successfully.

  Skylar’s hair fell out. She complained she looked like a boy. But I would tell her, “No, honey, you’re still beautiful.” And she was.

  The hospital became the center of my universe. My entire being had been reduced to three emotions: anxiety, depression, and anger. Every day, Sharise, myself, our parents, Heidi, some combination of people, would sit with Skylar.

  Finally, Skylar took a turn for the worse when the tumor on her right kidney began pressing against her lungs. By this time she was on a morphine drip; at least we knew she wasn’t suffering any physical pain. It was becoming harder and harder to remain upbeat for her, but when I was at the hospital I was determined to keep my baby smiling. I brought her favorite clothes and toys and surrounded her with them, and we’d watch her favorite Disney videos, sing along with the songs. Using connections, I got Warner Bros. to bring in Bugs Bunny and Sylvester. On Easter I went to the hospital dressed as the Easter Bunny—fuzzy costume, the whole nine. Skylar didn’t even recognize me until I started talking.

  Of course, she kept asking when she could go home. I got so used to that question. It killed me every time. “Soon, honey,” was my automatic response. But one morning she looked up at me with the most grown-up look in her eye
s. And she said, “Daddy, I’m never going home, am I?”

  After that, you can damn well believe that I made sure we took her home. She’d been in hospitals for nearly a month at this point. The deal was we’d take her home, but we would come back for more chemotherapy. I could see the joy on her face—unfortunately, she didn’t last long. Every day the pain just got worse; she couldn’t sleep because her stomach hurt so much. We couldn’t stand to see her suffering; we brought her back to the hospital.

  The doctors said they needed to perform another operation: The scar tissue from previous surgeries had formed on her intestines, twisting them and obstructing her bowels, the main source of her pain.

  After that, Skylar looked even worse—if that was possible. It was as if she herself had given up. Lord knows she was a fighter, but I guess her little body just couldn’t keep on taking it. The life had drained from her face; she was just skin and bones. Three days later they took her, this time to remove her kidney, they said. Once inside, they discovered that the cancer had spread—it was in her liver, intestines, and dorsal muscles.

  I was at home a few days later when the oncologist called to tell me they’d placed Skylar on a ventilator. He suggested one last operation. They warned us the procedure was extremely dangerous. However, they said if Skylar made it through, it was very likely she would survive.

  Those eight hours in the waiting room were the worst of hundreds. Sharise and her family, my family, Neil, Heidi… all of us sat huddled together anxiously waiting for word from the doctors.

  They managed to remove the tumor. It weighed an incredible six and a half pounds (about the same as Skylar’s birth weight). They’d also been forced to remove her right kidney, half her liver, some of her diaphragm, and a muscle in her back. How many organs could she lose and still be alive? Somehow she managed to survive.

  I know it sounds gross, but I wanted desperately to see the thing that had slowly been sucking the life out of my daughter. After some discussion, the doctors took me down to the pathology lab, where the monstrous tumor was spread out in a metal pan. I had never seen anything so ugly and vile in my life; I felt like I wanted to vomit.

  As you can imagine, at this time I wasn’t taking things very well. I was going straight from the hospital, where I’d put on a good face, to Moonshadows, where I’d drink myself to oblivion. At least I had a place to go where people knew me and cared about me. I got so drunk one night the cops drove me home. The hurt and pain was more than I could take. I felt like God was punishing me. I know I’ve done a lot of bad stuff in my life, but why take my little girl? What had she done to anyone?

  After this surgery, for a little while we thought things were looking up. Every day Skylar seemed to recover a little bit more. She was breathing on her own; the color had returned to her skin. She could again speak and smile. Every gesture, no matter how slight, felt like a gift. I spent the next few days cleaning up the house in readiness for her return.

  I was walking into the hospital carrying a giant stuffed panda when I was greeted by the team of surgeons. An infection had formed on Skylar’s left kidney, they said. They needed to operate again. They had already operated on my baby five times, and I was terrified that she wouldn’t be able to take any more.

  After this sixth major surgery was performed, she went into a fast decline. She was suffering from sepsis at this point. The infections were too great. Her remaining kidney, her lungs, and her liver began to fail and she slipped into a coma.

  I stayed at her bedside all that day before heading out to Moonshadows with Heidi. Sharise and her family kept vigil; I said I’d be back—I meant the next day, same as usual.

  Heidi and I had barely sat down at the table when the bartender said I had a call. It was Sharise telling me to get back to the hospital. Skylar’s vital signs were slipping fast.

  There was a lot of traffic on the way back from Malibu. Skylar was gone by the time I arrived. The date was August 15, 1995. I will never forget her.

  It kills me that I never had the chance to say good-bye to her, to tell her one more time how much I loved her. Wherever you are, sweetie, I hope you know that. I’m pretty sure you do.

  Sharise Ruddell Neil Vince’s Second Wife

  I had already left Vince; Skylar and I were living in a house I’d rented in Studio City. She had a stomachache at like two in the morning. I lay in bed with her, because I’d never seen such a bad stomachache. I didn’t want to bring her to the emergency room because I thought it was cramping and the flu. The flu had been going around at her preschool. They get sick all the time when they first go to school. And I had already brought her to the doctor two weeks before for the flu, so I thought, Oh no, here we go again; she’s got another strain of it. So in the morning I brought her in to the doctor.

  The doctor said he couldn’t hear the sounds he was supposed to be hearing. Later we find out it’s because there’s a tumor, but we didn’t know that yet. The doctor was like, “I want you to go across the street to the hospital, to the emergency room.” And I was like, “Why why why?” He was just, you know, “I want something to be checked out.” So we go to check her out and, oh, I’m going to cry….

  The doctor said she needed her appendix removed. I was freaking out because I was like, “Why?” I was thinking about how hard that was going to be for my little girl to have to be cut open. And so I went home to get some of our things, and and when I came back my brother was waiting for me. And he said, “It’s not her appendix. She has cancer.” It was just so shocking, because she was always the strongest and tallest kid in her class. Other than this flu the other week, she was a kid who never got sick. It was like, “What? Are you talking about the right little girl?”

  She was admitted to the hospital, they put her in surgery right away. I called Vince. He was at like a race, the Long Beach Grand Prix; I couldn’t get ahold of him for the longest time. Finally I did. He came to the hospital.

  They opened her up and oh my god, it was just like nightmare after nightmare after nightmare. They couldn’t get it all; it was actually a tumor that had ruptured; it was stage four already. It was all throughout her body. It was leaking everywhere. It was just like unbelievable.

  We never wanted her to be alone in the hospital during visiting hours. So I would take the mornings, he would take the afternoons, and then vice versa every single day. So he would sit there for—you were allowed to be with your child ten hours a day. Vince would take five hours and I would take five hours. And we would sit there with her mutually for a little while, during the overlap. It would be like the changing of the guard. It’s a really hard thing to, to just watch your child deteriorate. We managed as much grace as was humanly possible.

  After that it was pretty much over between us. We went our separate ways. One of the weirdest parts of our relationship I felt was that he never even mentioned to me in seven years the stuff about the accident with Razzle. He never spoke about it, and I didn’t really bring it up because I didn’t want to bring up bad memories or whatever. Vince doesn’t like to deal with emotions like that. He doesn’t like to vent verbally. He keeps everything at like a level five. You know? He doesn’t, he doesn’t ever feel things deeply, maybe. He doesn’t let himself. I mean, he would show emotions. He would cry; he would cry when he was in trouble and he wanted you to know he wanted to work stuff out. He showed love and affection, but he didn’t show sadness. He was comfortable with anger. You know: “Fuck that guy, fuck these people, fuck you.” But never sadness. Not a very deep guy.

  When I first got with Vince I thought it was going to be so great because I was in love and he was a great guy and I had this little fairy tale, and it just didn’t quite turn out that way. Life is an adventure. You never know where you’re going to be even ten years from now; you can’t even imagine.

  Even though there was a lot of, of heartache and trauma being with Vince, I had such an amazing ride. It was hard losing somebody who I was really, really in love with. I was really i
n love with him. I didn’t want to let go. He dictated the terms himself by cheating all the time. He always thought I was just with him for his money. The managers used to say stuff. And he would say it in a fight: “You’re just with me for my money; that’s what everybody thinks.” Of course it was never that. He couldn’t see he was wrecking something with someone who actually loved him. He’s done this probably over and over and over. I know Heidi really loved him. By the time she got him, he had no money and he was fat. And he was a total raging alcoholic all the time, and she paid for him and put up with him… and look, he threw away that relationship, too. It’s just like what a waste this guy’s life has been.

  At least I had some fun times. I had all the limos and the jets and the helicoptering into the gigs and… that was awesome. And while I was with Vince I was designing some of his gear and stuff to wear for photo shoots. I’d always kinda done that. Today I am a successful designer and businesswoman. I have three companies. Pink Polka Dot is the largest. I sell to over five hundred stores in the U.S. and abroad.

  It bothered me that in The Dirt Vince wrote about how our whole relationship we fought all the time. But really I would like it to be said that the reason that we fought was because his stories didn’t match up. I’d ask questions and his stories wouldn’t match up. It was eating me up inside. He was being unfaithful and that’s what we would fight about. If you’re being unfaithful, don’t you think you’re going to fight with your wife?