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

by Vince Neil

  Chapter 9

  BITCH IS BACK

  After Skylar died, we put her in the ground in a little pink coffin. My drinking got steadily worse. I added pills, any kind I could get my hands on.

  I knew I was on a path to self-destruction, but when the love of your life has just died, rational thinking doesn’t enter the equation. I blamed myself for Skylar’s death. I was her father. I was supposed to protect her. That’s the toughest part about being a parent. You’re there to protect your kids, but you really have no control. Life dishes out what it gives you; you do the best to deal. Skylar had the best care in the world, but we just couldn’t save her. Her medical bills, even with insurance, came to something like $2.5 million. Between that and the cost of my divorce, I was almost tapped.

  I couldn’t stay at Sea Manor; the memories were too painful. I fought with my neighbor; there was legal action back and forth; we’d had a fight after he told me that Skylar was better off dead so that she wouldn’t end up like me.

  I checked in and out of rehabs. At one point I spent an entire month in Palm Springs by myself—playing golf every day and drinking every night until I passed out. I must have been wasted; it was the longest in my life I’d ever been alone on a consistent basis…. Of course there was never any shortage of barflies, fans, and professionals to warm my bed. I was still deeply in love with Heidi at this time; of course that had nothing to do with the other girls. I was confused and fucked up. Women, alcohol, and golf were my tickets out of Realityville. One sunny morning, out on the golf course, I shot a 76, my best score ever. I was momentarily elated.

  And then the guilt hit me. What the fuck is wrong with you, man?

  My daughter was dead, and here I was hiding away from the world playing golf, drinking, and fucking to oblivion. I was never really one to be objective about myself, but right then and there it occurred to me that maybe I really did need a better way to work through my emotions. I might have had a relatively normal childhood in a loving middle-class family, but shit, I had sure been through a lot since. The death of Razzle, the death of Skylar, the broken marriages and children left behind… there was a lot of grief inside of me, though it didn’t really occur to me then. I was focused on Skylar—it would be years before I would realize the toll of a lifetime of strife. I went back to the hotel and called Heidi and my old drug counselor Bob Timmons. They flew me to yet another rehab.

  This time, rather than asking me bullshit questions about why I liked to get high and if my mother loved me, the counselors told me the treatment they were offering wasn’t so much for alcohol or pills—it was to deal with grief. They suggested I should write a letter to Skylar and then set it on fire. I sat there watching the smoke drift up into the air; I think that was the beginning of my being able to accept Skylar’s death, learning to accept a past I couldn’t change. They suggested that I begin to think about her life in a different light, and to thank God for the four years I had with her.

  When I called Heidi and my parents, they could sense from my voice that I was back in the land of the living. I had made it through to the other side. The first thing I did when I got out of rehab was visit Skylar’s grave for the first time. I’d missed her funeral. There was no way I could go at that point. I was in no condition, even I knew that. Now, instead of bursting into tears, I was able to smile as I talked with her and remembered all the things we used to laugh and joke about.

  While I was in rehab Sharise and I finalized our divorce. We hadn’t gotten along for years, but Skylar’s illness created a strong bond between me and Sharise during the last months of Skylar’s life—I was so glad we could at least give her that much. Once our baby was gone, there was nothing to tie us together anymore. There was nothing more to say, you know?

  On the other hand, Skylar’s illness and death brought me and Heidi closer together. It’s kind of funny that it takes a death of someone close to you, or some other tragedy, to make you appreciate what you have in life.

  Another—and more permanent—good thing to bloom from Skylar’s death was that I pledged to commit a greater percentage of myself to charity work, to help other children and parents who were going through what I’d been through. It started while Skylar was in the hospital. We had Disney bring in first-run movies such as The Lion King and Warner sent the characters in person, as I already said. As the hospital only had one TV for the whole ward, I bought TVs and video players for every room. It doesn’t seem like much, but little things can make a whole lot of difference when you’re a kid in the hospital. In 1997 I would begin hosting the Skylar Neil Memorial Golf Tournament—we’ve done it every year since; it’s become a huge deal, raising millions for charity. Together with “Skylar’s Song” on Carved in Stone, those things are my daughter’s legacy, my monuments to her memory.

  Skylar’s illness had also served as a distraction from work. I still had the lawsuit going against Mötley Crüe. During the whole business with Skylar’s illness, over the agonizing months that my little girl lay dying, I never once heard from any of my former bandmates. Not one of them bothered to call, write, send a fuckin’ flower, or do jack shit. Sure, we were at war, legally speaking, but as far as I was concerned, all our petty squabbles and hissy fits paled in comparison with what I was going through. Nikki had kids. Tommy had kids. When you have kids you know what it means for someone else’s kids to get sick. You can’t convince me they didn’t know what was happening—for years, those guys had been like family to me. Maybe it was because they didn’t know what to say, but they should have manned up and said something. I know that feeds into my whole resentment of the band as well.

  As history shows, the John Corabi–led version of Mötley Crüe went over like a lead balloon. Although the album Mötley Crüe hit gold status, sales were pitiful compared to the albums in our past—Crüe had a built-in audience because we’d earned it over the years, but you give your fans too much dog shit and they’re gonna all be gone, as far as I’m concerned. I hated the idea that Crüe was letting down the fans, but of course I was also secretly cheering. “Secretly” being the operative word, because if you asked me about the band directly I’m sure I would have feigned ignorance about any and all happenings at that time. The band blamed Elektra for not promoting the album. Then they turned on producer Bob Rock and blamed him for the album’s failure. It couldn’t have been the songs, because Nikki had written them, so it had to be the production, right? Next they decided that manager Doug Thaler was the problem. They fired him and brought in Allen Kovac. Kovac’s record was impressive enough—he’d resuscitated Duran Duran and breathed life into Meat Loaf’s dead career. But like I said, I was not really interested.

  The story goes that Nikki had signed on with Kovac only given the proviso that Kovac was committed to keeping John Corabi as the singer. But Kovac was and is a smart and slippery motherfucker. In his opinion, only one thing would restore Mötley Crüe back to their former glory… a reunion with Vince Neil.

  It was the spring of 1996. I was thirty-five years old. My career was going nowhere fast. There was new management at Warner Bros.; when new folks come in, all the old shit goes. If it’s not selling, they don’t want it—no matter what it is. And I’d gotten caught up in that. One minute I had all these friends at Warner Bros.; the next minute I had no friends at Warner Bros. And nobody gave two shits.

  Around this time, my manager, Burt Stein, got a call from Kovac saying he wanted to meet and talk about me maybe coming back to Mötley. I think I happened to be in New York City at the time. Maybe I was doing press for a solo tour, I can’t remember. I don’t think I made a special trip out to New York to see Kovac. I will say this: You know that whole story about me being in the lobby of a hotel with Burt and running into Kovac and how sneaky and clever he was and how they duped me into taking this meeting? That’s right, the famous story about how brilliant all the managers were for plotting to get us back together? And how they tricked me into a meeting? You know, that story?

  T
hat story is total bullshit.

  I knew about the meeting the whole time. I knew that the only reason Kovac took on Mötley was if I was going to be in the band, okay?

  So we went to Kovac’s hotel to meet him. He’d asked Burt to bring me and I’d agreed.

  We ordered room service and made small talk until the food arrived. Then Kovac wasted no time: “Would you consider getting back with Mötley?”

  Now lemme tell you. I didn’t trust this guy. And I had no interest in being anywhere near any member of Mötley Crüe. Ever again! I remember at that time I hated every guy in the band and every person who worked for them. Even though I’d been released by Warner, I didn’t care. I could tour. I could always get another solo record deal, I was sure. There was no amount of money that would make me get back together with Mötley. That’s where my head was at. I let it be known.

  Kovac remained calm while I went through my rant. Once I finished, he looked at me calmly. “Vince,” he said, “you can get as angry as you want with me, but you have to ask yourself, are you a star as a solo artist?”

  I answered him with a glare. He knew he had me. Okay, so I hadn’t exactly been filling arenas with the Vince Neil Band. One tour had to be closed down halfway through ’cause we were spending more than we were making. More recently I’d brawled with my bass player, Robbie Crane. After quitting the band he would tell the press, “The only thing I look down on him for is that he can’t handle his alcohol. I’m a drinker, too… but I don’t get violent and I don’t take my problems out on other people. He does and that’s not fair.”

  Kovac continued. “In the environment of four guys in a band called Mötley Crüe, you are a real star. The audience that comes to see you gets its money’s worth. Is the audience that comes to see the Vince Neil Band really getting what it pays for?”

  The same, he went on to say, was true of Mötley Crüe without me in the lineup. The paying public had voted resoundingly, as was evidenced by sales and critical reviews.

  Looking at the big picture, he concluded, there was only one rational thing to do. I had never given any thought to rejoining the band. All I wanted was my quarter share of the brand name and the money they owed me. I just wanted to get on with my life. But Kovac had talked some sense. A seed had been planted.

  Allen Kovac

  Vince’s Manager,

  CEO and Chairman of 10th Street Entertainment

  Yes, the story about the chance meeting is BS. I had Burt Stein’s commitment to deliver Vince Neil. That’s why I threw the other guy (John Corabi) out. I felt Vince Neil was Mötley Crüe. I felt the other guy was like some placeholder that didn’t hold the place well. So for anybody to say I just stumbled into a hotel or they just stumbled into a hotel is kind of off the mark. The only reason I knew Vince was at the hotel, or that I could guarantee his participation in the band, would’ve had to come from one of his representatives. It was never a chance meeting. It was premeditated with me and Burt Stein.

  As I saw it, things at that point were a little two-sided. Because here you have Vince’s manager, Stein, telling Vince, “You don’t need to be in Mötley Crüe; you can make it on your own.” Meanwhile the same person is telling me, “Look, just drop by, give him your presentation, give him your take, and we can make this happen.” ’Cause I called Stein up and I told him how silly it was that he was making no money with Vince Neil. I told him the only way Vince was going to make any real income was to join Mötley Crüe. I told him, “I’m going to get the guys to New York to meet with Doug Morris and Sylvia Rhone at Warner. How can I meet with Vince and you and get this done?” And he laid it out for me.

  I was honest with the band. I said, “Look, I’m willing to do what you guys want. I work for you. But this is my opinion.” At first they wanted to make a go of it with Corabi; as I saw more and more issues arising I’d of course point them out to the band. And finally they started to understand the same thing I understood. The reason I had that meeting with Vince was because they had turned around.

  They finally saw what I saw, which was: Yes, Corabi’s a really good guitar player; yes, he can sing; but he’s not the frontman that Vince Neil is; he’s not a frontman like David Lee Roth. And if they needed someone like David Lee Roth, then why not go get the real guy, the original guy, the guy we knew who worked, at least musically.

  As I remember the meeting, I laid out to Vince why I thought it was silly for him to go on solo when he and the band together could make him 500 percent more than he was making on his own. At the time I think I was managing the Cranberries, Duran Duran, Mellencamp, and Luther and Meat Loaf, so I was managing a lot of artists, and Mötley Crüe wasn’t a big part of my client base. They were a part of it, but not a big part. And Vince was playing small venues and fairgrounds or whatnot. I’m sure Vince understood this. Especially in light of who was representing him.

  I tried to get across to Vince that whatever his perception of why he wasn’t in the band didn’t matter. That was baggage he had to pack away. He had to decide whether or not he wanted to be involved in an asset that he’d built. It was a straight business conversation; I told him, “I have nothing to do with the past; this is a clean slate.” The way I positioned it was, “You’d be crazy not to have a guy like me sit down and work with you and your manager.” So Burt and I negotiated a deal. I had to pay him a point or so of course. But, you know, it was basically a business discussion. A discussion about moving forward and forgetting about the past. It was irrelevant to me why they broke up. I got Vince past that and got him to realize that I wasn’t a part of whatever had happened in the past. I explained that I could be a part of bringing him back into the band. Eventually he started believing that was a good idea.

  Look, I’m not Vince’s friend, you know? I told Vince during that first meeting, I told him, “I think I’ve been to Mick Mars’s house in fifteen years twice. I’ve been to Tommy’s house twice, and I’ve been to Nikki’s house twice. None of them have ever been at my house. So I’m not their friend. That’s the way it should be.” I’m not their friend. I’m the person who is helping to guide their career. I’m not really involved with the day-to-day activities—I’m involved on the ten-thousand-foot level, and then I have a marketing company that has different departments—there are publicity people who deal with publicity, and touring people who deal with touring; you know, a lot of different people have dealt with Vince and the band. I deal with the big picture. Where people are going. What they’re trying to accomplish. What we think we can help them accomplish.

  Lately, I’ve been saying to Vince, “Look. All artists have a hundred ideas, but you gotta concentrate on the first three and get them done before you try to do number ninety-nine.” The problem for Vince is that in the past, he wasn’t willing to let anyone manage that. So the way I manage that is I’ve got a big company. I’m focusing on the three things that I think are the most important for Vince Neil. And he signed off on it. He has the book, the record, and the tequila and the tattoo shops. The tequila has distribution in thirty-three states. He also has Feelgoods in Florida and Vegas; that feeds off everything else of course. And the tattoo shop right now is in Vegas in two locations. If I can help him focus in on the priorities, I think we can do all right by him.

  In some ways you can see the upside already beginning to show. Like he just made the video for the title song on the album, he’s done the song, he stayed within budget. You gotta keep your record within a budget because the record’s just really gasoline—the tour and the merch and the tequila and the book are how you’re going to make money. You know records aren’t selling today. But you have to have new stuff. Getting him to do that and keeping him in line hasn’t been easy. But you know, lately it has been a lot easier. This record isn’t being made for a million dollars or half a million dollars, or even a quarter-million dollars. Here we have a guy adhering to a budget and working with the people that we’re putting around him. That’s an extremely good sign in terms of what Vince’s fu
ture will look like.

  My hope is that Vince turns the corner in this real-time situation. I’ve been able to do it for a lot of artists; I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it for him. I’m gonna try. But a big part of the equation, a big part of being able to get this done, is him deciding that he’s willing to do things. Sometimes he’s sort of one foot in, one foot out. You’re not exactly sure what he’s thinking, you know? I can only hope he wants the best for himself and his family.

  And that’s really your story. Being able to sort of reveal to him in real time the things he needs to do. Being able to say, “Hey, Vince, what are you going to do? Are you going to slip down the slippery slope, or are you going to finally climb the mountain?”

  Because he can, I’m telling you. He has a lot of opportunity; he’s gotta focus on the few things that are going to succeed and not the hundred things that all his friends are throwing at him all the time. And then he’s gotta surround himself with professionals and be willing to take guidance and hear the word “no.”

  And then?

  You wait and see.

  One thing you learn in my business—never be surprised by anything.

  My capitulation didn’t occur overnight; a meeting was eventually set up with the rest of the guys at the Continental Hyatt Hotel. Things were far from harmonious—Nikki showed up wearing a T-shirt with the word “John” written on it, in memory of his beloved Corabi. What a joke. A table full of rock stars and their high-priced lawyers. It took them a couple of hours, but by the end I gotta give the shysters credit for making us see the bottom line: the name-calling, suing, and countersuing were costing us all a fortune. My legal bills alone added up something like $350,000; they would at least double if I continued with the lawsuit. By the end of the meeting, it was agreed. There was only one rational plan of action.