Tales Of A RATT (18 page)

Vince and Stephen comparing notes, 1984.

Warren and Kathy and Me having some late night tea in my room in Tokyo, 1985.

Scorpions headlined this show. RATT was special guest. Opening bands were Metallica, Inva Malmsteen, and WNT.

Cocaine (or KRELL, as we affectionately called it) and I go way back. While I might have gotten close a time or two, I was never addicted. I drank like a fish, and A.A. probably had me on their radar, but that's bullshit. When I wanted to quit hard liquor, I did. And, weed is just an old friend; weed, cinnamon toast and Black Sabbath.

We used to love to snort on tour. Again, we never saw a problem with it, unless you completely abused it and stayed up all night with it. At times we had done that, of course, which sucked, but for the most part, it was just a recreational thing.

This one time, in 1985 on the Bon Jovi tour, we were playing a show up in Montana. There's no krell in Montana. None. Zero. The only snow in Montana is the kind the dog pisses in.

Somehow Hugh Horn, my drum tech, had acquired some blow.

We were playing the show, and I feel a jab in my leg. It's Hugh, down in my dollhouse with a drumstick in his hand. He's jamming me in the leg, trying to get my attention.

Where I sat on those tours was pretty high up in the production. We all had our little places behind our amps, which we called our dollhouses. Most of them were pretty tight, but mine was fucking huge. It was big enough that I had a full bar in there, with posters and things all over the wall. I used to invite the opening bands back there to drink and check out the show.

Any given moment, it could be Bret Michaels, or someone from Kix or Queensryche, just hanging out back there and enjoying the show. It was an open door. There was so much booze on our rider, and besides, I thought it was really cool that I had a full bar right behind my drum kit. So did the other bands, when you get right down to it.

Anyway, I look down, and Hugh is jamming my leg. He's holding a small, folded paper, and he's shaking it back and forth. He's got about a gram of blow inside it. When they sell coke, they'll sometimes fold it up in little paper pouches, and give it a seal. That's what Hugh was waving at me.

Needless to say, I was pretty excited!

It was the last song, which meant we would take a quick break and then jump back on stage for an encore. I immediately hopped down into my dollhouse.

I said, "Give me a bump!

Hugh goes, "No man, just hold on for one more song.”

I'm like, "No, fucker! Give me a bump! Now! Hurry up!” I was jonesing. What can I say?

He's like, "Alright. Wait.” He's got his flashlight, and he opens up the little pouch. He rolls up a $20 bill and passes it to me.

I'm like, "Don't bother cutting out a line, I'll just do a snort from the pouch.”

I take the bill and put it to my nose, but as I lean over the pouch to do my snort, a huge river of sweat runs from off of my head, down my nose and plops down dead center of the gram of coke! It immediately soaked all the powder in the pouch.

"NOOOO!!!”

Anyone who knows what happens to krell when it gets wet, you know what I'm talking about. It's done. No one will be snorting any coke that night.

I pass the pouch back to Hugh, and go, "Oh, my God! Fix it!” Then I jump back up behind my kit to play the encore. He's back there in the dollhouse with a fucking blowdryer trying to fix the greatest disaster in Montana history…at least in Blotz-World.

The show ended, and that shit looked like a yellowish cottage cheese sitting in the bottom of the pouch.

That shit sucked.

Drugs weren't big players in RATT. Not until we realized what Robbin was going through, but by then, RATT was falling apart for a multitude of other reasons. I can't place our abuse of Krell or weed, or even alcohol as the primary reason for our initial breakup in 1992.

I think, with respects to social position within the band, I was the voice of reason and responsibility. Robbin was like that too. He was just a really sweet guy. Really nice. But, Robbin would call it like it was. I tend to be a lot like that, as well. Stephen has always been unrealistic and difficult. Warren, while not as bad as Stephen, was the same. Warren is a purist; an artist. I'm a businessman. The two tend to conflict. Juan was only interested in Juan. He could give a shit about the rest of us. Juan was an island unto himself.

Robbin was the kind of guy who would bust out after a show with truth and honesty.

"God, we fucking sucked ass tonight. That sounded like shit!”

Stephen was the total opposite. He didn't want to hear anything about it. Didn't want to talk about it. It's like, if he didn't acknowledge it, then it never really happened.

Having Bon Jovi out with us in 1985 was going to be a little bit of a payback. We had started the 1984 tour with those guys at a club in Portland, Oregon called Starry Nights. They were real shitty to us that night, and then the next night when we played up in Seattle at the Paramount Theater, they were even worse. They had all their gear shoved way up, so we had virtually no stage room.

In Seattle, we found out that we got the Ozzy tour. Naturally, we completely bailed from the Bon Jovi thing and immediately flew down to San Diego to go out with the Prince of Darkness on tour!

When Bon Jovi came out with us in 1985, it was time for a little payback, so we thought. Instead, an oddity of the rock world happened, and we became quick friends. Most of us were, anyway.

Stephen always fucked with the opening acts. He went out of his way to make sure everyone knew it was HIS stage, and no one could put their feet on HIS monitors, etc.

Of course, standard procedure is that no one goes on the headliner's production anyway, but, Jon kept climbing up on our shit. We kept having to pull things from them, things from their dressing room rider, stuff like that. It made for some friction, but almost all of it was between Jon and Stephen, which made for some entertaining road drama.

Stephen told me a story about that tour.

On Christmas, just before the end of the tour, we were in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Stephen had the balls to walk into Bon Jovi's dressing room and say, "Merry Christmas.” Jon looks at him and goes, "You're a fucking hypocrite! Fuck off!” Stephen was really stunned.

They finished the tour out, which ended on New Year's Eve of 1985 in San Diego, and then they went on to superstardom, absolute superstardom. That tour was greatly received. It was a huge sell-out and a lot of fun.

Jon really resented Stephen, after that tour. But, surprisingly, when RATT split up, and Stephen was playing in Arcade, they opened ten shows for Bon Jovi. I never understood that. Someone must have owed someone else a favor. Either that, or Jon has a very selective memory.

We used to hang out a lot and play poker on that tour. Usually, it would be me, Richie Sambora, Alec John Such, and sometimes Tico Torres, but that was rare. We'd play cards until all hours, you know?

There was one game that seemed to last forever.

We were up north, somewhere around the Dakotas or something. The game was in my room, and started as poker, then went to blackjack, and finally wound up as Acey Deucy (also called Hi Low).

With Acey Deucy, you bet between the cards. Say you lay one card to the right, and it's a 9 of diamonds, then you lay another card to the left, and it's a king of spades. You then can bet on whether the next card will fall between the two cards. So, when you start the game, everyone puts ten bucks in the pot. On each turn of the card, you can bet anything up to and including whatever is in the pot. If you turn over a card that's between the two showing, you pull from the pot, but if it isn't, you lose your bet.

So, this game can quickly get out of control. At one point, with our Dakotas game, the pot was over $7000. I remember Alec kept trying to bet the pot when it was around $5000.

I'm like, "Dude, show me where you have the ability to pay ten grand if you lose, and you can bet the pot.” Reason being, if Alec had lost after betting the pot, he had to pay double! He just keeps going, "I bet the pot! I bet the pot!” Alec was a quirky, Jersey kind of guy. He had this tiny, little derringer pistol he would leave out on the table, and thought he was really cool, smoking cigars and weird shit like that. I thought it was kind of geeky.

Jon had been in the game earlier, but he had tapped his cashflow pretty quick and didn't want to buy in for any more chips.

Our tour manager’s banging on our door at five o'clock in the morning going, "We have GOT to go! We got a five hour drive ahead of us.” So, we had to write everything down, and keep track of it so we could continue the game later.

It took us about four days to finish that game! I don't really remember who won it all. I think Richie got a big chunk of it, Alec took a big chunk, I don't remember. I just know that I didn't win it.

That's okay, though, because I was making all the money on the tour. Those guys were only getting something like $500 a week salary.

I remember that Richie Sambora and I were in my room one night drinking. We were starving, so I'm thinking, "Let's go down to our bus, we've got pizza down there.” So, we scurry down to the bus, and all the pizza is gone. I did find a box in a bunk that had some two-day-old pizza in it. Hard as tree bark, but we tried to heat it up and eat it, anyway. It just wasn't very appetizing.

We kept talking about business, mostly merchandise. He asked how much we were getting, and I told him. He was blown away! I asked, "What about you guys? What do you do?” He's like, "Fuck if I know. I don't get any of that.”

I was stunned. Are you kidding me?

I go, "You don't get anything on merchandise? Wow, dude. You wrote the songs with Jon, from the very beginning.” We talked about it until he was pretty worked up.

He was worked up enough to go in and insisted on a piece of it, I guess, because he came up to me later and said, "Thanks for sticking up for me that night, because I went in and recut my deal.” Now, he's got something like $80 million in the bank? So, hey, Richie! Send a brother a little love, will ya?"

I had my rituals on the Invasion tour, as most of us did. I used to go out every night and watch the opening bands, especially if I really liked their music. I'd go out there and have a couple of beers, watch Bon Jovi, and hang out at the soundboard.

We had a Veri-Lite system on that tour, and our lighting guy was a big golfer. He knew I was too, and he had a golf game in the computer. We weren't using the Veri-Lite system during their set, so I'd be hanging at the board, playing on the golf game during Bon Jovi's show. People would be looking at me like, "What the hell? Is Blotz mixing lights for those guys? What's that all about?” I'd be hunched over the board with a mouse in my hand, looking all serious.

Pretty funny.

By and large, that was a great, fun tour. It started in April, and ended New Year's Eve. They were with us the whole seven months. We kept in touch with one another for years afterward. I was in touch with Jon up through 1992. Sadly, when grunge hit, everybody went their own way.

Moon Zappa came out with Dweezil while we were on tour in 1985, and we were running with us for a while. They were friends, and we just hung out on the bus.

Moon was always wanting to play games, and have fun. She had this child-like quality to her. This sort of eternal youthfulness that I couldn't get an understanding of initially, but it was cute and charming. The guys all really enjoyed them hanging out. At the time, she must have been 21 or 22.

One night, we were all partying, and things got a little out of hand with Moon and I. We had a little overnight tryst.

It was at this point that I discovered the source of her kid-like nature. Moon Zappa, daughter of Frank Zappa, born and raised in a musical family, and around over-sexed rockers her entire life, was a virgin. Not only was she a virgin, but after that first night, she was pregnant.