Tales Of A RATT (34 page)

In 1994, Robbin was asked to do an appearance on the Geraldo Show. It was an episode on drug addiction. While he was gone, these asshole gutter junkies cleaned him out!

They took all his platinum records, all his guitars, anything of value. He got back and this beautiful house of his was ransacked. There was trash everywhere, holes kicked in the walls, everything. It was something that Robbin, victim of his vices though he was, did not deserve.

It broke my heart when I heard about it.

He had a collection of guitars hanging on his walls that was worth a small fortune. There must have been fifty or more vintage guitars, all collector items and one of a kind, just lining both sides of the wall as you walk down the hall. They were worth ten thousand, twelve thousand, twenty thousand dollars each. It was sickening, and it drives me crazy every time I think about it. All that stuff was gone.

It wasn't long after that when Robbin finally crashed and disappeared to El Paso, Texas. I heard he was playing in a bar band, doing country music and shit. King Crosby, the Viking of Heavy Metal playing gigs in a country bar.

The night I found out that Robbin Crosby had AIDS, I was in a club the San Fernando Valley called FM Station. Jaime St. James, the lead singer of Black and Blue, tapped me on the shoulder and was talking into my ear, over whatever band was playing. He goes, "Sorry to hear about Robbin, dude!”

I thought I misheard him. "What are you talking about?”

"Robbin! You know. What's going on with his health!” Mind you that the music is cranking, so I was really struggling to understand what he was saying.

Finally, I'm like, "Come over here.” I motioned him to follow me to a place where we might actually be able to talk.

"Now, what are you saying?” He goes, "Well, I heard that King's got HIV.” I knew Robbin had some health issues, but holy fuck!

I go, "Where did you hear that?” Jaime looks at me, sort of confused, and goes, "I heard it from his roommate.”

I got home that night and called Juan Croucier. "Juan, have you talked to King?”

He's kind of tentative, and goes, "Yeah.”

"Have you heard about this rumor that he…”

Juan interrupts me. "It's true.”

Fucking, no way. Juan filled me in on what Robbin told him. King had been feeling sick with the flu, and he just couldn't get past it. He went in to the doctor. They couldn't figure out what exactly was wrong with him, and finally they administered an AIDS test. It came back positive for HIV.

That was shocking.

When we first started talking about getting the band back together in 1996, none of us knew too much about King's situation, you know? We didn't have a lot of contact with him after he was let go in Japan, and what little time we did communicate with him, he didn't give a lot of details.

We knew about the HIV thing. But, we also knew that there had been advances made in the treatment for HIV. We were hoping for the best.

But, we got the worst.

No one knew that his condition was as bad as it was. His pancreas was shutting down on him, which just slaughtered his metabolism. He was swelling up like a balloon.

Robbin was a huge guy to begin with. Six foot five and about 230 in his prime, Robbin Crosby was a big motherfucker! But with his health in decline, he wasn't physically able to tour anymore. Honestly, it was a question if he could play the guitar again. I guess, at this time, he was up around 300 pounds or more, and his hands looked like baseball gloves. He was really puffy and swollen.

The really strange thing with Robbin's case was when you think of someone dying of AIDS, you think of someone who is really skinny and withdrawn, like they had the life sucked out of them.

Robbin was the complete opposite. He gained MASSIVE amounts of weight. It was hard to recognize him. There was no way he could pull off the work. His health and appearance were just not conducive to pulling off this reunion.

It absolutely sucked, because he really wanted to do it. It just wasn't possible.

God rest his soul, that guy. I love him. He knew I loved him, and I wish that whole thing had been different; you have no idea how badly.

But, wanting to do something and having the ability to do it are two very different things. Sometimes the game passes you by.

“The King” in Japan 1985. I miss you brother.

In the end, we told Warren that we were getting Nuno Bettencourt from Extreme to handle the guitar work. We hadn't talked with Nuno about it, mind you, but that's what we told Warren.

We knew that Warren and Nuno had a friendly rivalry thing with each other. They had lots of respect for one another, but it was a competitive, almost jealousy laden friendship. I never really knew the details, but we kind of used it to our advantage. It was manipulative, true, but when we told Warren that, he was suddenly interested it starting up again.

So, we put RATT N Roll back into business once again in January of 1997.

'97 and 1998 were odd years. We had been out of it for a while, and we had distanced ourselves from each other, so it was almost like starting anew.

Almost.

In 1997, when we were getting back together, people wondered why Juan wasn't getting back into the fold. I BEGGED Juan, fucking begged him to get on board with this. I tried to reach him through his brothers, through his friends and family, nothing worked.

Finally, I got him on the phone and said, "Look, man. We're getting this band together. You came out to that first meeting several months ago, and we're ready to roll.”

He goes, "I don't know that I'm ready to do that.”

I found that really confusing, since from a musical standpoint, Juan had been doing dick. It wasn't like he was blowing up the music scene. None of us were at that point. So, I go, "I don't know why that is, bro, but we're ready to rock.”

He gets pretty raw about the whole thing. "Look, man, there's been a whole lot of shit happen to me because of Stephen Pearcy. I'm not ready to open that part of my life again.”

"Yeah, but WE are, Juan. If you want to do this, which is the smart thing to do, because we're going to fire up the machine and go make some money, it's time to work, man. It's time to RATT and Roll again.” I couldn't understand why he wasn't on board.

He says, "Look, Blotz. You and me own the name. As far as I'm concerned, unless I'm a part of the thing, no one is going out and doing anything with that band.”

That stone cold pissed me off. I couldn't believe the balls of this guy. He's telling me that the band I BROUGHT him into, AFTER we were already signed; the band HE almost fucked off because of his love affair with Dokken; he was going to keep the rest of us from going out and earning a living? I was so mad.

I wanted to tell him, "When you're in that Palos Verdes house of yours, with the killer city view and the recording studio, thank Blotz for bringing you into this band, bro. Because you could be a pain in the ass from day number one!”

I didn't say that, of course. Juan is one of my brothers-in-arms, and I still wanted him to get back into the band. However, Juan has extremely thin skin. Fucking rice paper thin.

Back when he was playing us against Dokken, I went to his house because he wouldn't answer any of my calls. He lived in the same neighborhood as me, so I went to his place and said "Listen, are you in this band, or not?”

He kicked me out of his house! He came to his senses a couple of weeks afterwards, of course.

He tells me, "Maybe in two or three years…”

"Two or three years?!? Juan, the band is getting together. We're going to record and tour again. Either get on board or get out of the way.”

I tried everything, for weeks, to get him to come around. He shot his own family down when they tried to get involved.

If Juan had told me that he didn't want to do it, but we could buy his share of the name and move on, that would be different. We would have worked out a price and cut our ties. But he didn't. He was a completely inordinate about it. He went and got a lawyer, and tried to sue us.

It cost us about $35,000 to defend the lawsuit. It never went to court. It never settled. It just sort of went away.

Juan didn't have the money to do it, and his lawyer was completely outclassed by our team of guys. The guy showed up to the first depositions dressed in a tweed suit, circa 1961, and was shot down in a blaze of glory. It was sad. He looked like he should be doing law out of the trunk of his car, or something.

We used the same firm that represented me during my divorce in 1998. It's this huge firm, with several departments, which sent in a full school of slick, pressed, and razor sharp sharks, and they could smell blood in the water.

To this day, Juan insists we stole the name from him. I firmly and morally believe that we did not. Our stance was this: When Stephen quit the band; he wrote a letter to our former manager, Alan Kovaks that wasn't written in a fashion that the bylaws of our partnership agreement would legally consider quitting. The letter stated, "I am no longer working with RATT, and you do not represent my solo interests.” Then he signed it.

He never said, one way or the other, if he was completely out of the band, or if he was simply taking a hiatus.

When Warren quit, he did it through his lawyer. It was very concise and followed the letter of the bylaws, making it clear that he was no longer an owner of the RATT name.

Juan and I were left with the position of having the ownership of the RATT name and label. We were going to take legal action against anyone who tried to use it, even Stephen, despite the fact that his letter was sketchy at best, and it was going to be difficult to determine how a court would view that thing.

All the while when we were broke up, Juan kept sending Stephen letters from his lawyer stating all of this, and he kept trying to get me on board with it.

I wasn't going to spend a nickel. Unless I saw that Stephen was out there touring as RATT, don't count on me to contribute money to fire off warning shots at him.

But, Juan kept doing it on his own.

When it was time to get back together, and Juan decided to fight it "all the way to the Supreme Court" if he had to, it was my stance that Stephen had perpetuated RATT business the whole time we were broke up. He had taken care of clerical things dealing with trademarks issues and publishing and various other things that needed tending to.

I always felt that the time would come when this band would get back together. I wasn't going to go out and ruffle all the feathers. If it was going to happen, it had to be a smooth transition, so yeah, Stephen had quit, but when he wanted back in, he was in the band.

We used that as our stance. There were two owners other than Juan himself. We weren't going to allow Juan to come between the rest of us doing business and making a living.

Enter our Ritalin poster child, Robbie Crane!

Rudy Sarzo really wanted to work with us, and I really wanted him to do it. He was calling my phone daily asking about the gig. At the time, he had just come out of Quiet Riot. I was into the idea, but Warren wouldn't agree to it. He felt that Rudy wasn't a very good player, and had dealt with him during his Whitesnake run.

I'd never played with Rudy, but my good buddy, Tommy Aldridge had, and spoke highly of him. That's good enough for me.

Stephen brought in Robbie, and here it is, eleven years later. I'm glad the guy is here, even though he's so fucking hyperactive, I'm bringing a tranquilizer gun on the next tour, I swear to God.

Stephen recommended Robbie Crane, who had played in Vince Neil's band, and then played with Stephen in a band called Itronic.

Robbie was this young Mexican kid who was totally funny and fun to be around. Although, he was two hours late to the first day! I was ready to fire him right then and there before we met him. I was so sick of the years dealing with Juan's incessant tardiness. Juan's punctuality was painful. I wasn't going to deal with it again.

But, it was an honest mistake.

Stephen told him the wrong studio, so he didn't know where to go. When he finally got there, it was great. Robbie's been in the band ever since then. In fact, he has been in the band LONGER that Juan was. Now Juan was a writer, and Robbie doesn't contribute any songs, but he's really easy to work with. Really easy to get along with.

RATT was back!

The first thing we wanted to do was get some material out there that we could push. What we planned on doing was taking a bunch of songs we had in the vault, that were written and recorded for other records, put a record out when we toured and see what the climate was like.

That's what "Collage" was.

We basically put a bunch of songs that weren't good enough to make our platinum albums into a mismatched mash of a record. It was rehashed.

While I didn't really like the record, itself, it was one of the best things we could have done. We remixed it, recorded three new songs, and spent a total of ten thousand dollars on that record.

It was a collection of stuff that sounded like a polished demo, but we proved two things with "Collage.”