Authors: Bobby Blotzer
That sort of stuff freaks me out, now.
That's how 2003 started for me.
The court case with Stephen was finally over with, and thank God for it. It was such an emotional and financial drain, that I just wanted to get back out on the road and build up the coffers again.
Warren didn't quite see it that way.
Maybe he was just too exhausted by what we had been through. Maybe he just needed a break. Maybe, even, he wasn't excited about making music anymore. For whatever reason, Warren simply didn't want to work.
We did a few club dates, but it wasn't much to exist on, and I was just sitting there with my newly acquired real estate skills.
So, what the hell?
I started up a business as a closing agent for mortgage companies.
I went to the classes, and got a notary license, then developed accounts with different title companies and banks. They would send me out when people wanted to re-finance or do a line of credit on their house. I'd work up all the closing paperwork, then go over and sit down with the customer, showing them all the details of the agreement. They'd sign it, I'd notarize it, stamp it and send it on its way.
Easy money, baby.
After about eight or nine months, I was pulling in around fifteen hundred to two thousand a week doing this, depending on how much I wanted to work. It was pretty exciting, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. It was a principle source of income all the way through 2005.
Again, it all started because so many fly out dates were being turned down by Warren.
At the time, we were still slugging it out in clubs trying to make a living. It was a pretty uneventful couple of years, other than the fact I did a solo record called "Twenty Four Seven.”
My personal life was going pretty well. Misty and I were in love. My mortgage closing business was doing fantastic, and I bought a house.
Misty and I moved out of Encino and into a new house in Canyon Country.
Thanks to some of what I'd learned about real estate, I was able to get in for no down payment. Not only did I get in without a down payment, but I got another ten grand back, because I made the real estate agents add another point to the backend. My cut of the deal was a third.
That beats the hell out of the 13% I was paying back in the 80s on my mortgage rate. I was paying 7% on the Canyon Country house.
I was really proud of that place. It wasn't a big house, but it sat on a half acre, which in California is huge! Canyon Country was up near Valencia, just north of Los Angeles. There's a nice golf course out there, and Misty and I were very happy to have a home instead of an apartment.
So, to a degree I was back in the game. Won the lawsuit. Came off a good tour.
I was back!
Of course, I wasn't getting a lot of joy for my musical needs. We just weren't working as RATT very often, and as I've said, I have to have a creative outlet. Most creative people are like that. We don't function at 100% without doing that "thing" we do. In my case, it's making music.
I decided that if Warren was burnt out, I'd do a solo record. That should be a lot of fun. It was, but it was a disaster as well.
"Twenty Four Seven" was ambitious, enjoyable, and fulfilling, but it was also a train-wreck from a business prospective. It serves as a prime "you can't trust anyone" lesson for musicians.
The record was comprised of music that I had co-written with Jack Russell (before the Rhode Island tragedy), Ralph Sanes from Metal Skool, and John Corabi. I produced the record, and was playing all the instruments, Aldo Nova-style. John Corabi came in and did the vocals on it.
And, I was completely fucked over with that record deal.
I had signed with a cheesy little label called Metal Mayhem. There was this 6'8" guy named Ryan who owned it. The guy started out as an alright cat, but quickly degenerated into a creep, freak of a guy who ripped me off, and kicked me out of my own recording session!
It was incredible.
I was recording with this guy name Mike Viscera, who was a singer in Yngwie Malmsteen's band. We were doing all of the recording for the record at his house in his studio. It took two weeks, and I was staying in his guest room.
The record was coming along, doing fine, except he kept going off and doing his home thing, so I kept nailing him down to do work.
"Mike, look, from 10 in the morning to 7 at night, this is what we do.”
Of course, he wouldn't listen. He would leave, and then I would do all the overdubs with Corabi on the vocals. He didn't know what to sing, so I was having to show him what to sing vocally, which was turning out really well.
My mistake was a small one, but it blew out of proportion in short order. I left my liner notes sitting on the table. Liner notes being the "thank you’s" and special thanks and credits for the album.
Mike saw it. We had all the artwork done and finished out, so it was almost press ready. Mike sits down and is reading them. It said "Produced by Bobby Blotzer".
This Mike Viscera character freaked out!
He's like "What?? I fucking produced this album!”
I go, "Wait a minute, dude. You produced this? What did you produce?? You engineered it. I'm not the engineer. Even though while you were upstairs having dinner, I was punching in the overdubs. But, I'm not going to ask for engineering credit. What did you produce?”
He's flailing about, stuttering and fumbling for what to say. "When you fucking needed drums and amps, I'm the one who went out and got them for you!”
You gotta be kidding me. "That's producing? Look, you didn't arrange one thing. Not one. I came up with the vocal parts and harmonies. You know what? You're not getting producer credit.”
Finally, he just throws his hands up and goes, "You know what? Get the fuck out of my house!”
I couldn't believe this clown. "Are you serious? Alright, man.”
So, I packed my shit and Ryan came and picked me up. I was good with Ryan, until all this shit happened. He was just a little goonish, you know? He took me to his house, and was just tripping out that all this had happened.
I told Ryan, "Those are my masters in there. That's my music, my artwork. I want those masters.”
We were getting ready to mix. I mean, it was just started. And, now Mike wouldn't let me in to mix, and he was saying he wouldn't give me the tapes. So, we're driving back to the house, and Ryan is talking to this ass-clown on the phone.
Things chilled out that night.
The next day, we were trying to figure out what to do. I said, "Give me the disks, and I'm taking them back to California and mix them.”
Mike won't do it. Ryan comes on like, "He won't give them up, man".
I hung up the phone and called Mike. "Dude, I'm giving you one chance to give me my masters, then I'm calling the cops and we're coming up there.”
I left that on the answering machine. Forty-five minutes later, I'm on the computer in Ryan's home office, and I hear the door slam open *BLAM!*. It slams open, and I hear this, "You motherfucker!” I hear this loud yelling, and I'm going, "What the hell?”
I go walking out of the room where the computer's at, and lumbering down the hall is this 6'8" freak, Ryan, and he's flipping out. "Get your shit, get the fuck out!”
Great...here we go again.
He continues, "You fucking call his house and threatened him?”
"I want my tapes, Ryan! That's my music!” I was pretty passionate about the whole thing. "You're the record company, not the producer. Those are my tapes, and I want them right now!”
He had me get my shit and had his brother take me to the airport and drop me off. He told his brother to just "Drop him at the end of the block.” What a fucking cocksucker.
He never paid me the rest of my dough, AND put the record out. They kept the tapes and finished the mix without me. What the fuck am I going to do? He's in Connecticut. I'm in LA I was going to go bi-coastal on another lawsuit? Retain a lawyer there with a $10,000 a month tab? I didn't have the money, nor the wherewithal to go through another lawsuit.
So, I had to let the record come out. He said he was only going to print a few copies of it, and that was it. A lot of people liked that record, and have it. I don't know how many he printed. He said 3000, and he sold out of those.
And, that's how I rounded out 2003. Dealing with that nonsense. Lesson learned, right?
RATT did a short little stint with Vince Neil in 2004. Mostly fly outs, but that was about it.
It was and odd time, because we'd fly out on Thursday, do the gigs with Vince all weekend, signing autographs for fans, doing big shows, and living the rockstar life. Then we'd fly back home on Sunday. I'd then be up first thing Monday morning, doing closings, getting other peoples autographs.
Clients would spot me once in a while, which was always funny.
We'd be talking about various things. They'd ask me if this was my main job, and I'd tell them it was just a side gig. They'd find out who I was, and just flip out. I had people bring RATT records out of their back room and show them to me. They'd be pointing to my picture on the back of the album.
"Is that you, man?”
"Yeah, that's me!”
It was always a very big laugh, because these people would turn out to be HUGE RATT N Rollers. It was completely surreal for them to have one of their rock star idols sitting in their house or office and doing the closing paperwork on their new home.
Invariably, they would go, "What the hell happened, dude? Why are you here?”
It would take a few minutes to explain that the band was still working and touring, but this was just something to fill the gaps in time, you know? Most of them believed it!
It was a very strange, yet profitable point of my career.
I'd do five or six closing a day, on average. It was pretty trippy to get a look into these people lives. You'd find a contractor who makes $200,000 per month and lives in a giant house, and then the next guy would be an office guy who might make $40,000 per year.
It's interesting to see that cross section of American life.
In 2005, RATT went out on the Cinderella tour, so I had to put the closing job on the shelf for a while. It was a little upsetting, because I really had the thing dialed in. The agents and banks were getting used to using me, and I'd play the RATT card to get more work. If the scheduler was young, I'd always drop something like, "I'm going to be out on tour for a little bit during…” and they would get curious.
They'd find out who I was, and it would turn out they were big fans. Then I became their go-to guy. Once that's established, you work all the time. When you disrupt it, like I had to with the tour, it's hard to get it going again, because they've moved on to someone else as their go-to guy.
I shut it down for the summer of 2005, and started back up briefly when I got back, but it never reached the heights it had in 2003 to 2004.
During this whole time, Misty was my girl. We had been together for almost five years. August of 2000, when Traci and I were done, was the starting point for Misty and me.
But, by June of 2005, just before going out on tour, there were some serious problems.
All through 2005, my relationship with Misty wasn't getting any better, and we had such a tumultuous relationship to begin with!
She really wanted me to be something I couldn't be, and was very controlling. I was trying to make it work, but so many of the things that I had come to love were the things she had grown to hate. It drove her crazy being at Lake Havasu with my lake buddies, because we do what we do. We drink beer all day, have cocktails at night, and just have a really good time, running around with my crew and me.
While she would step out and enjoy herself, but she really didn't like the person I was when I drank liquor. She got really uptight about it. Same thing with Traci. Same thing with ... well, obviously, there's a pattern here.
When I'm on hard liquor, I'm a completely different person, which is why I don't drink it anymore. Captain and Coca-Cola is as ballsy as I'll allow myself these days. I'm not violent, or anything, but I become a different personality. It's fun, but girlfriends don't deal with it.
So, a few Coors Lights, a little red wine, and I can still socialize and not be a fucking kook. Ain't life grand?
In 2005, I started giving her some signs. "Babe, it's March. We've been in this house for three months, and we've only had sex twice.” I'm the kind of guy that needs to be intimate with the woman in my life. I can't sit stale, and just hope that's enough.
So, I told her, "This isn't going to work, if you can't be intimate with me.”
"Well, the more you behave like this, the more you act…” giving me this ultimatum. Like I was in the wrong.
Misty and I had split for about three months in 2004, so this was not a new development for us. We managed to pull the thing out of the fire, and she moved back home. But, things were never tight again.
I guess it's like pulling a carton of spoiled milk out of the fridge, taking a drink and going, "Fuck! That's spoiled! Here, I'll put it back. Maybe it'll be better tomorrow.”
Then Misty pulled some shit. She still won't admit to it, but it got back to me that she had been fucking around with some drug dealer type up in Hollywood. Everyone knew about the guy, and he's a total stain. She claimed that he had spiked her and her girlfriend's drink one night, and that she was totally innocent. She stayed the night there, but nothing happened, she swore!
You know, once you've been mauled by an animal, it's hard to really trust any other animal not to maul you, as well. I tried to take Misty's word as truth. I didn't want to think that she would go off and fuck this character, but thanks to Traci, I know how women can be, and things certainly hadn't been intimate around our house for a while.
In my experience, if nothing is happening in the bedroom at home, then chances are, it's happening somewhere else.
So, when it got close to the tour, I told her, "Here's the deal. I'm going back out on the road in a month. If you don't start acting like we're together, and not just roommates, I'm telling you, it's a bad thing. Me, on the road, having been emotionally deserted? I'm going out single, Pi-RATT flag flying high!”