The Dirt (24 page)

As we flew home, I thought about another plane ride. A few months before, after we had received our platinum awards in Manhattan for
Shout at the Devil
, I flew to Nantucket to meet some girls. I had met Demi Moore at the award parties, and she was waiting to greet me as the prop plane arrived. She was working on a movie there with Bobcat Goldthwait, who was also on the runway along with a handful of other actors and crew members. My head was spinning because I had gotten so drunk and high on the flight. I walked out of the plane to the top of the staircase leading to the tarmac; I had the awards cradled in my left hand, a bottle of Jack in my right hand, and an ounce of cocaine crushed flat in my back pocket. I imagined them looking at me: I looked like a real rock star, like Johnny Thunders.

As I stepped down from the doorway, my shoe slid off the edge of the top step and I lost my balance. I tried to catch myself on the railing, but only succeeded in dropping the bottle of Jack, which smashed on the steps below. I followed it, tumbling headfirst, a mess of broken glass, alcohol, and limbs. I hit the runway first, followed by the award plaques, which knocked me in the head.

I opened my eyes to find Demi, Bobcat, and their friends standing over me, helping me to my feet and looking at me very disapprovingly. They had been where I was. That day was the first time I heard of AA. When Demi and Bobcat suggested that I look into the program, I shrugged them off. But I could see it in their eyes and the way they shook their heads and looked at each other: They knew that very soon, I would be one of them. I was partying without any thought for consequences because, to me, consequences didn’t exist. We were Mötley Crüe, we had a platinum record, and we were bigger than the New York Dolls ever were. We were young, fucked up, and worshiped for it. Words like
consequences, responsibility, morality
, and
self-control
didn’t apply to us. Or so we thought.

fig. 1

H
ave you ever had anyone call the police or security or your landlord on you for playing your music too loud? How can such a beautiful thing be pissed on so much? If you’re at home playing a good album, and some nosy-ass neighbor claims he can’t hear his TV, why does your music have to suffer so he can watch his TV? I say, “Too bad for the neighbor.”

Music is censored as it is: You can’t say “shit” or “piss” or “fuck” or “cock-a-doodle dipshit” on your records if you want them on the radio and in Wal-Mart. It’s not allowed. And if you want your video on TV, you can’t wear certain clothes and you can’t have images of guns or body bags. Is music that dangerous? More dangerous than the death, murder, suicide, and rape I see on TV and in the movies all the time? Yet write a little old love song about the same topics, and no one will play it on the radio. And you can’t crank it on your home stereo, because then it’s too fucking loud for your neighbors. It’s pretty powerful stuff, that music, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. People suck; music doesn’t.

When I was home in Manhattan Beach with The Thing, all I wanted to do was play my stereo or bang on my guitar, but I’d get shut down because of dumb-ass neighbors trying to watch murder and teenage sex on television. However, they never seemed to complain or interfere when The Thing was bitching me out and beating the shit out of me. That was okay. Maybe they thought I deserved it for playing my music too loud.

I was taught as a kid never to hit a lady, even if she hits you first. So when The Thing had her tantrums, I never slugged her back. In fact, I moved in with her. I felt so old that I didn’t think it would be possible for me to get another decent-looking woman.

I’ve never really understood women anyway. On the Monsters of Rock tour in Sweden, one of the guys from AC/DC brought a girl back to the hotel bar. He was really drunk and puked all over her. A hotel security guard brought him up to his room, but he was back in fifteen minutes, pounding on the bar for more beer. After drinking enough to make himself sick again, he asked the girl to come up to his room with him. She was still stained with his puke, but she said yes anyway. How gross is that? That is worse than Ozzy snorting ants. What’s wrong with these women?

Vince and his wife, Beth, had moved into a house near The Thing and me in Manhattan Beach. The Thing was friends with Beth and, together, the two were the toughest broads you’ve ever seen. The Thing was the type that punched first and asked questions later, and Beth was more the nagging kind, very sensitive about cleanliness and paranoid about germs. I don’t know how Vince got away with all the shit he did. He would go to the Tropicana, a strip club with a ring where women wrestled in baby oil, and he’d come home after two in the morning. When Beth would ask why he was covered with oil, Vince would just say, “Oh, I was at Benihana and the cook at the table got carried away.” And that would be it. I never went to those places. No interest. What’s the use of looking if you can’t touch?

After returning from the last
Shout
shows in England, Vince threw a party at his house to celebrate the start of our next album. A day or two into Vince’s party, The Thing walked into our living room with her sleeves rolled up. I was sitting on the couch, fucked up as usual, and watching an episode of
Nova
about mathematical theories. I’d taken a couple of quaaludes and was drinking Jack and bellars. A bellar was something my friend Stick and I invented: It was a mix of Kahlúa and brandy, named after the way old ladies at the bar would bellar at us.

The Thing knocked me upside the head and demanded to be taken to Vince and Beth’s. I didn’t really want to leave the couch but I figured going was easier than staying home all day and fighting. So we went to Vince’s place and ended up in a fight anyway. It was so pointless. There was no way to win with her. And I was miserable and sick of being abused. It just wasn’t worth the trouble, especially since her friends had been telling me that she was fucking some jock behind my back. I think she thought that he had more money than I did.

I was so aggravated that I walked out of Vince’s house and onto the beach. My head kept ringing: “Do yourself in, do yourself in.” I didn’t really want to end it all. I’d been through worse. I just wanted peace and quiet. So I waded into the ocean with a bellar in my hand. The waves were cold and kept smacking my clothes, higher and higher, until they knocked my drink out of my hand. Soon, my hair was wet and sticking to the back of my neck. Then I blacked out.

I
t was me, Mick, Vince, and the guys from Hanoi Rocks, who were in town partying. We were doing a shitload of drinking at Vince’s and just having a killer time. We’d probably been barbecuing, boozing, and occasionally sleeping for a good three or four days when we finally ran out of beer. Vince wanted to show off his new Pantera, so he asked who wanted to make a beer run. Razzle volunteered first, and the two of them disappeared out the door.

The liquor store was only a few blocks away, but they were gone for a long-ass time. Mick had disappeared, too, and no one knew where he had gone. But that was typical behavior for that sneaky fucker. Nikki hadn’t even shown up to the party, so no one knew where the fuck he was either.