by Drew Fortune
It’s always great when it ain’t your house, and it turned into something out of the movie Weird Science, where all the mutants on motorcycles crash the place. It was every parent’s nightmare, and as a homeowner now I think, “Are you fucking kidding me?” It was a bi-level house, and the whole fucking thing was packed to the gills. To top it off, there was a torrential downpour that night, to the point where my feet sunk while walking across the lawn. Every asshole was dragging mud into the place and ruining the carpets. People were putting their cigarettes out on the carpeting, spilling beer everywhere, and smashing holes in the walls. We opened the show with “Bark at the Moon.” Here I am all these years later, closing out shows with Ozzy playing that tune.
Bobbi’s parents came home early, just as we were loading up the gear in my buddy Tommy’s truck to leave. The mud was so bad we had to prop it up with two-by-fours to get the hell out of there. Between the kegs, hard alcohol, marijuana, and the Caligula factor of people having sex in the bedrooms, the house should have been condemned. Her parents walked in and, aside from some drunk stragglers, we were the only people left. We didn’t say a thing and basically ran out the door. I will never forget the look on her parents’ faces. Anger hadn’t registered yet. They were just gray. The last thing I saw on my way out was “Stonehenge Was Here,” tagged on the living room wall in green spray paint. The million-dollar question we all had was, “What happened to Bobbi Bush?” They moved shortly after, and I never saw her again.
This was one of the craziest Ozzy gigs. After the tragic death of Randy Rhoads, Ozzy got word that people were vandalizing Randy’s grave. To me, it’s one of the most sacrilegious things you can do. If I was a fan of the guy, the last thing I’d want to do is fuck with his grave. I’d be waiting for a lightning bolt to hit me in the graveyard. It was typical silly shit, like how people mess with Hendrix or Jim Morrison’s grave. Randy’s mom and Ozzy decided to play a gig to raise money to build Randy a mausoleum so people would stop fucking with his grave.
I was pretty new to the band. Halfway through the benefit show, we were about to play “Crazy Train.” Oz yelled, “Who wants to go extra crazy?! Come up on stage and dance with the Oz!” We broke into the song and, sure enough, everyone rushed the stage. The barriers crashed down and crazed fans started climbing onstage. Security was like, “Oh, fuck this,” and ran off. It was a sea of bodies, with about 200 people onstage with us. It quickly devolved into chaos, with people trying to take microphones and monitors, and ripping the drum set apart. We almost got to the guitar solo, but that was it. Kids were climbing the huge projection screens we had set up behind us. The weight of the bodies caused one of the screens to snap and people came flying down. I know one guy broke his leg.
Ozzy had buckets of water onstage that he would throw into the crowd. Those all got spilled, and the water rushed over the monitor console, causing smoke and sparks to fly everywhere. It was mass insanity. I wasn’t scared. If someone wants to mess with me, I’ll break their fucking neck. I was just in awe of the whole goddamn thing. Ozzy had a sixty-inch teleprompter with the song lyrics, and that got stolen, along with microphones, snare drums, and cymbals. Our drummer at the time, Randy Castillo, was stabbing people in the fucking neck with his drumstick. The damages to the venue, along with broken bones, was something like two hundred grand. We still got Randy the mausoleum, but the damage bill was fucking ridiculous.
I was standing right next to Ozzy during “Crazy Train.” Right when Ozzy goes, “Things are going wrong for me,” someone tried to steal the microphone. They were trying to pry it right out of his hands, and they eventually got it. Right before my guitar solo, Randy stopped playing, then I stopped. Ozzy gave me a look like, “Do you fucking believe this?” Ozzy has studied a ton of Jeet Kune Do, just like Elvis did during his karate phase. Ozzy studied with Dan Inosanto, who was one of Bruce Lee’s best buddies. Oz probably knocked out about five people that night before we left.
I had a legendary, Hall-of-Fame, world-championship relationship with drinking before I quit. Between neck, back, and shoulder surgeries, I was like a banged-up car that didn’t run anymore. We were out on the road with Static-X and Mudvayne in 2009, and I noticed that the back of my leg was killing me right below the knee. I thought it was from the David Lee Roth splits I was doing at the Shoot ’n Stab bar the night before. During the “Animal House” years of Black Label, it wasn’t just the band partying—it was the driver, crew, and anybody who wanted to come out.
One night on Ozzfest, my wife called and said, “The Berserker has got to stop. I’m shutting him down.” I said to my immortal beloved, “Why, what’s the matter?” She asked if I had seen the credit card bill. Every day, me and a few of the fellas went to the liquor store, without fail. We would come out with a palette of booze, and we weren’t getting the cheap shit. It was top shelf or whatever local microbrew was available—we tried it all. That was our daily routine, so when my wife called about it, I braced myself. “How bad is the tab?” I asked her. She told me to take a guess. I grumbled and said, “Ten grand?” There was dead silence on the other end of the phone. “Fifteen?” Silence. “Twenty?” She told me to guess again. I said, “OK. Twenty-five grand?” More silence. Now I was getting worried. I said, “It can’t be more than thirty-five!” She said, “Keep going.” The total was $51,000. On booze alone. In less than a month.
My leg was still hurting, so I went to the doctor with my wife. He told me I had a blood clot behind my knee, one in the calf, and one going into my Achilles Heel. I thought only older people got blood clots, but he told me a lot of it comes from being stationary. I realized that except for the stage, I was on a bus or parked in a bar drinking. The doctor finally said, “With all your years of heavy drinking, the alcohol thinning your blood may have saved your life.” I raised my arms in victory and yelled, “See! Drinking is good for something!” There was no laughter from anyone else.
That was the end of the road for me and booze. I stopped cold turkey and became the fucking designated driver. There was a lot more laughter than dark times with it. No matter how banged up I was the night before, I never missed a gig. But, I had to drink about four beers just to feel normal in the morning. That was it, and the booze wasn’t why I grew up with Hendrix and Page posters on my wall. I got to the big leagues and get to play with the Yankees. I never let myself forget that. I’m fucking blessed and wouldn’t change my situation for anything.
10
DEBBIE GIBSON
I bet you never thought you’d read a book with Debbie Gibson and Zakk Wylde! Thankfully, you know me. As you’ll read, Debbie was kinda punk rock, sneaking into twenty-one-plus venues when she was only sixteen, while winning over drag queens and LA’s seedier underbelly.
I’m really lucky because I haven’t had too many “Oh my God, I’m quitting showbiz” moments in my long career. I grew up in theater and learned very early that something going wrong onstage is an opportunity. It’s an opportunity to use humor and to give the audience a once-in-a-lifetime experience because that’s what live shows are meant to be anyway. The first nine months of club gigs prepared me for the rest of my career. I’ve had piano lids get stuck on stage. My dancers lifted my head right through a stucco ceiling during “Fallen Angel.” Ashlee Simpson didn’t have those nine months, and that awkward jig on Saturday Night Live is an example of how not to react.
I started as a “track” artist at the age of sixteen because my first single, “Only In My Dreams,” was a dance song. I always hated that there was no flexibility with that term, as I was always locked into the same twenty-five-minute show, three times a night, four nights a week. That’s what I did for nine months to get that single off the ground. I was sixteen, and my mom was managing me. I was never the type to sneak into clubs or steal my sister’s ID because I was super focused on my work. I wasn’t a high school party girl, so it was very funny and ironic that I ended up promoting my single in twenty-one-and-over clubs.
In one night, I
would play teen, straight, and gay clubs. It was clubs in East LA with armed men escorting us in. Nobody could peg my age, and it was before Tiffany and I could use our age as a gimmick or advantage. My label had no idea what to do with a sixteen-year-old, so we had to really work it on the club circuit. After the show, my mom would say, “Kids, wait in the car. I’m gonna go collect the money from the promoter. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, someone come get me.” It was really gritty, as she was collecting money from drag queens and mafioso club owners. Sometimes a shooting had just occurred, and we were the last act before they were shutting the club down. It was nuts, but where I developed my love for the LGBTQ community. I remember playing a lesbian club in Brooklyn when I was sixteen and a bunch of sweaty lesbians hugging and kissing me. I thought they were so cool.
My night would start around 9:00 p.m. and end around 6:00 a.m. I would do my twenty-five-minute set, change in the car, and move on to the next club, with my mom driving. I had my two young, gay, male backup dancers with me, and we were a very naive, innocent group. Buddy Casimano is still one of my dancers. We went to high school together, and he’s danced with me at my first track show at Joey’s Place in Clifton, New Jersey, all the way to Rock in Rio for 150,000 people, and everything in-between. So, it was my two boys, my mom, and my twenty-one-year-old sister Karen, who was on sound and lights, all packed into a car.
Back then, I always sang live, but my backing tracks were on reel-to-reel tape. Karen was always met with a lot of resistance from the DJs at the time, as it was such a male world. She would crawl into these little DJ booths and mix my sound. One night, Karen climbed a ladder up to this DJ booth, and the DJ said, “Listen, Little Miss Sound Engineer, you’re not touching my equipment.” She tried to explain that she needed to set up the reel-to-reel, but he just grabbed the tape from her and proceeded to put them on backwards.
The show started, and I came out to this garbled, backward-sounding mess. I looked at Karen, who just shrugged. I thought to myself that this crowd is so drunk, and they don’t give a shit about me, so why not perform anyway? I sang the whole twenty-five-minute show over horrendous, backward tape. It sounded like a record playing backward, but there was still a groove. I cued my voice and eventually got the crowd clapping. I’ll never forget that night because, right after, I went to my junior prom. But, that’s a whole other story.
When grunge hit like a wrecking ball in the ’90s, I credit theater for not sending me into depression. I had always wanted to do Broadway, so the minute grunge hit, I was pretty rational and realistic, even though there was a tremendous backlash against me and my kind of pop music. I remember MTV telling me that they were not going to air the “Electric Youth” video anymore because there was so much backlash. The people I thought were my friends were easy come, easy go. So, I went right into Les Misérables on Broadway and always kept in mind that things are cyclical. I did have to work the carnival/pig wrestling events for years. I ran into Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray a few years ago, and we joked about that time. We call it the “funnel cake years.” I really enjoyed that time, and since I’ve been doing this for so long, I enjoy the whole weird, rollercoaster of it all.
For the last five years, I’ve been dealing with Lyme Disease, which has brought on so many changes to my body and voice. I used to feel like Superwoman when I was performing, and I can’t do that anymore. The options have been to cancel or to get out there and say to the audience, “This is what I’m dealing with. It might not be the most flawless vocal you’ve heard in your life, but I want to be here.” I’m welling up with tears talking about it because this is my life now. I don’t feel like I explain that to the audience as an excuse, but rather a means to draw us closer. I don’t want to curl up in a ball and disappear. The whole idea of perfection is overrated anyway. The audience wants to have an experience. They want to commune. Hitting a perfect high note isn’t what moves people. My fans are affectionately called “The Debheads,” and they’ve been with me through everything. I’ve got a pretty good life!
11
JAMES WILLIAMSON
(The Stooges)
By the time Williamson entered The Stooges in the late ’70s, the band was already in the depths of drugs and destitution. As the guy who tried to hold it together, Williamson recounts the good, the bloody, and the time Iggy got his ass kicked by a biker.
Financially, we were pretty bad off and needed to get paid for gigs because we desperately needed to eat. There was this one Stooges gig around 1971. Our drummer, Scott Asheton, was driving the equipment truck for the first time. He just felt like doing it and didn’t know anything about trucks. One of the first things you should learn is to check the bridge clearance when driving under one. The truck was a little higher than the bridge, and it didn’t go so well. Luckily, no one was seriously hurt, but he smashed into the thing head-on and ended up in the hospital. He obviously couldn’t make the gig that night, so we were without a drummer, but we did the show. Iggy started by asking the crowd, “Can anybody play drums?”
Steve Mackay, who played sax on the Fun House album, is the kind of guy who’ll just say yes to anything. He said, “Yeah! I can play,” but, of course, he couldn’t. The songs we had aren’t all that easy to play. They’re pretty frenetic, and you have to know what’s going on. We tried playing with Steve on drums, and it was absolutely horrible. Iggy spent the entire show trying to teach Steve how to play. We filled the hour, and while I feel bad about it, we still got paid. Our shows were always chaotic, so the crowd wasn’t sure if this was just a typical night, only much worse.
We were not an act. Everything we did was for real and improvised spur-of-the-moment. We never had discussions before the show about how we needed to make that night extra crazy. We weren’t an Alice Cooper-type band that had everything worked out. The roots of the band had more in common with a “happening.” It was the late ’60s, and things would just happen on the stage. After we developed a repertoire, it became a little more regimented in the sense that we had a setlist. Certain Iggy moves had been done in previous shows, but we never knew any more than the audience did.
I didn’t personally witness the “peanut butter incident,” but someone in the crowd handed him the peanut butter jar. I believe Iggy was on acid and smeared it all over himself. It’s an incredibly iconic image, and it definitely wasn’t staged. Everybody was doing psychedelics in the band, and I was no different. We tried it all. The first lineup of The Stooges, which was originally called The Psychedelic Stooges, were really into that, but they were mostly just jamming out and not playing songs. Once they made the first record and started playing the songs live, they were over that psychedelic period.
There wasn’t much Iggy could do that would shock me. I’d seen most of everything, but one time we stayed at the Watergate Hotel in D.C. and played the venue right next to it. One of the girls that Iggy was dating gave him THC, and he was stoned out of his gourd right before the show. We were doing our best efforts to get him coherent for the show, but nothing was working. We got to the point where he could actually get on his feet, and we arrived at the venue very late. Backstage, the promoter was absolutely livid. He was so furious with us that he took off his Rolex and smashed it against the wall. He was screaming about how he’d see to it that we’d never play the East Coast again and all this craziness. Once again, we wouldn’t be deterred, so we went on. Our road manager literally had to throw Iggy onto the stage. He was staggering around, and the first thing he did was fall off the front of the stage. Everybody in the audience thought it was part of the show, so they loved it. But, Iggy could barely even talk.
There’s a lot of backstory to the time Iggy cut himself on stage. Mainly, his girlfriend was supposed to come to New York to meet him, then abruptly decided not to, which got him all upset. He didn’t smash the glass; it was already shattered on the floor. He initially fell onto it, and when it didn’t hurt that much—or he just didn’t care—he started making all these little cuts on h
is chest. It was mostly just surface bleeding, but it definitely made for a gory scene. It creeped a lot of people out, and they were trying to get him to the hospital so he didn’t bleed to death. I didn’t feel that he was in any danger, but it’s one of the things everybody remembers about the band.
Mostly, those kind of antics caused me a lot of frustration. That was a very low point in the band because some of us were trying to make a living doing this. My main focus was playing shows and making good records. We were trying to be professionals, and that kinda stuff was a little too out-of-control. That tour culminated in the show we did at the Michigan Palace. The night before, our manager had booked us into a small club near Detroit called the Rock & Roll Farm. None of us knew that it was actually a biker bar. Iggy was doing his thing out in the audience, and he slithered up to a biker who was leaning against a mirror.
We were accustomed to Iggy going into the audience and it taking a while for his vocals to come back. The biker had cold cocked him, and Iggy was out cold on the floor. The rest of us were on stage still playing the tunes, but after awhile, we began looking at each other, thinking, “OK…this is a little too long.” Eventually, the crowd parted, and there he was on the floor. We didn’t get paid that night, and luckily we got out alive. It was a really hostile night. Not to be deterred, Iggy went on the radio early the next morning and heckled the bikers.