by Drew Fortune
All those bikers showed up at the Michigan Palace show the following night and immediately started chucking anything that wasn’t nailed down at Iggy. Bottles, change, cameras…it didn’t matter. That recording turned into the live record Metallic K.O., which ended up being one of our most famous albums. That tour was really hand-to-mouth. We had our manager’s credit card, which had long since been declined, but in those days, the instant communication wasn’t there. We’d use that thing with no credit, run out on bills, and do whatever we had to do to keep going.
That lifestyle completely wore me out, and that last show at the Michigan Palace made us realize that we didn’t need it anymore. It was insult to injury if you’re not even getting paid to have beer bottles chucked at your head the whole show. That was the end of that phase of The Stooges. We had some demos that eventually got turned into the Kill City record in 1975, but that was really the end of it. I went on to work at Sony, where I got fat, dumb, and happy. In 2009, Ronnie Asheton died, and I had taken early retirement from Sony. It worked out to be the perfect time for me to come back and play with the band.
We did the Ready to Die album and toured together. It was fascinating because in the ’70s, nobody thought we were worth a damn. When we came back in the 2000s, we were huge! The first show I did with the reunion band was in São Paulo, Brazil, for 40,000 people. I had never even been in front of 2,000 people in my whole life. My only thought was, “God, I hope I remember the chords!” I hadn’t played guitar in forty years, so I had to do a lot of woodshedding before that one. A whole new generation had discovered the band, and there were a bunch of twenty-somethings at those shows, which was really cool to see. The next thing I knew, we were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
We got all the accolades and vindication that we never got back in the day. It was really satisfying and strange. I’m always amazed at the influence we’ve had. People go ape over our stuff, and I feel weird because I don’t know how to play guitar any other way. It’s something I developed as a kid on my own, as a reaction to being a teenager. I don’t feel there’s really anything special about it, but others seem to think it’s pretty cool. Who am I to complain?
12
JOHN BELL
(Widespread Panic)
One of the most venerable lifers on the jam-band circuit, Panic is the Southern roots alternative to the human peacock that became the Phish experience. Front man John Bell reflects on the scariest thing that can happen on stage: death.
It all comes back to Widespread Panic and my musical hero Colonel Bruce Hampton. The first time we played together was in 1987, when Panic was just starting out, at a little place called The Nick in Birmingham, AL. From the moment they began their set, some of it was noise, and some of it was music, and I walked to the stage like a zombie in Night of the Living Dead. It blew my mind. They were doing all kinds of weird stuff, like playing guitars with egg beaters, and Bruce was doing all kinds of crazy stuff while rocking out on this electric mandolin thing. It looked like a circus act, complete with on stage wrestling. Despite all the craziness, the music was cohesive. It blew my mind so much that I lost contact with how to play that night. I was totally discombobulated, to the point that it felt like I was trying to play during the last half of an acid trip.
It rocked me so much that the following morning, I seriously considered going ahead with Panic. I didn’t think I could ever come close to what I had seen that night with Bruce. That night was a huge teaching moment because I learned to be comfortable with my abilities and not compare them to any outside entity. I don’t know if it was ever Bruce’s intention to teach, but I would always learn something in his presence.
Fast forward thirty years to May 2017, and Bruce celebrating his seventieth birthday with a concert at the Fox in Atlanta. It was the greatest collection of musicians I’ve ever played with, including Tedeschi Trucks Band, Warren Haynes, Jon Fishman, and Peter Buck to name a few. It was Bruce that brought all those people together because you never could have booked a night like that without Bruce. We had most of Panic up there on stage, and Bruce was the most on-his-game that I’d ever seen him. He was just playing on a whole other level. He was really present and killing it.
During the encore, Bruce had a heart attack on stage and passed away about an hour later. I wasn’t at the hospital. I was driving there, just minutes away, when I heard he’d passed. That evening went from watching one of the best things happen to the worst. The weird thing was that it was during the very last song. It was one of Bruce’s favorites, “Turn On Your Love Light,” by the Grateful Dead. There were about thirty of us on stage for the encore, and my line of sight to Bruce was partially blocked when he hit the dirt. Some of the players around him thought he was pulling a Fred Sanford stunt, because he had done that in the past.
There was a slow wave of recognition and understanding that something was seriously wrong. I was standing next to Susan Tedeschi who was singing. I just watched her slowly lower the mic from her lips and her jaw drop. It was a slow motion moment, but it happened really fast. We were all in shock, wide-eyed and teary at the same time. The night before, Bruce called me, and I realized it was a pocket dial. He said, “It was the weirdest damn thing! I just pocket dialed you and a whole bunch of people!” Then he proceeded to rattle off a bunch of names. He was always funny on the phone, calling me at random times on some weird whim or just to say hello. I’ve seen all kinds of great musicians—some that are humble and many that aren’t. Bruce was the most genuine musician I’ve ever met. He was completely unafraid to be who he wanted to be and stand firm in his being.
The curtains closed, and there were 4,500 saying, “What the fuck?” It was my understanding that Bruce flatlined on stage but paramedics revived him. He died about an hour after that at the hospital. I had the opposite experience with our guitarist Michael Houser, who died at age forty from pancreatic cancer. The last shows were actually easier than I bet a lot of people think. I knew he’d been ill for a good, long time, so there was some time to process it. Even with chemo, there wasn’t a great change in his physical appearance. That was another thing that distracted me from the reality of the situation. When we were playing, he was laser-focused and giving it everything he had, up until the last show. The shows really stand out for me as some of our best and not just because they might have been our last. He was soaring during those moments.
Originally, he had planned to not come out on that summer tour. We played Red Rocks and Wyoming, and he was stage four in those altitudes. Those altitudes are hard enough to deal with without cancer! After those gigs, he said, “I think it’s time for me to go home.” He never faltered during that tour. It’s the little moments that I remember best and cherish the most.
13
JANE WIEDLIN
(the Go-Go’s)
Much of the Go-Go’s bad behavior has been well-documented, especially since they recorded much of it themselves via grainy, ’80s camcorder footage. So, here’s a story about disease, wheelchairs, and odd Japanese fetishes!
In 2004, the Go-Go’s got invited to open for Green Day in Japan. They were playing stadiums and arenas, so it was super exciting. Japan is one of my favorite countries. Shopping is one of the Go-Go’s main activities, so once we got there, we immediately went to an underground mall in Tokyo. It was completely sealed in, and we shopped our guts out. As we were walking back to the hotel, I suddenly started feeling like I was on acid. I asked the girls, “Do any of you feel like you’re on acid? Did we get drugged?” Everyone, of course, said no. Back at the hotel, I was feeling weirder and weirder. I started vomiting uncontrollably about every thirty seconds. It was so bad that I didn’t have time to breathe, and I thought I was going to die because I couldn’t catch my breath. The room was spinning around like a merry-go-round.
I was barely able to call Charlotte [Caffey], who is kind of like the mom in the band. She ran into my room, and we were just panicking. “What the fuck are we gonna do?” The tour
manager arranged for me to go to a hospital, and when we got there, nobody spoke English. Not one fucking word. Here I was, trying to explain these symptoms to a doctor who doesn’t speak English when I didn’t even know what the hell was going on with me. They gave me something to try and combat the nausea, but I couldn’t keep anything down. We had a show the next day, which was a theater show we were headlining without Green Day. I couldn’t even walk, but the show must go on.
The Japanese have really crazy fetishes, and one of them is called broken doll. It’s where really cute girls dress up with crazy, fake injuries, like broken arms and legs. I wanted to dress like a broken doll for the show. I put on this super cute, nurse’s uniform. It was white with the red cross and the cute little cap. We wrapped all these bandages around my knees and elbows and put fake blood all over them. Because I couldn’t walk, we had to get a wheelchair. I got rolled out on stage, wearing this insane outfit, and played the whole set like that. I was playing guitar, singing, while in a wheelchair in a bloody nurse’s outfit, and completely nauseous.
One thing I’ll say about playing while you’re sick is that you’re so locked in. You’re concentrating so hard for that hour and a half, you forget that you’re sick. I made it through the show, but backstage afterwards, I immediately started barfing again. When we got back to the States, I found out I had Meniere’s Disease, which is named for the doctor who first diagnosed it. It’s this thing where you have an acute, allergic reaction to something, but instead of getting hives or a stuffy nose, it goes straight into the inner ear. It causes massive vertigo and nausea. After getting it a few more times, we realized that when I’m in an enclosed space, like an underground mall or certain hotel rooms, there is a chemical used to freshen the air. I have a crazy allergy to those chemicals. When it hits, I feel completely lopsided. I can’t even walk down the aisle of a grocery store. If I swivel my head, I fall over.
So, that’s the craziest. There was one time back in 1979 when the poet Jim Carroll gave me cocaine before a gig. He was hot at the time, and he came to see us. He offered me the coke, which I had never done before. I think it was actually pure speed, because we were all grinding our teeth on stage so hard that we must have looked like total freaks. We played the songs three times faster than normal. That was the first, and last, time I took drugs before going on stage. It’s never a good idea kids!
14
DARRYL MCDANIELS
(Run-D.M.C.)
As the first hip-hop group to go platinum, Run-D.M.C. went from playing stadiums to barely filling clubs. To add insult to ego-bruise, McDaniels had a crippling alcohol and Burger King addiction at the time and could barely fit into his Adidas track suit.
This wasn’t just the worst show of my life, but the worst period in my creative and personal life. We called our 1990 album Back from Hell, but I was still in hell. That record came out and nobody cared. We were still getting booked because of the Run-D.M.C. name, so we went on a little tour to promote it. We weren’t playing the big venues anymore. We were playing clubs, and some nights would be five hundred seats. It was just a two-week run, and most of the promoters were booking us because they were fans, not because the demand was there. We rented a van, and with Jam Master Jay’s DJ setup trailing behind in a U-Haul, we were all crammed in that thing. It was me, Run, Jay, our road manager, and a couple homies all packed in together, playing to basically empty clubs. We were Run-D.M.C. man. It was crazy!
From 1990 to 1993, we were playing to fucking empty clubs. Some nights we wouldn’t even go on because the promoter couldn’t pay us. Some nights we’d get the cash up front and play to twelve people. What happened was that instead of us just being us, we were trying to be something else. Hip-hop had changed, and with Jay being the flavor of the group, he started incorporating that New Jack Swing into it. R&B and hip-hop used to be separate. You’d have Keith Sweet and those guys in one corner, holding their own. New Jack melded all that together, and I couldn’t stand it. It got to the point where every R&B record had to have a goddamn guest rapper. It’s my opinion, but that shit is corny. Look at the damn cover of Back from Hell! Look at that shit! I’ve got on fucking checkered pants! We were not a tight unit: Run was a family man, I was running around drinking, and Jay was more concerned with his label JMJ records and trying to stay cool and hip. Jay was able to adapt to trends, but me and Run were clueless. Instead of just being Run-D.M.C., we were trying to conform to the trends, and it ruined us.
I look back at that time, and people will say, “D, it wasn’t that bad.” I say, “Motherfucker, it was worse!” We did a video for the song “Pause.” The song wasn’t that bad because it had that Run-D.M.C. energy. But in that video, Jay had me wearing a green and purple suit, doing the fucking running man dance. The last thing Run-D.M.C. should ever do is dance. It’s fucking embarrassing! It was New Jack Swing, which had stolen hip-hop from us, and I fucking hated it. Motherfuckers wasn’t coming out to check us doing that shit! The Beastie Boys went back to instruments in 1992 with Check Your Head. They evolved, kept making Beastie records, and didn’t let trends influence them. We forgot about our influences and totally bugged out.
We had a song called “The Ave.” It was us trying to tap into gangsta rap. Again, it just wasn’t us. We weren’t the Geto Boys, and it was so phony. I knew shit was going wrong when Jay was telling me what to write about. They had me rhyming about crack and hustling. I don’t do that! It sounded like a bad Chuck D or Ice Cube knockoff. I’m rapping about a 9mm and shit, when I want to rhyme about my new Gazelle shoes.
It was also the height of my alcoholism. During the day, I was drinking a case of forty-ounce Olde English. Not two or three either. I was so alcoholic I was buying that shit by the case. I put a refrigerator in the back of my monster truck so I wouldn’t have to stop at the grocery store when I was drunk. Until I went to rehab and got sober in 2004, all of that drinking was just suppressing how I really felt. On top of my group falling apart, I was fucking depressed. I was drinking so much that I didn’t even know I was depressed. When Down with the King dropped, I wanted to commit suicide! Life was good, the album was pumping, but I didn’t want to do it no more. I was so fucked up that I couldn’t even enjoy it. I was depressed since the ’80s but didn’t know it.
I was drunk and up to 240 pounds. Burger King became my favorite place in the world. I would order three triple cheeseburgers, a large fry, and large onion rings, because Burger King has the best onion rings. Then I’d get a fucking large orange soda and a large vanilla shake, which was all on top of the case of forties I was drinking. I would demolish it all in one sitting, and this was just during the day! At night, I was going out drinking rum and Cokes and fuzzy navels. You can drink that shit forever and not feel anything until later. I hate seeing pictures from that time, because I’m alcohol-bloated and huge.
Our saving grace came in 1993 with Down with the King and Pete Rock, who was killing at the time. With him as producer, we were back as the baddest motherfuckers around. The cool thing about Pete Rock was Down with the King did for Run-D.M.C. what “Walk This Way” did for Aerosmith. It put us back, man! We got back on MTV and the charts. We got back on the road and were opening for A Tribe Called Quest and Naughty by Nature, and back to kicking ass. I love Pete Rock. He saved my life. Funny story about Aerosmith. We were recording “Walk This Way” together. Rick Rubin wanted both of us there at the same time, not laying down separate tracks. When we first showed up to the studio and saw the band, me and Run said, “Oh shit, the Rolling Stones actually showed up!”
The whole thing came together so quick that we didn’t know any better. I didn’t know nothing about Aerosmith. Steven was very nice and said, “No, those are the other guys. We’re Aerosmith.” When the video came out on MTV, our fans were saying, “What the hell is Run-D.M.C. doing with the Rolling Stones?” I didn’t even know their song was called, “Walk This Way.” We’d just tell Jay, “Get out Toys in the Attic and play track four.” We only knew that guit
ar riff. But those guys were cool in the studio and shooting the video. It was a culture clash, but we all were respectful and got along great. We didn’t see any drug use, even though they’ve said that they fell off the wagon around that time.
When we got back on track, and back to doing what we do, Tupac and Biggie didn’t want to close for us. We were opening, but they felt bad about headlining. The promoter said to us, “Help me out. Tupac doesn’t want to close.” Me, Run, and Jay had to go in the dressing room and tell Pac, “We’re very flattered, but you hear that crowd out there? They’re here for you. This is your time.” Pac said, “The only reason I’m gonna close the show is because Run-D.M.C. told me to.” We did a few shows with Biggie and he said, “Ain’t no way I’m going on after you guys!” Big and Pac wanted their audience to see where hip-hop comes from. It was about respect, and that was very honorable of them.
The moral of my story is stick to what you do. Evolve and innovate, but stay true to who you are.
15
DEE SNIDER
(Twisted Sister)
This one I feel compelled to include a “trigger warning,” as there is violence against women (not on Dee’s part). The whole story reminds me of something out of the movie A Bronx Tale, except Chazz Palminteri is played by Dee Snider in drag.
In the early days of playing bars, our agent gave us the name “The Destruction Squad” because we would blow any band away that shared a stage with us. My first Twisted Sister outfit was Daisy Dukes, thigh-high stockings and leather boots, arm-length women’s gloves, and a T-shirt that said, “I’m Dee. Blow Me.” All that with very rudimentary, crude makeup, and a brown afro. Our thinking was that we would do, or use, anything to win. We were playing Amsterdam, Holland, with Anvil. The only time we were ever blown off the stage was by Anvil at the Paradiso in 1983. That, to me, was the worst gig ever. Respect to Anvil, but we lost in the ring that night. Holland was into much heavier stuff back then, and it was clear that the audience just wanted metal. They were really into heavy, black metal. We’ve always been a metal band, but with an anthemic, pop undertone. We went on after Anvil and just got shot down. Our opener beat us, and I’ll never forget it.