No Encore!

by Drew Fortune

  She was hanging by her fucking neck, and her weight dropped the rig low enough that someone was able to raise her up and cut the fucking cord. That’s what the French do! We got backstage and she’s sitting in our fucking dressing room. I yell, “What the fuck is this?” We called security and explained that she just tried to kill herself. She’s like, “What’s wrong?” I go, “Where we come from, it’s not OK to kill yourself!” That girl needed serious help, and I was not the one to give it to her. She’s mumbling in this thick French accent, “Yes, maybe you’re right.” Goddamn I’m right! Some of the people were saying, “Yeah, she was acting weird all day.” Really, ya think?

  We opened for Nine Inch Nails where people were literally ripping up the floorboards. It was another goddamn hockey arena, and they were ripping the wood covering off the ground, setting it on fire, and throwing it at us. We didn’t stop playing. NIN were going to shoot a concert movie that night, and the audience was obviously going fucking berserk while we were playing. I was thinking how crazy the place was going to go when Trent [Reznor] came out. He walked out at the end of our set and said, “That’s fucking it! I don’t want to see anybody throwing any more shit, or we’re not gonna play.” All the energy got sucked out of the place. They filmed, the show was totally lackluster, and they shit-canned the whole thing. We drove all the hate and adrenaline out of the crowd. This was the height of the Downward Spiral era, so Trent was God. Those guys were totally nice to us and no problems behind the scenes. Everyone there was totally cool. But anyway, I’m one happy son of a bitch, and I love what I do.

  44

  CHOPMASTER J

  (Digital Underground)

  Apart from the “Humpty Dance,” Digital Underground was also famous for introducing the world to a young Tupac Shakur, who came into the group as a roadie. You’ll love the story about Pac’s fake gold chain.

  Dig this. The 1990 Houston Summit jumbotron incident with Public Enemy on the Fear of a Black Planet Tour. The stage guys warn you about what to do and what not to do when you hit the stage. It was my first time being onstage in an arena with a jumbotron. They tell you not to watch yourself on the jumbotron because you’ll fuck up and trip or something. I’m like, “Shit, OK, OK.” We’re onstage, I’m rocking, and we’re doing “Doowutchyalike” from the Underground record Sex Packets. When the chorus comes in on that song, I would jump off my riser where I was doing my samples and percussion. I jump down and grab the champagne, which I start masturbating into the crowd. I’m also throwing popcorn and confetti, yelling, “Do What Cha Like! Do What Cha Like” and running around this big-ass stage.

  I look up at the jumbotron, thinking, “Oh wow, this is really incredible!” For the second verse, I went back to my position on the riser doing my thing. Then the chorus comes back, and I jump off again. This time, I’m watching myself run on the jumbotron. Problem is, when you’re watching yourself on that thing, you’re not watching the stage. I flew right off the motherfucking stage with a bucket of popcorn in my arms. It was so embarrassing. I fell off because I got caught up in my own vanity and hype. Guilty as charged. I landed down in the pit. You would have thought the crowd would have caught me, but that shit opened up like I was Moses, and I just went splat, right on my back off an arena-size stage. That shit hurt, man!

  I sprung back up and scrambled onstage like it didn’t hurt. All my bandmates were cracking up, and they couldn’t even do the chorus. It was probably the most humiliating moment in my career. No one ever let me get over that. Do you know what it’s like to get teased by Flavor Flav? You don’t wanna know. Tupac was there for that too.

  One time, we were on the Big Daddy Kane tour in the spring of 1990 with Pac. He was only eighteen and wasn’t a rapper yet. He was more of a sound guy and stage manager at the time. It was the first time that we gave him a mic, basically so he could be a backup MC. During the “Humpty Dance” he’d co-sign on shit, like yelling “Humpty!” and “Wave your hands in the air!” He held the mic down into the monitor, which he didn’t know creates a feedback response. He kept doing that, and he was swearing up and down that the sound guy was trying to sabotage him. That’s what Pac would do—he’d get all agitated and start making shit up in his head. He’d swear by it, then want to fight about it. He would never take the blame for anything. His response was to attack. I’d really have to check him hard and make him accountable to help him pick his fights. He was lovable, but he was wild.

  He was eighteen and had just left the projects. He was on an arena tour with some of the biggest acts in hip-hop. He believed in provoking then befriending you. For example, we were at the Joe Louis arena in Detroit in 1990. If you look up into the rafters to the side of the stage, there’s always people hanging out. Pac looks up, and there’s some Detroit locals razzing him about his jewelry being fake because he used to wear all these chains and stuff. Pac gets into a shouting match with these dudes hanging in the wings. He’s yelling crazy shit, and they’re yelling, “Punk ass, that’s why your jewelry is fake!” Pac was getting so heated that he gets into it with us. He’s like, “Those motherfuckers are yelling shit! If you don’t help me, y’all ain’t shit!”

  I said to him calmly, “But Pac, that shit around your neck is fake.” He wasn’t Tupac yet; he was roadie Tupac at that point. He’s still going crazy, and it’s like, why get into a shouting match with the audience that paid to come see us? It didn’t make sense. What, you gonna beat somebody up that called your fake jewelry fake? If I hadn’t talked him down, he would have hunted those dudes down after the show. He was the guy that would challenge the old, white waitress at the Waffle House in Oklahoma about his fork being dirty. It’s three in the morning and Pac’s accusing her of being racist and giving him a dirty fork.

  That’s the kinda shit when I’d tell him, “Man, you gonna get us killed.” It was 1990 and we were in Oklahoma. You couldn’t do that shit. The police were protesting our tour because they had confused Public Enemy with N.W.A. and thought they were the ones that did “Fuck tha Police.” The white folks in Oklahoma didn’t give a shit. They just didn’t like us anyway. Pac was always putting us in precarious positions like that. Flav was kinda like that too. I don’t know if he got really into crack a bit later—like when crack would fall out of his pocket onstage. But he was smoking during our time with him, and sometimes he would stay in the town that we had just left. If we were in Phoenix, he would have been hooked up with some chick doing his thing, and we’d just leave him.

  Sometimes Public Enemy wouldn’t even know he was gone. Chuck would hit the stage, and when they’d yell for Flav to come out, he wasn’t there. The whole thing was they’d come onstage at different times and then yell for the other to come out. There were a few nights where it was just Chuck out there, because Flav was late or stuck in some other city. Flav was a wild dude, but he also plays classical piano and speaks four different languages. Anyway, I’m about to go to sleep now. I ate a bunch of them edible Tootsie Roll things with the THC in them.

  45

  KENNY LOGGINS

  Kenny has always been one of those guys I wondered about in their ’80s period—meaning was he completely blown out on cocaine? Turns out, just a little. He also talks about poor fashion choices and a disastrous opening slot for Curtis Mayfield.

  Thank you for making me dredge up these memories, many of which I’ve successfully repressed. The first story that comes to mind was back when I was in college. I got an offer to go on tour with a rock band called the Electric Prunes. My friend Jeremy Stuart was the music director and keyboardist, so he brought me in as a singing guitar player. At that point, I’d already written “Danny’s Song” and “House at Pooh Corner.” Those were the songs that always worked for me, and Jeremy figured he’d restructure the Electric Prunes show to do a break in the middle for my songs. The Prunes were a psychedelic rock act from the mid- to late ’60s. I was definitely not a psychedelic rock person, although I did like some of it.

  I was more of an ac
oustic guy, like Dylan, Donovan, and Tim Hardin. Those were my idols at the time. So, I hit the road with the Prunes, and I had never been on a tour before. I was only eighteen and pretty nervous. We instituted that break in the show, where I would sing “Danny’s Song” and “House at Pooh Corner.” Up to that point, I had never experienced what it was like to truly fail or bomb on stage. People were walking out of the show during my songs because they weren’t there for that. They wanted a trippy, psychedelic experience, and here I was doing these quiet, acoustic songs. It was a very important lesson for me to learn, albeit very difficult.

  When Loggins and Messina started up when I was twenty-two, I would wake up with cold sweats during the night, reliving those Electric Prunes failures. It was truly traumatic for me, and I was developing a bit of stage fright. I learned that I had to be smart about my audience. When I was in high school, I would enter talent shows, but I never won. One time I lost to a guy who imitated Bob Dylan. Then I lost to a group of high school girls in black light hula skirts who did a hula dance, and the judges went wild. A black light dance was the height of entertainment in the 1960s. Let’s just say I had a very rocky entrance into show business. I never took into account the “show” aspect of show business. Presentation matters!

  I began to realize that things like wardrobe mattered, but Messina and I had as much wardrobe as the Eagles. It wasn’t much, but we would wear the local football or hockey jerseys of the touring cities. That was about as snazzy as we got, and you can see us on the cover of Rolling Stone with shirts that are way too tight and pants that are too short. You might say I’ve been wardrobe challenged my entire career. I did a lot of research on lighting and sound companies, so I was a lot better at the visual and aural presentation.

  Fashion is a weird thing, and my biggest offense was the Keep the Fire album cover. It was based on a Halloween costume I’d had previous to that shoot. I enjoyed the idea of playing Gandalf, and that was really where I was going with that fashion choice. I don’t think the photography quite captured what I was going for. I’ve taken a lot of teasing for that cover, but lately, my younger audience thinks that it’s really cool. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I’ve had a number of fashion faux pas that I’ve committed over the years. It really all adds up to nothing in the long run.

  When Loggins and Messina first went out on the road, it was as an opening act for Delaney & Bonnie and Billy Preston. We did a winter tour, and back east somewhere there was a blizzard. The promotor hadn’t put up the deposit, so none of us were going on. Our road managers were huddled in the back room with the promotors, and some kids who were waiting for the show threw rocks through the dressing room window. We panicked and thought there was going to be a riot. I said to Messina, “I think they’re going to fucking rip us to shreds,” so we ran onstage and started playing. That settled everyone down, but I had never seen an audience so hostile.

  One time in Boston years ago with Messina, it was raining like crazy, and the promoter was fighting with our road manager about whether it was safe to play. We thought it was too wet and too dangerous to go on stage, but the promoter kept insisting it wasn’t. He went on stage to announce that the show was happening rain or shine and that the audience shouldn’t be afraid of a little rain. At that exact moment, he got struck by lightning and had to be transported to the hospital. It was really a bad day for that guy. The kicker was that it didn’t rain enough to the point where he could collect insurance. He was majorly fucked. I’ve butted heads with a lot of promoters over the years, but the only artist I’ve never gotten along with is Glenn Frey. There’s a lot of horror stories about those boys, but Glenn tops my list. It’s too soon since his passing to get really into it, but someday somebody should write a book about the guy. He was just a really unhappy guy.

  One of my most embarrassing moments was with Loggins and Messina when we played the Troubadour in LA, opening for Curtis Mayfield. It was a ridiculous double-bill, but Clive Davis made it happen. In those days, we would start the shows with me going on stage alone to do “Danny’s Song” and some acoustic stuff. Then Jimmy [Messina] would come out with the band. I was doing the opening solo thing at the Troubadour, and the audience was 90 percent black. There were two really beautiful black women in the front row because at the Troubadour in those days, the audience would sit right in front of the stage. I was singing my songs, and they were looking at me, yelling “Get down! Get down!”

  I thought I was doing really good and that they were yelling it like, “Get down! Get funky!” I just thought it was the best gig ever and that I had completely won over the crowd. Finally, Jimmy comes on stage and whispered, “Man, I don’t know how you did that. Those girls were telling you to get down off the stage the whole time.” My face turned bright red, and I could barely look at the audience for the rest of the set.

  I had a short dance with cocaine in the ’80s, but it was not my drug and didn’t last very long. Thankfully, I didn’t lose my brain or my voice to drugs or alcohol. I’ve never smoked cigarettes, but I did smoke marijuana in the early days. I found that it was difficult to perform high because I kept forgetting where I was in the song. I would mix up the verses, and then I’d get really paranoid so I stopped doing that. As for the paranoia thing, I never knew when I’d slip from having a great time on stage to thinking someone in the crowd was heckling me, to the point where “Get down” becomes “No. Get down!”

  I still love playing for a real audience that has paid good money to see me. It’s more difficult with the corporate audiences. They didn’t buy a ticket and, quite often, they don’t even know who they’re going to see that night. The company president made the decision because he or she is a fan. It’s usually a good audience but not great. Usually, they yell, “Danger Zone” at me. It used to be “Footloose,” but because of the show Archer and a few other high-profile things, it’s usually “Danger Zone.” Truthfully, while I do not always want to play them, I’m lucky and glad that those songs have lasted all these years.

  46

  BRENT SMITH

  (Shinedown)

  Hard-rock outfit Shinedown was fairly new to me before this book, but I’m glad I spoke with front man Smith, who shared one of my very favorite stories. Take note: If you ever find yourself backstage at a show next to a deli tray, try giving someone a “smoking gun.”

  One story that immediately comes to mind was from the very beginning of our career, from the very humble beginnings of Shinedown. This was from late 2003 or early 2004, when we got a huge opportunity to open for Van Halen. They had reunited with Sammy Hagar. It was a two-month tour in really big markets, and every show was sold out. Our first album came out in 2003, and we had only been playing 200–500 capacity clubs before that. When we got on tour, with me being full of testosterone, I was gonna make everybody in the building pay attention. We only had about thirty-five minutes, and with only seven songs in the set, I really tried to make my performance count.

  I began to notice that a kid was in the VIP pit every night, watching intently. Those seats were insanely expensive, and sometimes he was the only one in there. About eight shows into the tour, the kid came into the dressing room. It was Wolfgang Van Halen, Eddie’s son. He was only about eleven at the time and was out on the road with his dad. He really liked us, and Eddie started showing up in the pit to watch us with Wolfie. That allowed me to befriend Eddie on the tour, and we got to be buds. He just started hanging around. He flew private jets everywhere and would show up around 5:00 p.m. every day and pop his head in the dressing room.

  We’d go to catering together. I noticed that he just wanted somebody to talk to and that he seemed kind of lonely. I think he liked that I wasn’t some fanatic Van Halen fan, as I only really knew their singles growing up. I didn’t see any in-fighting between Eddie and the band, but I never did see them together offstage. Alex and Eddie were always kind of around each other, and Sammy and Michael kind of shadowed each other, but I never saw them all toge
ther.

  Eddie had just gotten his second hip replacement, and he had just beaten cancer. He was drinking though, and I say with all sincerity that he was a really wonderful, endearing soul, but here’s where the story comes in. Eddie rolled into my dressing room while I was in the bathroom taking a piss. I washed my hands, but didn’t dry them all the way. I was patting them on my jeans, and I gave Eddie a handshake/hi-five thing. He yelled, “Motherfucker, you got piss on your hands?” I said jokingly, “No man, I just had to rub one out in the bathroom.” He looked at me sideways, walked over to our craft service table, and proceeded to urinate on the deli meat tray.

  He was smoking a cigarette, and he rolled up the lit cigarette in a pissy slice of turkey. He handed me the deli tray and said, “Give this to your tour manager. It’s called a smoking gun.” Then he walked out of the room like nothing had happened. He will never fucking remember this story if he reads this book, I guarantee it. I wasn’t offended, mad, or disgusted by what he had done. It was such a rock ’n’ roll moment that I had electricity running through me. There was no malice in his actions, and it felt like one of the folkloric rock stories you hear about that aren’t true. That shit doesn’t happen, right? I’m here to say yes…it does.

  Here’s a funny one from the first time Shinedown played the Download Festival in the UK. We were on the second stage in front of about 80,000 people, and they had these humongous jumbotrons on both sides of the stage. When I say they were huge, I mean they were freaking gigantic. We’re going hard, and at the end of our set, our bassist Eric Bass had a wardrobe malfunction. He was wearing all white for whatever reason at the time. He had these white jeans that he had been wearing for about a year on tour, and he kept talking about the jeans not having many more jumps and splits left in them. I kept telling him to put on some fucking new pants, but he liked the way they were broken in.