by Drew Fortune
Let’s go back to 1991 and the first tour we did with GG. Knowing what to expect, but to actually have it happen while you’re playing and watching it all unfold in front of you, is a totally different fucking story. Today, you can watch all the video of those performances you want, and it’s not even a tenth of what was actually happening if you were there. This story is legendary in San Diego. It was a place called the Spirit Club, and the floor was set up with tables and chairs in a kind of sit down and watch a show formation. Normally, what I would do with the club owners or the promoters in charge of the show, was go to them behind GG’s back before the show. I said to the Spirit Club owners, “This is what could happen. You should really put away these tables and chairs. Also, you should really serve alcohol in plastic cups tonight.”
The owner just looked at me and laughed. He said, “No, no, it’s fine. I’ve had Black Flag and such-and-such here before.” He kept naming bands while shrugging off my warning. I said, “Well, that’s your decision. But you’d be wise to move all your tables and chairs.” He didn’t heed my warning. A couple hours later we got on stage, start to play, and before long, the entire place looked like the fight scene of some old Western movie. Tables and chairs were flying all over the place. I think this show is the most scared I’ve ever been on stage. Bottles and chairs were flying at the stage, breaking all around my head. If someone on that stage said, “I wasn’t scared!” man, you weren’t fucking alive and breathing.
It was a goddamn war zone. GG was hanging off one of the water pipes, and he ended up breaking it. There was water, beer, shit, and blood all over the place. We actually ended up getting through most of the set. It was the craziest show I was ever a part of. If you talk about GG and San Diego, someone will say, “You remember the Spirit Club from ’91?” We would always go to the shows early, and people loved hanging out with us until GG got drunk. Once GG got on stage, it went from a love to hate relationship real fast. People that were loving us and buying us drinks before the show, were the people throwing shit at our vans, breaking windows, and slashing our tires.
GG’s protection from the crowd was covering himself with his own feces. He figured that nobody would touch him when he was covered in shit, and he was right. When he was covered in shit and throwing it into the crowd, it was kind of like his armor. GG’s pre-game ritual was just getting as drunk as possible. His attitude and craziness depended on how long we had to wait before a show and how much he was able to drink during that time. We had a show in Joplin, Missouri, in 1993, which was our last tour with GG. It was in the middle of nowhere. We got to the show really early, probably earlier than we should have. There were too many bands on the bill and, back then, we never traveled with any equipment. We realized after the first tour that traveling with equipment was the worst thing we could do because we’d always have to flee the club with amps, drums, and guitars on our backs. People would already have smashed our shit anyway during the show.
After that first tour, it was always prearranged that one band on the bill would have to supply us with equipment, and we still do that to this day. So, we’re backstage in Joplin, and GG was getting really antsy. When GG wanted to do something, you had better be ready to go, or he was going to leave you behind. Or he might do something far worse. The band whose equipment we were set to use was onstage playing. We had already been paid, as I made it a point to always try and get paid before we played. All the shit that GG would break during the show would otherwise be deducted from our pay.
As we were waiting forever backstage, GG was pacing while getting more anxious and pissed off. He was like a caged animal that was drinking and getting fucked up. I could see that he was ready to explode. Suddenly, GG runs out of the dressing room, jumps on stage, and tackles the lead singer. He threw the guy to the ground, knocked over all the equipment, and barked, “You guys are fucking done!” Yep, they were done. The whole fucking show was done, and we didn’t even get to play. At this point, it started to become a mob scene. We had already gotten paid, and we weren’t giving our fucking money back. We told our driver to get the van, and we planned to get out as discretely as possible, as the band GG attacked obviously wasn’t going to let us use their equipment anymore.
We all piled into the van, and the next thing we know, there were four or five vehicles following us down the highway. We were driving and saying, “Fuck man, there’s a goddamn mob after us.” Finally, after miles of being tailed, we said, “Fuck these assholes! Let’s pull over and see what they fucking do.” We pulled over, they slowed down, and after getting one look at us, they peeled off in the opposite direction. They did not want to fuck with us.
Another really bad one was from 1991 in New York City. Todd Phillips was filming for the documentary Hated. We knew the show was going to be on film, so GG was primed to go. A week before the show, I had to meet with the owner and booking agent to sign a bunch of papers. I was signing off on all this shit, basically promising in writing that GG wouldn’t do this or that. The whole time I was signing and making these promises, I was thinking, “This is insane. This is never gonna happen.” I always played along, saying that GG would behave and everything would be fine. The club we were slated to play was really small. The room with the stage was decent size, but there was a bottleneck to get out. It was only about two or three people wide, and that spelled trouble.
Night of the show, Todd had the cameras set up, and GG was getting really fired up. Everyone was excited to play, and the place was fucking packed. Because of the cameras, I knew it was going to be an all-out GG attack. Sure as shit, after the first line of the first song “Bite It You Scum,” GG busted this poor kid in the face. As soon as GG cracked that kid in the face and broke his nose, blood sprayed everywhere. People freaked out and ran for the exit. It was mayhem, and people were stomping all over each other. GG ended up breaking two kids’ noses that night. The show lasted about two and a half songs, and the cops barged in as we were singing “Kill the Police.” GG made his escape that night, but the club Space and Chase closed down shortly after.
Because GG died of a heroin overdose, the biggest misconception is that he was a junkie. The fact is he rarely ever did heroin. It was just something he did when it was available to him or when he was around someone who did it. Sure, GG would do any drug, but he was mostly just a heavy drinker. I think the fact that he rarely did heroin was one of the contributing factors to his death.
If GG was hanging out, chilling with my wife and I in my house, he was as normal as you and I doing this interview. He was a really smart guy and a fucking genius at writing songs. I couldn’t have asked for a greater brother, and that’s the truth. We grew up together knowing we wanted to play music. We were best friends. He was great in an atmosphere with just his close friends and not out in public being GG. As soon as he got out with people and fans he didn’t personally know, he had to outdo everyone. The people that tried to outdo him, he would totally explode on. The people that actually approached and talked to him after a show who weren’t total assholes, he was totally cool with them. But because of the stage show and the violence, everyone assumed that he would have been a dick or smacked them in the head if they tried to talk to him. Eventually, I’m going to write a book about my whole fucking experience with GG.
55
JON WURSTER
(Superchunk/Bob Mould Band)
I have a man-crush confession: Jon Wurster is my favorite drummer. He also has great hair. Wurster submitted this chapter to me about the very surreal night that he backed Katy Perry at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.
Written by Jon Wurster
I was walking my dog in Brooklyn one rainy Thursday morning when I received a phone call from a fellow musician. He asked if I’d be interested in joining a small cadre of drummers he was putting together to back Katy Perry at that Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall. Though I was fully embedded in the indie rock world and had not watched MTV for at least a decade, I agreed
immediately because this was just too bizarre an opportunity to pass up. Also, the only thing I had on tap for that weekend was a solo excursion to a matinee screening of Matt Damon’s new film The Informant!
The next day I reported to a rehearsal studio on Manhattan’s West Side. On hand were three other drummers, our Musical Director (who would be playing a full drum kit), and a young Izzy Stradlin-looking guitarist. The MD informed us that we’d be adding percussive support for Katy as she opened the VMA’s with Queen’s classic 1976 hit “We Will Rock You.” If you know the song, you know that any Neanderthal with a club can pound out its Boom-Boom-Thwack cadence, but apparently they needed professional Neanderthals to do it right, so there we were.
Two timpani and two large bass drums were positioned in front of a little stage in the rehearsal room. I was hoping to play timpani, but the MD put me on bass drum duty. Anyone who’s played percussion in their school band knows the bass drum is the instrument of shame—the equivalent of your Little League coach stationing you in left field. I wasn’t going to let it get me down though. This was going to be a memorable experience, and I was going to whack that bass drum like it owed me at least forty dollars.
As it turned out, Queen was allowing MTV use of the original stomps, claps, and backing vocals straight from their News of the World album master tapes. This made the experience extra special because my brother Lane and I used to scare ourselves silly listening to “We Will Rock You” as we stared at the murderous giant robot that graced News of the World’s cover. Also, Queen’s 1980 concert at the Philadelphia Spectrum was the first big arena show I ever attended. Every time I smell marijuana, I still think of the two shirtless dirtbags who marched around the upper-tier cheap seats yelling “Who wants to fuckin’ get high?”
Katy soon breezed in with a small retinue of assistants and managers. She introduced herself to everybody and then turned to me and said, “You look familiar.” “Oh, I’ve been around,” I replied. It was a weird thing to say, and I don’t blame her for not really speaking to me again. We got down to business and ran through the song a handful of times, the five drummers pounding out rhythm while Katy found her way with the vocal. Young Izzy nailed Brian May’s iconic solo note-for-note and everything felt pretty good by the final run-through.
The next day we assembled at Radio City Music Hall for an onstage rehearsal. I’d played Radio City eleven years earlier, opening for John Fogerty as a member of Ryan Adams’s band Whiskeytown, but this was a whole different animal. This was live, star-studded national television. Rehearsal was running a little late, so I explored the theater, wandering amongst empty seats reserved for the likes of Beyoncé, Pink, and Taylor Swift. I took a selfie in front of a chair set aside for astronaut Buzz Aldrin because that was the weirdest one I could find.
We settled into place behind our drums on the big stage and banged through “We Will Rock You.” It was pretty thrilling to be up there, and the drums, Katy, and Izzy’s guitar solo sounded great. But there was one hitch: MTV wanted a “name” guitarist to play the solo. I really felt for our young gunslinger. He learned the solo perfectly and sounded wonderful playing it. But he was guilty of an unforgivable crime: He wasn’t famous.
The usual suspects were tossed around: Slash, Dave Navarro, etc., but MTV was having difficulty nailing down a star guitarist. It was a lot to ask a well-known, already established guitar hero to come in on almost no notice and risk crashing and burning in front of millions of people on live TV. At some point that Saturday, news came that Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry had accepted the challenge and would fly to New York City the next morning and play the VMAs that night.
So there we were Sunday morning, back at the west side rehearsal studio at the very un-rock ’n’ roll hour of 10:00 a.m. The door to the rehearsal room was closed, and we were told we could not yet enter. Ten or so minutes later, we were given the OK to come in and there he was: Joe Perry, looking as much like Joe Perry as anyone has ever looked like Joe Perry. The first four Aerosmith albums were the soundtrack to my junior high years, so playing with Joe Perry, even if I was just banging on a bass drum, was a very big deal for me.
One of my favorite family trips occurred in the fall of 1978 when my dad booked a room at the south Philadelphia Hilton for us to hang out and spend the night in while Lane saw Aerosmith at the aforementioned Spectrum. Lane returned much earlier than expected due to Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler being hit in the face with shards of a glass bottle someone threw onstage. A similar incident involving a firecracker to the face forced the band to abandon their Spectrum show a year earlier. When my brother came back to our hotel room he excitedly told us that Aerosmith drummer Joey Kramer stormed up to Tyler’s mic and bellowed, “You got a real problem, Philadelphia!” Now there’s something I think we can all agree on.
The sound Joe and his tech were getting in the rehearsal room was the polar opposite of the classic, raunchy Joe Perry guitar crunch the world knows and loves. The clean, distortion-less tone coming out of the amp would not have been out of place on a Dead Milkmen album (hey, I’m from Philly, so my references are regional). Joe was working with an unfamiliar amp, and it was ten in the morning, so this was understandable.
Halfway into our first pass at the song it became apparent Joe had never actually played the solo in his life. And why would he have? He’s Joe fucking Perry, author of many of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest riffs and solos. He’s a creator, not a tribute artist. But it threw a little monkey wrench into the proceedings. Joe’s solo was inspired and original, but it wasn’t the “We Will Rock You” solo. Also, it was way too long. This would be a major issue, as we would soon find out.
When the song was over we all shot each other confused glances. At one point a member of Katy’s management team turned to me and nervously asked, “This will be OK, won’t it?” The turn of events was most unexpected, so I couldn’t give him a definitive answer. Unfortunately, there was no time to go over the song again because we were due over at Radio City for a full-production rehearsal. At RCMH we were told we’d be carried up from below the stage on one of the theater’s hydraulic lifts. This was very cool because it would allow me to live out a long-dormant childhood fantasy of taking the stage as KISS did on their 1979 Dynasty tour. I would not be allowed to spit blood at any point, but that was OK.
“We Will Rock You” was the first musical performance of the night and would also serve as the entrance for VMA host Russel Brand. Russell would descend a flight of stairs, make his way out onto the runway, and bask in applause while Joe played his guitar solo. Joe’s solo needed to be over at a specific time in order for the show to remain on schedule. This was crucial.
We ran through the song and everything was on track until the guitar showcase. Joe soloed out onto the runway where he wailed away among a sea of seats that would soon be filled by celebrities and beautiful people. The song ended with Joe still soloing on the runway and Russell looking perplexed about what should happen next. This was not good.
Make no mistake, nobody has ever looked cooler playing a guitar than Joe Perry, and his performance at soundcheck was no exception. But the length of the solo was causing heart attacks among the people running the show. The MD was taken aside by panicked network representatives and told there were hundreds of thousands of dollars of at stake if the song ran long and cut into a commercial. Exhausted and in need of sleep, Joe headed back to his nearby hotel room.
While I explored Radio City Music Hall (at one point sharing an elevator with a masked, stage-blood-spattered Lady Gaga) the MD tried in vain to reach Joe by phone to get with him about the length of the solo. Hours later he eventually connected with Joe and impressed upon him the importance of keeping it to a specific number of bars. The new plan was for the MD to play an elongated drum roll to signal the end of the song. There would now be no mistaking when we all should stop playing.
Few of the VMA’s big stars were on hand for that afternoon’s run-through, so I was absolutely shocked wh
en a familiar face came into my field of vision just as the lights went down at show time. “Holy fuck, that’s Madonna,” I said to myself as she glided by me. The Material Woman gracefully ascended a flight of stairs and took her place at the landing just above me where she waited in the dark for her introduction. It still stands as one of the most surreal moments of my life—hocking spit into my hands to ensure a secure bass drum mallet grip while watching Madonna silently prepare to walk into a spotlight and deliver a tribute to the recently deceased Michael Jackson.
I find that when you play on live TV, you go into a weird kind of shock. My friend and bandmate Bob Mould likens it to running out onstage and boxing somebody for three minutes while holding a guitar. This experience was no different. We rode the hydraulic lift to stage level, the MD counted off the song, and that’s the last thing I remember.
Today, thanks to the Space Age miracle of the internet, I watched our performance for the first time in nine years. I was honestly surprised how good it is. Katy struts the stage confidently, Joe reels off a barrage of cool guitar fills, and we drummers hammer away (without dropping our sticks) as an arena-rock light show swirls around us. There’s no evidence of the uncertainty we were all experiencing regarding the song’s ending—the kind of uncertainty you feel watching a scene in a thriller where someone is tasked with defusing a bomb by cutting one of two wires.
The video, however, reveals a somewhat less dramatic conclusion. Joe sticks close to center stage as he plays a blistering solo. Russell stalks the runway, looking back a couple times to see if Joe is wrapping up his solo. He isn’t, he’s still blazing. But then Joe goes into the main finale riff, and we’re back on track. The big drum roll happens and, somehow, none of us stop at the same time! The song skids and tumbles to a halt that sounds like the ending of every live Rolling Stones song before they got pro on 1989’s Steel Wheels tour.