by Drew Fortune
The drummers immediately returned to our dressing room to recover from those two minutes of glory. Questions abounded: “Did we end it right?” “Could you hear the drum roll?” “Was that Vin Diesel in the second row?” Sadly, while we compared notes, we missed the most infamous event to ever occur at the VMAs: Kanye West’s hijacking of Taylor Swift’s Moonman. It would have been nice to one day tell my grandchildren I witnessed it in person.
We never saw Joe Perry, Katy Perry, or Russell Brand again that night. Russell saw a lot of Katy in the ensuing days, tying the knot with her months later for what would be a tumultuous two-year marriage. Joe Perry continues to be the greatest Joe Perry anybody could possibly be. Our musical director, relieved to have the preceding three days in his rear-view mirror, kindly invited his rhythm partners to the RCMH bar for a post-performance drink. Unfortunately for me, I stopped drinking just a month before. I really could have used it. FYI: I went to see The Informant! on Monday. I liked it.
56
NICK HEXUM
(311)
They were several years older, but I grew up with 311 in Omaha. Conor Oberst also lived down the street, and I remember playing soccer in his backyard a few times. Anyway, here’s front man Nick Hexum on marijuana and getting a boot in the face.
I call this my “Welcome to New Jersey” story. We were playing at this place called Convention Hall on the Asbury Park boardwalk. They’ve cleaned it up a lot over the years, but when we were playing it in the ’90s, it was a ghost town. It’s featured in The Sopranos, and I think it’s where Big Pussy got killed. It’s a beautiful, old, haunted stone building, and we would have the wildest shows there. The first time we played there, after the first note, the place erupted, and I got hit right in the face with a boot. Clocked me right in the nose. It came flying out of the mosh pit. It was one of those heavy, big-soled, ’90s boots, and it was heavier than a Doc Marten.
I kept going, but I immediately thought, “This is gonna be a long fuckin’ night. Welcome to New Jersey.” I think they just call the boot-in-the-face a Jersey Hi-Five. It did take me a minute to recompose myself, and I had to also remember that I’ve thrown shit out of the mosh pit before. It’s not necessarily that someone is mad or hates your band. It’s not like a rotten tomato. It’s just a kid who wants to get your attention and is having so much fun that they don’t know how to contain themselves. Those Convention shows were always the craziest.
Our crowd has always been hard to peg. It’s a blend of skaters, punks, and kids who liked weed, NOFX, Nirvana, Rage Against the Machine, Cypress Hill, and reggae. I’ve always thought of myself as more of a punk than a metalhead. The hardcore punks might listen to us and dismiss it as non-punk. To me, it’s always been more about a punk attitude than sound. I don’t have any tattoos, so I don’t fit into the punk mold. It’s an attitude that I learned from Joe Strummer, which is to do whatever the hell you want and not worry about categories. I think that people who sound like punk from twenty years ago are the real poseurs. When the Clash and Sex Pistols started, they sounded like something no one had ever heard before.
Here’s a good embarrassing story. 311’s marijuana anthem is a cover of a solo by H.R. from Bad Brains’ song, “Who’s Got the Herb?” We’ve never put it out on an album, but it did come out on a box set. When we play it live, that’s when everyone pulls out the weed and lights up. There’s a part in the breakdown late in the song where I try and act all cool, dancing around the stage and pointing to people in the audience, “Who’s got it? Who’s got it?” I’ll usually include the name of the town, like, “Who’s got it…here in Columbus!”
Normally when I yell the city, the crowd erupts. This time there was no reaction whatsoever. There was just a bunch of smoke clouds and people staring at me. I yelled Columbus, but we were actually in Cincinnati. It took me about ten seconds to realize I had fucked up. I was completely mortified, and talk about killing the vibe of the place during a pot anthem. I wasn’t stoned, but considering we’ve done over 2,000 shows, you’re gonna botch a city here and there. Bruce Springsteen has done it too…c’mon!
Weed has always been a part of our creativity. Being rebellious kids, it was something we fell into during our Omaha days. You can imagine how hard it was for us to score and find halfway decent stuff back then. It was mostly ditch weed that would give us headaches. Cannabis has come so far in my lifetime. Now, I have more than I could ever deal with. I’m in the industry—I grow it, and I also make vapes. From the beginning, that was our process. We’d smoke and put a song together, and that hasn’t changed. I don’t like to be really stoned on stage because I’ve gotta be really extroverted. In the studio or hanging out with the guys and practicing—that’s the best cannabis time for me.
I’ll always remember this one too. It was back on the first tour we ever did, and it was a straight-up mess. First, we had an RV fire. Everything burned up, and we lost all our equipment. We borrowed some money to buy a new RV and drove up to Vancouver for a show. We were so excited about going international, and as soon as we crossed the border, an axle on our new RV broke. We probably had about 150 bucks between us to make it to the show, and a new axle, with labor, cost about 3,000 bucks. The part wasn’t available in Canada, so we had to wait a week to have it shipped to us.
It was a total nightmare, but we found a really nice Canadian family who let us stay with them. We only had that one show in Vancouver, and when we finally got there, we were so stressed out that we collectively decided to go berserk. We were drinking so hard before the show, and kept right on into the show. We gave this insane performance where we were rolling around on the stage, and we whipped the place into a fury. It’s one of the wildest shows I can remember, just jumping off shit and drinking into oblivion. 1994 at the Town Pump. If video exists, it’s probably nowhere near as good as I remember it.
57
LOUIS PÉREZ
(Los Lobos)
True lifers, Los Lobos is close to entering their fiftieth year as a band. If you’ve never heard the album Kiko, I implore you to check it out while reading this chapter. Here, drummer/multi-instrumentalist Pérez talks navigating the East LA punk scene and a very uncomfortable David Letterman appearance.
As musicians, we all go through the wringer. The good gigs aren’t necessarily memorable, but musicians can always remember the most embarrassing or completely disastrous gigs. Los Lobos has been a band for over forty-four years, so we’ve seen everything. 1980 was the year that we crossed the LA river to start playing clubs in the punk, New Wave scene that was happening in Hollywood. I had just made friends with Tito Larriva from the Latino punk band the Plugz, who went on to be the music guy in a bunch of Robert Rodriguez movies.
Before we crossed the river, we had basically been playing traditional Mexican music in East Los Angeles. Los Lobos were all rock ’n’ roll kids growing up, and we became buddies in high school. We learned some traditional songs to play for our parents on one of our Mom’s birthdays. That’s where the seed was planted, and we were hooked on the greatness of traditional musicianship. We put away the Strats, amps, and Fenders to play traditional for the next ten years.
As my friendship with Tito grew, I became more interested in what was happening in the rock and punk scene on the other side of town. When we discovered the Blasters and what they were doing with rock, that was when we knew we had to change up the traditional thing. One day Tito called, saying that a band had dropped out from a gig he was doing. It was a slot opening for PIL, Johnny Rotten’s band, at the Olympic Auditorium in downtown LA, which was an old wrestling arena.
We jumped at the chance, as we knew who the Sex Pistols were, but it was also just a great opportunity to get seen. This was like the second coming of the punk messiah Johnny Rotten, so it was a big deal in LA. We were so excited, and as I’ve thought about it over the years, I don’t know if Tito set us up for failure. We were the first band playing, and the crowd was ready to sink their teeth into any band that wasn’t P
IL.
Right when we walked on stage, they threw every fucking thing imaginable at us. They didn’t even give us a chance to plug in and see what we were about. They just wanted blood. I felt the rush of wind from all of the arms rising to give us middle fingers. It was a typical punk rock thing, but I was honestly surprised at some of the shit I saw fly on stage. They were spitting at us and throwing balled-up paper towels covered in God knows what.
We made it to the eight-minute mark, and that’s when the really serious projectiles started flying. There was one guy on the side of the stage that was getting change from the bartender to throw nickels and quarters at us. He was aiming to sink one into the hole of our guitarrón, which is a big, six-string, Mexican bass. When it got to a point that wasn’t exactly life-threatening, but close, we ran off the stage. We could have run back to East LA with our tail between our legs because we had invited all of our families to the show. They were hanging on the side of the stage, next to the spitters and the change-thrower.
When we ran off that stage, they were in tears. We all thought it was going to be our big break, so this was the worst thing that could have happened. But we just kept going. Instead of going back home and finding a day job, we had the resiliency of East LA chicanos that didn’t let us quit. We were used to seeing gang fights and struggle back home, so this was just a minor speed bump. We stayed in touch and finally met the Blasters, who invited us to do a big show at the Whiskey a Go-Go. We were in, and the rest is history.
I don’t think the response to us at the PIL show was racially-charged. That crowd was so amped because the Sex Pistols never made it to Los Angeles. They got as far as San Francisco and imploded. We went up there with acoustic instruments playing traditional Mexican music. We could have been a traditional Japanese Koto band, and it would have been just as strange to them. We never dwelt on how our race played into things. It turned out that one of the guys from the Blasters was at the show, and later he said that we were the bravest guys in the world to go up there in front of that crowd and play what we did.
That night is so important to me because it was our introduction to a new world. Circle Jerks and Black Flag was happening, and we all used to go to Madame Wong’s after gigs to hang out. Darby Crash would walk in and literally have to duck down because his mohawk was too high to fit through the door. It was a magical time, and we made friends with all those people. If we would have run home that night, nothing would have happened.
There was a dark side to punk, with drugs and that shit. I don’t think it was just endemic to punk though. It was rampant at that time in early ’80s Los Angeles. We’d play weekend gigs and party afterwards. But once we started seriously touring, we all had to put the brakes on. We made the decision to become rock stars as adults, so we were older than most of the people on the scene. Darby Crash was just a kid, and I was twenty-nine when our first record came out. I would say that we had more sense than everybody else, but I don’t think that’s possible in rock ’n’ roll.
One time we were performing on the David Letterman show, sometime in the mid-’90s. We did sound check, and David said hello before the show. We were in the green room, and the production assistant was explaining about our monitors and what was going to happen during the show. We were watching the show live, and Dave did his monologue and usual schtick. This was a “Stupid Human Tricks” night, where people would come out and show off some goofy, unusual trick.
One of the acts was this little kid, who was maybe eight years old. I can’t remember exactly what his trick was, but he walked on stage, and Dave started interviewing him. “Hi, how old are you? Where are you from?” It was light pleasantries. The kid lived on a farm down South somewhere. Let’s just call the kid Timmy for now. Dave said, “So Timmy, you live on a farm. What’s a typical day on the farm?” Timmy said, in this cute Southern accent, “Well, I get up in the morning and have my breakfast. Sometimes I go in the field and help the Mexicans pick peppers.”
There was an awkward silence, but Letterman was a pro and moved on. But it was very obvious to the audience and millions of viewers that it was a big, fucking oops. Dave was back at his desk after the bit, and before going to commercial, he said, “We’ll be right back. Paul, can you check if Los Lobos are still here?” It became a running joke for the rest of the show until we went on. Before each commercial break, he’d turn to Paul and say, “Can you check on Los Lobos again?”
Right after it happened, the PA and a producer rushed back to see us. They were apologizing profusely, but we were never offended to begin with. It was just a kid from the South! He didn’t mean it in some derogatory way. But man, Letterman’s staff acted like that kid had cursed our mothers and spit in our faces. They were definitely squirming, and we felt bad for them. We’re like, “Guys, we’re cool. It’s really no big deal.”
Before we played, Letterman dedicated the song to the little kid. His people didn’t stop apologizing to us until we left the building. It would have been funny if we had played it like we were extremely offended and locked the door to the green room.
58
DON BREWER
(Grand Funk Railroad)
Being a total Simpsons nerd, I couldn’t resist reaching out to a member of Homer Simpson’s favorite band from the classic “Homerpalooza” episode. So, crank up the FM, turn on the blacklight, and spark up a doobie for Grand Funk!
Let’s go back to Honolulu, Hawaii, 1971. We were just a trio at the time, as we hadn’t added a keyboardist yet. The big rage at the time was how good the pot was in Hawaii. Everyone wanted to get their hands on some Kona Gold. We arrived, but I wasn’t a big pot smoker. I’d partake every now and then, but the other two guys in Grand Funk certainly were, and they got a bunch of it. They didn’t try it out until before the show, which I knew was probably a mistake.
As we progressed through the show, I noticed that the music was getting worse and worse. By the time we got to our cover of the Animals’ “Inside Looking Out,” which was our biggest song at the time, things went off the rails. There’s a big, elongated guitar solo, with the bass and drums pumping, and you have to be pretty tight to pull it off. When we got to the big climax, my two bandmates got totally lost. We weren’t used to that kind of pot back home, so it must have been like an acid trip for them.
Pretty soon, they started playing a completely different song, while I was still going on “Inside Looking Out.” I had no idea what they were playing, as they were off on some other planet. You talk about Grand Funk Railroad having a train wreck, man…that was it. I just stopped playing, and they kept going. I just stood there, and eventually, they quit playing. Then, we just walked off the stage. It was not our finest moment, and it was my most embarrassing Grand Funk moment.
When I saw people going into bathrooms and using needles, I was smart enough to leave. I raised my daughter by saying, “I don’t care if you go to a party. Just know when it’s time to get the hell out.” For us, it was the wild and crazy ’70s, and groupies were the big thing. They were always trying to get backstage and hook up with the band. That was going on all the time. But I was the boring one. I was the one to always drive everyone home.
We didn’t get sucked in by everything though. We stayed in Flint, Michigan, and didn’t get caught up in everything by moving to New York or LA. There are so many ungodly stories about what happened to so many people and bands during that time. It’s like being a football player and, eventually, it will end. There’s not a ton of longevity, and there’s a reason you don’t see a bunch of guys like Elton John or Paul McCartney around. Very few people can be Bruce Springsteen and make a lifelong career out of it. Most of the time, they’re gonna come and go. When they go, it goes down hard. It goes down bad.
We avoided that, and I think we did a pretty good job. We were kind of outcasts. We were from Flint, and all of the “in” bands were from Ann Arbor or Detroit, like The Stooges and MC5. When Grand Funk finally got nationwide success, we were the last band to be ac
cepted in our home state. They certainly didn’t love us on the way up. So we just stayed to ourselves and did our own thing. We had a slow demise as disco came in. There was a lot of in-fighting about which direction we should go, and we were getting burned out on each other.
In 1976, we were working on an album with Frank Zappa, who was producing. We just couldn’t get along, and we disbanded after. It really didn’t come around until our music became classic rock in the ’90s. All the labels started reissuing catalogs and classic rock stations were springing up everywhere. Classic rock became an institution, and we reunited in 1996. What’s funny is that The Simpsons was instrumental in us reuniting because we are Homer Simpson’s favorite band.
I co-wrote the song that The Simpsons wanted to use in the episode, which is “Shinin’ On.” They sent me the “Homerpalooza” script because they wanted to get our approval to use the song. In the episode, Homer is driving his kids to school and “Shinin’ On” comes on the radio. Homer launches into this whole thing about how much he loves Grand Funk, and he’s so shocked to learn that the kids don’t know Grand Funk. He mentions each of us by name, and I thought it was a great use of the song and a really cool tribute to the band. We learned that one of the writers was a huge Grand Funk fan, and he’s made Grand Funk references in numerous episodes.
We started having young kids and musicians referencing that episode after shows. After they are done asking about Homer, they’ll say, “I didn’t know you guys could rock like that!” Forty years on, and we’re still doing great. We’re not selling out arenas, but we’re happy.