Life on Planet Rock

by Lonn Friend

  I was anxious the morning of our lunch. This was not Mötley Crüe or Ratt. I worried that the Hustler connection that had served me so well within the community of follicle freaks and fun boys might not wash with this new breed of somber rocker. I wondered how I should handle these guys. Should I be Lonn Friend, free-spirited, mildly pornographic, familiar dude about town? Or should I don a more serious hat? I resolved to just be myself and go with the flow How weird could it get?

  The mere contemplation of role playing defined how important it was for me to connect with the rockers. Fact is, I was Lonn the metalhead. I was also Lonn the prog rocker, Lonn the punk, Lonn the grunge rocker, Lonn the mosher, Lonn the thrasher, Lonn the hippie, Lonn the glam ham, Lonn the idiot, Lonn the savant—whatever the moment called for, that’s what I was. As for who I was, I’m still working on that one.

  It had become customary to take visiting dignitaries on a tour around the magazine. Since RIP’s editorial offices shared the same space as Hustler, Chic, and the most popular rag with the metalhead contingent, Busty Beauties, the highlight of the go-round was usually the X-rated photo department. Rockers used to drop by the office unannounced just to catch a peek at the next month’s Hustler honeys. But my gut told me Nirvana wouldn’t appreciate such eye candy, so we went directly to the RIP side of the building. Little did I realize that the flesh depicted on my own office wall would prove my undoing.

  It was a balmy Southern California winter day when the trinity called Nirvana—Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl—entered the house that Larry built.

  Kurt’s demeanor immediately made me uncomfortable. His eyes were fixated on the photographs that dotted my walls. I chatted it up with the easygoing Krist and Dave but kept a polite distance from Kurt, who I could tell was somewhere else. He just kept gazing blankly at the framed photos on my wall. God, I hope he likes Chinese food, I mused.

  Tse Yang was a five-minute walk east on Wilshire to Doheny a nice stroll to get acquainted before sitting down for a meal. I remember taking Red Hot Chili Peppers vocalist Anthony Kiedis out to lunch one time, and during the walk I started to laud the kung pao shrimp. “I don’t eat shrimp, Lonn,” he fired back succinctly. “They’re bottom-feeders. They consume the feces from other creatures that fall to the sea floor.” I was Lonn the vegetarian that day.

  When we got to the restaurant, the rhythm section immediately started hammering back one Tsingtao beer after another while the laconic Cobain offered little commentary, content to remain in his private world, disconnected from the blather and bullshit that often spews freely during the initial bonding session of press and artist. I don’t think Kurt took one bite of whatever Far East delicacy he ordered.

  I truly enjoyed the lunch with Krist and Dave. They were disarming and fun, especially Grohl, who was a big fan of the magazine. Raised on Motörhead and Sabbath, he was an authentic metalhead and made no bones about his headbangin’ roots. We were connecting and it felt good. Kurt, on the other hand, was visibly detached. I had a strong sense that he genuinely disliked me. But it wasn’t until two years later that I realized just how badly that lunch at RIP rattled the fragile feathers of rock’s darkest angel.

  In 1993, Michael Azerrad’s biography of Nirvana, Come As You Are, was published. When I reached page 210 of the book, I was floored by what I read.

  Part of playing the game is going out to dinner with powerful music magazine editors and pretending to be friendly with them so they’ll give the band an article or a favorable review. On one of these junkets, the band went out to lunch at a swank Beverly Hills eatery with RIP magazine editor Lonn Friend.

  Before lunch, Kurt, Krist, and Dave visited Friend’s office. “I looked up on his wall and I noticed that Lonn has a fetish,” says Kurt. “A rock ‘n’ roll butt fetish. He has to have all these pictures taken with him and up-and-coming bands where either he’s naked or the bands have to drop their pants. He’s pinching their butts. There are all these pictures of him with naked rock stars that have been in this magazine. He’s in the bathtub naked and they’re standing around him and it started to scare me.”

  The bathtub shot Kurt was referring to was of me and Alice Cooper posing for a RIP subscription ad from the October 1991 Neal Preston cover session. The photo depicted the light-hearted prince of darkness holding an electric blow dryer over a bathtub with me in it. It was an innocent, satirical image that was actually Alice’s idea. But Kurt didn’t see it that way.

  The next depiction that curdled Cobain was the Halfin photo of Metallica and me with their bare butts showing. The other shot was of veteran metal icons Geoff Tate and Chris De-garmo of Queensrche flanking yours truly clad in a bath towel with the Queensrche Q inked on my chest. The ‘Rche hailed from Seattle, but apparently Kurt didn’t recognize them from the old neighborhood.

  I was riding a wave of media visibility at this time predicated on the “heavy metal dude” character fans were getting to know via the magazine MTV and syndicated radio. Alice Cooper always referred to “Alice” in the third person, the alter ego that made him famous. The “Lonn dude” I showed to the outside world was occasionally misunderstood. Being a chameleon is one thing. Being aware that you’re a chameleon is another. I adapted to my environments, not to survive like a lizard in the desert, but to thrive amongst the weird array of creatures I encountered on a daily basis. I knew there were snakes in the grass. In the rock business, they’re everywhere.

  It was obvious from the Azerrad tome that my instinct that day was correct. I didn’t need to waltz Kurt into the Hustler photo department. I had enough skin in my office to corrupt whatever relationship may or may not have had a chance to develop that day. I was completely unconscious of this, simply tickled to have silly shots of my rock star buddies on display in the well-trafficked RIP offices for all visitors to enjoy or, in this case, be repulsed by. Whether the rockers in the photos saw me as the “butt” of the joke or the friend in the frame never crossed my mind. It was fun. Simple as that. But that wasn’t what ticked me off most about the passage. Kurt’s quote continued:

  It was a disgusting scene because we were basically pimping our personalities to this person to see if he liked us before he decided to promote us. It was the most sickening thing I ever experienced. I just decided to not say a word and sit there and be pissed off and act really insane. The only words he said to me after he got up to leave were, “Kurt, you shouldn’t talk so much.” He was really offended, totally pissed off.

  My office was the most disgusting thing that Kurt Cobain had ever seen? Whoa, hold on for a sec. More disgusting than the bruises on his arms from shooting smack? More disgusting than the evening news, corporate America, or Courtney Love first thing in the morning? Okay. Kurt may have exaggerated but the last part of that sentence, that I was “really offended”—this is indicative of how severely we misunderstood each other. I wasn’t pissed off at all, just disappointed that I was unable to connect with a significant artist whose songs had sincerely rocked me. It wasn’t often that my personality did not jibe with those of the musicians who appeared in the magazine. But I never allowed my personal vibe with a band member dictate how RIP would cover that act. But this is where Azerrad really flies off the mark:

  Sure enough, RIP didn’t support Nirvana until it practically had to, at the height of Nirvana mania. When the band refused to cooperate anymore with RIP after the magazine ran a special edition on the band without their permission, the letters page just happened to feature more and more anti-Nirvana screeds. “If we were smart,” says Kurt, “we would have played the game a little bit longer to get the acceptance of the RIP readers, to where they liked us so much that no matter what we said, it wouldn’t matter. But we blew our wad too soon.”

  Nirvana happened because of planetary timing and the fact that their message reflected Kurt Cobain’s keen sense of self-expression and his ability to channel those sensations and observations into perfect riffs and remarkable songs that the disenfranchised, disillusi
oned youth at the turn of the decade could relate to. Similarly, RIP happened because we were there to document the moment, connecting with that same transmuting youth culture.

  I had always attributed my success in this business to the fact that artists trusted me. I earned the respect of bands and developed relationships because I never violated confidences or exploited scandal for the short-term reward of selling a few more magazines. Damn, we probably would have sold an extra hundred thousand mags a month if I had published one-tenth the dirt I knew about GN’R alone.

  Our coverage of Nevermind ranked with any on the newsstand, including Rolling Stone. RIP scribe Steffan Chirazi authored the magnificent June 1992 cover story, “The Year of Living Famously,” which echoed the sentiment put forth in my cover line “Nirvana! How They Made It… and Why They Hate It!” Our layout also included a revealing sidebar titled “Head Full of Hate: The World According to Kurt Cobain” by Mike Gitter. Cobain told Gitter:

  I don’t feel much sincerity from people my age at all. Just look at how many people just sit there and watch TV all day, and it’s really obvious that all it does is exploit macho-sexism 24 hours a day. … I just feel really ashamed of my generation. I seriously want a revolution. Wouldn’t that be really exciting and fun?

  As far as publishing a special Nirvana issue without permission, we had done quarterly specials on bands for years. They were the best photos and articles we could find, fanzine-style keepsakes, which we took great pride in. And as far as the anti-Nirvana letters, RIP ran the good and bad from our readers (our rants, if you will) with great attention to balance. Keep in mind, during this period the hardcore metal community was looking at Nirvana as the Grim Reaper. MTV was wiping the hair bands off their network faster than you could say “mullet head.”

  The grunge movement was in full flower. Metallica was crossing over to mega-acceptance, and decadent glam metal was being shoved back underground after a decade of chart-topping, multiplatinum prosperity. But my mission as a magazine editor was an eclectic one. RIP was expanding its focus, adapting to the changing landscape of aggressive music. It was a rock magazine, wide in its scope, fearless in its journalistic approach, and always just a bit heavier than the competition.

  “Heavy” was defined by the attitude of the articles and the photography. Sebastian Bach was a pretty-boy pinup in Metal Edge and Hit Parader. We put him on the cover in an alley with a broken bottle and a “fuck you” smirk on his face. Our features were long form, sometimes up to three thousand words, unheard of for a metal mag. And we did our best to run the stories uncensored, blotting out a couple letters in fuck so the more conservative retailers would keep us on the stands.

  Nirvana belonged in RIP and we did them right. But I never got to know the artist Cobain personally, so my perspective on who he was and what made him tick comes from outside sources rather than the one I’ve always trusted the most: my own impressions. Because the fly never made it onto Nirvana’s wall, I am destined, like so many moved by his presence and musical purpose, to hypothesize on the mystery man. Kurt played the part of the tortured artist like he was bred for it.

  Growing up under the cloudy skies of Aberdeen, a hundred miles from the streets of Seattle, Cobain picked up his guitar at an early age and began to channel the punk avatars with an authentic sense of violence, anger, antiestablishment angst, and almost ethereal disillusionment with society, but more so with himself. “Rape Me,” “Heart Shaped Box,” and the excruciating 1993 B-side “I Hate Myself and I Want to Die” resonate like the prophetic preachings of a doomed poet. Fact is, as I look back in midlife after my fair share of peaks and valleys, I empathize with Kurt far more than I ever did back when I was handing out assignments on the heroes of the day for a hard-rock magazine.

  I finally got some inside perspective on that lunch and on author Azerrad and his book years later when Kurt’s widow, the sometimes fabulous, ofttimes flammable Courtney Love and I spoke at the 1996 premiere party for The People vs. Larry Flynt, the Milos Forman motion picture in which Mrs. Cobain portrayed to a magnificent and haunting tee my old boss, Althea Flynt. Courtney introduced me to Kurt’s mother that night. Shaking the hand of the woman who bore Kurt Cobain was somewhat bizarre, as was the obvious affection Kurt’s mom had for Courtney.

  I saw my chance during the Flynt dinner to engage Courtney in conversation about Come As You Are and how I felt about the page that took my beloved magazine and me to task. I wasn’t looking to salvage my reputation or that of RIP, but rather for some perspective. I blew it with Cobain, never made the connection; maybe I missed something.

  “Michael Azerrad is an asshole, Lonn,” she said emphatically. “And as for that lunch, well, let’s just say, Kurt wasn’t in his right mind around that time.” I felt somewhat vindicated, even if it was the fair-haired firebrand pot calling the kettle black.

  9

  Band of Golden Words

  I ASPIRE TO INSPIRE BEFORE I EXPIRE.

  —Kinky Friedman

  I’m goin’ hungry!

  The duet cried, their voices united by song and the memory of a fallen friend. Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell traded vocals and marched across the Hollywood Palladium stage as four thousand fans from far and near stared at a jam for the ages. It was the encore of Soundgarden’s dazzling one-hour set, the grand finale to an evening that had also seen performances by their fellow northwest countrymen Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.

  I’m goin’ hungry!

  They bellowed again, tossed their mikes to the floor, and took flight like a pair of flannel-clad pigeons over a sea of sweaty bodies moshing in the pit below. Into the crowd they soared as intoxicated, hypnotized fans reached for a touch of infamy. The song setting the house ablaze was “Hunger Strike” from Temple of the Dog, the one-off record produced by members of both bands as a tribute to Andy Wood—lead singer of Mother Love Bone—who had died of a heroin overdose the year before. Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron along with Pearl Jam guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, the latter two remnants of Love Bone, were also on stage, strumming their heavenly riffs.

  I was watching from the wings, stage left, as the magic unfolded. The date was October 17, 1991, and this was RIP’s fourth-anniversary party, what urban legend would someday crown the “Seattle party.” The previous year, we’d made history with a soiree highlighted by Motörhead and the last Guns N’ Roses club performance the world ever saw. But Planet Rock had changed drastically in the span of twelve months.

  There was a seductive new sound emerging from the rainy streets of Seattle, a town better known for its Boeing aircrafts than for its badass beats. Though the bands that would be kings were still yet to be crowned on a global scale, it was obvious to all in attendance that the shift was on.

  My relationship with the extraordinary individuals that would fuel the movement that the mainstream media would lamely label grunge rock began with an overnight road trip to Seattle in August 1990. Just a few weeks prior to my departure, the RIP advertising department had negotiated what would have been our first promoted concert tour. The bill featured Mother Love Bone and Kill for Thrills, a local outfit featuring guitarist Gilby Clarke, who would later go on to replace Izzy Stradlin in GN’R. Love Bone was the headliner. They were from Seattle, were local heroes, and had just been signed to PolyGram Records by A&R rep Michael “Goldie” Goldstone.

  But the tour never played even one date because before it launched in the spring of 1990, Love Bone’s lead singer, the charismatic star child with a penchant for heroin, Andy Wood, passed away on March 19. His body was discovered by his fiancée, Xana La Fuente, on the couple’s bed. He’d been clean for 116 days but fell off the wagon one night, hard, when he scored some bad smack. RIP’s first tour was abruptly cancelled, and I soon found myself walking the boulevard where Andy had lived and died.

  Columbia Records A&R rep Nick Terzo and label publicist Kevin Kennedy invited me to take a road trip with them to get a first glimpse of the b
and Nick had just signed. I was often privy to peeks at new bands and product before the competition. I loved making a visit to a recording studio to hear tracks from a forthcoming LP—and having the guys in the band play me the material personally. Or getting an all-expense-paid minivacation to a foreign place to catch an indigenous act live before they broke out of their neighborhood and hit the big time.

  “They’re very dark and very heavy,” said Kevin on the phone, giving me the details of our proposed road trip.

  “What are they called?” I asked.

  “Alice in Chains,” he responded.

  “Alice in Chains?” I fired back. “Sounds like a good title for an Alice Cooper album.”

  We arrived around 6 P.M., got a bite to eat on First Street, Seattle’s main drag of clubs, and headed over to the venue, a nice-sized theater known to most of the local talent that had built up enough of a following to escape the one-hundred-seat-capacity club scene. The mood at the show that night was gloomy, with local fans plodding about the drafty venue like extras from Night of the Living Dead. Bodies listlessly milled about the building as Alice introduced to these virgin ears strains that would soon be known from Bellingham to Boston as grunge. The dirgelike sadness of the band’s music was only overshadowed (emphasis on the word shadow) by the long-sleeved and knit-capped crowd, whose aura was as damp and cold as the weather outside. But they paid attention. They hung desperately onto every painful note that poured forth from the stage that night.

  My senses took hold of two things: the deliberate, authentic, inventive grind of guitarist Jerry Cantrell and the hypnotic, guttural vocals of singer Layne Staley. There was one song that stood out during a rather grueling seventy-minute set. “Man in the Box” was punishing, perfectly cast, the evil and seductive villain of that evening’s poisoned theater. Layne delivered it like a sickly seasoned veteran, diving to bowel depth to dredge up the Edgar Allan Poetry of the song’s lamenting lyric. “Jeeeeeesus Christ!” I had no idea then that this was not just the chorus to a song but also a cataclysmic cry for help. Layne was a junkie from a dysfunctional family. He was drowning in this black well of addiction, and the music was his only light.