Life on Planet Rock

by Lonn Friend

  She was unimpressed. “Dada, I’m tired,” she said.

  “Meg, we’re at the Pearl Jam concert in Las Vegas!” I preached to my divine offspring of love and rock. “They’re going on in just a couple minutes.”

  We lasted through “Release,” “Go,” and “Animal,” but by the opening bars of “Jeremy,” father and daughter were done. I could see Aaron on my brother’s shoulders having a blast. His face glowed like he was standing beneath the burning bush. This was his live-concert deflowering, and no matter how old you are, you never forget your first time. Meg and I were back at the Mirage snoozing away a half hour later. Was she conscious of the event, the miracle journey of father and child for love of rock and rocker? I got my answer the next morning when I dropped her off at school. Her teacher said, “Good morning, Megan, how are you?” whereupon the slightly-worse-for-wear three-year-old replied, “I went to Las Vegas with my dada to see the Purl Jam show.”

  As RIP continued to cover the Seattle scene, I got a bit caught up in the media madness surrounding Seattle and green-lighted a special one-off issue called Grunge that the bands, especially Eddie, perceived as pulp prostitution of the scene to sell magazines. Pearl Jam had exploded with the video for “Jeremy,” sending their debut, Ten, to multiplatinum sales and the band into the realm of superstardom far quicker than expected. In fact, they so detested the size and speed of their success that they did what no band before them—with the exception of the Grateful Dead—had done. They flipped the middle finger to MTV. “No more videos,” they said. And for all intents and purposes, that was it. “Jeremy” was the last time Pearl Jam’s fans got to see them in a slickly produced video.

  It took unprecedented courage to say no to MTV, the musical media monolith that was writing me a monthly check at the time for my “Friend at Large” segments on Saturday night’s Headbangers Ball.

  One item came back to bite me in the ass. I did a segment hyping the Grunge issue of RIP: first mistake. Then I compounded the misstep by showing the poster of Eddie Vedder we inserted into the issue and doing a Wayne’s World “we’re not worthy” up-and-down bow before the photograph. This kind of behavior would have been fine for, say, Mötley Crüe or Iron Maiden, but it did not fly with Pearl Jam. I discovered the error of my ways on a Vs. tour overnighter to Phoenix.

  We were backstage at the Mesa Amphitheatre, November 7, 1993—second show of a two-night stint being promoted by Danny Zelisko and Evening Star Productions. The rotund and wonderful Danny Z—mentored in concert promotion by the legendary Bill Graham—was not just a great businessman and fierce storyteller, he was the consummate party animal and as pure a rock fan I’d ever known. He was also my friend.

  “Eddie’s pissed off at you,” he said as I arrived backstage, naïvely prepared to greet the guys. “You better make nice or he’ll take away your flannel pj’s and burn ‘em. Seriously, go talk to him before they go onstage. I don’t want a shitty show because of you!”

  I had brought along a gift for the lead singer—my original vinyl foldout collectible copy of Jethro Tull’s Stand Up LP Rick Krim, talent relations VP from MTV, was also backstage. He’d flown in from New York to make his umpteenth in-person plea for the band to reconsider delivering a video for the new LP, Vs. Krim failed in his agenda. I, however, succeeded. It was about heart and the authenticity of uncorrupted communication.

  “Lonn, that wasn’t right,” said Eddie, pulling me aside near the back door adjacent to where the crew and band buses were parked. “That issue, the poster, that shit on MTV, that’s not what we’re about.”

  I lowered my head, took a breath, and processed his words. “I had no idea, Eddie, really,” I replied. “I just think the Seattle bands are so important and wanted to give the fans something cool. But I understand what you’re saying, and I apologize.”

  My delivery disarmed Eddie. He smiled. “Cool. What do you have there?” he asked, sighting the LP in my hand.

  “Oh, that’s for you. My original Stand Up. I know you love Tull. This record is almost as old as you. I bought it when it came out in ‘69. I signed the inside.”

  His smile widened. “Wow,” he responded. “Thanks, man! You’re a good guy, Lonn. Enjoy the show.”

  You can say that Eddie’s attitude was all about protecting their image, a vanity play, but I choose to look beyond the obvious and believe that he was sincerely trying to teach me something, from his point of view, about how the Seattle movement and its reluctant heroes were being perceived by the public. Every man creates his own reality. Sorry for the pun, but maybe these guys were just trying to make me a … better man. Or at least a better journalist.

  The most beautiful song on Mother Love Bone’s delicious Apple is called “Man of Golden Words.” It is a touching piano ballad that praises the inspirational power of music. Andy Wood sounds almost as if he’s praying, rather than singing. Perhaps he was.

  Tell me, Mr. Golden Words, how’s about the world?

  Tell me can you tell me at all?

  Words and music, communication

  Let’s fall in love with music.

  I will always be an idealist when it comes to the individuals who create the music that connects us to something bigger than ourselves. Some musicians become assholes when they go from rocker to rock star. But the guys in Pearl Jam have clutched firmly onto their integrity while navigating the treacherous waters of fame and fortune.

  The best concerts are the ones that remove you from your body and allow your soul to roam free on the astral plane for a couple hours before returning you to real life. And when you actually know the dudes up there operating the transporter machine—well, that rocks even harder.

  After the show, I headed for my hotel, located directly adjacent to the concert site, a short stroll under the starry desert sky. I was feeling … connected. Getting in the elevator with me was a roadie wheeling a road case, laminates dangling from his neck, a walkie-talkie on his hip. “How’s it going,” I said, not paying attention to the image on his passes.

  “Not bad,” he replied in an obvious English accent. “Fucking tired, though. Can’t wait to get to bed. So who played here tonight?”

  “Pearl Jam,” I replied. The elevator stopped at his floor first and as he exited into the hallway, I asked, “Hey, who are you here with?”

  With the door closing behind him, he blurted, “Jethro Tull.”

  10

  Live and Let Clive

  POUND ON THE EARTH: DULL AND EARTHEN ITS ECHO, DEADENED AND MUFFLED BY WHAT WE UNDERTAKE.

  —Rainer Nlaria Rilke

  Geoff Bywater worked in the marketing department of MCA Records. I’d supported several of his label’s acts and we had developed a friendship. When he landed a senior position with Fox Music Group and saw the script for a green-lighted heavy-metal comedy that took place in a radio station, he thought I would be an excellent candidate for the motion picture’s music supervisor and executive producer of the soundtrack for the new imprint, Fox Records.

  The film’s producers, Robert Simonds and Mark Burg, were very high on the script, penned by a young screenwriter named Rich Wilkes. Simonds came by RIP one afternoon to check me out and got off staring at the photos on the wall of me with rock stars and their pants down (Cobain would have hated this guy). The hundred or so laminates hanging off the corners of my bulletin board also intrigued him. “These are cool!” he crowed. “We should use them for the opening credits, like a montage. Can we borrow them?”

  I got the gig and began working on acquiring music for the soundtrack with Fox principals Elliot Lurie—former lead singer of the band Looking Glass who composed and sang the 1972 smash “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl)”—and Matt Walden, a slick, Ivy league, energetic attorney. Elliot handled all things creative while Matt did the legal dirty work, such as negotiating licensing fees and clearing songs for use in the film and on the soundtrack.

  The film’s director was Michael Lehmann, known primarily for having helmed the 1989 black com
edy Heathers, about a high school clique of murderous blondes all named Heather. Airheads starred Steve Buscemi (an independent cinema hero); Brendan Fraser, who was getting raves for his performance in 1992’s School Ties; and Saturday Night Live’s Adam Sandler in his first big screen role.

  The list of co-stars was also impressive. They included Michael McKean (from the movie Spinal Tap, who’d played the infamous “Seattle” RIP party), Joe Mantegna (nephew of Rainbow/ Roxy owner Mario Maglieri), David Arquette (younger brother of Rosanna; remember Toto and Grant High?), and Michael “Kramer” Richards (from TV’s up-and-coming situation comedy Seinfeld), an alum of Valley College who’d taken astronomy with Barlow.

  Getting to know Adam Sandler was the highlight of the Airheads experience. One afternoon on the Fox lot, I sat with him in his trailer and he told me about his other dream, besides acting—the rock-’n’-roll dream.

  “I had a meeting with [President] Mo Ostin at Warner Brothers Records,” he reported to me in confidence. “I think he’s gonna offer me a record deal. I got the shakes sitting in his office. Eddie Van Halen, Neil Young, Paul Simon, Prince— damn, I thought, if those walls could talk. I like Mo, Lonn. We’ll see what happens.”

  My first coup was securing a brand-new track called “Feed the Gods” by White Zombie, who were buzzing big via the repeated appearance of their “Thunderkiss ‘65” clip on MTV’s top-rated animated show Beavis and Butt-Head. In the script, a club scene called for a live band to perform while a rookie cop, played by the late, great Chris Farley, interrogated crowd members—and Zombie fit the bill.

  Todd Singerman, manager of Motörhead, came by RIP and played me a track called “Born to Raise Hell,” which had seen release only in Europe. It screamed Airheads in riff, word, and attitude, but it needed to be, for lack of a better term, fucked with. Sting, Rod Stewart, and Bryan Adams had been riding the charts all fall with a sappy ballad called “All for Love.” The three musketeers of adult contemporary gave me an idea. We could do the antiballad. I pitched Lemmy on rerecording the vocal tracks to “Hell” with a pair of mischievous guests: Sebastian Bach and Whitfield Crane from Ugly Kid Joe, whose 1991 hit single, “Everything about You,” had become a troublemaker’s anthem.

  Whitfield and Bas—like so many other second-generation hard rockers—idolized Lemmy, but when it came to closing the deal, Sebastian’s label, Atlantic Records, nixed the idea, not because of Motörhead, but rather, they didn’t think it was good for Skid Row’s poster child for adolescent excess to share a mike with the less-worldly Mr. Crane. Bas was in the middle because he didn’t really care. He wanted to do it. On December 16, 1993, he sent a fax to my office. “Dunk! I don’t have a problem with it, man! I’ll do it. How does Lemmy feel? Lemme know. Rip it, Baz.”

  But artists can be overruled, especially by managers or executives holding the purse strings to their career. Bas was axed from the project and I needed a replacement, so I called up Jorge Hinojosa, manager for rap artist Ice T, who had found favor with the metal crowd through his hybrid side project Body Count.

  He called me back the next day. “Ice loves Lemmy and has no problem with Whitfield. He’s in.” We cut the track with producer Howard Benson and everyone loved it. Michael Lehmann gave Lemmy a cameo in the big demonstration scene outside the radio station, where members of the throng are spouting up to make Brendan Fraser’s character, Chazz, feel better about having grown up a geek. “I edited the school magazine,” cried the deadpan metal god. Classic.

  Fox decided that White Zombie and Motörhead would be the LP’s two singles and videos. “Feed the Gods” was an edgy-effects-laden concert clip, while “Born to Raise Hell” had a big-budget, comedic storyline woven about a killer soundstage performance. On the set of the downtown L.A. video shoot, Singerman pulled me aside and said, “Lonn, no one has ever spent $200,000 on a Motörhead video. Not even close. This means so much to Lemmy. Thanks for stepping up.”

  During the months I worked on Airheads, all memos regarding the soundtrack were cc’d to Roy Lott, general manager of Arista. Roy answered directly to label founder and industry icon Clive Davis. About three months into the project, sometime during the summer of 1993, Roy flew into L.A. from New York, the executive hub of the company, to meet with Lurie, Walden, and Bywater for a progress report on the soundtrack. I was invited, too. As the distribution arm for Fox Records, Arista would be responsible for shouldering 50 percent of the marketing and promotion costs on the release, so Roy wanted to make sure the ship, in his estimation, was sailing straight.

  Roy was businesslike yet approachable. I did my song and dance on what I had in the hopper and he seemed impressed. “4 Non Blondes is going to cover Van Halen’s ‘I’m the One.’ That rocks,” I said. At the end of the meeting, we took a short walk down one of the faux Fox streets outside Lurie’s office. “If you need help with anything, just ask,” he said. “You’re doing a great job. Keep it up. We’re very excited about this soundtrack.” Little did I know, Roy and Clive had begun hatching a plan to romance me out of journalism and into the record business. The debut volley came from my attorney friend and golfing buddy Eric Greenspan, who had negotiated several recording contracts with Roy and whose pedigree was business affairs.

  In March 1994, Eric invited me out to play eighteen holes at Brentwood Country Club, where he was a member. “Have you ever thought about working for a record label?” he asked.

  “What are you talking about?” I replied.

  “Roy Lott called me the other day inquiring whether you’d consider taking an A&R position at Arista. They’ve been desperate to develop a rock roster. It’s the weakest part of the company. They’re huge in R&B and pop but can’t break a rock band to save their lives. I think you could write your ticket on this. Roy really likes you. He wants you to meet Clive when he comes out for the Grammys in two weeks.”

  My first reaction was “no fucking way!” I preferred being on the outside of Babylon looking in. Eric pushed a little harder. “Lonn, you should meet with Clive, just for the hell of it. He’s Clive Davis. Be a good experience for you.” I enjoyed being a media personality but I still wasn’t making enough money to get the Friends out of the ‘hood. In a couple years, Megan would be ready for preschool, and then private school, and then … maybe I should give this some thought. What harm could one meeting do?

  The Chameleon met the King the morning after the 1994 Grammy Awards ceremony. “Mr. Davis will meet you at 10 A.M. in his suite at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel,” instructed Rose Marino, veteran keeper of the Clive calendar. “He usually stays in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, but they’re remodeling.” Right. Whatever. I rang the bell and waited two minutes for him to answer. The door finally opened, and a sixty-something man wearing a cardigan sweater and tinted glasses invited me in. I took a deep breath and crossed the threshold.

  We exchanged pleasantries and he offered me some breakfast. “I’ll have a bagel,” I said. I was nervous but did my best to act aloof.

  “Last night was marvelous for us! Did you watch the Grammys?” he asked, excitedly.

  “Uh no,” I replied. “I hate award shows. Like Woody Allen.” The Annie Hall reference escaped him, and he lit into a recap depicting his company’s victorious evening. Not one artist he mentioned was on my current personal playlist. I did my best to act interested.

  “So, Roy is very high on you. He believes you could help us build a rock roster. We need assistance in that area. Have you ever thought about scouting talent? Let me ask you, who do you believe are the most significant rock artists making music out there right now?”

  My mind went blank for a second and I blurted out, “Well, Metallica, Pearl Jam—I really like Beck. I think his major-label debut is brilliant. He’s going to be around for a while.” Clive looked puzzled. “Beck? He’s a novelty. Geffen couldn’t even follow up ‘Loser.’ I wouldn’t put my money on Beck.”

  He asked me how I decided what bands to cover in my magazine, and I told him I relied o
n input from my editors and writers, as well as my own instincts. “Your greatest ally in A&R is your gut,” he responded emphatically. “You have to know the goods when you hear it. Be able to identify a star. It’s a gift. Do you think you could recognize talent at its earliest stage of the game? Unpolished, raw, young?”

  I was starting to feel comfortable. He wasn’t so intimidating anymore. “I bought my first record when I was seven after seeing the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.” He grinned wide at that comment. I think he was starting to like me.

  Ninety minutes later, he was playing me demo tapes from crappy bands that had sent their virgin wares to his senior director of A&R in New York, Michael Barackman. “Tell me what you think of this one,” he directed, cranking up his expensive portable stereo to Spinal Tap levels. I’m sure the volume didn’t bother anyone. The suite was bigger than my house.

  “That sucks, Clive,” I said. “The lyrics are cliché and the guitarist can’t play”

  He grinned, obviously enjoying my candor. Another half hour passed and it was time to wind things up. “Lonn, one more question. If you were to use a phrase to describe yourself, what would it be?”

  I paused for an instant and the words flew off my tongue. I’m not sure they even stopped at my brain before exiting the gullet. “I guess you might call me a pragmatic rebel.”

  There was a message from Eric waiting for me when I got back to the magazine. “You blew him away,” reported my esteemed legal counsel.

  “Really?” I responded. “No shit. So, now what?”

  “Well, are you empowering me to initiate negotiations? I know that Michael Lippman has represented you in the past. I don’t want to overstep his authority.” Michael and I hadn’t done a deal together since Airheads. We never had a formal contract. Besides, he was busy now with this buzzing new band called Matchbox 20, which his brother Terry had discovered.