by Tommy Lee
And then, one night, my new girlfriend, Marcia (who I had met after a White Horse show at Pier 11), came over with the vague smile that I had seen on another woman’s face before and broke the news to me that had been broken so many times before: “I’m pregnant.” Of course, she wanted to keep the baby. Life had gone full circle and dropped me back in the quicksand. It felt like my dream was slipping out of my hands again, though I was actually closer to it than I knew.
I made the first step in the right direction by not getting married again. Then I drifted through bands like Vendetta, which included two ex–White Horse members, and moved to Alaska to make some quick money playing Top 40 music. When I placed the ad in The Recycler that Tommy and Nikki responded to, I expected to find myself in just another cover band fighting over ego and money. But once Vince joined, I knew my search—almost three decades since I first saw Skeeter Bond, three decades of hitchhiking through bands, drugs, sofas, and relationships—was over. This was where I was supposed to be.
But the more successful we became, the harder it was to enjoy the rewards. New ankylosing spondylitis symptoms kept appearing: Something called “iritis” set in, producing bolts of pain in my eyes whenever I looked into bright lights, like I did onstage every night. And my lower spine seized up and froze completely solid, causing scoliosis in my back and squashing me further down and forward until I was a full three inches shorter than I was in high school. That’s why I never take off my platform boots. I don’t want to be a pygmy.
The disease finds any open spot between or inside bones—ribs, joints, ligaments—and grows there. If you try to operate and remove it, it just sprouts back like a cut-off fingernail. When I die, I figure my skeleton will be rock solid. If they display it in a medical class, they won’t even need wires to hold it up.
The worst part of the disease however, isn’t the pain or the slouching. It’s walking onstage, seeing all the people out there excited, and not being able to do anything about it. So many times onstage, I’ve wanted to walk down to the bass bins, but I know that if I make it there, there’s no way I can get back onstage unless Vince or Nikki pull me back up. And if, God forbid, a fan dragged me into the audience, I’d be hospitalized. I get so upset every night watching the way that Nikki and Vince run all over the stage. All I can do is plod around and, when a fan in front starts cheering, muster a smile, say hey, or try to throw them a pick.
I watched myself on film the other day, and I looked like a statue whose hands have somehow come to life. When I tried to move, it looked so fucking stupid. It looks better if I just stand still. Sometimes when I’m playing, the guitar strap will bother my neck until it feels like a charley horse and the muscles start spasming from the bottom of my spine to midway up my back. When that happens, I can’t even turn my head to acknowledge a fan for the rest of the show. It’s so fucked up. People think that I’m shy or strange or mean because they see me like that onstage. They think that I’ve purposely cultivated an image of distance and aloofness. But the truth is that I’m a prisoner in my own body.
Eventually, during the Girls, Girls, Girls tour, I became so frustrated and weary of the pain that chronic depression set in. Psychologists gave me antidepressants and pain-management counselors fed me anesthetics, but nothing worked. So I decided to try my own medicine: alcohol. Nikki was strung out on heroin again, Tommy was unconscious for half the tour, and Vince was drinking himself into a stupor and everybody knew it. Me, I preferred to keep my problems a secret. But the problem with secrets is that nobody can help you if nobody knows what’s wrong. And a lot was wrong on that tour.
We had a huge-ass jet, we had endless cash, and we could do whatever the fuck we wanted. Girls, Girls, Girls was the raddest time I ever had in my life, or at least I think it was, because nothing stands out but a blur of fucking insanity. We partied like clockwork, bro. You could check the clock in whatever time zone we were in and figure out exactly what kind of shit we were into.
For a while, we even had this drug kingpin following the tour bus in an exotic Excalibur with a license plate that said DEALER. Whenever we got out of the bus, he would suddenly appear with his diamond-packed Rolex, gold chains, and a token couple of bitches on each arm, throwing bindles of coke to everyone in the band and crew. He was the pimpest fucking drug dealer ever and he always had his party hat on. But the record company flipped out and told us he had to go because he was a magnet for cops and trouble. We were sorry to see him leave, but fucking dealers and pimps and partied-out freaks were a dime a dozen on that tour.
Every day was a battle between a band bent on destruction and a record company determined to keep us in check. And we may have won the battle, but we lost the war. It was the last tour of its kind for us. And, to paraphrase Stephen Wright, it didn’t go something like this. It went exactly like this:
17:00–18:30: Phone rings. Wake up. Remember nothing. Answer phone. Struggle through interview with radio disc jockey or newspaper reporter. If alone in bed, fine. If not alone in bed, that’s fine, too. If necessary to puke during interview, cover receiver with hand and puke on floor. If there are people passed out on floor, try not to get any on them.
If interview is longer than fifteen minutes, roll over and piss off the edge of the bed closest to the corner of the room. Continue interview.
During second interview, open door for room service (ordered by road manager). Eat unless too sick to eat. Throw up again. Finish interview.
18:30–18:45: Baggage call. Knock on door. Bellboy retrieves suitcases, which have not been opened since bellboy last dropped them off in room. Put on clothes from previous night. Spend ten minutes searching for sunglasses.
18:45–19:00: Wander out of room. Find lobby. See band. Say: “Hey, dude, how about last night?” “That was fucking fun.” “Yeah.” Find van or limo transportation to gig.
19:00–20:00: Arrive at venue. Sound check. Nurse hangover backstage. Submit dinner order. Get massage to remove some toxins from system. Drink. Listen to music. Hang out. Come back to life. Meet record and radio creeps. Listen to them ask, “Don’t you remember pissing on that cop car?” Answer honestly: “Um, no.”
20:00–21:00: Opening act performs. Find wardrobe case. Peel off street clothes: black leather pants and black T-shirt. Change into stage clothes: black leather pants and black T-shirt. Make fun of Vince for being the only one in band to shower. Sit on drum stool in front of mirror and open up cosmetics box. Smear on eyeliner, rouge, and makeup. Consider shaving.
21:00–21:15: Drink or snort cocaine with opening act when they come offstage.
21:15–21:20: Production manager gives five-minute call. Lift weights backstage to get pumped up and sweat out toxins. Production manager yells, “Showtime!”
21:20–22:00: Try to get into the groove onstage. Play “All in the Name of,” “Live Wire,” and “Dancing on Glass.”
22:00–23:00: Blood begins to flow. Adrenaline kicks in. Play “Looks That Kill,” “Ten Seconds to Love,” “Red Hot,” “Home Sweet Home,” and “Wild Side,” and play them well. Split fifth of whiskey with Nikki during bass and drum solo. Backstage, Vince washes sleeping pill down with beer; Mick drinks glass full of straight vodka and smiles because he thinks he has rest of band fooled into believing it’s plain water.
23:00–23:15: Finish show with “Helter Skelter” and “Girls, Girls, Girls.” Walk offstage comatose and hyperventilating. Grab oxygen mask. Stare at untouched dinner.
23:15–23:45: Wait for someone to ask: “Anybody got a line?” Cut up drugs. Snort drugs. Change from sweaty stage leathers back into sweaty street leathers. Find hospitality room. Meet fans. Watch rest of band hunt for human entertainment. Consider partaking. Go to production office. Call Heather.
23:45–24:00: Ask management for permission to stay in city. Beg management for permission to stay in city. Accuse them of purposely making band travel to next town during the only hours when bars and strip clubs are open. Attempt to punch them when they confirm accusat
ion. Get in van or limo for airport.
24:00–03:00: Arrive at airport. Wait for Vince to finish with girl in airport bathroom. Meet drug dealers on tarmac. Board Gulfstream One plane with black leather interior. Find designated seat. Make sure stewardess has laid out correct drugs and drinks on each meal tray ahead of time. For Nikki, white wine and zombie dust.1 For Vince, sleeping pill. For Mick, vodka. For me, cocktail and zombie dust.
03:00–04:00: Arrive in new city. If city laws allow establishments to serve alcohol until 4 A.M., ask local record company representative distance to nearest strip club. Groan when he says, “Forty-five minutes.” Ask if record company planned it that way. Threaten violence when he confirms accusation. Tell limo driver to take band there anyway.
04:00–09:00: Arrive at hotel. Look for drugs and alcohol in lobby. If none, tell road manager to bring drugs and alcohol to room. Drink. Do drugs. Go on rampage in room, on roof, or in parking lot. Get caught. Get locked in room or handcuffed to bed by road manager. Yell. Scream. Threaten jobs. Shoot up heroin alone.2
09:00–17:00: Pass out.
17:00–18:30: Phone rings. Wake up. Remember nothing. Repeat cycle.
One of my favorite movies is Crossroads, about the legend that Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads one night so that he could play guitar like no man has since. At the end, the devil comes to Robert Johnson in the depths of his unhappiness and gloats, “You got what you wanted. You wanted to be a bluesman.”
I used to tell myself the same thing: “You got what you wanted. You wanted to be a rock-and-roll star. Deal with it.” My dreams had come true, but they weren’t what I had thought they would be.
When we were recording Girls, Tom Zutaut would stop by the studio and see me drunk, slouched over, and knocked out on painkillers. When he first signed us, he used to call me the purple people eater because he said I had a purple aura. But now he looked at me distraught: “Your purple people eater is fading,” he said sadly. “It’s fading into this weird alcoholic thing.”
“No, it’s not,” I would mumble back. But it was. When I was recording the staccato guitar line at the end of the song “Girls, Girls, Girls,” I fell out of the chair because I was so drunk (though we used the take anyway because we liked how it sounded and I was in too much pain to play anymore).
We had sold millions of records and I was still broke. The rest of the guys were partying and spending all this money on drugs, but I was stuck with lawyers, accountants, and greedy exes coming down on me for child support. When I left for the tour, I kept my car at a friend’s house and not only did he total the right side but he had the nerve to ask for five hundred dollars for car-sitting. When you start to get successful, everybody thinks you’re rich. Me, I didn’t even have enough money to buy another car. And, on top of that, I lost the last guy who I had considered to be a real friend. I haven’t had one since.
Before I went onstage, I’d line up six shots of vodka next to an open can of Coke, and then down them all. During the show, I’d have a glass of pure vodka on the side, which the other guys thought was water. Afterward, I’d bring out a jar of Mars-ade—a mix of tequila, orange juice, and grenadine—and suck that down.
Alcohol would bring out sides of my personality that I never even knew existed. I was moldy one night at the Lexington Queen in Japan, and the owner happened to have a Godzilla mask. I put it on, hopped on the dance floor, and started doing what we call crack dancing—shaking my ass with my butt crack hanging out of my pants (we used to do a lot of crack bowling, too). I suddenly got inspired to leave the bar with the Godzilla mask on and terrorize unsuspecting Japanese civilians, maybe crush some office buildings, too. I pulled my pants down to my ankles, and walked up and down the street barking and snapping at people with my Godzilla mask on. The rest of the guys were chasing after me laughing, because they’d never seen me behave like that before. Someone had told me that it’s legal in Japan for a man to stop anywhere and pee on the side of the road. So I decided to see if that was true.
I thought I was so funny. But when I returned to my hotel room, I looked at myself in the mirror and just saw an ugly, dirty guy with a big giant belly. Since I had started drinking heavily after Vince’s accident, I had slowly been blowing up like a balloon. I was surprised no one pitch-forked me and stuck an apple in my mouth. I was such a pig.
That’s why I should have been suspicious when Emi Canyn, one of the two backup singers we had hired (in emulation of the Rolling Stones with Merry Clayton or Humble Pie with Madeline Bell and Doris Troy) started getting really friendly with me. She was thin, athletic, and beautiful and I was old, ugly, and sickly. No woman in her right mind would have been attracted to me.
The guys had made a rule: “You don’t shit in your backyard,” as Nikki explained it, “and you don’t sleep with anybody who works with you.”
So when they started hearing Emi’s voice coming from my room at all hours, they flipped out. The Jack Daniel’s and Halcion made them blind with rage, and they punished us much more than we deserved. They stopped talking to us, gave us dirty looks, poured drinks on us, and smeared food all over our luggage. Emi was very religious, and they showed her no mercy. Whenever the plane hit turbulence during the tour, they’d stand up, drop their pants to their ankles, and start chanting “Fuck God! Let’s crash!” just to make her freak out, grab her crucifix necklace, and start crossing herself and praying. If I tried to stop them, they’d heave a bottle of Jack at me.
It was so hypocritical because before we had hired Emi (and Donna McDaniel, the other backup singer in the Nasty Habits), we were working with a vocalist named Brie Howard. She had a dirty, bluesy voice, like Tina Turner, and had sung with Robbie Nevil and toured with Jimmy Buffett. But just as she was about to join the band, Nikki started dating her.
I was disillusioned and disgusted that Nikki and the guys came down so hard on me after that. I guess they lost all the faith and trust they had in me, and I definitely lost any faith and trust I had in them as friends and bandmates. If I didn’t love playing guitar so much, I would have walked out on them.
I’ve always been ready to crawl back to where I came from. Most people aren’t: They think bad things only happen to other people. That’s why I try to rely only on myself. Anything could happen to our society and probably will, from a massive earthquake to a nuclear attack to a stock market crash. Most people say, “Oh I have a great job, plenty of money, good benefits, and medical coverage. I feel great and safe.” But what if a depression or a food shortage raised the price of bread to fifty dollars. How would you feed your family? Could you survive as your ancestors did? Unlikely!
When you’re running around begging for scraps of food, drugs and girls suddenly don’t seem so important. I never really got into the decadence or the pampering or the hard drugs like the rest of the band did. They used to call me Eightball Mars, because I’d say, “Give me an eightball and don’t ask me why.” I was new to cocaine, and when it became a problem, I stopped. Not like Nikki.
I was mad as hell when I first saw him doing heroin. We were playing at the Long Beach Arena on the Shout at the Devil tour, and he was sniffing a little bindle. I asked, “What the fuck was that?” He said it was smack, and I asked, “Have you started shooting that shit?” He said that he would never do that, but I was fucking livid. I knew exactly what was going to happen to him, and during the Girls tour it did.
But how can you save someone like that from himself? No one could stop me from drinking and swelling up; no one could stop Elvis from the pills that killed him.
That’s what I thought when I got the call between legs of the tour telling me what I already feared. Our tour manager was shit-faced high and crying when he broke the news to me. He asked me to call England and cancel the European leg of the tour for him. Why me?
I was hungover, confused, upset, and mad—at Nikki and at myself for not doing more to stop him. I called Kerrang magazine and said the first thing that came to
my head: “We can’t come over because we heard you have severe storms over there and, um, we have so much equipment that we are afraid that it could cause a cave-in. Because, uh, there is snow on the roof or something.”
I didn’t know what I was talking about. All I knew was that I couldn’t tell them what Rich had really told me: Nikki was dead.
Early in the Girls tour, I stopped dating Vanity. Whenever she came out to meet us, she’d annoy me, the rest of the band, and the road crew by riding a bicycle around the stage in the middle of rehearsal or doing something else obnoxious. It wasn’t much of a relationship anyway, and the drugs had caused her to lose a kidney. She was even starting to lose her sight and hearing. I found out years later, though, that she turned herself around. She cleaned up, found God, became a reverend, and changed her name back to the one her mother gave her, Denise Williams.
Now I was truly alone. I had no girlfriend, my grandmother was dead, my dad was probably dead, and I didn’t talk to my mom. So I was the only one in the band without a family, a girlfriend, a wife, or any prospects, and I was too smacked out to care. As for the music, I could hardly even stand the last two albums I had written. And the acclaim? There was none. Critics despised us. I felt like the McDonald’s of rock and roll: My life was disposable. Consume me and throw me out.
After six months of touring Girls, my existence had disintegrated to the point where every waking moment was about drugs: I went onstage to get drugs, I came offstage to find more drugs, I used my per diem to buy drugs, and I traveled to each city only to see if anyone had new drugs. Heroin, coke, freebase, Jack, zombie dust: They all had been controlling my life for a year straight. And, like a bad relationship, the longer they stayed in my life, the more miserable and out-of-control my life became.