APRIL 5 / PHOENIX
Alice Cooperstown is to Vincent Furnier’s alter ego as Margaritaville is to Jimmy Buffett, but with baseball paraphernalia, where you might have expected something more Madame Tussaud. Calm night until someone threw a bottle at the stage during Dio’s set and Dio stopped the show, resuming only after the culprit had been ejected, and Dio felt he had made perfectly clear where he stood on projectiles. There were no further disturbances.
For a minute or so while we played the crowd sounded like it was coming around, but they were only using some type of localized boo we didn’t recognize.
APRIL 9 / MONUMENT PARK, COLORADO
Matt was lucky. Getting him functional to play was an epic procedure requiring patience, and caution, but most of the last forty-eight hours he was no more than half-conscious in the back of the van. I on the other hand was in a state of heightened activity, pure voltage, very much up and about, on the move, interfacing with humans, every nerve in my body flicking like a snake tongue—then suddenly I would curl like an armadillo and roll into a corner to comprehend some newly revealed angle on human fragility, as my bones transformed to glass, for example. Camping, in Colorado. Slept, finally. You call bullshit on people checking into Shady Pines for “exhaustion,” but exhaustion can do some real damage. Forget the drugs. It’s not the drugs, this kind of thing. I mean—in the physical, tangible sense, yes, it’s the drugs, of course. But, you know. All kinds of factors.
APRIL 11 / LUBBOCK, TEXAS
Day off here, nothing to do. No press, no business matters, no reason to touch musical instruments—nothing. Trouble.
Eugene and I were headed on walkabout and the elevator doors opened onto Ronnie James Dio, in civvies. Wearing a leather cape blasted with stage lighting and tornado fans he’s a regular guy; in an elevator in some jeans and a button-down he looks like he’s pretending to be an Earthling. “Paisanos!” he said. “Buy you a beer?”
Willy, Ronnie’s British right-hand man, was at the bar and they each bought us a couple of rounds. We discussed what to do when people throw shit at you. Dio says stop the show, we said throw it back. He illustrated with a few stories, we did same, and what it comes down to is, he’s Ronnie James Dio.
Ronnie has to be close to thirty years our senior, older than my mother, and playing raging, epic metal for two hours a night with the encores. He’s well removed from the drink and drugs vortex, but he likes a beer or a nice cocktail, maybe even a couple-three. He’s not ordering special hippie meals, or into any kind of obvious health to-do that I can see, apart from having a wife who’s certified in massage. I feel like an old man next to him. I tell him this.
“Well, first of all,” he says, indicating his beer, “you have these, but not every day, and not a million of them, and you go easy on the hard stuff. And get exercise if you can.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. Exercise, even if it’s just walking. Cardio is especially important.” He smiled. “Yeah, I know. Seems crazy.”
“Yes, it does,” I said. Though less so than getting exorcised, which is what I thought he meant initially.
“I’ll tell you the real secret is these special vitamins I take.”
“I’ve heard about those. Kennedy had a guy that would come and inject him, right into his voice box.”
“No, no Dr. Feelgood stuff. These are regular vitamins. Supplements. Willy. Let’s get these guys vitamins. It’s no good having the opening band keel over on us.”
Willy calls a guy over, instructs him, guy goes off. Eug and I started reaching for our per diems, but Dio held up his hand. “My treat.”
And maybe I knew this and forgot, but the common use of the index and pinky gesture—aka the goats, the maloik, devil horns—can be traced back to Dio. “You know,” he said. “It’s just the Italian thing, to ward off the evil eye.” He demonstrated. “I just adapted it.”
“You weaponized Italian grandmother juju.”
“Oh no, no. Symbolic only. Actual nonna energy is far too unstable. Very dangerous.”
Bobby returned with vitamins. Dio explained what was good about that particular brand, shared his regimen, and made recommendations toward our developing our own. We thanked him and Ronnie went back to his room, to do Dio things. Eugene left after a while, too. Willy and I stayed at the bar, and dug in hard, with the rest of the crew. The bar was swinging. Shots, more shots. When Willy had to go do some things, I went up to take a nap but saw the video camera was charged up and had a wander with it. Wandered into a beauty pageant, total accident, had help wandering out.
Back in the bar later, most of the crew was three-sheets. War stories, repulsive jokes, scatology, ritual verbal abuse—a pirate ship after a good plundering. A group of oilmen in ten-gallon hats drew me over to their table. Too loud, too fat, and too rich; keeping it real, Texas style. They wanted to know what was going on. We got to talking about scotch; they ordered a couple bottles of Johnnie Blue and threw those into the ring. Pageant contestants (sashes over their street clothes) appeared in our midst, people were on tables, rowdy—the lobby began to look staged, a parody of a rock-and-roll lobby scene. At one point I was in situ with Miss Alaska (marine biology, animal shelter volunteer, “beauty comes from within”), who asked if I could teach her to play a few chords on the guitar. I said she didn’t want to learn from me, I play wrong, and made my hand into a claw and started hitting myself in the face with it, or something equally demonstrative. I’m only sure (well, not sure-sure) I saw Chris the tech watching nearby, agape, shaking his head, what the fuck, dude. Miss Alaska was impressed, though. She stepped away, to catch her breath, probably. Fan herself, swoon. I saw Willy pass by on the other side of the hedge that cordoned off the bar area from the reception area. Willy was missing some primo cultural activity so I yelled out to him. Foully, of course.
The air in the room condensed suddenly, the split second before I was bumrushed, like Sirhan fucking Sirhan. Distraught faces came at me saying, What’s wrong with you? What was that? What the fuck! And me going, What? What was what?
Sadly today the operation changed from search-and-rescue to recovery. . . .
Woke, head roaring, to the TV news. Someone lost at sea and presumed dead. Someone I briefly envied. In the bathroom there was a watermelon floating in the tub. That it was unsmashed worried me. Then I saw I’d neatly folded my clothes on the chair, a bad sign. The clothes cairn indicates that nothing else was in my control.
I took about a hundred Dio vitamins, per Dr. Dio (plus one), and went downstairs, where it started coming back to me. (Noted, Dio vitamins far too intense for an empty stomach.) I remembered:
Willy glaring at me from the other side of the hedge, and from a lower vantage, visible only through a break in the lobby’s foliage, was Ronnie, his expression of total disbelief, thinking he was looking at someone who had just called him an asshole. Which there’s no way my programming would have allowed me to do, in any condition. I simply hadn’t seen him because he was below the hedge line—he’s not a tall man. But what mattered was what appeared to have happened, of course. After an appropriate interval I went and—I seem to recall genuflection was at the time easier than standing—and I explained, and apologized for any offense, and for my sloppy behavior. We spoke for a while, and the scene lightened up about as much as I could have expected. This was as straightened out as it was going to get. The outer sanctum was less forgiving.
“You’re number one on the shit list,” Steve said. “My hands are tied, you know the rules. At least a week, and probably two.” The shit list is not notional, or figurative, it’s a verifiable tool for maintaining standards in a context where few of the normal ones apply. As the social order of rock and roll touring parties falls somewhere between Lord of the Flies and the Stanford prison experiment, punitive measures run the gamut. Minimum, nobody’s going to repeat a punchline you missed, offer you a beer or get you one if they’re already up. And no matter what: stay on your toes.
A
PRIL 12
Holing up here in the van until I’m needed. Looking up at the marquee on the club:
TONITE!
RONNIE JAMES DIO
WET T-SHIRT CONTEST
A pounding on the door just now. Scott the drum tech dropping off a massive Igloo full of beer, trumpeting the Looney Tunes theme. He saluted and trotted off, doing Daffy. Weird weather.
APRIL 14 / DALLAS
The Bronco Bowl. Thirty-five hundred seats, sold out. Added to the bill: Enuff Z’Nuff, Sebastian Bach, and LA Guns, though we hear LA Guns canceled. Always had the sense that band is a hard ride.
On arrival ran into Paul Crook, tuning up a guitar that looks like it’s made of whatever Jolly Ranchers are. The Anthrax and Sebastian Bach are swapping guitar players mid-tour, I don’t know why. An alien concept. Now that he’s not in the Anthrax, Crook is all smiles and remembers our names, pleasant. Maybe he was always that way, and we just didn’t notice. Maybe you have to be a chameleon to be a hired gun. Maybe the Anthrax tour was a bad dream. . . . I asked Steve. He said it was a nightmare, real or not.
Sebastian Bach was in catering, whooshing around in bright yellow parachute pants. We got to talking (mostly he) and we sat down. Everything he touches gets louder. He puts a fork down and it’s somehow amplified; pushes back his chair and it scrapes the floor at stadium volume. And he speaks continuously. “Man! It was a fucking rip-off back in the day we got paid eight hundred dollars for selling out the LA Forum motherfuckin’ sold out you know how many people fit in the LA Forum a fucking lot man a lot of fucken people man you don’t make just eight hundred fucken—hey! hey! Bob! get over here! those posters come yet? well, get ’em the fuck up, man! [stabs pepper onto hunting knife]—yeah, man so, fuck the Forum, man, and don’t trust anybody, ever—everybody’s a fucken liar fucken everybody, excuse me, what is this, tuna?—hey, ’scuse me ma’am? ma’am—hi, yeah—this, see this, what’s this stuff here, eggs or potato or what—ah forget it all goes in the same hole and comes out the same fucken hole anyway, right?—yeah, man but that shit doesn’t happen now man, no way, everything’s cool I got my girl managing me and she’s a fucken shark man you know what I mean? Fucken shark because what the thing is man is fuck it, fuck ’em all, man, all you need is fans, man—it’s about the fans. Don’t ever forget that, man—lotta people forget that—lotta people—beginning of the end right there I’m tellin’ ya—don’t ever forget that it’s about the fans.”
He’s angling for Broadway now, wants to do Phantom of the Opera, particularly. The more he explained his motivation, eating with a Bowie knife, the more sense that made. By the time he left—politely, businesslike getting my name again—and walked out inhaling a brick of pound cake off a dagger, I was solidly convinced; not sure of what, but I’m all for it.
Enuff Z’Nuff had no equipment, due to all sorts of unusual circumstances, including—it sounded like—“fuck it.” We loaned them ours. Other bands with our gear—it just looks wrong, mismatched, the way you can tell when someone’s walking someone else’s dog. As thanks, Donnie, the singer, and the bassist, Chip Z’Nuff (then why the three other guys?), smoked something with us later that locked me into condition where it was impossible to tell when people were being serious and when they were joking. Loading out I had either a grave misunderstanding or a hilarious Cook & Moore improv with one of the techs. Matt popped off on Steve for making him miss Sebastian Bach doing “Youth Gone Wild” by calling a band meeting (we’re over budget, but not disastrously). They argued, Matt chucked a pile of our glossies at Steve, Steve put his fist through the dressing room wall, instead of Matt’s face, and walked out. I was pretty sure none of that was funny but had to check with Eugene. I picked up the glossies. Most of them. With all that went into the multiple photo shoots—the special studios, the superphotographers, blubbery slabs of the budget—our promo shot is of the three of us ripped to the tits in the back of a yellow cab, taken by Miss Management with a disposable camera.
APRIL 15 / SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
None of us had ever heard of the other band on the bill, called Legs Diamond, from Los Angeles. They play in San Antonio annually, and almost nowhere else. According to a radio DJ hanging around, Legs Diamond are “bigger than Zeppelin, in San Antonio,” based on the volume of requests he gets.
Steve and I crashed the nearby Japanese gardens with Foster’s oil cans. Steve is in much more regular communication with the label now—Lenny, Consoli, marketing and radio people, becoming adept at navigating that end of it in general. This is good. I can’t be the messenger. More than my not wanting the responsibility, it’s bad for balance. Matt’s hackles go up at least a little now whenever I relay something business-related, and often mistakes common knowledge about the music industry for the result of a direct communication between myself and someone at the label, “behind his back,” he says. The glossy-tossing, wall-punching business between he and Steve can be chalked up to exhaustion, Steve and I agree. Two hundred scheduled days on the road last year wound up being over three hundred, then there are the recording sessions, photo sessions, publicity, business dinners . . . and we’re on track to do about the same this year, probably more. Need to pull it together a bit. Discussed what that means. Vague ideas.
The TVT rep is punctual and exceptionally helpful, rolling through the place with a heap of well-mannered retail folk. The retail people are important to know, the ones at street level, more so than your average out-of-touch execs. Interns, some of them. This Legs Diamond got onstage and immediately shirtless metal babes appeared on shoulders, lighters went up, whole bit. It was 1985 out there.
A sign had been taped to the stage where I would see it, regarding Dio’s box, very dissuasive. There was another sign on the box.
This morning. Pain. In a strange room. Light filters through the curtains, south of the Mason-Dixon sun. A desk, neat, a ship in a bottle there. Felt baseball pennants on the wall; game balls, trophies. Textbooks (is that redundant?). Late high school, but I wouldn’t know. Firm mattress, good. Bedspread, baseball related. I got out of bed, inventoried, seemed okay. I was wearing a T-shirt with a kitten on it. Not an actual one, a design. Opened the door onto a Hummel-populated living room, with doilies under empty candy dishes, a grandmother advancing through by means of a metal thing—the word wasn’t there . . . a walker. She looked at me. I said morning, and retreated, closing the door slowly; my presence felt impolite enough. Found my shirt. Smelled like tequila. And something else, couldn’t place it. Chemical.
Through the densely carpeted living room, past judgy Hummels and into a classic American kitchen, and a sunny, everyday breakfast scene. Mom scrambling eggs, Dad reading a newspaper. A young girl in pigtails eating cereal.
“Morning,” said Dad.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Morning,” said Mom.
“Good morning,” I said.
No idea who these people are—why they are not alarmed? What do you do. Sit down, have breakfast with them. Let it play out.
Wally entered—I know him, but can’t remember his name. Wally gave me a ride in his Honda back to San Antonio, ninety minutes away. I was late, held up departure. Matt said, “Where were you?”
I snapped at him. “Who am I, Rand fucking McNally?”
Needed sleep, slept.
APRIL 16 / CORPUS CHRISTI, TEXAS
Walked into a pole downtown. The rush of blood from my nose was painless, unstoppable, and profuse. In a nightclub I signed one of our posters for a guy who had been carrying it around since the show. He had Matt’s and Eug’s signatures on it and was determined to find me—“I figured he might run into you here,” he said. Though how I came to be there was impossibly circuitous and I never would have set foot in there had I known what it was like. We haven’t played in front of a crowd that receptive outside of New York City in a long, long time. Likely just an autograph collector, this guy, getting ours in case they’re ever worth something. He asked where we were from; I said New England.
“Overseas! Well—welcome to the U.S. of A.!”
Face flat on the bed at the hotel, exhausted, trying to ignore the sounds in the room.
Later I sat up and Tim J., from Northampton, was in a chair across holding a beer, as if he was in Northampton. Just the kind of sight that can throw you off, you start trying to bend your internal astrolabe around it everywhichway. I said, “What?” and he mimed airplane and pointed out the window, busy smoking a bowl. Ah. I conked out again. Some time later there were more voices in the room. A girl next to me, saying she’s a model. She didn’t look like any models I knew of, aside from looking slightly crazy, and high as a kite. She’s “a Flowbee girl,” she said. Flowbee is an “As Seen on TV” blade gismo that attaches to a vacuum cleaner for cutting your own hair. Her hair looked like it had been chewed off her skull by raccoons. She got on the phone and ordered cocaine from her mother, who runs a delivery.
I put myself back under. I can do that now; throw the switch.
Felt all right this morning, up early. Warm clear sea air . . . Get in the van that stinks like a week-old corpse packed in horseradish and drive twelve hundred miles directly to a load-in dock just outside Indianapolis. Day and night alternated inconsequentially. Randomly.
APRIL 17 / ??
Album sales, to quote Leonard, “a steady-ish trickle.” Deluge of reviews, however. Most positive, many are effusive, a handful endorse us as a “guilty pleasure”; one, by a teetotaler from St. Louis or someplace, who fills eight inches square of broadsheet counting the ways our music indicates to him that we don’t “take care of our lives properly,” winds up reading like a hypercritical obituary, and one, from a student newspaper at the University of Chicago, deems us “the worst band in the United States.” As yet, no fence-sitting whatsoever. That’s the important thing. Couldn’t help batting around the van what the difference is between having heaps of thoughtful, positive, reviews and “critical acclaim.” From the back bed Eugene said, quite correctly, “NPR,” then went back to sleep.
Adios, Motherfucker Page 23