Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal

by Jon Wiederhorn

  ACE FREHLEY: [Drummer] Peter [Criss] and I were both party animals who came from similar backgrounds—we were street kids who grew up in gangs. There was a camaraderie between us right from the start, something neither of us could ever have with Paul and Gene, because they came from very different backgrounds.

  PETER CRISS (KISS): There was a lot of coke, and that was my problem. I used to [get coked up] and lock myself in a room with a chick or two—or four or five. It depended on what mood I was in.

  ACE FREHLEY: We all started out as friends, but it got to the point where we didn’t want to talk to each other. After a gig, we would each get in separate limos and go our own way. We started communicating with each other through our lawyers. I think a lot of [our problems] had to do with our success—the fame, the money and the pressure of the whole business. That kind of stuff changes people.

  GENE SIMMONS: Ace and Peter wanted me to babysit them, and I wasn’t willing to grow tits so they could suckle on them. In the beginning we had to rent our own trucks, place our own ads, put up our own posters, hump the equipment up and down the stairs, and those guys wouldn’t do any of that stuff. That always bothered the shit out of me.

  PAUL STANLEY: What bothered me is that once the band made it, did you give 100 percent to your fans? And when that was no longer true, whether or not you hump gear, the ultimate slap in the face is when you start taking your fans for granted or giving them below what you’re capable of or what they deserve.

  GENE SIMMONS: [Once Ace was wasted drunk, and he went into the bathroom and] wouldn’t answer the door, and all we heard inside the room was the sound of water running and music blasting. [We] broke the door down and found Ace soaking in a hot tub with the water running and his nose about a half inch from the surface. He was completely unconscious. If we hadn’t showed up when we did, he would have drowned. We took [him] out of the water and put him in bed, and he didn’t regain consciousness until the next day.

  ACE FREHLEY: No matter how fucked up any of us were—and we were all fucked up in some ways, and not just because of alcohol and drugs—there was a chemistry between us that [could] never be recaptured unless the four of us [were together].

  GENE SIMMONS: Talking about stability in KISS is like talking about freedom in prison. It’s all relative. Ace had a fascination with Nazi memorabilia, and in his drunken stupors he and his best friends would make videotapes of themselves dressed up as Nazis. Paul and I weren’t thrilled about that. But Ace laughed about how funny he was when he saw the tape. Peter, too, was drinking heavily and using drugs.

  In some ways, AC/DC were peers of KISS. AC/DC’s music was minimal and straightforward. It was fun and often campy, and filled with lyrical wordplay. Both bands knew what they did well and delivered it album after album. AC/DC’s founders, guitarists Angus and Malcolm Young, were born in Glasgow, Scotland, and eventually moved with their family to Sydney, Australia, where they found a more vibrant music scene. They named themselves AC/DC after their sister Margaret spotted the electricity-related acronym for alternating current/direct current on her sewing machine. Angus experimented with different looks, including wearing a gorilla suit onstage, before his sister suggested he wear a schoolboy outfit. Margaret later explained she got the idea from Angus himself, who used to rush home from school and jam with his bandmates without changing out of his school uniform.

  “The schoolboy thing has always given me the ability to stay young,” Angus says. “I put on the guitar and that school suit, and I get on that stage, and there’s just this sheer driving force.”

  In 1974, at the recommendation of the Youngs’ brother George (who had played in the successful Australian pop group Easybeats), AC/DC fired vocalist Dave Evans and replaced him with Ronald Belford “Bon” Scott. A wild and expressive performer, Scott’s gritty presence and raspy, raunchy vocals put AC/DC on the map as one of Australia’s greatest blues-based rock exports.

  ANGUS YOUNG (AC/DC): Rock and roll has always had that blues element, and we’ve always dabbled in blues. I loved Keith Richards and the Stones, but Chuck Berry was the biggest for me. That’s how we always wanted to be. Even from the first album, we’ve done tracks like “She’s Got the Jack.” Stuff like “Dirty Deeds” and “Ride On”—they’ve got that blues smell about them.

  DAVE EVANS (ex-AC/DC): [Before Bon Scott joined], Malcolm and Angus would have the bare ideas [for a song] and sit down with George at the piano. The three of them would fit on the same piano stool because they are so tiny. George would take the material and get the best out of those ideas.

  ANGUS YOUNG: Even when Malcolm and myself were growing up, George showed us a lot of the basic stuff—helping with the songs and explaining studio techniques. When you’re a young kid, you don’t know the difference between a verse and a chorus, let alone a drum break or a middle eight. He helped with a lot of melody ideas and showed us how you can get the best out of the two guitars without having to resort to layered sounds. And [as a producer of the first four AC/DC records], he gave us that room to be who we wanted to be—not a hit producer’s idea of what he thought we should be. From his background, when he was in the Easybeats, he got to work with different legends of rock music, which was invaluable to him.

  BRIAN JOHNSON (AC/DC, ex-Geordie): I’d met Bon when he was with a different band, and he was supporting Geordie, the band I was in, and we got to know each other. He was the funniest man and we had a lovely time. But it was all too brief. It was “See ya, mate.” He wasn’t half as good as he was when he joined AC/DC. They brought something out in him, as they did with me. When they start playing they bring something out in ya that’s just inexplicable. I can sing with a charity band, good rock and rollers, all great players, and I’ll sing in tune and do me thing, but it just doesn’t sound the same. When I sit down with the boys in a rehearsal room, we say, “Let’s kick this one around,” and boom, this thing comes out that I really can’t explain, and I don’t want to, because I’m really happy the way it is. That’s the way it was with Bon, too.

  ANGUS YOUNG: When we finally got to [AC/DC’s first gig], Bon downed about two bottles of bourbon with dope, coke, speed, and says, “Right, I’m ready.” He got out there and this huge hurricane yell came out. The whole place went, “What the fuck is this?”

  MALCOLM YOUNG (AC/DC): We used to finish a gig at about two in the morning, then drive down to the studio. George and Harry [Vanda, of the Easybeats,] would have a couple of dozen cans in and a few bottles of Jack Daniel’s and we’d all have a party and rip it up. So it was the same loose feeling like we were onstage, still. The studio was just like an extension of the gig back then.

  ANGUS YOUNG: At first, when you’re young, a lot of temptation comes at you. Some people get attracted and figure, “Oh, there must be some gold there.” There’s that feeling of eternal youth going. That doesn’t work for me. I think what’s eternal is getting a good song. If you can span generations with that song, it becomes timeless.

  BRIAN JOHNSON: The one day we got blasted with Angus was when Malcolm’s daughter was born and he got a telephone call. Malcolm came down and said, “It’s a girl,” and that was the first time I saw Angus take a drink. He got a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and he went, “Aw fuckin’ great mate.” And he drank. And he was put on somebody’s shoulders and taken to bed. It was the first [and] last drink I ever saw him take, poor sod.

  Most rockers didn’t stop with one drink. The seeming invincibility of youth brought with it the desire to push the limits and keep the good times rolling 24/7.

  ROB HALFORD: Drugs and alcohol are very insidious. They creep into your life and you find yourself doing more and more. It’s been there since day one, since rock and roll began. It’s like a trial by fire to get through those times of your life. Some of us don’t become addicts. Some of us become drug addicts and alcoholics, then clean ourselves up like I’ve been able to do. Then there are people that succumb and end up in the ground.

  GLENN TIPTON: We partied heavil
y and we performed heavily. The two went hand in hand all through the seventies and eighties. But the one thing we’ve always felt was important was to give a good performance. People pay to see you, so you have to give them value for their money. So we’ve never let partying affect our performance. Most of the drinking and partying went on after we left the stage.

  ANGUS YOUNG: In the early years, a lot of people thought I was a smack addict. I would lose myself onstage and they’d go, “This guy’s gotta be on dope.” But the truth is, I’ve never been a party animal.

  OZZY OSBOURNE: There are three things over the years that I have seen destroy more fucking great bands than anything on this planet: women, booze, and drugs. The thing is, you get blinded by the glitter. All of a sudden people start to notice you and you get a buzz. I used to have a cocaine habit of $1,000 a week. I was drinking four bottles of cognac a day. I was just killing myself. John Bonham was a really good friend of mine. He choked on his vomit. I was at a gig with Bon Scott a week before he died. And that didn’t change me. When you’re young you think that you’re never going to die.

  TONY IOMMI: The first time I ever tried cocaine, we were playing Madison Square Garden and I felt tired. One of the guys that worked for us said, “Well, just have a bit of this. It’ll perk you up and you’ll feel a bit better.” So I did, and that was it. I went onstage and thought, “Wow, this is great.” It started from there.

  CHERYL RIXON (ex–Penthouse Pet): You would go to these parties and there was cocaine everywhere—salad bowls full of it. Every time we went backstage everyone was doing blow. It was like an appetizer.

  MICK WALL: In permissive seventies society, cocaine would be like caviar. It would be considered such a delicacy, such a treat, such a marvelous thing to offer your guests. Also, it was expensive, so you’re this guy who has come from nothing and suddenly you’re being treated like royalty. Sabbath were scum from the council estates [housing projects], the ghettos. And now they’re in Hollywood making albums, playing the Hollywood Bowl, playing Madison Square Garden. “Cocaine? Fuck! You betcha!” It’s like saying, “Would you like to travel first class?” “I fucking would like to travel first class, actually. Thank you.” Of course, the trouble with cocaine is it does make you so high and so edgy. What’s the perfect complement to bring you down again? “Have some heroin.” And Black Sabbath got well into that. They were all into heroin for a while. It fucked Bill [Ward] up for years. But they weren’t unique. Zeppelin—Page and Bonham—were major junkies. Plant did it. Everybody sampled it.

  TONY IOMMI: When we were doing [1972’s] Volume 4, the amount of drugs we were doing was absolutely ridiculous. We were having stuff flown in on private planes. But it was a great period for us. For the next album, [1973’s] Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, we tried to re-create the same thing and it didn’t happen. We went back to Los Angeles, the same house, the same everything, but it didn’t work. So we went back to England all disappointed. It was the first time in my life I’d ever had writer’s block. We thought, “Well, that’s it. We’re finished. It’s over.” And then we rented a castle in Wales and rehearsed in the dungeons, and as soon as we were there I came up with the title track, “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.” Just like that, the riff came up, and I thought, “That’s it, we’re off again.”

  While Sabbath and Priest confronted dark, sometimes violent subjects, AC/DC preferred songs about getting loaded and getting laid. “The Jack” is about a girl with gonorrhea; “Crabsody in Blue” is about getting crabs; “Go Down” addresses oral sex. But the band’s racy lyrics aren’t always so blatant, and their use of double entendres became a trademark. The best example is “Big Balls,” a song simultaneously about testicles and fancy parties.

  ANGUS YOUNG: I’ve always viewed our lyrics as a tongue-in-cheek thing—just schoolboy humor. But sex has always been a big part of rock and roll. When I would hear [Chuck] Berry singing, “Riding along in my automobile / my baby beside me at the wheel,” it was the same thing. For every rock-and-roll band there’s been the cars, the women. The Stones had “Honky Tonk Woman” and “Starfucker.” They probably got away with a lot more than we did. Even the Beatles—they had songs like “Why Don’t We do It in the Road” and “Lady Madonna.” Hell, that’s rock and roll.

  BRIAN JOHNSON: We had a Swedish reporter who said to us, “Sex, sex, sex! Everything is sex. How would you like it if you were thrown in the back of a car by a woman, and she tied you down and abused you?” I went, “Fucking great! That’s me fucking dream come true. Bring a friend.” She said, “Do you think that’s amusing for the woman?” I said, “I’d fucking love it. Tie me up in a car and get me fucking brains fucked out by some wild rampant tottie” [laughs]. Working lads, that’s where your head’s at.

  MARTIN POPOFF: I always thought of AC/DC as the ultimate party band that will kill somebody with alcohol poisoning one day, because those records were so intense as soundtracks to partying, to throwing up, to having big drinking parties out in the woods where something bad is inevitably going to happen. There’s going to be a car accident or something. And yes, I guess a lot of that is underscored by the lyrics. A lot of them are about drinking and womanizing, and evil women.

  From a fan’s perspective, Sabbath was still the kingpin of metal. Its first four albums were revered as classics, and the band filled arenas. Behind the scenes, however, Ozzy’s chronic substance abuse and unreliability was driving a wedge between him and the rest of the band.

  TONY IOMMI: Ozzy used to get out of hand on days off. I used to try to keep myself fairly straight, even though it didn’t happen all the time, because somebody had to be in control. Many times somebody phoned me up from the bar in the hotel and said, “Can you get down here and get him out.” ’Cause he’d be passed out on the table. So I’d go down and get him and bring him up to his room and put him in bed. We were in the studio once and we went to a real plush club afterwards. We were drinking away and he got absolutely smashed and passed out on this couch. The club was closing and the guy from the club said, “Get him out. Get him out.” I went, “I’m not moving him. If you want him out, you get him out.” So they picked him up and put him over their shoulders—and of course, I knew what he was gonna do—he pissed himself all over them. And they went, “You dirty bastard,” and threw him off. They couldn’t wake him up. But I’d seen that so many times, I just knew what was gonna happen.

  OZZY OSBOURNE: I really was drunk all the time. I was just fucking crazy, but I was a fun crazy guy, I think. I wasn’t a bad crazy guy. I wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally. I put myself in danger. But every time you get in a car you put yourself in danger. Every time you leave the house you put yourself in danger.

  GEEZER BUTLER: I did everything you can think of and I’m lucky to be alive. But I went off drugs in 1976 once they weren’t doing anything for me anymore. They made me depressed more than anything. They were great at first, but once they started taking over my life, I went right off the whole idea. And I saw the way Bill Ward and Ozzy were getting overtaken by it, and I didn’t want to get like that. So I was lucky to be content being boring.

  TONY IOMMI: Drugs and alcohol eventually take their toll, and Bill was probably the first big sign of it. And Ozzy, of course. We’d all have our times of getting drunk, but Bill actually started drinking onstage. He really got bad. He used to get nervous and take Valium. Then he decided he was too scared to fly and started traveling by road. He’d develop these fears and it was coming out more the more he’d drink and take drugs. It just built up over a while. We’d all go out to clubs and get pissed and come back out of our brain. But Bill was the only one who had to have a drink before he played. The rest of us didn’t do that. We couldn’t do that. I couldn’t play drunk. I wouldn’t be able to.

  MICK WALL: Ozzy told me once, “Me and Bill were like the drug commandos. We would never come through a door if there was a plate glass window we could smash instead.” Ozzy told me as far as he was concerned they were all just bumpkins and that “
as long as we had a few quid in our pocket, some tarts to fuck, and a bootload of drugs, we were happy.” I think in Ozzy’s happy-go-lucky world, especially in those days, it was about the intoxication. It was about being permanently out of it every day.

  OZZY OSBOURNE: I said to Bill recently, “Can you believe we used to believe having a belly full of alcohol, a bag of pills, and hash and dope was our idea of having a good time?” I can’t even think that way nowadays. I figure, “Why did it take me so long to get it?” And he goes, “Yeah, but it worked for a while.” That’s about right. But when it stopped working, at the end of the day with drinking and me, I’d be miserable. Then I’d have another drink and be even more miserable. Then I’d think to myself, “What am I doing this for?”

  GEEZER BUTLER: We played Nashville one time and Ozzy went into the hotel and didn’t tell anybody what room he was in. He went to a completely different room than he was registered at, and we thought he’d been kidnapped. We had the FBI come in and look for him. We were playing with Van Halen that night, and they finished their show and then we had to go onstage and say, “Sorry, we don’t know where Ozzy is.” The next day we all got on the bus and we were really worried. We were saying, “I wonder who’s got him and if they’ve killed him.” Ozzy was already on the bus. He went, “Hello fellas, where’s the show?” We felt like killing him. As it turned out, he’d had a cough, so he went out and bought two bottles of cough medicine, drank them both, and knocked himself out. That was the last tour we did. It was sort of the last straw.

  TONY IOMMI: In 1978, when we went to Los Angeles to write [Never Say Die], we had a house and we all lived there. We turned the garage into a studio so we could rehearse and write. We had equipment in the house as well so we could put rough ideas together and then go in the studio and play it. When we were trying to come up with riffs, Ozzy came apart from us. He was going to clubs and getting really out of it and not coming home some nights. It got to a stage where nothing was happening with him.