Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

JAMES BURDYSHAW We go to this place called the Bar of Soap, a laundromat and bar in Dallas. Some Chuck Norris–lookin’ fucker was talkin’ to our friend Kathy Kowgirl from Houston, and he must’ve said something that was really rude ’cause she threw her drink at him, and the next thing I know, this drunken dumbass with blond feathered hair and a mustache punched her right in the face. I just jumped on him, grabbed him around the neck, and he flew to the ground, then everybody else ran up on him and started punching him and kicking him. David grabbed him and threw him outside. Danny and David were just fuckin’ him up. Fuckin’ bashed his face in. The guy was so drunk he didn’t even know what hit him.

  DAVID DUET When we were in New York, L7 were walking up ahead of us, and all of a sudden the girls were being harassed by a group of Puerto Rican teenagers, all carrying backpacks. So Danny and I step up to be the gentlemen and the protectors, and the kids whip hatchets out of their backpacks! One of the kids swings at Danny and breaks the bottom of his beer off. We were tripping on psychedelics, and at that point all the Cat Butt guys just started dying laughing. And then the girls started laughing. And then the guys with the hatchets started laughing. They put away their hatchets and walked away, laughing their heads off.

  DANNY BLAND Where does someone all of the sudden pull out a hatchet in New York? We were magnets for trouble, and we liked it that way.

  JENNIFER FINCH Donita got stabbed in New York, where we were staying at Janet Billig’s house. Donita was in the bus and some gal from that neighborhood who didn’t really want a big bus with people like us in it—weird rockers or junkies or white people, I’m not even sure—just reached into the van and stabbed her through the window and then came into the van to continue trying to assault her.

  DAVID DUET That same night with the kids with the hatchets, I get back to the bus and I see a Latin couple, very tough and streetwise, walking past our bus, and one of the windows was slit open. Donita had been climbing into her bunk in her leopard-skin underwear and the girl starts screaming at Donita, “You bitch! You bitch!” Accusing Donita of trying to seduce her man. Erik, Dean, and our roadie are on the bus, and the guy comes onto the bus first, screaming. They jump up and start wrestling with the guy. Donita runs up behind them to see what’s going on and the woman whips out a straight razor, goes in between the guy’s legs, and slashes Donita’s knee open. She was going for Donita’s crotch, but Donita sees it coming, jumps backwards, and it slashes her knee.

  At the same time this is going down, a couple of car spaces up, two guys gangland-assassinate another guy right on the street, in the back of the head. Bam!

  DEAN GUNDERSON Donita waved down the ambulance that came by. They were like, “We’re looking for some guy that got shot in the head, but we’ll take you.” In the hospital waiting room, there was a woman who was not mentally completely there crying the entire time right next to me. She had some snot dripping from her nose, and it kept getting longer and longer and longer and longer. I was on LSD the entire time, but it wasn’t the drugs. It was actually happening. It got to like a foot and a half long, just dangling there. At that point, I was like hypnotized. It was swinging around and it hit her mouth and she sucked it up.

  Donita had a limp the rest of the tour, but she had a pretty good sense of humor. She was always saying, “Wait up for the gimp!”

  DANNY BLAND Several of us were indulging in hardcore narcotics. I remember walking around Detroit looking for heroin in a neighborhood where cars were literally on fire, and there were no firemen or police even thinking about coming into that neighborhood. The person we were staying with was an assistant to a veterinarian or something, so she had all of these needles, but they were these giant fucking horse needles or something. I don’t know if they were made for basting a turkey or what, but those needles were quite ineffective.

  DAVID DUET There was an agreement amongst the L7 camp that there would be no hard-drug use, but not everybody participated in that. There was no agreement in Cat Butt about that. (Laughs.) Danny and I were dabblers. Jennifer was a little more ahead of the game. She was kind of an instigator. It really didn’t come into play until Detroit. Crazy night in Detroit. If I’m not mistaken, we saw a pimp shot that night. We saw a lot of gunplay. I’m not clear on the events of that night, but I know that was the beginning of the rest of L7 being not so happy with Jennifer.

  JENNIFER FINCH I barely remember the tour. I was on so much heroin. Actually not when I was on the tour. I used maybe twice, when I was in larger cities, so you’d think I’d remember more.

  DAVID DUET Actually, there wasn’t that much hard-drug use on the tour. When we were in the band, there was the image that we were doing all these drugs, but we actually weren’t. We put that image out in interviews and stuff and tried to seem like the craziest people alive, but we’re actually not. We were quite un-drug-involved then. Especially considering our peers at the time. Our peers just kept it on the down low.

  JAMES BURDYSHAW I’d quit doin’ hard needle drugs in spring of ’88. I never was addicted ’cause I couldn’t shoot myself up—I’d have a friend do it for me—and I couldn’t afford it and it was scary to me. I liked the high, but I didn’t like the process. I was afraid of death and still am. I quit after my roommate shot me up with a speedball and I started hyperventilating. When I came down, I thought about John Michael and all the people he had ripped off and how brown his teeth were and how he used to scratch himself all the time, and I was like, I’m not gonna do this drug anymore.

  DANNY BLAND One of the most amazing things is that Suzi Gardner from L7 was clean and sober that whole time. At the time, I had never heard of anybody being sober. I was like, “Explain this to me.” She kind of did, and it still didn’t compute. Goddamn, that girl really loves playing music, or else she would’ve ran screaming from that van.

  DEAN GUNDERSON About two-thirds of the way through, Donita and I broke up. I was young and dumb and having someone like me that much freaked me out. I was pretty much a 20-year-old bimbo.

  DANNY BLAND I always thought that Cat Butt should’ve been documented more on film than on record. Our M.O. was just to get as annihilated as possible and rock out. It was a very volatile situation, and often there were fistfights on stage between band members. If I recall, the fights were between James and David, in some fake struggle for fake leadership of some completely retarded and dysfunctional rock-and-roll band.

  JAMES BURDYSHAW We get to L.A., and by this time I was not getting along with David. We were getting into shouting matches and fights. He liked to pick on me a lot. My bandmates would tease me all the time, talk shit about me. When Donita told me, “I’ve never seen a lead guitar player treated with so much disrespect,” that’s when it really started to make me feel like I couldn’t take it anymore.

  In my mind, David and me were supposed to be the leaders of the band, and instead it was David and Danny. Danny was the newest member of the band and he could barely play the guitar, and I was writing all of the songs, everything on that Cat Butt record except for a few little bits.

  We finally get back to Seattle and played a welcome-home show that nobody came to. It was like the worst attendance we’ve ever had. This is welcome home?

  Then the Babes in Toyland come to town, and I started a mini-fling with the bass player, Michelle Leon. Beautiful girl. We were hanging out, and they played a Halloween show with Lubricated Goat. Somebody had some fuckin’ mushrooms and I got really high, and we were all in the Babes in Toyland van headin’ to this party. I’m trying to give directions, but I’m really wasted, and David and Dean are also in the van, and David says, “Don’t listen to him, he doesn’t know a goddamn thing” to the girl that I’m trying to impress, and I just went off. I started yelling, “Fuck you!” All of a sudden David punched me in the face.

  I got out of the van, and I told Dean, “I’m quittin’ this band!” We were so high. Michelle and Guy Maddison from Lubricated Goat run up to me, “Are you okay?” Michelle told me, “Don’t play with that
asshole. Fuckin’ quit his band.” And I did.

  DAVID DUET How can I put this delicately? It’s no secret that James can be a very hard person to work with, and I really made strong efforts. Tried to be very diplomatic. But at times I couldn’t handle it. It was Halloween night, and I punched him. James was bein’ a prick. I was drunk. I think there were psychedelics involved.

  Then things started getting weird. Drugs were becoming more prevalent in the Seattle scene. I decided to get away from Seattle ’cause everybody was getting incredibly strung out. I checked myself into a five-day-detox wino hospital. Stayed there about three days. L7 was playing down the street, and I convinced the nurse to let me out, that it would be better for me to go play rock and roll, and she did. It was amazing. I hobbled down the street, got on stage with L7, did a Frank Sinatra version of “Strychnine” ’cause I was so looped out from all the medications they had me on, jumped in the van with L7, went to Canada. Came back from Canada, packed up all my stuff. Flew down to Texas for what was gonna be a month visit and ended up staying for four years.

  KEVIN WOOD The last time I saw Andy alive? I remember that distinctly because it happened to fall on the third day of the third month, 1990. He’d set up a deal where he was gonna get a solo album, and he invited me to do preproduction rough mixes for it. So he was pulling me back in and rectifying things.

  After working on preproduction that day, we were heading downtown when we ran into Regan just by chance. We mentioned that it was a 3/3 day, that’s about it. It wasn’t a long meeting. And that was the last time me and Regan and Andy were together.

  XANA LA FUENTE Andy and I had gone to see Aerosmith Wednesday night, but we didn’t go backstage and meet them. We were with all the other kids that buy the book at the show with pictures of the band. On Friday, all the members of the band except Steven Tyler and Joe Perry came into my store. And I said, “We came to your show. What are you guys still doing here?” They spend about $3,000, and I gave them a Mother Love Bone tape. I said, “We’re touring with you in a few weeks in Europe,” and they were like, “Yeah, we’re really excited.”

  That’s the day I came home and found him.

  DAVID DUET I saw Andy that day, at the Denny Street House. There was a drug dealer that lived there. I saw him copping. That was really weird. He was one of those people you did not expect.

  MIKE STARR That day I walked into Kelly Curtis’s basement, and Andy was there. I said, “What’s up Andy? How ya doin’?”

  “I got 40 days clean, man.”

  I was like, “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Clean off heroin.”

  I was like, “What?” Back then, I didn’t know anybody that ever did heroin. Then he goes, “Can you give me a ride home?” I gave him a ride, and we passed his apartment by about three blocks and he goes, “Just drop me off right here.” I dropped him off, and he went up to this Mexican guy when he got out.

  GREG GILMORE Jeff and I and Kelly were out to dinner with a prospective tour manager. Kelly had called Andy about coming, but Andy, apparently with a froggy voice, said he wasn’t feeling very well.

  XANA LA FUENTE Andrew was supposed to meet that night with the guy that was supposed to be his chaperone on the road. He called Kelly and said, “I’m sick,” and he said, “Xana is going to think I did drugs.” And Kelly said, “Did you?” He said, “No.” Well, he was lying.

  KELLY CURTIS We had just had dinner with the tour manager that we were gonna hire. I went home and there was a note on my door from my then-wife Peggy that said, “Andy’s in trouble. He’s at Harborview.” I had just left Jeff, and I knew where he was, at a bar downtown, so I drove back down there and yelled at him, and he got a couple of the guys, and we all showed up at Harborview, and Andy was in a fuckin’ coma.

  XANA LA FUENTE I just happened to have a work meeting that night, and my boss was really pissed off at everybody; there was stealing going on at the store. Two coworkers asked me if I could drive them home, and I had to take them way past my apartment.

  When I got home, Andy was on the bed facedown unconscious, so I called 911 and they were trying to tell me how to give CPR. I tried, but they got there pretty fast. When they got there, they had me sign this paper. They pronounced him dead at the scene, but they told me to go to the hospital, so I went to the hospital—and then he was alive again. He was in a coma, and he immediately looked totally different. He was swelled up like a balloon, unrecognizable, and all his organs just started to shut down, his brain wouldn’t stop swelling.

  That work meeting was about 30 or 40 minutes, and then taking my coworkers home was probably another 30 to 40 minutes. The nurse at the hospital said if I would have been home 10 minutes sooner …

  GREG GILMORE When me and Jeff went in to see him, it was brutal. Andy had not been on the respirator very long. If you have ever seen someone on a respirator, in the beginning it’s very unnatural. After a while your body seems to relax into the rhythm of it so it doesn’t look so freakish, but at that point it was still very mechanical. It just makes someone look more dead.

  REGAN HAGAR I went down immediately with my girlfriend, now my wife. Andy looked really bad. His hair was really messy. My wife had a brush, and we brushed his hair out because there was a lot of people gathering and people coming in, and I remember being mad at people for letting him look like this. It seems so stupid now. I was concerned about Andy and how people perceived him.

  There were a bunch of people there that were friends of friends. It wasn’t very family to me. I remember going down a hall and finding Brian Wood, who was going through the same kind of thing. He was very angry. It was frustrating. Actually, like three people had overdosed that weekend, so there were hangers-on around for other people, too. It was a total scene.

  BENJAMIN REW My keyboard player from my band at the time, Sleepy Hollow, had also OD’d that same night, potentially off the same stuff. It was the first time that Billy had ever shot up heroin; he ended up being in a coma for four and a half months at Harborview, but he eventually recovered. So we were all waiting in the hospital together. All the guys from Mother Love Bone and Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and us.

  I think Jerry Cantrell thought I was there to pretend that I was cool, because there were a lot of people that were there that shouldn’t have been there. There’d be like random chicks. So I think it got confused that I was there for the wrong reasons, and Jerry brought it up. He asked me why the fuck I was there. It was as simple as, “My fucking keyboard player is dying in there, asshole!” That normally will spark some confrontation. Basically, I think I lunged at him. And I think Jeff and some other guys and my guitar player Rick got in between us. I was pretty stoned at the time.

  XANA LA FUENTE I had this thought recently: Sometimes I wish I would have never called anyone and told them he was there. Because of that scene there. A lot of people didn’t deserve to be part of that. There were a lot of groupies showing up.

  BRUCE FAIRWEATHER It happened on a Friday night, before cell phones. I was on Orcas Island with some friends of mine and didn’t find out what happened until I got back on Sunday. I went over to Kelly’s, and everyone else was there. I said, “What’s going to happen to the band? What’s going to happen to the band?” and “Andy’s going to be all right. He’s going to pull through.”

  But when I saw him at the hospital the next day, I was like, “Fuck. Who cares about the band?”

  XANA LA FUENTE I knew he was gone. His mom kept saying, “When he wakes up, we’re going to kick his butt.” I’m like, “You don’t get it. He’s not waking up.”

  KEVIN WOOD They had to do some tests to see if he could possibly come back—a brain scan after his brain stopped swelling. But he was deprived of oxygen too long for him to have any hope of recovery.

  STUART HALLERMAN Soundgarden was at L’Amour in Brooklyn, and somehow the tour manager was on the phone talking to Andrew’s girlfriend. He’s like, “I’m not gonna tell Chris till after the show, because I do
n’t want to ruin the show for him, but Andrew’s in a coma.” We did tell them after the show, and Susan was out with us, and she started plying herself and Chris with liquor to dull the pain a bit. Driving back to Manhattan, Susan was like mumbling and falling over in the van. It was maybe the only time I’ve seen Susan drunk. The band played the last show of the tour in Hoboken the next night, and Chris and Susan flew out and got to the hospital.

  XANA LA FUENTE I wouldn’t let them unplug him until Chris Cornell got there. Andy’s parents were getting pissed at me. They kept going in and saying their good-byes, and they wanted it over with. I was like, “We gotta wait for Chris,” and Soundgarden had been on tour, so we were waiting for him to fly from like Chicago or something. I kind of threw that at Chris: “I got a lot of shit for keeping him on life support when everyone already said good-bye, waiting for you.” It wasn’t right of me. I was just mad at the world.

  I made Andy’s hair into three braids because that was the Malfunkshun number, three. I made it into three braids, and I cut it off. I still have it. Me and Brian were the last ones in there.

  KEVIN WOOD When they pulled the plug, me and my brother Brian were there, and that’s about all I remember. It was such a traumatic experience. We stood by his bed and watched the heart meter slowly stop, and then, boom, it was over.

  DAVE REES I went over Regan’s the day Andy died. We decided we’d make a tape for the service, so we drove down to Stone Gossard’s parents’ house and got the tape deck that we’d use to make it, and in the deck was the rough mix of Apple. So that was an emotional listen, to hear that for the first time on the day he died. It was so bittersweet. I was amazed at Andy’s vocals and his songwriting ability. It was Regan and I think Mara West, one of Andy’s old friends. We basically just sat there and cried and no one said a word for the entire day.