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I dedicate this book to my loving mother, Joanne (RIP): you’re now dancin’ with the angels, walkin’ on the clouds.
Robbin “King” Crosby (RIP), brother: gone but never forgotten.
And to all my dear friends lost since the party began,
you’re forever in my heart.
And to all the hard-core Ratt ’n’ Rollers out there
for making my trip so far a dream come true.
INTRO
NO HUMAN SHOULD HAVE to remember fumbling drunkenly over his newborn baby daughter in Beverly Hills Hospital in Los Angeles, California, trying and failing to cut her umbilical cord with surgical scissors, pushing the scissors back and forth, booze and pills playing hell in his stomach. Wanting to do this worse than anything he’s ever wanted to do before, yet unable to get a good enough grip on the steel handles to do the job.
“Go ahead, Mr. Pearcy,” the doctor urged.
I tried again, gaping in total wonder. My daughter squalled, her face bright red, her body covered in goo. I stifled a mouthful of acid reflux.
“These are surgical, right?” I mumbled. I sawed the blades back and forth, the umbilical cord twisting slippery and red, bulbous and veiny. The enormity of the event was causing my nerves to go haywire.
I made my thumb and forefinger like rods. I am the greatest cord cutter in the world, I promised myself. I can do this.
I sliced through my daughter’s umbilical cord. She cried especially loud for a moment, and it was the most beautiful sound I have ever heard in my entire life. Beautiful enough to make you cry, want to get clean, become pure again, surf. She was the most beautiful jewel, angel I have ever seen. Changed my life forever after that.
My brain should have been a smoking ruin, hole eighteen at the 1945 Hiroshima Golf Classic. I was on hydrocodone and weed and heroin and Budweiser and strange trim for most of the major events of the last five decades. But somehow, glimmering moments of my rock-and-roll journey splash out at me like fireworks in my cerebral cortex, at times when I least expect it.
I may be taking my dog, Puppy, to the veterinarian. We sit together in a leather-chair-filled office in Van Nuys, both of us quiet and docile. I’m leaning over the counter to take a look at the papers, and then suddenly it’s 1983, and I’m driving a Datsun B-210 north on Hollywood Boulevard, listening to KLOS, swerving from lane to lane, licking barbecue sauce off my fingers. Then, with no warning at all, Ratt’s first single comes on the air. I’m so fucking stunned and elated, I almost drive into oncoming traffic.
Then the memory is gone. It’s just me and Puppy again. I’m staring into his black eyes, and he’s staring right back. One of us has a skin condition; the other smokes too much.
For such a long time, I tried not to remember any of this. Threw a blanket over everything, courtesy of booze, dope, pills, rage. But the past didn’t go anywhere. It sat there, stubborn and pissed off, waiting for me to come home.
YOU’RE TALKIN’ TO ME
IN 2009, I PACKED myself off to rehab in Pasadena, California, in an attempt to wean myself from that nagging booze/pills/grass/heroin habit I’d picked up over the last several decades. There was an initial period of hell, better known as withdrawal, followed by a long stretch of a much more annoying kind of torture: therapy.
It’s the price of getting clean, I guess. They help you ditch the drugs, make it so your bandmates no longer have to stick mirrors underneath your nostrils to see if you’re still alive when you go into one of your increasingly frequent nods in the recording studio—and then you have to sort of humor them when they say, What else about you can we clean up?
I was assigned a decent, flabby therapist named Dr. Harold Roberts, who had the nerve to imply that I might have a few other addictions to my name, too.
“What I’d like to ask you, Stephen, is, have you ever considered yourself a sex addict?”
I laughed. “How would I even know?”
“A sex addict might, for instance, spend the majority of his waking hours trying to procure sex.”
“I’m a rock singer,” I said. “If you have to try to get laid, then there’s definitely something wrong.”
“Did you ever have a period of your life when you went from partner to partner, without due regard for their personalities?”
“Yes. The 1980s.”
“Okay.” Dr. Roberts laughed. “All right. Humor can be a defense mechanism. How many partners might you have had?” He said it casually, but I could see his interest was growing.
“You know that guy John Paul?” I said. “Lives in Italy?”
“The Pope?” Dr. Roberts asked.
“More than him.”
“Again with the humor,” said Dr. Roberts.
“My stamina in the mid-’80s was unparalleled,” I began. “I was tearing down three chicks a day when we were on the road, under ideal conditions.”
“Three? But I don’t even see how that’s possible.”
“It’s possible when you’re organized. It’s possible when you have a team.”
They were well-trained and faithful soldiers—Phil, Joe, and Road Dog—each one ready to scout the hottest trim around and slap passes in those girls’ hands. They’d continue throughout our show, scanning the audience, knowing my type perfectly. After the encore, there would be twenty-five giggling blondes lined up, all incredible tits, flat stomachs, and golden asses. I just had to pick.
“But of course you’re exaggerating,” Dr. Roberts said.
“Now,” I continued, “if you want to throw down on tour, you have to learn how to do it right. You space out the trim—one before the show in your dressing room, one midshow, during the drum solo, and then obviously, one at the hotel that night.”
A momentary silence filled the room.
“Or on the bus.”
The doctor was writing something down in his notebook.
“But you must stay organized. For instance, always make sure to take a Polaroid of each of your girls. Write her phone number on the back with a Sharpie. Then hand that off to your security guy to stick in his Rolodex, so that you have it for next time you come through Jacksonville or Corpus Christi.”
“Mr. Pearcy, this is compulsive behavior, don’t you agree?”
“No, it’s smart behavior. I grew up with this, man. I was at Van Halen shows for a long time before my band broke, and I knew the best bands had their systems down. I always told my guys when we got big, we’d do it right.”
The doctor and I stared at each other for a while. It was nice and quiet in that office. You pay through the nose if you go to rehab, at least if you go to some of the posher places. The one I went to, embarrassingly, is the place where Dr. Drew filmed his celebrity rehab show. I liked the cleanliness and general high production value of the whole place, though.
“Back in the day, I used my itineraries to keep track of every single chick I ever met or put myself into. I kept them my whole adult life. Had stacks and stacks and stacks of them. They got burned by my super-pissed girlfriends. I’d just write the girl’s name, her phone number, the city I met her in, and a rating. You know, seven, eight, maybe a nine. Once in a while, a true ten. And if we had sex, I’d mark it with three x’s. And if we did something else, I’d write that. Then I’d try to add some sort of signature
description, like ‘see again.’ Or ‘fly out.’ Or ‘kinda funky.’ ”
“Do you have anything else that you want to tell me, Stephen?” Dr. Roberts said. “Anything that you’d like to get off your chest?”
Where do I start?
THE YOUNG AND THE DAMNED
I WAS BORN SCREAMING in Long Beach, California, on July 3, 1956, a slick, black-haired ball of muscle, part German, part Irish, part who knows what. Pure mutt.
I’m a twin: I came out first.
My most distinct memories of childhood are of unrelenting California sunshine and the moist smell of crabgrass in our small, ragged backyard. Our family never had much money, and I never had real pets. My older brother and I became ghetto zookeepers, collecting beady-eyed possums, raccoons, and squirrels. I would put on electrical gloves and try to hug the animals to my chest.
“He’s going to bite you,” my brother warned me. “He probably has rabies.”
My brother and I pooled our allowances and purchased rats from the pet store, storing them in cheap wire cages. One night, a renegade rat with steely whiskers escaped his cage and went to town on our pet turtle. In seconds, he had begun to suck the turtle’s body out from underneath the shell.
“Will, watch this!” I cried, fascinated.
“It ain’t nothing.”
“But he’s . . . he’s killing him.”
Our turtle died a terrifying, slow death that night, right before our eyes. The rat looked wholly unrepentant, teeth dripping with blood, eyes bright and alien.
“We better off him, too,” said my brother. “Go get me my knife.”
“But why?” I cried.
“Dammit, Stephen, don’t start crybabying over a goddamn rat. That thing’s a menace. You saw it yourself. He’s a common murderer. We’re going to have to put him down.”
My brother clutched the rat’s stomach in his left hand and as it struggled, he used his free hand to slash its throat with a knife. Rat blood flowed onto his hands and the toes of his sneakers. Together we buried the disemboweled body in the backyard.
“That was fucking very uncool of you,” I choked.
“You sound weird when you say fuck,” my brother mused.
MUSIC WOULDN’T PIERCE ME WITH ITS terrible talons for a very long time. Which is not to say I didn’t feel it when I heard it; more like, I was utterly clueless when it came to its finer points. Some would argue I stayed that way throughout my career.
When I was about fourteen, my older sister had a “cool” boyfriend, with a mop of thick black hair and big forearm muscles. He dressed like a greaser, an outdated look by the early ’70s, but his rebel vibe came through, and that was what mattered. He smoked filterless Camels, the official cigarette of the who-gives-a-fuck set.
“Listen to this, man.” He handed me a pair of large ’70s headphones that led from my sister’s eight-track player. “This is real music.”
I fitted the phones over my ears and bopped my head appreciatively. “She’s awesome,” I remarked politely.
“Who’s awesome?” he sneered.
“Janis,” I said. “Janis Joplin? Right?”
“Oh, man,” my sister said, embarrassed. “My little brother thinks Led Zeppelin is Janis Joplin?”
I stammered, “I was just kidding.”
Pretty funny that I had absolutely no clue who Led Zeppelin was, considering how infatuated I’d become with the band in later teenage years, pestering record store clerks all across Southern California for the latest bootlegs until finally one shouted at me, “I’ll LET YOU KNOW, Pearcy! Okay?”
A similar event transpired at the home of my friend Victor Mamanna. On his bedroom wall, Victor had a large poster of an ugly, scary-looking chick. She was pale-faced, crow-eyed, with long black hair dripping from her skull. I studied the poster carefully, repulsed by the imagery.
“That is one freaky-looking chick,” I said.
Victor cracked up laughing. “Stephen. That’s Alice Cooper!”
“She’s a dog,” I said.
Victor roared. “Cooper’s a guy! And a genius.”
I shrugged. How was I supposed to know?
Music was a groove, sure, but my first love, even as early as the age of ten, was the girls. They just did it for me—all of them. At my Catholic school, St. Gerard’s, I didn’t mess with kickball, or marbles, or any of that basic Boy Scout crap; no, I spent all my recesses trying to charm the babes in my class into the boys’ restroom.
“I’m not going to go in there,” giggled most girls who I tried to get into the bathroom.
“Come on,” I coaxed. “It’ll be fun. We’ll be all alone.”
Somehow, I managed to tempt many of them inside. We tried to French kiss, I tried to cop a feel. Childish graffiti decorated the walls around us.
While the plaid skirts were world-class, Catholic school wasn’t perfect. I was a fairly appalling student. I had a talent for art, and I wasn’t bad at English, but after that, my aptitude and attention span dropped off a ten-foot riser. Classroom time was better spent spitballing my friend Andy Holgwen’s hair without him feeling the weight of it, or fucking with the school savant, a huge Japanese kid, Louis Watanabe. That kind of immature shit often earned me personal time with our head nun, a frightening woman known as Sister Barbara.
“Put out your hand, Stephen.”
“Oh, no, I ain’t.” I smirked. “I know what that’s all about.”
“Put our your hand,” Sister Barbara hissed.
“So you can smack it with your ruler?” I laughed, smashing each hand firmly underneath the opposite bicep. “Not a chance.”
Sister Barbara stared me down, her face hard and bleak.
“Do as I say, Stephen, or I won’t be responsible for the consequences.”
“Sister,” I warned her, “if you smack me with that ruler, I’m gonna smack you right back.”
Wrong thing to say. The nun colored instantly, a hot crimson flush spreading from neck to forehead, her face becoming all twisted lips and knitted eyebrows.
“We’ll see what your mother has to say about that,” she said, her voice dangerously quiet.
I kept my arms crossed defiantly.
My mother arrived half an hour later. The nun explained our situation succinctly. “Your son informed me that I am in danger of being struck by him.”
With no hesitation, my mom reached out and smacked me hard across the back of my head. Whip-crack! “Like this?”
Man, you just didn’t want to cross my mom. She was nothing like my older sister, who threw brooms and irons at us when mom was at work. Most of it was just frustration, and love was behind it all. My mother had a tough row to hoe. My dad was rarely around, and when he did show up, he was either drunk, dragging on dope, or ominously silent. Only when I would fill those shoes later would I understand the nature of his addictions.
My father, Bill Pearcy, seemed to believe I was weak, and as a veteran of the Korean War, he wasn’t particularly happy about that. He did his best to toughen me up, though if you watched it from afar, you might liken it to the way other men tenderize meat. He bounced my head off plenty of walls. For some reason, instead of developing the stiff upper lip he wanted for me, I continued to just cry like a baby.
“I’m sending you boys to karate lessons,” he decided one day.
We studied karate in a dingy strip mall, and I surprised myself by learning the punches and kicks. Soon I could fight. My reflexes were sharp, but still he wasn’t satisfied. When I spilled my milk at the table, I got a smack on the jaw. When I yelled at my sister, I took one on the chin.
“Things will get better,” my mother promised me. “Things will change.”
But they never did. I got pummeled, again and again. I seemed to be the only kid in the family he liked to smack; that kinda confused me. Wouldn’t it be kind of fun to smack your other kids around a little bit? I thought. Do you find me to have, like, an especially punchable face?
One time he beat the shit out of me wi
th surprising enthusiasm, jabbing my face with the force and intensity of a boxer. The next morning, my brother shook me awake.
“Hey, Stephen?”
“What?” I croaked. My eyes were swollen; my throat felt stiff and awful.
My brother softened. “Want to go catch a pet?”
That afternoon, my brother and I found a wild rabbit in the fields near the house. I was in love at first sight. It was the softest, warmest creature I had ever held against my skin. I cradled it in my arms, feeling the heartbeat of something gentle and good.
With no warning at all, the little monster tore its tiny white teeth into my forearm and wouldn’t let go. I had to punch his crazy fucking body off my arm, bashing it against our picnic table, again and again, until finally, stunned, it relaxed its death grip and hopped away.
DRIVE ME CRAZY
RATT WAS BORN FROM the ruins of Mickey Ratt, in Southern California, in 1982. The dysfunctional band and our sleazy brand of musical passion were a direct product of my ragged upbringing, but we’re also such a 1980s creation. Ratt could only have been born in that weird decade. We are a consequence of the bizarre tastes of the time.
Weirdness abounded in the 1980s, spreading like a virus. It was the golden era of MTV and the dawn of image rock, where Aqua Net hair spray stood in as a secret fifth member of rock bands and vast piles of potent cocaine decorated the oak desktops of many an aging, open-shirted Hollywood record executive. Sam Kinison, a shrieking, maniacal ex-preacher from Tulsa, Oklahoma, slowly became a fixture on the metal scene in the latter half of the decade, as recognizable and respected as any member of Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, or Twisted Sister. He loved the screams of guitars and the caresses of rock sluts, and I was proud to be part of his entourage.
In 1987, Kinison recorded a version of the Troggs hit “Wild Thing” and began to climb the charts himself. For his music video, he hired Praise the Lord scandal alumna Jessica Hahn and her crudely sculpted, giant-size boob job, and put her into a wrestling ring. Kinison and Hahn fought it out, then smooched weirdly. Steven Adler, Steven Tyler, Joe Perry, Tommy Lee, Richie Sambora, Sebastian Bach, Billy Idol, and I were all there, making cameos, standing by awkwardly. At a certain point, Tommy and the Guns N’ Roses guys began throwing beers and spitting on Jessica, who looked surprised, then aroused, then demented. Sam kept screaming louder and louder.
Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life in Rock Page 1