Sex, Drugs, Ratt & Roll: My Life in Rock

by Stephen Pearcy

  “I’m a flirt, man,” I said. “I can’t help it. By the way, that reminds me, I’ve been trying to talk to your receptionist. She’s giving me the cold shoulder, though. What’s up with that?”

  “Let’s focus on relationships, Stephen,” Dr. Roberts suggested. “It sounds like you’ve gone through some real emotional pain in the past. Is that fair to say?”

  “I’d say I’ve gone through real physical pain,” I corrected him.

  Dr. Roberts looked up, concerned.

  “I don’t want to gross you out,” I said, “but when we went to Japan in ’87 for the Dancing Undercover tour, I came down with a case of VD that was absolutely unholy. Some guys might have thought it was worth it, because I caught it through a vicious three-way with two smoking international model chicks I picked up from the Lexington Queen. I think they were German. Ever heard of that club? Every rocker from the eighties knows about the Lexington Queen.”

  “No,” said Dr. Roberts. “But this is a perfect example of how some relationships, particularly those based on sexual conquest, often lead to a short period of satisfaction, followed by long periods of emptiness. . . .”

  “This conquest was followed by a long period of my dick dripping,” I explained. “It just wouldn’t go away. I called my doctor back in the States. ‘I think I’ve got something.’ He’s all, ‘Go to the doctor, you idiot!’ But I was afraid of the Japanese docs, so I just sat on it. I stopped banging groupies completely. And that’s when the guys in the band knew something was terribly wrong.

  “Eventually, I was like, Fuck it, I’m going to the Japanese docs. But when I got to their office, it was like an assembly line. I move to one guy, he tugs on my balls. Move to the next, he draws some blood. The next one gave me some pills, and I’m out of there. But I was still boozing heavily. I didn’t get better. Meanwhile, in three days, I’d be going home with a dirty dick to my girlfriend.”

  “You had a girlfriend?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Look, in those days, if we weren’t married, then we were free men. Even if we were married. I went to Vince Neil’s bachelor party, before he married that Sharise chick, the stripper from the Tropicana, okay? Tommy Lee had a bachelor party for Vince that was absolutely insane. Tommy rented a big huge private yacht in the Marina, it was the coolest thing ever. You had to have a fucking laminate just to get on board. The who’s who of rockers were there, and all the waitresses and bartenders were female and fully nude, and Tommy’s going around handing everybody dollar bills to give to chicks. Talk about a fucking send-off! At the end of the night, we took Vince up on the roof, cheering like crazy, put him in the center, and twenty or thirty chicks got on their hands and knees, circled around Vince, each one of them planting their face and tongue in the next one’s love triangle. Just going to town.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is,” I said seriously, “there was so much goddamn trim around in those days, it just didn’t make much sense to any of us to stick to one woman. You could try, and we did, but it never lasted for long.”

  “Which is how situations happen, like your case of gonorrhea,” said Dr. Roberts.

  “Yeah, and see, I started being real careful after that. My doctor gave me the best advice: ‘Always look in the mouth,’ he said. ‘If the mouth’s filthy, then you got a filthy snatch.’

  “That guy was my man! I called him Dr. Rock. I credited him on every Ratt record. He fixed my dirty dick. Took a month, but he did it. That was probably the longest month of my life. Total deprivation. I can’t believe my chick didn’t break up with me. I had to make up excuse after excuse after excuse. ‘Not in the mood.’ Or ‘headache.’ But it never happened again, because, like I said, I got smart after that. I started giving them the rocker taste test.”

  “Taste test?”

  “The rocker taste test, man. As you give ’em a hug, slip your finger in, then sniff it, around their neck,” I said, my eyes bright, remembering. “Sometimes it smells like rhino.”

  “Stephen,” said my therapist. He closed his eyes. “I think we’ve done enough for the day. Meanwhile, please stay away from the receptionist.”

  THERE WAS NO TIME TO CELEBRATE getting signed. We had a gig in San Francisco the following night. Phil Schwartz packed a car full of gear and beer and drove us north, toward our destination, the Keystone Theater. We were giggling like excited children. A deal. With Atlantic.

  “It’s insane, man. When I hear Atlantic, all I can think about is Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. . . .”

  “Now Ratt!” cried Robbin.

  I was in a fucking state of ecstasy. We all were. San Francisco had a strange glow to it that weekend. I staggered through the summer fog, shivering my nuts off, dressed in paint-splattered spats and tennis shoes, a joint behind each ear. One moment I felt wide awake, then caught in a dream, then unable to discern between the two.

  “They’re gonna give you some money now,” Marshall told us when we returned. “It ain’t much, less than ten grand a piece, so don’t get happy. Don’t be stupid with it.”

  But telling me to be smart with cash was like telling a fat chick to take it easy on the Sara Lee. Suddenly flush, I ran around town, demented, squandering my newfound cash on trinkets, gasoline, liquor, trash. A week later, they asked for all of it back.

  “Accounting error,” Marshall said. “Sorry.”

  I turned over what I had left and immediately went back to being constantly broke. It didn’t matter. I knew how to get by. I had girlfriends. They fed me, they stroked me . . . you get the picture.

  “Now, are you guys ready to get back into the studio?” Marshall asked us. “Ready to make a hit?”

  “Marshall,” I said, “by now, you should trust us.”

  In hot August, we teamed with new Atlantic Records staff producer-writer Beau Hill, and the six of us set about slaving for ten long weeks at the Village Recorder in West L.A. The result was Out of the Cellar, a ten-song album bearing three singles: “Round and Round,” “Back for More,” and “Wanted Man.”

  “How’d we do in there, Beau?” Robbin asked, exhausted beyond all belief, when it was done.

  “You all were great, I promise you,” said Beau. “Seriously, I think we got something special here.”

  I wasn’t completely convinced, though.

  “If it doesn’t sell,” I worried, “we might not ever get the chance to make another one.”

  “Stephen,” Beau said, “it’ll sell.”

  By late December, the album was mixed, set to be released by the spring. I paced around in gold spandex in Ratt Mansion West on Christmas Eve, nervous and tripped out, turning a tiny snow globe over and over in my hands, watching the white flakes fall with agonizing slowness. Our record wouldn’t drop for three months. What the hell was I going to do in the meantime?

  Marshall made that decision for me, when he came to us, excited. “Fellas, MTV is where it’s at. And you’re not the worst-looking band around, right? So let’s put you in front of a camera and see if we can make some magic.”

  We all were into it. At that point, Marshall held the keys. If he had told us to jump into a huge pile of dog shit and roll around, we would have done that, too. For my part, I loved having someone around who was willing to tell us what to do—as long as I had the last word. I’d been scratching and clawing for too many years, booking our gigs, a slave to the unrelenting voice inside my own head. The yoke of responsibility was gradually starting to slide off my shoulders. It felt like a huge relief.

  “I got great news for you, too,” Marshall confided to me. “We’ve secured a big guest star for the video.”

  “Who?”

  He grinned. “My uncle, that’s who.”

  Milton Berle was a television legend, and he was not exactly shy about letting everyone know about it. When Uncle Miltie came on set, his word was law. The poor bastard who’d been hired to shoot our video essentially had his job swept out from under him.

  “What the hell
do you mean, you haven’t got a two-shot yet? Do you even know what a two-shot is, you amateur prick?”

  Our director was stunned, but the band was laughing so hard our sides hurt.

  “Milton,” Marshall suggested, “how about you let the crew do what they need to do. Then we’ll start filming the band, what do you say?”

  “No chance,” Milton said. “Listen, you schmucks need some humor. I’ll tell you what, I’ll play two parts for you. I’ll put on a goddamn dress for you. This is how much I love my nephew. You owe me big for this, okay, Marshall?”

  Making the “Round and Round” video was a blast. Milton Berle cracked me up, in drag or out of it. I was so curious about his era.

  “Hey,” I said, between takes. “Milton—did you really bang Marilyn Monroe?”

  “I’ll let you use your imagination on that one,” he said, giving me that famous smile.

  “Everyone says you’ve got the biggest pecker in showbiz. Is that just another Hollywood fable, man?”

  “Boy!” He looked to his nephew. “Your fucking singer asks a lot of personal questions! What’s his problem?”

  Marshall shrugged. “Kids. Right, Milton?”

  Milton inspected me closely.

  “When I was growing up,” he said, “if you had pretty hair like that, you’d be considered a real faygelah. You know what that is, Stephen? That’s the Yiddish way to say homo.”

  “Cool,” I said, unfazed.

  “Amazing,” sighed Milton. “He doesn’t even know what the hell I’m talking about. This is our future.”

  I wanted to get Milton a hooker as a present for doing the video for us, but our budget was so tiny, we had nothing left over to spend.

  MARSHALL BERLE, MANAGER:

  In the early 1980s, the music industry was in a real boom period. It was like a gold rush. When MTV came along, it really started making stars out of bands like Ratt. MTV was the model that helped break a lot of bands.

  We shot the “Round and Round” video in one day. We had a very small budget, twenty-five thousand dollars. Milton came in there, and he took over the whole set. Told the director where to put the camera, told him where to light everything. It was awesome. The band loved it. And it turned out to be the right thing. Before the video came out on MTV, “Round and Round” was turned down by radio. Nobody would play it. And then when the video came out, we did the press, and it made all three networks. “Mr. Television is now Mr. MTV.” And it just took off, and then radio jumped all over the single. That video propelled the band into the national spotlight.

  When MTV first came down the pike, ’81, ’82, all you had to do was show up with a video, and they would play it, because they needed content. And then after Ratt had these huge hits, and Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe, it was simply a matter of having the record company’s promotion people contact MTV and submit the video. It was not that hard to get a video on MTV. As it got later, in the late ’80s, it got a little more difficult, because the style and the music was changing. That was the death of heavy metal, and hair bands like Ratt.

  For a while, though, in the record business, everyone wanted a Ratt, everyone wanted a Mötley Crüe. It’s funny, because when Van Halen came out, you’d think everyone would have wanted a Van Halen. Well, that didn’t really happen, because the punk and new wave scene was coming right at the same time. But when Ratt came out, boy, every record company wanted one just like ’em.

  IN FEBRUARY, WE BEGAN TO TOUR. The album would come out in stores in March, and so the idea was to generate a little prerelease buzz. Our aims were modest, and our road crew small: Phil Schwartz, a buddy of ours named Road Dog, Johnny Road Rat, Marshall, an accountant, the driver, a few lighting and guitar techs, and that was about it. Most of us managed to squash into one bus.

  “Dude, this is pretty amazing, right?” I said to Robbin as our journey began. We lodged ourselves in the back of a big old Eagle bus, hopping up and down in our bunks like kids on the way to school. “Do you know how long I’ve dreamed about having a bus? Man, do you know how much trim we’ll get on this bus? Are you getting that?”

  Robbin agreed wholeheartedly. “A sex ship this grand needs a proper name.”

  “Y’know, you’re right, man. Let’s see. . . .” I thought. “How about . . . Starship Pussy Whistle?”

  “Hmm,” said Robbin, unconvinced.

  “The Vagina Diner?” I asked.

  “How about the Rolling Hilton?” Robbin said.

  King’s word was law, and the Rolling Hilton it was. We even christened it as such. Eventually Marshall found a painter with airbrush skills to emblazon the side of the bus with a giant Strat, Warren’s guitar at the time. A Flying V, Robbin’s choice of instrument, crisscrossed it.

  “Absolutely beautiful,” said Robbin. “Let’s hit the road.”

  On the first leg of our tour we headlined small five-hundred- to thousand-head clubs, then went to open-arena shows for Billy Squier. An amazing experience—but our real enthusiasm was reserved for the Hilton. The magic bus was split into two regions: a large front lounge with seats, where the grown-ups could conduct business, and then the back area, set off by a folding door, where the band was free to drink, snort drugs, and play Pong. For music, we employed a weathered Sony double-tape-deck stereo that worked on cassettes (Blotzer dominated the deck when drunk, insisting on playing the Beatles for ten-hour stretches—“because they were four geniuses! Fucking brilliant, every last one of them”); for communication, a semi-functional two-part detachable cell phone with an enormous portable battery; and for comfort, a cheap AC system that sucked in the hot air from the towns we passed, gave it a quick hit of Freon, and then blew it into our sweaty faces.

  Our bunks were coffinlike. They stacked three to a column, six feet and no inches long, shielded from the outside world only by a polyester curtain. No DVD players or tiny televisions in our bunks: There was a small yellow bulb coated in plastic, a thin rubber mattress, and that was it. If you awoke in the middle of the night, disoriented, and tried to sit up, you’d smash your forehead into the bunk above you before making it six inches.

  The fuck if I cared. I thought it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen.

  Did I give much of a shit if someone’s foul toes were in my face when I woke up? No, I certainly didn’t, because being awake and on a moving bus, however groggy, meant it was officially party time. It was time to crack the first beer of the day, roll the first joint, and get down to the serious business of catching a decent buzz. The coffin bunks were useful for other purposes, anyway: When we opened for Squier in Erie, Pennsylvania, after the show I stowed a cute, exuberant blonde onto the bus.

  “So this is how rock stars do it!” she giggled.

  “Yep. Welcome to the Rolling Hilton,” I said. “Watch your head.” I guided her back to my middle bunk and wedged her inside, closing the curtains but for a tiny gap, through which her lips pooched out.

  “Pearcy,” Bob asked. “Play Pong?”

  I pulled my pants down around my ankles and received the blow job of a lifetime while losing to Blotzer at Pong. “And yet, part of me feels like I won,” I said. I zipped up my pants. “Hey, King, come back here for a second, I want to talk to you.”

  Robbin appeared, grinning. “What are you bad dudes up to back here?”

  I nodded my head toward the bunk. “There’s a present inside there for you, buddy, if you ask nice.”

  It was on that tour that the underwear and bras started flying onstage. At first, I found it confusing: Only rarely had our fan base at the Whisky and the Troubadour stripped off their panties and tossed them into our faces. Now, twenty to thirty pairs a night regularly ended up onstage by the end of our set.

  Soon I realized we had the opportunity to do something special, and I began to gather up the G-strings, the lingerie, the cotton drawers, and the bikini panties after our set. I brought them onto the bus, tied them to the luggage racks. You walked back to the john to take a piss, and it was like beating your
way through the jungle. Silky, filmy lace dragged across your skin from every direction. Soon the Rolling Hilton had the subtle aroma of a whorehouse.

  Our bus was a motorized fuck factory on wheels, driven by a long-haired Southern good ol’ boy who never seemed to sleep a wink. It was a perfect fantasyland, built for rockers, raw and nasty, lacking many of the amenities that today’s bands might take for granted. For example, no one was allowed to take a shit in the bathroom—though, drunkenly, many of us did. The primitive plumbing simply couldn’t deal with a man-size turd. The stench would linger for days.

  “You guys, stop shitting in the john!” our driver yelled. “You’re choking my pipes. If you need to pinch a loaf, do it in a plastic bag, okay? Then when we stop at a rest stop, you can just throw it away.”

  I followed our driver’s advice that afternoon, and went to the crapper to squeeze out a giant shit into a white plastic bag. Tying it off, I waltzed through the bus, slapping my band members across the arms and chests with my fresh bag of turds.

  “Pearcy! What’s the matter with you, man?” Robbin said. “Are you that sick?”

  “Rotten bastard,” cried Bob, covering his face with his hands ineffectually. “Christ, Stephen, what have you been eating?”

  Drugs, weed, and alcohol got us through the long highway treks. And maybe a hit of acid. I stared out the window, pleasantly stoned, watching America’s roadways and cornfields roll by.

  We were starting to generate our first money and it felt good. Naturally, we had to waste it as soon as possible, lest we be mistaken for responsible human beings. Drugs were the most efficient way to do it.

  “Hey look!!” yelled Robbin, Juan, and Bobby. “It’s SNOWING!”

  The dummies had pooled their cash and bought an ounce of blow, and in a drunken show of brotherhood, they were snorting the entire pile at once, Scarface style. Robbin tossed the excess in the air, laughing like a maniac the whole time.

  The crowds weren’t enormous in the clubs and theaters, but they were responsive. We played a show in Detroit where I saw a clutch of teenage chicks literally crying, reaching out their arms toward us like we were gods. Like . . . really? I never understood that kind of adulation. I really wasn’t into music for that. But hey, I’d take it.