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

by Stephen Pearcy

  Atlantic, eager to capitalize on our popularity, soon shoved us back into the studio to record album number three. Beau Hill was there once again to produce, and together, we created Dancing Undercover, which featured the singles “Dance” and “Body Talk.” “Body Talk” would end up being featured in the Eddie Murphy film The Golden Child.

  While we were recording, I always went out at night and tried to meet the new up-and-coming guys, if only to stay abreast of the competition. One afternoon, Steven Adler took me up to the house that he and the rest of his band, Guns N’ Roses, had rented in the Hollywood Hills. The place reminded me of the old Mötley House, trashed beyond all recognition. Although it was about two in the afternoon when we got there, I was stepping on people still laid out from the night before.

  “Party never stops, huh?”

  “I guess not.” He shrugged. “Hey, come on out to the balcony. I want you to meet Axl.”

  His lead singer was outside, hovering over the keg, coaxing the last few drops of beer from the plastic tube.

  “Hey, bro,” I said, extending my hand. “I’m Stephen, how’s it going?”

  “Hey,” said Axl. He just sort of said it. He stood there, looking kind of distant, with his bandana pulled low over his eyes.

  It was a cool little scene, though I wouldn’t say it was overly welcoming. Axl went back to pumping his beer, I went back inside, and a short while afterward, I left.

  A couple of nights later, Steven invited me to the Troubadour to see Guns N’ Roses. I was mingling backstage with my rock brethren and their chicks, a drink in my hand, a Vicodin in my gut, when out of nowhere this girl came up to me and said flirtatiously, “Aren’t you Stephen Pearcy?”

  I grinned. “Guilty.”

  “Well, Stephen,” she said, “you have something on your shirt.”

  I looked down, surprised. Food? But I’m on an all booze-diet. . . .

  When I did, the chick lifted up her hand and popped me on the underside of my nose. Bonk.

  “Hey,” I said. “That’s not funny.”

  “What do you mean?” she said, concerned. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you. And you do have something on your shirt—look down.”

  I looked down, and she did the same trick again. Bonk!

  “Now look, dammit,” I said, “nobody bonks me! Okay? I took karate when I was a kid.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” she sneered.

  “It means I’m not afraid to bonk you back,” I said, tweaking her nose with my forefinger and thumb.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?!” she screeched, holding her nose, outraged.

  People started to cluster around us.

  “What’s going on, Stephen?” asked a security dude, a guy I knew from previous tours.

  “This woman bonked me,” I announced to the room. I pointed at her. “Get rid of her.”

  “Sorry, Stephen,” he said, in a low voice. “We can’t.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “She bonked me.”

  “Dude—that’s Axl’s girl.”

  Oh, great, I thought. So Axl Rose’s chick bonked me. And I bonked her back. And now the whole world’s gonna know about it. Just fucking great.

  On another night not too long after, I headed to the Cathouse, looking for thrills and maybe some trim. Joe Anthony with me. He and I walked in the door, smelling the odd scent that permeated the building.

  “Hair spray by the gallon,” I said. “Super fluffy in here.”

  “Damn shame when the guys are looking tighter than the chicks.”

  A weird aura of doom spiked the air along with the Aqua Net. Riki Rachtman had some of the best up-and-coming talent sprouting up in his club: L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat, Lickety Split, Shiver Shiver, Jetboy. But there was something odd about it, as if metal had passed a critical point, and had now begun to approach the status of a cartoon. . . .

  “You know, Joe,” I said, as we approached the bar, “I almost died last night. Drank some weird alcohol out of a jar with cow balls in it.”

  “What the hell, Stephen?” laughed Joe. “Do you need to be supervised at all times?”

  “It’s an idea.”

  We ordered beers and shots. We’d been at the bar for about ten minutes when Riki Rachtman approached, smiling. “Yo, Stephen,” he said, “Axl’s here.”

  “Oh, okay,” I said. “I met that guy. I’m real close with Stevie, his drummer. I’ll go say hey.”

  “Where is he?” Joe asked.

  Riki pointed to the sound booth. “Right in there.”

  The sound booth was super small, about the size of two telephone booths. We made our way to it, knocked on the door, and the security dude let us right in.

  “What’s up, fellas?” he said, smiling. “Come on in.” He nodded at Joe. “What’s up, man?”

  Inside, it was crammed so full, there was hardly any room to move. The club DJ was in there, as well as the security guard. Then there was Joe and me and Axl, and a chick who was with him.

  “Axl, how’s it going?” I said.

  He didn’t answer. Just gave me this little push in the chest.

  Now, I’m a jolly guy. I never have beef with anybody, and I don’t expect static. So I just thought it was a rock-star push: you know, mutual respect, right?

  “Hey, what’s up, man?” I said, trying again. “I’m a good friend of Stevie Adler. I think we met once—”

  “You like this?” snapped Axl. And then he reached over and bonked me.

  “What the hell’s your deal, man??” I said, offended.

  “Why’d you mess with my girl at the Troubadour?” he accused.

  “You got it backward,” I said, outraged. “Dude, she bonked me.”

  “Well, how about you pick on someone your own size?” he said, all threatening-like, all “Welcome to the Jungle.” “Huh? Pearcy?”

  And he reached back and tried to shove me.

  Joe intervened—he caught Axl’s hand. But I was pissed. I’m thinking, What the fuck is going on here? I’ve done nothing to this dude.

  We lit into each other, raining a torrent of weak, girlish blows that repeatedly missed their marks. It was downright embarrassing. Joe and the security guard tried to intervene.

  “Stop, guys! Guys—stop it!”

  They moved to separate us, but then Axl’s chick jumped on Joe’s back and wouldn’t let go.

  “Goddammit,” yelled Joe. “Get off me!”

  He swung her around in circles, trying to hurl her lean weight from his body, but she dug in, all nails.

  “Come on,” I said to Axl, “Let’s go! Let’s take it outside!” There were beads flying, screaming, yelling.

  “YOU GUYS GET OUTTA HERE! NOW!” yelled the security guy, annoyed. He used his giant body to push me and Joe out of the booth. Axl’s girl hung gamely to Joe’s back, but the guard peeled her off like a used condom. “Stop this shit, you idiots.”

  Me and Joe found ourselves, disheveled and confused, standing outside the sound booth, totally befuddled, trying to figure out just what the hell had gotten Axl so pissed in the first place.

  “What the hell was that all about?” I said.

  Joe shrugged. “Man, I don’t know.”

  “But I respect that dude!” I said, frustrated.

  “Can’t fight for shit, though,” observed Joe.

  Half an hour later, Axl finally emerged. I began to say something, but he just shot me that look of death and went: “PEARCY.”

  Then he smirked and walked on by. It was just like that Seinfeld episode: “NEWMAN.”

  To this day, every time I run into Axl, he goes: “Pearcy.” I reply: “Axl.”

  Years later, Steven Adler explained the whole thing to me.

  “Axl thinks you had something to say to his old lady at the club.” Well, just for the record, I didn’t know who she was. I would have been respectful if I did.

  Or not. I was loaded, so who knows?

  JOE ANTHONY:

&n
bsp; I actually did see Axl land a punch once.

  I was working for a limousine company, same one I worked for when I drove Michael Jackson’s monkey.

  Axl was dating Stephanie Seymour, and I got a call to go out to Malibu, for New Year’s Eve, and pick up Stephanie and her mom and a bunch of different people. And I guess her mom got kind of drunk and started telling Axl what to do. And Stephanie came up to Axl, because Axl was giving her mom shit, and Axl turned around and fucking knocked Stephanie out. Like, clocked her right in the fucking face. Knocked her ass out.

  And as soon as she hit the floor, he yelled, “Everybody get the fuck out of here! This party’s over.” Everybody left, just like that. I’ll never forget that. It was like: whoa.

  WE HIT THE ROAD FOR THE Dancing Undercover tour with a larger crew than ever before, including three buses, five truck drivers, two sound guys, two carpenters, a bass tech, a guitar tech, a drum tech, riggers, six lighting guys, a set designer, a wardrobe girl, a pyrotechnician, a production manager, a tour manager, a tour accountant, and plenty of security. We were top-heavy from the moment we set out, with the band having taken out complex contracts with travel agencies, legal teams, insurance agents, merchandising corporations, even our bus and truck companies. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie. And all we wanted to do was Ratt ’n’ roll. I just wanted to keep the party going.

  When I look back on it now, I can kind of pinpoint the third tour as the period when we began the transformation from young guys in a band to a corporation. Oh, we were still having fun out there, for sure, but it just wasn’t as new anymore. It was one hell of a thrill to get out there and sweat and scream in front of thousands of people, but our sets were a little less dynamic, and, frankly, we’d begun to move through the paces. We had a system for everything: for exciting the crowds, for getting our chicks backstage, for scoring the drugs that we felt like we were entitled to. Frankly, once in a while, I would have preferred to catch a movie, know what I mean? After all, I was getting on in years. I had just turned thirty.

  But there was no way we were going to catch a movie. The machine was off and running, and we were at its service. They shuffled us off to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to play at the Five Seasons Center, and then to Bloomington, Minnesota, to do the Met Center, then to Milwaukee to rock the Mecca Arena, then boarded a bus to Chicago to do the Rosemont, and then finally truck all the way back to Indianapolis to play for the raging crowds at the Market Square Arena, and not a day off in between.

  “I’m not trying to be a dick about this,” I said. “But it seems like we’re traveling in circles.”

  “You guys got one job to do, Stephen,” our tour manager told me. “Play, okay? Otherwise, let us take care of the itinerary.”

  People ask why so many rock dudes have drug and alcohol dependencies. Part of it has to be the road. I mean, sure, you could pull off a tour sober, if you really wanted to, punching the clock day in and day out like a mature, responsible adult, but the travel is so deadening, so monotonous, that without some kind of spice, the room service all starts to taste the same. The hotel decor begins to get to you. Soon you can no longer discern the difference between the Stouffer’s Five Seasons or the St. Paul Hotel or the Pfister Hotel or the Hyatt Regency or the Seelbach or the Peabody or the Ventana Canyon Resort or the Mulberry fucking Inn. They all morph into the same four walls, a giant television, a bed that other people fucked in last night, and a toilet warmed by the asses of countless traveling businessmen.

  I tried to make it fun. Not just for me, for all involved. And if that meant trying to get the doe-eyed concierge at the Ritz-Carlton to sneak up to my room after her shift and take a bubble bath with me, endangering her own job in the process, then so be it. Back-to-back-to-back shows made my vision blur. Only immature hijinks could straighten me out.

  Poison was out with us for the Dancing Undercover tour, opening up our shows and enjoying their first taste of success. Bret Michaels, C. C. DeVille, Bobby Dall, and Rikki Rockett had talent, and we liked them pretty well as people, too. Robbin and I had gone to some Poison shows in Los Angeles, and we’d agreed: “There’s something about this band.”

  I started hanging out with Bret, taking him on limo rides. One night, we ended up at his apartment playing beer pong games, doing blow, smoking—standard procedure. I happened to have my video camera there, and I set it down and let it film hours of us entertaining ourselves. That night, Bret was begging to open up for us: “Hey, man, please, can we do a show, come on, man, we’ll do anything!” To this day, that tape is a big part of their history, yet I couldn’t give it away to them. Maybe I’ll put it on eBay—let someone else in on how they got their start.

  One night we were hanging backstage after a show, just being total idiots, drinking, smoking weed. One of our techs, John, was just finishing a Slurpee cup that he’d half filled with vodka.

  Instead of putting the cup down, John took the lid off, unzipped his pants, and started to piss into it.

  “Dude,” I yelled. “Come on! Pull those pants up! Your aroma. Don’t you ever shower?”

  John ignored me. He filled the Slurpee cup halfway with hot piss and passed it to me.

  “What the hell do you want me to do with this?”

  “Piss in it?” suggested John.

  In drunken times, disgusting notions seem somehow appropriate. I rolled down my skintight white spandex pants and pissed into a Slurpee cup full of another man’s piss. Then Joe did it. Mike, our carpenter, followed.

  And then the cup was full, on the table, yellow and stinking—seventy-two ounces of tour piss. You could smell it from a mile away.

  “Well,” said Joe, “who’s gonna drink it?”

  I totally died laughing. Maybe it was a drunk thing. I’m not sure. But I scurried away and found a fifty-dollar bill in my dressing room, ran back out there, threw it down. “Not me. But whoever does is welcome to my cash.”

  A shower of bills followed. They piled up next to that cup of warm piss. Twenties and tens and fives. Soon the pile grew into a pyramid. Joe counted it, his voice rising with a barker’s enthusiasm. “Two hundred and ten bucks here, ladies and gents, two hundred—”

  “Watch out.”

  Riki Valentine, Bret Michaels’s personal assistant, cut Joe short. He picked up the Slurpee cup. Then he chugged it in one fluid motion like it was an ice-cold fucking brew.

  Riki wiped the piss drops from his lips, dropped the cup, picked up his money, and walked out of the room.

  Dead silence. I think we were all in shock.

  “That piss was so stank it had a crust on it,” someone said finally, and we all walked away a little older and wiser.

  We all thought, This guy is a fucking freak. The next night, we told him we’d give him a hundred bucks if he ate one of those urinal cakes. Well, the sick bastard did it. He got another hundred bucks.

  A few nights later, we paid him another hundred bucks to drink an ashtray full of butts that we poured some beer into. He took it down. Granted, this guy was making some bread, but he was out of his mind. Go figure. He was working for Poison. Out of all the crazy opening acts we’ve had, Lita Ford, Joan Jett, Queensrÿche, Bon Jovi—we knew how to pick them, and they did us well—Poison took the cake. In weirdness, they took the cake.

  The rules of the road were such that we constantly tried to take advantage of one another’s weak spots. For Blotzer, this was women. He was just a secretly sensitive son of a bitch, like a lot of us, and if a groupie was especially pretty, or showed him a lot of love and attention, there was a chance that he’d come out of his hotel room glowing with pride.

  Well, one of our best tricks was to find a tall, slutty groupie with dyed blond hair and black roots—these are easy to find at Pittsburgh and Cleveland shows, especially—and have her suck off as many crew guys as possible; ideally, the ones who never showered. Then we’d steer her over to Blotz.

  “Guys,” he’d say, emerging from the back of the bus with a postcoital rock strut, “I j
ust met someone, and dammit, I’m almost afraid to say it, but she’s really special.”

  “Bobby,” I’d say seriously, “man, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I hope you didn’t kiss that girl.”

  “Why?”

  “She just deep-throated ten crew guys.”

  “Agh! Agh! Agh!” Bob would cry, wiping his lips with the back of his hands. “You bastards. Fuckheads! I’ll get you for this.”

  This tour lasted just as long as the other ones did, which is to say, forever. We hauled our asses from Atlanta to Landover to Philly to New Haven to Boston to Worcester to Providence to Binghamton to Poughkeepsie to New York City to Troy to Erie to Johnstown to Utica to Rochester to Lansing to Muskegon.

  Bret tried to drink as much as me and Robbin and Blotz. We pulled him into our lair and threw down the gauntlet. Bret hung tough for a time, but as the hours wore on he began to stagger. Sometime into the second consecutive night of boozing, snorting cocaine, smoking powerful joints one after the other after the other, and eating muscle relaxants like Pez, he started looking kind of green. I told him not to be embarrassed. The next night, Bret collapsed onstage, and the fucker almost died. It was dangerous to hang with Ratt. But worth the risk. That was our motto. Anyway, who knew Bret was a diabetic?

  In Montgomery, Alabama, I got my first death threat and had to wear a bulletproof vest onstage for several shows. It didn’t quite go with my costume, but what the hell was I going to do about it? I’m gonna kill Stephen before the drum solo, the scratchy note read.

  We always went on, no matter what. Rock and roll is a dangerous profession, as Marshall Berle used to say. They threw cue balls at me some nights. Bottles of piss. Flaming rolls of toilet paper. I have a Chinese throwing star on my desk, next to my computer—someone got it confiscated from them at a show in Marin. I mean, a throwing star? Why someone would go to a show to injure the entertainment is beyond me. When we’d open for Ozzy, he’d be getting death threats nightly. He’d cancel shows, too. Nobody’s immune to fear out there.

  One evening in Salt Lake City, Robbin wandered outside after a show, smoking a roach. He immediately was arrested and the city’s by-the-book cops hauled him off to jail. We ended up getting him sprung on some technicality, but the band was wary of it ever happening again, so we hired a former DEA agent to accompany us on the road, in case another incident of the sort occurred. Our guy was a strange fucker, quiet and definitely crooked. Once I overheard him talking to a sheriff buddy of his about some guy they were going to “get rid of.” Okay! I wasn’t supposed to hear that. I’ll be leaving now, gentlemen.