Then, in the middle of 2006, Velvet Revolver regrouped to start writing songs for our second album. Even though Scott didn’t tell me or any of the other guys directly, I knew there’d been murmurs of a Stone Temple Pilots reunion tour at some point in the future. On the face of it, I didn’t have a problem with that, though it annoyed me that it was all kept hush-hush. His sneaky behavior created suspicion and tension. In the tight space of a band, that stuff can get unhealthy fast.
As we created songs for the record, new rumblings began. First, Scott demanded to write all the lyrics this time around. We reluctantly agreed. I thought it was a waste of everyone else’s talents. Plus it made me write music differently; up to now, lyrical ideas had always informed the way I conceived of songs. But fine, this was a concession I could make to keep my bandmate happy. Then Scott decided he wanted a bigger share of the publishing rights—because he’d written all the lyrics. Oh, boy. This was typical stuff where I’d come from: success bred greed and megalomania. Still, I figured if we could just talk about it, we could come to a workable solution. I knew Scott was a smart guy and would listen to reason. I kept calling him, leaving him messages: Let’s have coffee, let’s talk it over, face-to-face. Finally, when I didn’t hear back from him, I sent Scott an email, using an analogy to express my problem with his demand: “A group of guys build houses together, but suddenly one of them insists on building the roof by himself even though they had previously constructed first-class roofs all together. So the rest of the team agrees to concentrate on the foundation and walls while the other guy builds the roof. The day comes when the house is complete and the man who built the roof asks for more money. The roof is the most important part, he says, because it keeps the rain out. Would you describe that as fair, Scott? A large part of business is dialogue and compromise, and I suggest that we, as a band, try a little of both.”
No reply.
The issues were left unresolved, but the album—eventually called Libertad—got finished. As we prepared for its release in July 2007, we booked an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s TV show. After the performance, we were finally going to sort out the rot at a band meeting at a suite at the Roosevelt Hotel, a short walk from Kimmel’s studio on Hollywood Boulevard. My hope still was that we’d be able to sit down calmly, put everything on the table, and discuss it like businessmen. Yelling and screaming was no longer my preferred method of negotiation. Unfortunately, Scott was drunk and a levelheaded discussion was not in the cards. Nothing was accomplished before the meeting devolved into yelling and screaming—and then Scott and Matt squared off as if they were going to fight. I walked out. That’s when management stepped in to avert disaster. They probably saw the value in VR going back out on tour, and knew that if Scott started swinging at Matt, their gig might be up. They basically took cuts in their own commissions to get Scott close to what he wanted. It seemed as if Scott was chuckling through the rest of the talks. If you asked me, the managers should have held their ground. But at least they were actually doing something, which was a new experience for me.
The same week we appeared on Kimmel, in July 2007, my dad died. I was glad we had made our peace in the last few years of his life; we’d had some good times and many laughs. He’d been a good grandpa, and Grace and Mae definitely benefited from knowing him.
Now I had the honorable duty of being a strong male figure to my own daughters. Being a dad was a daily learning process—a lot of things I supposed would be simple common sense got thrown out the window. I really never had any idea what was in store for me next. I had to be a “man’s man” at times and at other moments I needed to be sensitive and soft. Earlier in life, I had gauged masculinity by how tough someone was in a threatening situation. More recently I’d come to understand that such bravado was usually a mask for fear. My biggest challenge, and the core of what I now saw as true manliness, was being honest with myself and others and being forthright and true in my actions and dealings with my family, friends, and business associates. I didn’t have this shit figured out—and still don’t—but for me, especially after my relapse offered another glimpse of failure, the true essence of manhood was now clear: being a caring husband and father.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Velvet Revolver headed out on tour for the rest of the summer—first through South America with Aerosmith, then across the United States with Alice in Chains. Slash and I had regained our footholds on sobriety, and Alice in Chains guitarist Jerry Cantrell had also been sober for a couple years by that point. We would meet every day to support one another. It was a perfect situation for Scott to turns things around.
Instead, things fell apart. Scott went back to dabbling in crack and pills. I felt bad for him in a lot of ways. He was a shell of the cool guy I’d gotten to know quite well, and his marriage was falling apart—again. He traveled separately from us and began to show up late and make our crowds wait around, often drawing boos from our fans. Hadn’t I been through this all before? His performances started to suffer; one time he even nodded off right in the middle of a song only to come to again singing the wrong part of the song. The crowd realized and started to heckle him.
Matt Sorum fell off the wagon at this time, too, before eventually regaining sobriety. The backstage areas of the tour quickly became as debauched as they’d been in the old days. This time, however, none of it affected me. I made sure to keep up my routine. And I got the fuck out of there. I had become the proud owner of a black 2006 Harley-Davidson Road King motorcycle and took it with me on the tour. During downtime, I revved it up and roared out of the vicinity of the band, the crew, the entourage—all the craziness.
Alice in Chains drummer Sean Kinney had gotten sober two weeks before the tour started. Over the years, he and I had become good friends and rode our bikes together a lot in Seattle. In fact, he had taught me to ride my big Harley. He and his drum tech, Tavis, also brought their motorcycles along on that tour. When the strippers arrived and the crack rocks were torched at the latest venue, Sean, Tavis, and I just cruised off into another beautiful landscape. As a result, I never felt trapped.
Riding in a state park instead of listening to drums getting tuned all day over a PA system was a good thing indeed. Sometimes we would ride off to have lunch and browse bookstores. It staved off loneliness while also offering new perspectives on places I had been before but never really seen.
During my teens and twenties, I would say that it was a great and genius thing that I did not have a motorcycle. The one time I did get on a bike during that time was at a video shoot for “Don’t Cry.” I asked a cop to let me try his bike. The poor cop was just working the shoot, but he let me take it for a spin. I crashed it. I owed my later epiphany about the pleasures of the motorcycle to Martin Feveyear, a producer who helmed a lot of Loaded recording sessions over the years. When we made the first Loaded record with him in 2001, he had laid out photos of a 1951 Sunbeam SX he was putting together from parts. The bike had been in Martin’s family from the day he was born in the south of England. For a time it was his family’s lone mode of transportation. Or so the story went. Martin’s dad had shipped the old family bike in pieces to Martin in Seattle, and by trial and many errors, he eventually fixed the broken bits and put that ’Beam back in working order. Martin’s studio was in the heart of the Wallingford section of Seattle, and the area was a crossroads for bikers. Each year, come springtime—which in Seattle meant anytime the thermometer topped forty and it wasn’t raining—I’d see other friends who’d gotten their bikes out of their garages, fired them up, and were gallivanting around town, too. Eventually I started to ask myself why I wasn’t riding now that I was sober, and I decided to buy my own bike. I realized now, on tour in 2007, that the timing had been perfect.
The other way I maintained my sanity on that second VR tour was by taking online college courses. For a long time I had remained steadfastly unwilling to finish my degree anyplace but Seattle U. I had worked so hard to get into that school. I had the family connecti
on to that school. I had learned to learn at that school. But I had to concede that I would no longer be able to attend a full slate of classes in Seattle with ongoing band obligations and with Grace and Mae happily ensconced in their school in L.A. Eventually I decided to fill in missing credits with online courses.
A number of the online courses involved group projects, and I got to know people in my class—via computer. The students came from disparate backgrounds and from all over the country; for one class, my project team included an army sergeant, a woman who managed the office of a construction company, and a bank executive. Touring with VR allowed me to meet some of my classmates in person. I would put them on the guest list or meet them for coffee—I remember the office manager came to our show in Minneapolis. Somewhat surprisingly, the workload for these courses proved every bit as rigorous as at Seattle University, and the teachers often had distinguished backgrounds. One of my first online professors had taught at Berkeley for years. Even so, I still had mixed feelings about having to transfer my credits from Seattle U to an online university. I just had to hope Seattle would let me transfer the credits back and allow me to fulfill my dream of hanging a diploma on my wall to match my uncle’s and to honor my mom’s memory.
While I was maintaining my sanity by riding and studying, Slash, Matt, and Dave were getting more and more upset about Scott. We held a band meeting—without Scott—just before heading out on the last leg of the tour, which started in Dubai and then hit Europe and the UK. Our conclusion: there really was no other choice than to fire Scott at the end of the run. A funny thing happened. Once we came to this conclusion, it was as if a huge weight had been lifted from our shoulders. We went onstage every night on time, whether Scott was in the building or not. Once this started happening, Scott began to show up on time. With everything resolved, the band played better than it ever had, and we just plain forgot that Scott was even there. His drug-induced antics no longer had any impact on us, and we blazed right through any garbled rant that we might earlier have given him time to indulge. By the last gig, in Amsterdam, we were bordering on giddy about ridding ourselves of Scott. I wished him luck and I think he knows that he can always reach out to me. But I was happy to be done with the drama.
I arrived home to find my daughters starting to act almost like teenagers. Suddenly Grace couldn’t wait to drive, to have an apartment and a job, to go off to college and not be walked to school in the morning by her mom and dad. Naturally Mae wanted to be just like her older sibling. When I suggested to them that they should enjoy their youth and not rush everything, they gave me a look like I was the oldest and nerdiest coot ever to walk the face of the earth.
I’d been warned about this stage—it’s a stage at which daughters suddenly depart emotionally from their fathers. I knew it was just a phase, but it still entailed a profound sense of loss for me right then. As a typical guy, I wanted to “fix” the situation, but that only made my daughters think I was even dorkier and less cool than I had been the day before.
Still, I craved some serious dad time with my girls. I held out hope that in the right scenario they would somehow respond to the soothsayer-like genius with which I dealt with life and the universe. So I was thrilled when Susan asked whether she could take a weeklong trip with her mom, aunt, and sister.
“Of course, honey!”
The way I pictured it, once it was just me taking care of the girls, I could wait patiently in my easy chair—or, better yet, wait cross-legged in a yoga position to offer visual reinforcement of my mystic wisdom—until Mae or Grace inevitably clamored to be the first to pose all her life questions to me. Perfect.
On day one of Susan’s absence, the girls came home after school and both went to their rooms with nothing more than a cursory “Hi, Dad.”
That’s okay, I thought. I knew they had a lot of tests to study for and homework to do.
Day two went the same way. As did day three.
But kids can’t live on schoolbooks alone. I was still a strong believer in the power of things like playing catch with a baseball in the backyard. That kind of thing could fix any and all problems. I decided to take my daughters on a hike after school that Friday.
They were delighted.
Actually, they both groaned.
“Come on!” I said.
I thought surely a little fresh air and exercise would loosen their tongues, and finally they would talk to me about life and ask for my insight and knowledge. I had decided we would walk a fire road in a park not too far from our house. But first I had to convince my girls to put on tennis shoes in place of their fancy sandals.
They both gave me a look.
“Oh, my god—what if a boy sees us?”
As we were climbing the first hill, I noticed that Grace had her purse with her. I didn’t understand why a young girl needed a purse at all, much less out here in the park. When I asked her why she had brought it along on a wooded and not-so-easy hike, she replied, “Lip gloss! Duh!”
Duh indeed. Sometimes it was best just to keep my mouth shut and trudge on. And sometimes I just had to run up the white flag of surrender. I just wasn’t going to understand it all.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
With Velvet Revolver on ice, I spent the rest of 2008 playing rhythm guitar with Loaded—lead guitarist Mike Squires, bassist Jeff Rouse, and on drums first Geoff Redding and then Isaac Carpenter. While we were in the studio one day recording some demos, I counted in a song we were working on. Later that afternoon, we were listening to some of the songs. That one came on.
“One … two … one, two, three, four …”
The other guys all looked at one another.
“What?” I said.
“That sounds just like the beginning of ‘Patience.’ That’s you counting in ‘Patience,’ right?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Dude,” said Squires, “you could walk into the trendiest restaurant in the world, a place with a six-month waiting list for a reservation, and when the snooty maître d’ came up, dripping with disdain, and said, ‘May I help you, sir?,’ all you’d have to do is go, ‘Uh, yes, my good man, actually you can help me: one … two … one, two, three, four,’ and he would escort your ass straight to the best table in the house. That can open any door.”
This became a running joke in Loaded, and I was expected to magically whisk us through any sticky situations with that incantation.
We released our album Sick in early 2009 and spent much of the year touring. We launched the U.S. tour at the legendary Crocodile Café in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood. The Croc had folded a few years prior and had just been reopened by a group of people including Sean Kinney from Alice in Chains. My old friend Kurt Bloch, from the Fastbacks, got up and played a few songs with us, including “Purple Rain.” It almost felt as though the punk-rock commune I’d wished for long ago had come together—at least for a night.
I spent much of the Sick tour actually sick. I even came down with pneumonia at one stage. The success of my sinus surgery was a thing of the past. This time, however, I refused to let the recurring infections hinder my training, and, if anything, continuing to work out helped subdue the aches and pains and throbbing ear infections. Another reason my renewed sinus problems didn’t bother me too much was because being on the road with Loaded was totally devoid of drama. When you toured with nine guys—band plus crew—on a bus, playing night after night, all expectations of space and privacy were left at the curb. There was literally no room for bullshit. We washed our laundry in the backstage sink at whatever venue we played that night and hung it to dry in the bus; we only booked one night per week in a hotel—and even then we all crammed into just two rooms at the cheapest place around.
The way we dealt with close quarters was with humor. Tons of it. There was the warning call we used when two of us approached each other in the narrow aisle between the onboard bunk beds: ass to ass. The call had entered our lexicon a few years back when a huge security guy got ruffled after
a band member passed him crotch to ass in a space about the same width as the aisle on a budget airline. This security guy did not exactly dig the fact that his manhood might have been compromised in that fleeting instant. He dressed down the young rocker right then and there: “Man, it’s always ass to ass, dog … ass to ass!”
The incident became part of Loaded folklore and we practiced the ass-to-ass program on our bus—unless someone felt a bit frisky. In that case, you could surprise your fellow band member with a “junk drag,” a quick spin just as you met your bandmate in the aisle to create a crotch-to-ass passage. I had a college education at this point and was a responsible father and husband, but, hey, you just can’t beat juvenile fun sometimes.
A tour diet is never very wholesome. In fact, it’s often downright gross. We ate dinner after we played, and at 1 a.m. we were lucky to find pizza or schawarma. In the UK, we lapped up cheap, spicy Indian food. Nine guys, one bus, mutton vindaloo, few rest stops—it was a recipe for a lot of flatulence. One of our guitar techs, the hilarious “Evil” Dave, from Sheffield, England, suggested we start a contest: who could come up with a word that most sounded like any given burst of gas. Some sounded like, say, “teapot.” A more throaty one might become “streeeetpost.” This not only passed the time, but also broadened our vocabularies; racking our brains for a winning word was almost like playing Scrabble.
When I returned from the various tour legs—in addition to dates here and in Europe, we crisscrossed South America and hit the festival circuit—I didn’t have anyone to play Name That Fart with. My daughters ran from me when I so much as brought it up. And anyway, my diet also returned to normal.
The new words in my quiver came in handy, however, as during the same time period I kicked off a writing career with a column in the Seattle Weekly and a series of pieces on finance for Playboy. One … two … one, two, three, four: doors really were opening for me now.
It’s So Easy Page 32