by Scott Ian
Touring went well, and it wasn’t long before Allen Kovac, the manager, contacted us about recording for his label, Beyond. We started working on a compilation for them, Return of the Killer A’s, which was a spin-off of the Attack of the Killer B’s odds-and-ends record we did for Island. Return of the Killer A’s was pretty much a greatest hits album that spanned our career and included a cover of the Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion,” which featured both John Bush and Joey Belladonna singing. What’s even weirder is Dan Lilker played bass. Frankie wasn’t available when we were recording it, so we asked him if it was okay if Lilker played on it. It was fine with him and Lilker said he’d do it, so we went with it. Paul Crook produced it, and we recorded it at Big Blue Meenie studios in Hoboken, New Jersey—the same place S.O.D. recorded Bigger Than the Devil.
Someone at Beyond came up with the idea of having both John and Joey on the song and asked me if I thought they’d both do it. I said probably not but we asked them anyway, and they were into the idea since the rest of the record featured songs from each of them. Joey came to New York and hung out with us for a while. We joked around and got along really well—no tension at all. And then he recorded his parts perfectly. I don’t know why Beyond chose that song, but we all liked it; the Temptations were an amazing and groundbreaking band, so we were happy to do it. The track itself is not one of our best songs. The singing was good and I made some cool guitar noises, but I was a little disappointed when we were done. The real coup is that it’s the only recording that features both John and Joey.
Next thing I knew, Beyond wanted to do a full studio record with us. Suddenly, we had a deal again. We couldn’t start working on the record right away because of the upcoming shed tour with Megadeth and Mötley Crüe. We hadn’t gotten an offer like that in a while, so it definitely seemed like the boat was turning around. In the back of our minds, we were thinking, “Madison Square Garden, here we come.”
Chapter 27
The Perfect Pearl
I was editing the S.O.D. home video with this guy, Kevin, in a suite at the Beyond Records offices in the spring of 2000, and I was talking about the upcoming tour with Mötley. “You’re going out with Mötley?” Kevin said. “My wife is one of their backup singers. Her name is Pearl, Meat Loaf is her dad.”
It was just a conversation point. I didn’t think anything of it. Kevin and I started off on friendly enough terms, but while we worked on the S.O.D. video, we started having problems. He claimed Nuclear Blast agreed to pay him $5,000 more than he had received. I went to bat for him because I was about to go on tour with his wife and I didn’t want it to be awkward. The last thing I wanted was for her to think I was trying to rip off her husband. I asked Nuclear Blast to pay Kevin the money because they were going to recoup on the DVD whether they paid him or not. And it didn’t seem like something that should turn into a sticking point that might delay the release date. So they paid him and Anthrax headed out on tour.
The first show with Mötley was June 24, 2000. We were backstage in catering on an outdoor deck at the Sacramento Valley Amphitheater, and Pearl came over to where I was sitting and introduced herself. I had seen her picture, so I knew what she looked like. She said, “Hi, I’m Pearl, nice to meet you.” I shook her hand, barely looked at her, and replied, “Hi, I’m Scott,” but that was it because I was sure her husband had been talking shit about me and I thought she hated me. I definitely was concerned about being on tour with someone who had heard negative things about me. I thought she’d tell everyone on the tour that I was this total stingy, egomaniac asshole.
During the first few days of the tour, we’d play our set, get cleaned up during Megadeth’s show, and then go to the side of the stage to watch Mötley and drink. I never loved their music overall, just a few songs, but they sure put on a show. Mick Mars is a great guitar player with a sick tone, and there were hot girls on the stage, so why not? When the show was over, Pearl and the other backup singer, Marty, would change out of their stage clothes and get wasted with me, John, and Frankie. During the first week, we all became drinking buddies. I figured either her husband didn’t tell her I was an asshole who owed him money or she figured he was full of shit.
Against my better judgment, I developed a major crush on Pearl almost instantly. And I found out she didn’t know anything about the tiff I had with her husband. After a few days of getting wasted and laughing our asses off together, she said, “The first two days of the tour I thought you hated me.”
“I thought you hated me!” I replied, smiling.
“Why would I hate you?” she said.
I told her the whole story. The mood got a little darker for a moment. I thought she might have figured out that I was the guy her husband had bitched to her about, and my stomach rose into my throat.
“Yeah, Kevin,” she said with distaste. “He and I are getting divorced. We’re separated. Our relationship is awful.”
I couldn’t have been happier if Elektra had dropped another $500,000 check in my lap. “Oh my God! Me, too! I’m separated, too!”
I told her about my last marriage and the toll it took on my psyche. We were both in the same exact place in our personal lives. We had both struggled through three years of hell and somehow made it through to the other side—with the help of recreational beverages.
Actually, she was raging even harder than I was. Her tolerance for booze was amazing, so every night we’d drink and talk for hours. I hadn’t made a move yet because I was really into her and I didn’t want to fuck up everything. She was smart, funny, talented, beautiful, and there were never any awkward pauses in our conversations. We’d talk about family, relationships, music, movies, books. I enjoyed her company so much, I felt like if I crossed the line and tried to kiss her, I would ruin everything. You don’t do that on a tour. You’re in a vacuum with everyone else you’re hanging out with, and if something awkward happens between two people, it compounds itself tenfold. So, buds, buds, buds. We hung out every night.
We never even held hands, but everyone thought we were fucking. We were in the Salt Lake City Hard Rock on a night off, and I went back to her room. There was a big party and I ended up staying over. It would have been the perfect place to bust a move, but no. We got hammered, I crashed in a chair, and she slept in the bed.
When we got to Houston after the third week of the tour, Mötley asked us to cut our already-small guarantee in half because they were losing money. Tommy Lee hadn’t rejoined the band yet. Former Hole drummer Samantha Maloney was playing with them, and while she was okay behind the kit, she didn’t have Tommy’s star power. Mötley fans didn’t exactly flock to the shows, and we wound up playing in these big sheds to between 3,500 and 5,000 people a night. No one in Anthrax was willing to cut our guarantee in half, so we got kicked off the tour. We were in Six Flags riding rollercoasters the day we found out we were going home. I didn’t really care about not playing the last five weeks of shows. What bummed me out was that I wasn’t going to be able to hang out with Pearl every night. I was going home and she was still on the road.
Not only did I have to leave this totally rad girl, I had to go back to my apartment where my fucking not-yet ex-wife still lived. I felt like I had blown my chances of ever making anything happen with Pearl. She was going to meet someone else and I’d become a distant memory. Just the thought made me queasy.
I went back to Daddy’s every day with Jesse. For five weeks straight I was a total barfly. When everyone left, I’d be so fucking drunk I felt like the only thing that would keep me from dying would be the five-mile walk back to my apartment. If I drove home and made it without crashing, I’d be home in ten minutes, and I’d still have so much booze in my system that there was no way I would be able to get to sleep, and I’d probably end up spinning until I puked.
This way, I was moving the whole time and I didn’t feel sick. Those walks were amazing because Hollywood is a weird fucking place, but
at 5 a.m. it’s even weirder. You see a lot of crazy shit, whether it’s trannies giving each other blowjobs, junkies shooting up, or hookers arguing with their pimps. I got to see the underbelly of life, which I had written about before but never experienced quite like that.
During those walks home I usually called Pearl. We’d talk for three hours, out of our minds drunk. She was on the bus in the middle of nowhere, and I was metaphorically nowhere, wasted. It didn’t matter what we talked about. Just hearing her voice made me feel better. I finally decided I had to tell her how I felt about her, because if I didn’t and she wound up with someone else, I’d be devastated. This way, if I at least tried and she turned me down, I wouldn’t live the rest of my days wondering what if. . . . I handwrote her a five-page letter, and I spilled my fucking guts out about how much she meant to me, how our conversations were the highlights of my day, and how much I wanted to kiss her. I wrote about how much fun I had with her on tour, told her I wished we were in a relationship, and I felt like I was falling in love. I ended the letter by saying, “You may not feel the same way at all, but that’s fine. Either way, I just have to let you know because I can’t let this opportunity slip by.”
I put the pages in a FedEx box with a bunch of goofy Anthrax stickers and a Sgt. D figurine from Japan and sent it to her. I knew she’d have it the next day, and I even told her, “I sent you a FedEx package. You’ll have it tomorrow.”
The next day I talked to her and she didn’t say anything about the package. Another day passed. We talked a couple more times. The conversations weren’t awkward at all, but she never said anything about the letter. After four or five days I figured, okay, that’s it. Just friends.
We kept talking, and I didn’t bring up the letter because I was already crushed. I knew how she felt. I didn’t have to make her tell me. By not saying anything, she’d already told me she didn’t share my feelings. And I still loved talking with her anyway.
Finally, the Mötley Crüe tour ended and she got home. I called her and said, “Hey, you’re home. Let’s go do something.”
My friend Kenny and I planned to go to the Troubadour to see Nebula and High on Fire. I invited her to join us, and she said she’d meet us at the club. When I saw her we hugged and watched the bands. Then after a few drinks I decided I’d go for broke. “Did you ever read my letter?”
“Yes, of course I read it. It was wonderful, it was beautiful, it was unbelievable.”
“So, why? . . .”
“I tried to reply to you,” she said, looking me in the eyes with the warmth of a fireplace. “I must have started so many times writing you back to tell you I felt exactly the same way, and every time I did it, it sounded terrible. It didn’t match what you wrote me, and I just felt I couldn’t send you something like that. It didn’t express how I felt.”
I was pretty buzzed, not really from the booze—more by her response. I was as happy as when we were hanging out on tour and physically lighter. The weight on my heart had lifted. I asked her why she never said anything at all on the phone for five weeks and told her I was really tormented. Pearl felt the same way, but she said she didn’t want to talk to me about something so important over the phone, and she figured we’d see each other when she got back and we could talk then.
That was September 9, 2000, and we’ve been together ever since. I had found my true love. I think I knew it from the second day we were hanging out on the Mötley tour. I’d never felt that way about someone so quickly. The connection we made was so strong that nothing else in my life was as important. I felt like I was in love with her and I was only getting to know her. And the more I knew, the deeper I fell. I never really loved Marge. I thought I knew what being in love was with Debbie. But it was nothing compared to this. The only shitty thing was I was head over heels with Pearl, and I was still living in an apartment on Orange Grove with Debbie, and Pearl was living in Brentwood with her parents.
Meat Loaf and Leslie G. Edmonds hadn’t split up yet and the atmosphere at their house was pretty tense. After Pearl and I were dating for a while, I started going over to her parents’ place for dinner. I met her mom before I met my future father-in-law. Leslie was friendly, nutty, and nice, and we got along really well. Before I met Pearl’s dad the first time I asked her, “What do I call him?” I had no idea. “Mr. Loaf” just didn’t sound right, and I wanted to get off on the right foot with him. Pearl said, “Call him Meat. That’s what everyone calls him.” The first time I met him was just a short “Hi, hey. Nice to meet you.” Then he went back into his office and closed the door. He wasn’t in a good place. He and Leslie were right at the beginning of what became a brutal divorce.
There was a lot of dysfunction in the house. He definitely intimidated me at first because I had Bat Out of Hell as a kid and I saw Meat Loaf play at Calderone Concert Hall on Long Island in ’78. Obviously, he was a massively huge rock star, and I was this fucking weird, bald, goateed, tattooed heavy metal guy dating his daughter. I was in his house watching his TV and eating his food. I understand the pecking order. I was definitely determined to be extremely respectful whatever happened.
The first real interaction I had with him was on Christmas Eve of 2000. Pearl and I were on the couch watching TV. The plan was that I would stay over with her that night and we would all be together the next day for Christmas. At around 8:30 a car pulled up and Meat Loaf came walking through the living room. Pearl said, “Hi, Dad.” He grumbled, “Hi.” Then he went straight to his office. He didn’t say anything to me. I was okay with that. Pearl and I returned to watching TV. Five minutes later, he walked out without saying a word and went back outside. Then we heard his car peel out of the driveway. We didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t so out of the ordinary.
Pearl and I were lying down, and I had my arm around her. It was completely innocent. A few minutes later her mom called down from upstairs and said, “Pearl, pick up the phone.” She picked up the receiver and said, “What? What? We weren’t . . . huh? Okay, okay, okay.”
“What?” I said.
“That was my dad, screaming at me, telling us that we’ve got to get the fuck off of his couch and get the fuck out of his house. Who the fuck do we think we are? He said we better be the fuck out of there before he gets back.”
Our friend Kenny was having a Christmas Eve party, so we went over there. Everyone (including us) thought it was pretty funny that we got thrown out of Meat Loaf’s house on Christmas Eve. After the party was over, we went back to my apartment, where Debbie was still living and stayed over in my room. We went back to Meat Loaf’s place the next morning, and it was like nothing happened. We certainly didn’t bring up what he said the night before, and we all had a great time. Meat was stoked that it was Christmas. And we all had a great meal.
I figured that things were pretty crappy for him and Pearl’s mom, and when weird shit happened I shouldn’t take it personally. He wasn’t angry at me, he was just angry. Once, he threatened to punch my teeth down my throat. He didn’t say it to me. He said it to Leslie or Pearl, and to this day I have no idea why. He never yelled at me directly. It was just that, in the beginning there when he was going through his own personal hell, I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I got some fallout. Maybe he didn’t want some new character hanging around while all that bad shit was going on in his life. Pearl was still singing in his band at the time, and he knew she really liked me, so he tolerated me as a human that existed in his daughter’s life, but there was no real relationship between Meat and me. Then something happened that totally broke the ice.
In early 2001, Metal Shop, the eighties hair metal spoof band that evolved into Steel Panther, were doing a Monday night residency at the Viper Room. Pearl and I used to go every week from the first few times they ever played. They fucking ruled. I hate hair metal, but when they covered Bon Jovi and Ratt songs, I actually liked it because they injected humor into the show. The
ir presentation was ironic, their whole shtick was amazing. Pearl and I told her dad about it a few times in passing. We told him how much fun it was and said, “You should come out with us one Monday night and check it out. Steven Tyler came and got onstage with them, and it was really great.”
That was the big thing at the time. All these musicians would do impromptu guest performances with them, and it was obviously massive. Steven Tyler was the first big, big dude to do it. One night Pearl and I were out to dinner, and while we were eating we were talking about going to see Metal Shop like we had for the last six weeks in a row, and we decided to skip a week. We had been out for a couple nights straight, and we figured we’d go home and take it easy. We were walking into the house around midnight when my cell phone rang.
“Scott!! It’s Meat!!”
“Hey Meat, what’s happening?”
“Where the fuck are you guys?!?” he shouted. He was clearly someplace where there was lots of noise, and I could barely hear him.
“Oh, well we’re walking into the house right now. We just got back from dinner.”
“Well, what are you doing?!?”
“Nothing. We’re probably just going to go to bed.”
“Well, I’m at the fucking Viper Room to see this Metal Shop thing that you guys have been talking about for all these months. Where the fuck are you?!? You better get your asses down here right now!!”
I got off the phone and said to Pearl, “Guess what? We’re going to Metal Shop. That was your dad. He’s there and wants to know why we’re not.”
We turned around, got back into the car, and drove to the Viper Room. As we were heading there, Lonn Friend, the author who used to edit Rip magazine, texted me that he was hanging out earlier with Meat Loaf at the Grand Havana Room smoking cigars and having some drinks, and now they were at the Viper Room. “Meat’s in rare form—he’s had about sixteen margaritas—no exaggeration.”