Tales Of A RATT

by Bobby Blotzer

  They had to take him away in an ambulance. All of this in front of 35,000 people.

  It was really bad.

  But, it could have been much much worse. We went to look at the spot afterward, and there were these fence posts with a pointed arrow tip sticking straight up. They were using them to tie the barrier fences around. A couple of feet to either side, and it would have been a case of "Mourners, please omit flowers. The Pearcy family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”

  Stephen could have died that night, impaled on a fence spike.

  But, thankfully, he didn't. Nevertheless, he was seriously fucked up. His kneecap and been smashed and dislocated, then turned completely around the side of his leg.

  He was a wreck, and in the hospital for a while. July 27, 1997, and the tour was immediately over. Backing up, July 27, 1983 is when we signed the Atlantic deal. 14 years to the day. Odd paradox, when you think about it.

  We went to see him in the hospital the next day, and it brought me to tears!

  I just couldn't believe it, dude. We had to leave him there in the hospital! He was there for about a week or so. We went back home, and we were off for the rest of the summer. Then, in October, we went back out doing clubs again.

  Stephen had healed up pretty well, but he was never going to be jumping around on stage doing his high kicks anymore. Now, he had a legitimate reason for being a little stiff on stage.

  We finished out the tour from October on, and that leg of the thing did really well, too. But, the fractures started to show again. It was getting heated out there, and, it was snowballing into something unstoppable.

  In 1998, we sat down to do the "RATT" album, which was produced by multi-platinum producer, Richie Zito.

  We were meeting with John Kolodner every two weeks with batches of new material. We literally wrote about 50 or 60 songs for consideration on that record. This went on for about eight months, and, surprisingly John kept picking my songs.

  I was about ten minutes late to one of the meetings, and I came in all apologetic.

  "Sorry, guys. I'm a little late. Traffic was crazy.”

  John looks at me and says in his raspy, nasally voice, "Congratulations.”

  He confused the hell out of me. I'm like, "For what?”

  "You just wrote the first single!”

  They had been combing through all of the new songs. It was a song called "Breakout.” I wrote the music, and then Jack Russell from Great White came in and helped me develop the lyrics and melody.

  There was another song on that record called "Live For Today" that I wrote with Jack. Over the phone, Jack and I were talking with Jack Blades from Night Ranger. We were having a problem with one section of the song, and Blades came up with the line. One line. But, he contributed, so he was listed as a writer.

  Stephen saw that, and was like, "What the fuck? There's six writers on this song?!?” I go, "Look, you and DeMartini didn't do shit on this song, but you forced your way onto it. Jack Blades shouldn't really be on it either. He came up with one line. A couple of words. But, if you get credit, so does he.” Jack Russell and I wrote that song. So, I don't want to hear it. It's a strong song.

  I really liked that 1999 Sony release, but it was the wrong time for it. It charted, but didn't really perform.

  In the end, I don't think Sony really gave it any kind of a push. There was virtually no marketing campaign. It didn't have a video. Nothing. But, it was our first jaunt back into it since Detonator in 1990. That's almost a decade of being out of the loop, and it took some time to get into the groove of things again.

  RATT and Poison co-headlined on that 1999 tour, and it was getting exciting. People started getting used to seeing these bands out on the road again.

  That was the "RATT" album, not to be confused with the "RATT" EP way back in 1983.

  This was the "RATT" record...

  Not the "RATT" EP...

  ...fucking retarded.

  I hated the cover. I hated the fact we didn't title the record. We already had a self-titled album! Why were we doing another one? But, that's the bitch with a democracy. The majority rules. Now we have the bookend thing going on. Hopefully, we will get back into the studio and knock out another record. It's been 10 years since our last studio album, so it's time. I think.

  27

  Out Of The Frying Pan, Into The Fire

  "Ah, yes, Divorce...from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet." - Robin Williams

  I'm not sure when it happened, exactly. I know that RATT's experiences through the Nineties were traumatic, and really took a toll on us all. However, the real impact, I think, hit us hardest in our personal lives. Maybe, it was because I was home all the time, where we had spent SO MUCH time on the road during the 80s. That's probably a big reason.

  I guess it's easier to deal with a bad situation when you don't have to deal with it in your face every day. Relationships are no exception to that rule. My parents divorced. Mum and Pete divorced. Juan went through an ugly divorce, and it almost cost him his kids. King did it too, and his centerfold princess turned into a blood-sucking harpy who cried and moaned until the courts took everything he had and gave it to her. Laurie Carr was her name, and she was the quintessential gold-digger.

  Jeni was no gold-digger, though. She was my wife, and the mother of my two sons. We had been married for seventeen years, and had been together for twenty-one. She was there when I was struggling to find the gigs. She was there when I landed my first break with Vergat. She was there when I joined RATT, and we marauded our way through the better part of the decade.

  Jeni was always there, and our relationship had survived the best and worst of all those things. That is much to our credit, I think.

  But, the one thing people tend to not understand about marriage, especially long marriages, is that things change. Sometimes, they change for the good. Sometimes, it isn't so good. But, make no mistake about it, who you are at twenty years old is a very different person than who you are at forty.

  And, there's the rub.

  I didn't see it during the 80s. I was always touring, or recovering from a tour, so Jeni and I were all right. We didn't see each other all the time, so the subtle differences weren't that noticeable.

  When the Nineties hit, and grunge squashed the careers for a while, I was suddenly home all the time. All the time! We had become different people, Jeni and I. I expected the woman I married to still be there, but it wasn't really her. She was different. And, so was I. Add to that, the struggles of my music career, and the stresses of lawsuits and bankruptcy. It wasn't long before the battle lines had been drawn in the dirt.

  Jeni and I were on life support as a couple for a long time. It had reached a point where I wanted out. I had been thinking of leaving as far back as 1992, right after the band split. Michael and Marcus, I felt, weren't old enough to really deal with that, yet. So, I kept putting it off.

  I couldn't walk out on her and the kids like that. I remembered what that felt like, and while I survived the ordeal, I wasn't sure the boys could; not at their young age. My boys are my life, so we needed each other, at that point.

  It was a fight, though. Almost constant conflict, and by 1994, Jeni and I were really battling hard.

  I found my breaking point in the summer of 1997, after Stephen's accident where he fell off the stage. We were home, giving Stephen time to heal up, and then we were going back out on the road in October.

  Jeni and I were fighting virtually all the time. We spent that whole summer in a constant state of battle. Jeni and I had always had an up and down relationship. She was a hot-blooded Italian, so she would get right up into my face and yell and scream. It would literally start the moment I woke up, and would last the entire day. We hardly spoke a civil word to one another, and any sort of positive comment was usually dripping in sarcasm and backhanded in nature.

  By 1997, I finally sat down with her and said, "Obviously, this isn't working for us and has
to end. Agreed?”

  For once, we were both on the same page.

  "We should start thinking about divorce, here. The kids are getting old enough to understand it. I'm back with RATT, making money again, so we can take care of things properly.”

  To my surprise, she agreed.

  It's hard to explain how I felt about it. On one hand, there was this huge relief. I had to get loaded just to climb into bed with her, and we NEVER touched one another. It had been six months since we'd had the notion of sex.

  On the other hand, I'd been with Jeni since I was seventeen. At this point, Jeni had been a part of me for more than half my life. You don't walk away from that without it having some impact on you. Even today, I find myself dreaming and thinking about Jeni, she was ingrained into my existence for so long...for life, actually.

  But, it had to be done. Michael was sixteen, and Marcus was almost fifteen. The damage to them should be minimal, and we were both smart enough to see what was going on here. There was nothing of our marriage left to salvage. If we didn't stop this thing, we wouldn't be able to have a friendship, even for the sake of the boys.

  So I said, "Look, when I get off the road, we'll figure out how to do this. We will split everything right down the middle. 50/50. No lawyers. No courts. Keep it tight.”

  We knew the outcome of lawyers coming in and taking everybody's money. We had seen it way too many times already.

  She joked, "Well, that is, of course, unless you end up with some 23 year old blonde.”

  "Yeah, whatever, Jeni. Like that could happen.”

  Little did I know how prophetic she would turn out to be.

  In October, we started the tour up again. Our first date was down in San Diego. Jeni and the boys came down for the show to see me off. When I got back in December, we would look at all of our assets, divide them up, then I'd get my own place.

  The tour worked it's way up the west coast. We had a show in San Francisco, and then we were off to Seattle.

  When we got to Seattle, I was hanging out on the bus, waiting for showtime, and looked out the window. There were three really hot chicks out there. Two of them looked like twins. I told Joe Anthony, who worked for us, "Go see if those chicks would like to come in and say hey.” He did, and they all came on the bus.

  That's when I met Traci and her sister. I was instantly mesmerized with Traci, who was all dolled up for a rock show, and looked as incredible as any woman I've ever seen.

  It was a moment that would wind up costing me a part of my soul. I've been a rock star for a very long time, and, I've done a lot of rock star things; including women. As I've said before, we were Pi-RATTs out to pillage and conquer, so having a chick on the bus wasn't anything new.

  It had been a LONG time since those days, and with what was going on in my personal life, I wasn't ready for what happened next.

  Traci and I hooked up that night, and it was everything that I had been missing in my marriage. In one bat of her eyes, I remembered what it was like to FEEL. I was wanted by someone, and I didn't realize how much I had missed that feeling. Moreover, I was smitten and had a lot of love to deliver.

  Traci started coming out on the road and visiting me, and I fell for this girl really hard, really quick. It wasn't planned. I wasn't looking for anyone. In fact, I didn't want anyone at that time. But I hadn't felt like this in a VERY long time. That's the way it was, and I was helpless to stop it.

  I gave myself the usual, testosterone-laden explanations. Jeni and I were getting a divorce. We had verbally agreed to it. I wasn't doing anything wrong. Why should I pass this kind of love up? It didn't make any sense.

  Pick your clichéd rationale, but honestly, I wasn't out to hurt my family, and I didn't see how it would end like that. I also didn't see some of the more obvious questions about Traci that most people NOT in love with her saw from the very beginning.

  I was in love for the second time in my life. What are you going to do?

  It was still an awkward situation, though, and the guys in the band picked up on it. They didn't understand. Traci was young. I was thirty-eight and she was twenty-three. Hey, it was what it was. We didn't care about the age thing, and my life was changing. Everyone needed to accept that. I had found my muse.

  I guess my first mistake, the one that started Jeni thinking, anyway, was that my habits completely changed. I hadn't been calling Jeni from the road, which was something I always did. I was avoiding her because of Traci. I just didn't want to talk. Everything had been decided, as far as I was concerned, and I didn't want to address it.

  I didn't want to talk to her.

  This really bothered Jeni, I guess. I got the periodic calls of, "What's going on? Why aren't you calling me?” In the back of my mind, I started hearing that little voice of reason. The phone calls from Jeni told me that she didn't think our marriage was finished. Not completely. And, she was thinking that when I got back, we would pick up the pieces.

  It couldn't be that way, though. I wanted this relationship over. I was done. Not to mention the fact that I was in love with the twenty-three year old blond that Jeni had mockingly threatened me about.

  I started getting that bowling ball feeling in the pit of my gut. I had to be very careful how I dealt with the whole Traci / Jeni thing, or it was going to have lasting implications on the boys.

  Making this issue worse was the fact that it wasn't a great time of year for this to go down. I got home off the tour on December 17, right before Christmas.

  As usual, I made a substantial deposit into the bank, all of my tour income, and when I went to check it, the account balances were off by quite a bit. I called Jeni.

  "I made a deposit into the account, and this is what's in there. According to my records, it should be this amount.” She went off like a cannon; totally flying off the handle! Whatever. It was clear that two months on the road didn't change a damn thing. I just hung up the phone and headed for the house. I hung out with the boys, having a good time. Then when she got home, I was sitting on the bed and preparing for the maelstrom that was about to come.

  She came into the room and tried to kiss me. That turned me off immediately. I was like, "Don't.”

  She looked confused, and completely upset about that. I looked at her and said, "We've got to talk, Jeni.”

  That dreaded "we need to talk" vibe.

  "You know what we talked about before I left. I'm getting a place the first of the month. I'll stay through Christmas and make everything right for the boys, but after that, I'm done.”

  She was like, "What the fuck? You've got a girlfriend, or something?”

  What's the old saying? The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry? Well, I don't know about the plans of mice, but a man's plan can get fucked like a Tijuana whore in about ten seconds!

  I looked Jeni square in the eye...and lied. I told her, "No.”

  I didn't want to lie about it, but there was no way she was emotionally prepared for Traci. There was just no way. So, I thought I was doing...well, maybe not the right thing, but certainly the BEST thing. And, of course, like most things that begin with a guy's dick and end in his heart, it all came back to bite me square in the ass! But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

  I looked at Jeni and went, "Don't act surprised. You knew this was coming. It was going to happen, and we made this decision two months ago. Let's not make this harder than it is.”

  It got real weird through Christmas. We went out to a party for the holiday, and I just couldn't deal with it. All the bullshit Christmas cheer, and the revelry spirit of the holidays sucked, and I missed Traci in the worst way. I told her, "Get a ride from someone. I gotta get out of here. I'm going home.” She was fine with that, and I split.

  It just so happened that the party was at Don Dokken's house.

  Jeni came home that night, fully drunk-enraged. She was yelling, screaming and breaking shit all through the house. "I know about that fucking whore in Seattle!”

  I was, needless t
o say, unprepared. What I had done in an effort to make this transition a little smoother had now come back on me in a big way. I looked like the typical, lying, cheating bastard that all of the movies on the Lifetime channel are about.

  I wasn't that guy, though. However, no matter what I said, from that point on, I was never going to be trusted by this woman I had spent two decades with. She was never going to believe me again.

  If I could get my hands on the cocksucker who told her...!

  "Where did you hear this?”

  I knew the answer, of course. She heard it from Don. I had confided in him while I was on the road. He was, after all, my bro. I thought I could trust him. I couldn't.

  That was the second mistake I made during the course of my break-up with Jeni. I trusted someone I really shouldn't have. People like that will hurt you if they can; and Don Dokken could. He snitched me off.

  It was really eerie how that whole thing went down with Jeni. That night, before she got home, the power had gone out on our side of the street. I ran an extension cord from our neighbor's house so we could power a few things, but it made for a very creepy night, given the way everything happened.

  It was a really bad, really horrible night.

  I moved to a hotel immediately after Christmas. It was really depressing. Really weird. I felt like complete shit. I finally found a townhouse in Redondo Beach, and I leased it. I remember buying furniture for it, because I had left everything behind. I took nothing other than my clothes when I left. I left a bunch of my gear in the garage. I just had to get out. The weight of the split was making it hard to breathe.

  I had given Jeni $8000 in cash that I had from the tour. We hadn't done anything with the accounts, yet. Honestly, given how bad everything turned when I got home, I had no idea what we were going to do. But, I had assured her that everything would be paid for, and nothing would be neglected. It was going to be all right. She and the boys wouldn't want for anything. In fact, I'd just bought her a brand new car; a Ford Thunderbird, Anniversary Edition. It was a really nice, beautiful car.