Tommyland

by Tommy Lee

  But when I first got onstage to jam, Pamela led me over to the piano. I tripped out because it was beautiful: It had iron legs, gold leaf all over it, and an intricate, hand-painted design of crosses and pearls. I’m sitting there, taking it in when Pamela tells me it’s my birthday present. She had taken my old white baby grand and had it redone—I didn’t even recognize it. I was so happy and so fucking in love with her. I kept telling her so and I kept thanking her but those words couldn’t express what I was feeling: No one had ever done anything so amazing for me. It was the greatest spectacle I had ever seen—and I would have thought so even if it hadn’t been my party. But it was, and to think she’d done it all for me was paralyzing. It crippled me with love.

  There was so much going on and I was so into every bit of it that I’m glad Pamela hired a film crew because I sure as fuck wasn’t able to take it all in. She didn’t go for video either; she made it a film. Watching it back now on 35mm is fucking amazing. It made that night as epic as it really was—it captured all the colors and all the moments I missed. The crew and editors were complete pros. They used slow-motion filter effects in the film and added Radiohead’s “Planet Telex”—I fucking love that song—for the introduction as we all marched into Tommyland.

  Did I tell you guys how Pamela dressed me? I was all done up in a royal purple cape with a white fur collar. I had a crown, because, after all, I am the king of Tommyland, and she painted my face in black-and-white makeup. I looked like Marc Bolan from T. Rex starring in The Crow. She was dressed in black with the biggest top hat you’ve ever seen. She was the ringleader.

  The crowning touch was Pamela’s choice of transportation home. Picture this: You’re at a huge party in a field, with carnival madness all around. You’re totally faded and then you see lights and hear sirens coming across the grass. You’re not sure what’s happening—it could be the cops, it could be the Fire Department coming to rescue someone. But it’s not, it’s a fleet of ambulances she hired to make sure everyone got home safely. By that time, we definitely needed stretchers, a few needed body bags, and we all welcomed the caring hands of professionals.

  Pamela spent a shitload of money on that party and I’m happy to say that it really did surprise me. Nine out of ten times the person you’re throwing a surprise party for finds out, but Pamela had it on lock and I knew nothing. I still don’t know how she did it and to be honest with you, that scares me. The whole time Pamela planned the party, she was so devious and secretive that I was convinced that she was cheating on me.

  I WAS GETTING READY TO HURT SOMEONE, YO. I KEPT ASKING TOMMY TO JUST GET ME IN A ROOM WITH THAT GUY FOR A FULL-ON PANTS DOWN CAGE MATCH.

  TRUST ME, HE’D GO HOME LOOKING LIKE JOHNNY BOBBITT.

  It was the Party, people. Pamela absolutely killed it. We’ve never done anything less. From chartering yachts and houseboats so that we could be naked on the water for weeks at a time to riding up to the front door on a white horse in full knight in shining armor, to getting married four times over, renewing our vows in space suits, we were always on a mission to blow each other away.

  Pamela and I were so in love, we couldn’t wait to have kids, so after a year of honeymooning, we got right to it. I can’t even explain what making love is like when you want to make a baby. That said, it’s nothing like making love once you know that your child is inside your wife. You’re making love, hoping that you’re not bashing his head in with your penis. It’s the next level of love, dude. I can’t... Hold on, I have to sit down and dissect this a bit. The craziest thing is that Pamela’s body felt at least ten degrees hotter than normal. I wanted to snuggle, but I couldn’t even get next to her in bed because it was like hugging the water heater. Her body was so hot, I wondered if I could cook breakfast in bed on her stomach. We had our first son, Brandon, in June, and I felt bad for her. It was summer, it was hot as fuck, and there was no way she was getting cool; she was a walking incubator. Her body didn’t stop changing after the boys were delivered either—the whole lactating thing was amazing. Pamela’s breasts have never been what you’d call small, but when she was breastfeeding, they were giant and leaking milk everywhere. One day, after our first son was born, Pamela’s mom is over helping out, making some food in the kitchen. The girls are cooking, standing over by the stove, and while her mom is busy stirring something, Pamela turns around, lifts up her shirt, whips out one of those bad boys, and squirts milk at me. It flies ten feet through the air and I’m catching it in my mouth, loving it because it tastes so sweet. It was the cutest, nastiest thing ever—we were both enjoying our two newest toys, the milk cannons. And her mom had no idea. Uh... until now.

  While Pamela was pregnant we looked forever through books of names, not really knowing yet if it was a boy or a girl. If we were going to have a girl I wanted to name her China because I love that name. We agreed on Brandon if it was a boy—and he was: Brandon Thomas Lee. A little more than a year later when we did it all over again, we named our second son Dylan Jagger Lee. (And if one more person asks me if we named the two of them after the dudes in Beverly Hills 90210, I’m gonna fuckin’ sock ’em!)

  Pamela delivered both our boys at home, in the bathtub. She did not take any drugs throughout her pregnancy, not even aspirin. Her delivery was the same—totally natural. Read that again. Do you understand what I’m talking about? I have more respect for her than words can say. Pamela wanted to experience childbirth the way women did before the days of epidurals. Women were made to give birth naturally—that is what they do.

  We did our research and decided that giving birth at home was the best. Here’s why: When babies are born in a hospital, there’s bright lights and surgical steel everywhere, and they’re weighed on a scale right away and given vaccinations. The doctor will usually do circumcisions right away too. That’s their first memory to retain somewhere in the brain. Immediately the nurses wrap the baby in a blanket and no matter how soft it is, to a newborn it’s like sandpaper after living and growing in water. Babies have never even seen light. Pamela and I watched tapes of hospital-style delivery and then watched midwives doing natural childbirth—and it was just beautiful. It made the whole hospital trip look like a scam. Why should so many decisions be made for them the minute they’re born, like cutting the skin off their dicks?

  When each of our boys was born, there were lit candles everywhere and soft music playing—it was Andrea Bocelli and Orbital—and Pamela was in a tub of water at the perfect temperature. It is best to deliver a baby in water because skin has ten percent more elasticity in water, which makes the birth more comfortable. And since newborns have been living in water for nine months, it’s a more natural transition.

  Pamela and I are very private people—and by then, we were stalked day and night. The last thing we wanted was thirty or so people watching her give birth, even if they were our friends and family. There was no way we were going to share our most intimate, intense, and beautiful experience as a couple with anyone else.

  While Pam was giving birth to Brandon, I was worried about everything. I was constantly running out to the balcony off our bedroom to smoke like a chimney in winter. It’s so crazy being a dad-to-be. You are helpless as your wife does the impossible, delivering this package that is both of you into the world. Watching that is incredible and scary at the same time.

  I’ll admit it now—I was afraid that I was going to pass out. You might think you know all about it, but nothing can prepare you for the moment a slimy head pops out of your wife’s baby canal and looks around like some alien midget man that just landed on planet Earth. And believe me, that’s just the beginning, but I’m going to spare us all the rest of my play-by-play.

  Pamela and I laid in bed with Brandon, gazing at him, touching him, adoring him, and welcoming him into the world. I felt inspired and while they rested, I ran downstairs to the piano and wrote a song about him. The piano is the first place I go when I want to express myself. It’s not a one-way conversation: I’m not playing the
piano, we’re playing each other. I’m feeding those keys my feelings and when the hammers strike the strings, they resonate back to me, echoing my emotions like a mirror.

  Heavy songwriters always talk about those times when a song comes through them so effortlessly that it feels like it wrote itself. I’d had moments like that, but the day my first son was born, I really knew what they were talking about. I called the song “Brandon,” and when I was done writing it, I realized again what I’d already known: The best songs come from extreme pain or extreme happiness. Everything else in between is watered down and you can tell. Think about some of the greatest songs you know, whether it’s Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven,” or Eminem’s “Kim.” You know when it’s real. I’m proud to say that one of those came through me that day. I don’t feel right taking credit for it, and I don’t expect everyone to understand because it’s almost impossible to explain, but it’s one of those experiences that makes humans feel that there is a higher power out there. It’s something that happens, and I felt like a vehicle, or like someone else was delivering a message with my voice. Sitting alone at the piano in my living room as my wife and newborn son slept upstairs, I watched my fingers play by themselves—it’s something that doesn’t happen very often.

  It was so personal that I couldn’t expect anyone else but Pamela to really understand it. Some people hated it when I played it in concert with Mötley. It was something new for us—fans had seen me get off the drums and play piano before, but they’d never heard me or anyone else in the band sing about something as personal as the birth of a child. I couldn’t fucking believe that people dumped on me for writing it in the first place. To me that was insane. I wasn’t writing a love ballad, I was writing a song about the most amazing thing that’s ever happened in my life. I was writing a song about my son. What, are the dudes in Mötley never supposed to write songs about anything but drugs, chicks, and played-out rock-and-roll bullshit until we die? Guess so. Thanks superfans, that’s tight! You guys really love us.

  If you are a musician, a writer, a painter, a poet, or creative in any way, you put your life experiences into your art. Some of our fans dug the song—they told me so—and typically they were parents too.

  After I had written the song, I knew what sound would make it complete. Months before, when I went with Pamela to the doctor and heard our son’s heart beating for the first time, I recorded the sound with my portable DAT player. I’m in the doctor’s office, hearing my boy’s heartbeat, tripping because it sounded so cool. I ask the doctor, “Um, do you have a line out on that Ultrasound machine?” He did. Awesome! Brandon’s heart sounded like nothing I’d heard before—his tiny heart thumping inside Pam was something I had to capture. There was a cadence, an echo and a resonance to the sound of his heart coming through that machine. I knew I had to have it and I knew I’d use it because no mike, no studio, and no filter could duplicate it. His heartbeat became the intro and tempo to “Brandon.” I couldn’t think of a better place for it to be immortalized.

  11 STATE OF UPBRINGING

  a.k.a.

  THE MONKEYS

  The first year my sons were alive, like every infant, they were complete blobs. They ate, they shat, they pissed, they cried, they screamed, they threw up all the time, and their heads rolled around on their necks like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Most of the time, I could barely get close to them. Pamela is one of the most efficient, anal people I know, so she had the situation on lock before Dad could get in to lend a hand. I did change diapers and feed them though, and let me tell you, baby poop is as gnarly as they say it is—even when it’s your own child. A few times, not even a diaper could hold in all the poop. That’s when you just pick them up and run to the nearest sink or bathtub, as the crap runs down their legs.

  In those early years, you spend most of your time trying to figure out who they most look and act like—and so does everyone else. People would constantly point out how each of them was like Pamela or me in ways I just did not understand. It’s a weird time, because they’re changing month to month. The bone structure changes and so do their personalities: When my boys were born, both of them had light hair and I thought they would be blond like their mother. Slowly their hair got darker and turned brown to the point that it’s more like mine.

  By the time they were a year and a half, they were little people—little people we had to chase. Once they learned to walk, they were like blind guys driving a Ferrari: an accident waiting to happen. They’d blast off full-speed ahead with no idea of how to drive or where they were going. We had child-proofed the house already by installing locks on the cabinets they could reach, but we weren’t done. The tile in the kitchen had to be replaced by carpet after a few faceplants left dents in their hoods.

  Brandon’s first word was “pickle.” He’d say it over and over, just “pihkl, pihkl, pihkl.” I don’t know where he got that because he wasn’t eating them then—there ain’t no Gerber strained pickles for babies. Dylan’s made more sense, it was “da-da.” Both of the boys learned the word “pool” right away. They loved the water and I loved swimming with them. They’d splash around and giggle and then freak out for a second when I’d dunk them. It was amazing to see that much joy and surprise in their expressions. To this day, I can’t keep them out of the pool. I’ve had to invent a rule, the raisin check: The little guys show me their hands and when their fingers are more wrinkled than an elephant’s ass, I say, “All right dudes, out of the pool.”

  My two boys are so close in age that it didn’t take long for them to become a two-man army. I really noticed it when they were four and five. They started getting into sports—karate, T-ball, basketball, soccer—and it brought them together. It also fired up the old sibling rivalry, which is, to this day, a constant struggle for superiority. I should just buy an official WWF referee uniform because not a day goes by that I’m not breaking up a smackdown in the kitchen. It doesn’t matter that they know what comes next: a time-out. I put each fighter in his own corner, where he can’t speak, can’t move, and can’t do anything but think about why he’s there. They get a minute for each year they’ve been alive. Every once in a while I give myself a time-out when I’m dying for some peace and quiet. It’s the only way sometimes to guarantee sanity—and forty minutes with nothing to do.

  My boys each excel in different areas. Dylan is the more physical one: He is amazing at sports and goes at it like a pro. His coaches have all mentioned that he’s got something special and when I hear that, I fast-forward the movie in my head and watch him play at either Dodger Stadium, the Staples Center, or in the Olympics some day.

  Brandon is verbal; he’s a great storyteller, even when he’s lying. He’ll admit it too, if you ask him. He’ll come out with all kinds of things, like one time when we were sitting at the dinner table and he said, “They’re filling people’s heads with nonsense in school. Nonsense about brushing your teeth.” Where the hell does he get this stuff? Across the table, his little brother started brushing his teeth with a lambchop. We love him, we call him Random Brandon. At times like that, I see him becoming either a comedian, a writer, or a lawyer—they’re great storytellers and liars too.

  Our boys, like all little kids, are into everything they can get their hands on, like a pair of monkeys—so that’s what I call them: the Monkeys. Those two little maniacs pounce on me at seven in the morning and keep me running until they fall asleep at night. They make me love life—and I already do love life. They’re nuts, and they have more energy than children should be allowed to have.

  Right now they’re still at that age where everything is a wonderful adventure. I love watching them trip out, whether it’s about the new fish in our fish tank or riding dirt bikes. It’s amazing, and their enthusiasm sends mine into overdrive. Here’s what I’m talking about: Brandon’s favorite drink is cherry Kool-Aid, so for his birthday I filled the bathtub with it and set him down to soak it up. He was in heaven, just filling his mouth with his favorite drink
and marinating in that flavored bathwater. He couldn’t wait to tell everyone at school that his dad gave him a bath in Kool-Aid. I’m thinking, “Great, that’s a parent-teacher conference waiting to happen.” After ten minutes, he started to turn red, which cracked me up, but I scooped him out and washed him off before it got too bad. A dyed-red kid is not good.

  I have a koi pond and a Japanese garden in the back of my house, which is usually where I like to take my time-outs. One day, Brandon decided that he and his brother should get in there and swim with the fish. I put their masks and snorkels on them, and we all jumped in. The fish freaked out and, of course, both Monkeys chased them around, trying to catch them, ride them, hug them, or whatever. Between their speed and the natural slime on their scales, there was no way the boys were going to catch any koi. It was funny watching them try. It became a tradition until I got eleven more fish, some of which are forty years old and about three feet long—nearly the size of my boys. Once they saw those Japanese whales, they stayed away from the pond for a while.

  I hope that when they’re older they’ll tell people how their dad was just like them when they were little. I want them to say that their dad was just a big kid who gave them all kinds of insane experiences and did the craziest shit with them. I also want to do something involved with their world before they get much older, like do a voiceover or create music for a cartoon, or get one of my songs in a video game that they play. Getting inside their little kid world that way would be amazing. I’ve got to do that now because before I know it, they’re going to be sixteen and asking me for the keys to my car. They’ll be coming home with sixteen-year-old hotties asking me if the girls can stay the night. I’ll have to just tell them to be safe. Jesus, they’re going to be wanting to have parties in my hot tub! I know when I tell them they can’t because they’re too young, they’re going to just look at me and say, “Are you kidding me, Dad?” I still have a few years to work out an answer and I’m gonna fucking need them. (I just hope that the Mötley Crüe autobiography, the videotape of their mother and I having sex, and this book are all out of print by then.)