Hollywood: Rock Of Ages

by Chris Solberg

  A lot of girls appeared on the strip for a few weeks or so, then disappeared back to where they came from. This meant you would get used to seeing some familiar faces just enough to get to know them, then suddenly they’d be gone forever. Just like that!. It was strange to get so familiar with someone on a personal level, and then one day they just never came back and you never knew what happened to them. This led me to feel a little disoriented in times as I would look somebody in the eye as we were talking like close friends, knowing very well that I may never see them again. Hollywood was weird like that, something about the place fostered and atmosphere where people became friends immediately. That was a genuine openness that I loved about the people I met there. Everybody seemed to be escaping some sort of lack of affection back home that they found immediately with one another in Hollywood. I could relate to that..

  BETTER GET THE PARTY STARTED - Vinnie Vegas

  Once we started playing the strip, we never looked back. The Sunset strip was where the action was, and the reason I moved to Hollywood in the first place. It wasn’t easy to land your first gig on the strip, but once you did, you really didn’t want to play anywhere else. Why would you? This is Hollywood, baby! We liked playing the Whisky because Louie the sound-guy could be easily bought off with a bag of pot, and this assured that your sound was top-notch, no matter who you played with. After we played there a couple of times, we were offered an opening slot with Asphalt Ballet who were all over MTV at the time. We balked at first because it was the 8:00 pm slot, but we all figured that it would somehow pay off in the end. That gig turned out to be absolutely pivotal in our Hollywood career. It was a classic example of what an opening slot could be. Asphalt Ballet only played LA once a year, but their fans liked to go out all the time. So by playing that spot, we exposed ourselves to a whole crop of people who could see us every month. Both Hooligan Stew and the band Hung Jury who played the 9:00 pm slot, jumped up to opening band status overnight and we eventually co-headlined the Whisky on a regular basis. From that gig forward, our popularity soared and our fans multiplied like cats. I met Karizma at that Asphalt Ballet gig and she soon became a regular at our new Hooligan Pad and backstage at our gigs. If you saw Vinnie Vegas, then Karizma was somewhere near to be sure. She was mischievous and often times would come flying down the hall in her mini-skirt and high heels with some pissed off girl chasing her. She’d hide behind me laughing while the girl tried to slap her silly. This usually got Matt all riled up and threatening to throw everybody out of the room. Matt had no patience for hijinks, but I reveled in the chaos. I mean, isn’t that what Rock N Roll was all about?

  After that gig, we got in good with the guys at The Whisky and played there once a month. We hooked up with various other bands to create good dynamic band line-ups. Hung Jury sounded a lot like us and seemed to have the same type of draw, so we played with them quite often. There was also band called Lash who were made of a bunch of hunky Chippendale’s dancers with long hair. These guys were definitely out there as far as a gimmick goes, and for some reason, they seemed to like us. They were also into going the extra mile to give the audience their money’s worth, so maybe that was our common thread. Of course the girls loved that band, so playing with Lash was always good. There was a band called Ana Black which showed up on the strip one year. I think they came from Canada, but they had the entire Nikki Sixx/Motley Crue look down pat. Somehow these guys had money behind them and started headlining the Whisky and Roxy right off the bat. These guys did not pull any punches and I remember big 15 foot high cutout figures of all five guys on the roof of the Roxy at one show. They too liked to go the extra mile by adding things like searchlights out on Sunset, so we hooked up with them as well. With all the money and the star-power, everybody thought Ana Black was going to be the next big thing off The Strip. This meant they had tons of girls at their shows which leads to...well, you know by now! But Ana Black simply went away one day and we never saw them again. One big summer, and then poof! They were gone. Welcome to Hollywood!

  Playing the Whisky was definitely the highlight of my Hollywood days. The place had a lot of history. Bands like The Doors and Led Zeppelin played on the same stage you were setting up on. But more than that, you really had a sense of arrival when you played there. There was a special feeling you got driving down Sunset on your way to soundcheck. For that day, I was part of the machine called Hollywood. On that day, I was one with the stars and producers on the movie sets. I was one with the paparazzi on Rodeo, and one with the agents & managers doing lunch at the Ivy. For that day, we were actually working, on par with the lighting crew at “The Tonight Show” and the waiters at “Spago”. We were playing rock and roll and making money for the Whisky which in itself was an intricate part of the Hollywood allure. Indeed, playing the Whisky held an honor and prestige to it which was hard to top in LA, and I always thought back to those days in San Diego, squinting at the city lights pretending it was Hollywood. But this was real and I was on top of the world.

  Soundcheck was usually around 4 in the afternoon and more often than not, the soundman was not ready yet. But that was ok, because it was fun just to be able to cruise around the empty Whisky and soak in the moment. It was hard to look cool on the outside in our shades and earrings, while on the inside you just wanted to jump up and down and scream. The nervous energy made every little wisecrack hilarious and resulted in prolonged guffaws. You’d constantly find reasons to go outside because you knew people were checking you out as they drove by on Sunset. These were good times. But eventually the soundguy would call you in and then it was down to business.

  I went to so many soundchecks that I learned the drill really quick.

  Let me hear the bass drum...

  thump-thump-thump...

  ok, hit the toms...

  boom-boom-boom...

  all right, let me hear the snare...

  tak-tak-tak...

  ok, play the whole kit...

  pockata-pockata-pockata.

  I used to repeat a routine into the mike for Perris and that would always crack up the soundguy. After the soundcheck we’d have a couple of hours to get a bite to eat, cruise back home and have a couple of beers while we got ready. We had the common sense to wear street clothes to the gig and change in the dressing room so we didn’t look like idiots. I remember a cat in San Diego named Mike Legal who was the lead singer for his band Street Legal. He was notorious for wearing his stage clothes to the show and milling around in the parking lot in full regalia. He was the example to avoid. Looked like a dick.

  When you arrived at the Whisky, you were always nervous because you had no idea how many people were going to be inside when you walked in. But even if it seemed sparse, the Whisky had a way of filling up between 9:30 and 10:00. So really the big reveal was when you opened the backstage door right before you hit the stage. I will say that with Hooligan Stew, we were never let down. When you walked from the front door up to the dressing room, you played the cool act of pretending not to notice that people were looking at you. But you knew they were... you could feel it! Not to mention you’d do the same thing when you were in the audience! You always checked out whoever walked by with guitar cases. So once again, inside you wanted to scream, but on the outside, you acted like you were just trying to get your guitar cases backstage. No big deal.

  The Whisky became our home away from home and soundchecks were becoming second nature to us. We started seeing a bum regularly on the strip and he would sneak into the Whisky for our soundchecks. His name was Stanley and he was dirty, stinky and maniacally crazy. But for some reason Matt took a liking to the guy and would tell the staff to let him stay when they tried to shoo him outside. The guy looked like Aqualung and would scurry about ranting and raving to himself, and then break into bizarre Michael Jackson style dance moves when we played. People would be aghast at his antics and asked why we let him stay and Matt would explain that he was our manager. With Hollywood being what it was, most people bought t
he story with one eyebrow raised. Later, a band from Chicago hit the scene hard and sure enough Stanley was their lead singer! The band was called Life, Sex & Death (LSD) and they absolutely kicked ass. They sounded like Cheap Trick with a caveman singing. They instantly had A&R folk from all the major labels coming to sold out shows and we even played with them one night. This led to speculation that Stanley’s bum routine was a giant shtick and to this day I’m sure it was. The rumor was that people in Chicago knew Stanley as a normal rock guy before the move to LA. They got a record deal and the album sold pretty well, but then they fell off the face of the earth. All in all, a very typical Hollywood story.

  When I got backstage the first thing I would do is tune my basses. There was nothing worse than forgetting to do that and then trying to do it on stage. This was a little tedious because you had to set up the tuner and wrestle with the cords, etc., and you really wanted to dial it in good if you wanted to have a good show. So I liked to get this over with immediately, then I could relax, which is really what I wanted to do. I find I really like to just clear my mind and hit the pause button on the experience which so far has been on fast-foward! Once I got to seize that moment, I was good to go. Then you’d suit up, grab your gear, and start heading down those stairs to the stage. A lot of people in LA felt they were too cool to hang out at the front of the stage but we never had that problem. Since the Whisky was all ages, Matt had enlisted his little brother and all his rowdy high school friends to come to our shows. When you hit the stage, you could immediately start high fiving all the dudes up front which really added to the rock star image. You’d plug in, hit a few notes, and PRAY TO GOD that you heard something. Sometimes nothing happened and your blood would run cold as the color faded from your face. Most amps back then had a standby switch which was easy to overlook in the moment. This was because you would see the little red light on, which means your amp has power, but no sound is coming out! The stand-by switch had good intentions because you could quiet your amp without turning it off completely. But before a gig, it could really fuck with your mind! After that happened to me a couple of times I got wise and saved a lot of peoples lives. I would be at a show and see somebody on stage with that ghostly pale “oh shit” look on their face and I’d yell out “Hit the standby switch!” Worked ever time. No words were ever said between me and the poor sap. But I would see the unmistakable look on the guy’s face that read “Oh God, THANK YOU for saying that!” I saw that look more than a few times! It’s the same look you get when you find somebody’s missing keys. If everything checked out, then you’d be standing in the darkness on stage waiting for the house music to stop. Ready to explode.

  Ladies and gentlemen...please welcome to the Whisky...Hooligan Stew! (Showtime!)

  The lights come on and you are the center of attention for the entire club. The songs come pretty naturally to you, but this is show business and you have to put on a performance. You have to look like you know what you’re doing, and you have to look like you’re having fun. Always assume that everybody is looking right at you, because somebody always is. You smile, you pose, you connect with the audience and you never avoid eye contact. You search for faces and react to their smiles. You touch the people up front, and scan the back wall for more fans. If somebody offers a hand, you high-five. If somebody offers a rose, you take it and adore it. All the while, you sing, play and sometimes it spooks you how you can do all of that without thinking. When you do this you become more than LA...you become Hollywood!

  Hooligan Stew would open with an easy up-tempo song such as “There Goes The Neighborhood or Pretty Poision. These songs were easy to play as well as high-energy, so it got you over any heebie-jeebies you might have had at the start of the show. Matt’s dad was by his accounts an

  Archie Bunker type, so it never occurred to Matt that naming a song “There Goes The Neighborhood” might have some racist connotations. We’d then launch into a more introspective song like “Coast 2 Coast” or “Someday Sadie” as a bridge to something rowdier later on. Matt usually wrote about girls in a “gee-whiz” girl-next-door context that made the songs pretty innocent compared to most of the other bands at the time. Coast 2 Coast I liked because the lyrics conjured up images of traveling and seeing the country. It was a fun song that kind of reminded me of something John

  Cougar Mellancamp might play. Sometimes if I felt like it, (and I usually did!) I’d pick a point in between songs to shout Vegas... Vegas... Vegas! into the mike and get a chant started. This would annoy Matt but he never let on to it! We would usually throw in a copy tune that was never anything from the ‘80s. “Stepping Stone” by the Monkees, “I Woke Up In Love This Morning” by David Cassidy, or something from Elvis would be the tunes we would play. Then of course, it was the “power ballad” and into the closer. We had pretty rowdy audiences who would be tossing beach balls at you or maybe shooting you with silly string. The Whisky staff would grumble, but I think they knew our fans were up to good clean fun, all things considered. At the end, we’d take our bows, thank the audience, and head backstage to freshen up. There was nothing more satisfying for me than to get out of my stage clothes after a good show, and watch the last half of the next bands set. Then you could relax and have a beer with a few fans, and revel in the moment of a job done well. Then it was a mad dash to the Hooligan Stew pad. And this is where the party REALLY started!

  Our new apartment became the hot party pad in no time quick. After our gigs, everybody would pile back to our place and we’d whoop it up until the evil grey glow in the East appeared. The after parties were becoming legendary, but even on off weekends when we did not play, we had a constant stream of girls coming in the place which made life very convenient. If we didn’t play, we’d hit the strip to promote our upcoming gigs. And everybody knows that it never rains in Southern California right? Well, in actuality, it does... just not that often. But when it did, it ruined the whole strip experience and could spell disaster if your gig was that weekend.

  In California, nobody goes outside when it rains; instead, they stay home. Not to mention that trying to move your equipment around in the rain is a pain. So if it rained, we would stay home because we knew the strip would be dead and there would be no point in going there at all. I remember going to the strip one night when it was raining because a friend of mine was

  playing and it was truly pathetic. The place was empty and nobody was in the clubs. It seemed like such a sad waste of a Hollywood Saturday night. But this led to “rain days” similar to the ones you had in school. Since it would be impossible to promote any shows, we had the night off to relax and do whatever we wanted to with no responsibilities. That meant that you had all night to bond with the girls and I liked that a lot. Without the bum-rush into bed, you could actually get to know the girl and spend some quality one on one time with her. If it did rain, that would do something to me that I can’t explain. Something about rain puts me in a loving mood, I know it sounds silly. I guess I’m just a stupid Californian who’s never seen real weather! I’d be out on the balcony talking with Karisma and listening to the rain falling while a gush of cool air would blow across us every now and then. This of course is a great excuse to cuddle up and these intimate moments were rare and few in Hollywood. Karisma was a frequent visitor at that time and the other guys started to form an inner circle of girls of their own. It was around this time that a girl named Tara came into our lives.

  TARA - Vinnie Vegas

  When I first met Matt, he had a girlfriend named Kergie. Kergie was a small girl with a mean temper. She was part Eskimo, and kind of looked like a trashy version of Jewel. They had been going out for quite some time, but as soon as Matt moved to Hollywood he began to lose interest in her. But as in all long term break-ups, she always had a way of coming back into the scene, never completely going away. Because Matt got his own apartment, she had to start stripping at the Seventh Veil in Hollywood. This was the beginning of the end for her because stripping turns girls into
pigs, and her slide started fast. We cruised in there one night just in time to hear her screaming “Tip or die!” at the top of her lungs to the guys up front. She was hurriedly gathering up various articles of lingerie off the floor and stormed off the stage in a hissie fit. We turned right around and left. Like all strippers, she lived in a pig sty and had no car. Strippers liked to brag about how much money they made but they couldn’t save any. They spent it all on taxis and a place called Pink Dot which delivered groceries to your apartment at a huge mark-up.

  One night at the Troubadour, my band somehow got into the upstairs VIP room. The Troubadour had a history in Hollywood as the launching point for many rock stars and bands, but the inside of the club never really impressed me. I thought it looked more like a pizza joint or self-serve steak house than a rock club, but the VIP room was different. This had posh carpeting and comfortable plush couches to kick back on. And it featured a huge picture window which looked down upon the stage. Through the window you could hear the band, but at a muffled level which meant that you could hold a conversation as well. It featured it’s own bar which was nice because there were never more than 25 people allowed in the lounge at any given time.

  That night in the lounge we met a pack of girls led by Tara. Tara was a tough talking girl with a raspy voice and a slight Texas accent. She sounded like Pink, and looked like a young Teri Hatcher with jet black hair and the brightest fire-engine red lipstick you ever saw. She and Matt paired off

  immediately, and from that moment on, the two were inseparable. Well, to an extent anyway. You see, these two played a strange dance where they never admitted that they loved each other. Outwardly, they both acted as if they didn’t have any feelings for each other, but we all knew better than that. Tara was pretty tough, but she was afraid of Kergie and would stay away if she was around Matt. But when Kergie left, Tara would slip back like the tide and they would resume their covert affair. Of course Tara was doing the same thing with the singer from Hung Jury so she really wasn’t much of a victim.