Hollywood: Rock Of Ages

by Chris Solberg

  In Hollywood, Hung Jury was just about as popular as we were, and we played a lot of shows on The Strip with them. So it could fun to watch Tara try and walk the tightrope with the two bands. Everybody knew about this except Matt. The Whisky liked to pair us up as co-headliners because we shared the same fan base, and whenever that happened, things got really awkward for Tara. She would have to run back and forth between the two camps like an I Love Lucy episode. I would look at her and laugh, and she’d mutter under her breath, “Fuck you Vinnie!” as she lit up a cigarette. Everybody knew that Matt was completely inadequate both emotionally or in maturity to sustain any type of relationship, so I think she used Hung Jury as a safety valve. But I really believe she loved Matt, and that he came first. Well she had to love him to put up with all his crap. Tara practically lived with us in the apartment, but then she would disappear for a week or two. It was no mystery to me where she was, but Matt thought nothing of it. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Every time she disappeared, I always wondered if that was the last I’d see of her. But then she’d show up again which always made me happy because I liked Tara. She was smart and a lot of fun, and she and I could talk for hours about anything.

  I had my own little shuffle of girls I was juggling, so both Tara and I were both on the same page. We’d give each other knowing glances at appropriate (or inappropriate) times and would be able to confide in each other because we both had the same skeletons in our closets. Tara saw it all, and I remember her being appalled at us one night because she came in to find Perris and I lying on the floor. You see Karisma and one of her friends had come over drunk and later Karizma blurted out that she wasn’t wearing any panties. Perris and I broke open some booze and soon talked them into going to first and second base with each other. Then we took turns laying on our backs while Karizma would walk over us so we could see up her skirt. It’s not like this type of thing happened all the time, but Tara just happened to walk in at the wrong time.

  Matt was famous for having a huge dick, but equally famous for not ever using it. This led to a sexually frustrated Tara. I remember her not feeling so well one night so I asked her if she was pregnant. Without missing a step she deadpanned, “No, you have to have SEX to get pregnant!” One night we where both trying to coax our mates into the bedroom. Matt and I shared the same bedroom, but by then, there were no secrets between us. Karisma was all wound up about something and was bouncing off the walls. Matt was being Matt, and every time Tara coaxed him into the bedroom, he’d get up and wander off like an old man trying to figure out where he left his glasses. I finally rounded up Karisma, and Tara somehow got Matt back into the bedroom. I got naked and under the covers and Tara was doing the same, so it looked like we were finally gonna get what we were looking for. But Matt tried to back get up and Tara wrestled with him like a fisherman trying to land a marlin. She tried valiantly to not let him slip away, but alas, he got free and headed back out to the living room. Karizma let out a squeal and bounded after him like a puppy dog. We were utterly defeated in our quest for sex. I looked over across the room at Tara and she was looking at me. I then jumped over like a naked superman and dove into bed with her. She laughed and said, “I knew you were going to do that!” For a split second I think we both seriously considered gettin’ it on, but as for me, I looked her in the eye and couldn’t do it. She was too good of a friend. What’s wrong with me? Tara ended up being Matt’s girl for the rest of my stint with Hooligan Stew.

  ROCK STAR MOMENTS - Vinnie Vegas

  By Matt naming me Vinnie Vegas, he created a monster which would haunt him into infamy. How cool is it to have a name like that? Especially in

  Hollywood! The coolest part is when it got shortened down to just “Vegas”. I’d be walking down Hollywood Boulevard and a car would pass by with somebody shouting “Vegas!” out the window. I was now part of an exclusive clique of one-name celebrities like Slash or Cher. Thanks Matt! My second rock star moment was when I was leaving The Whisky after a show one night. As I walked out the door with my two bass cases in hand, I heard Louie the sound engineer say into the PA system, “Vinnie Vegas has left the building!” I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!

  The Rose sisters were becoming a staple at our Hooligan Stew shows. I had made friends with them from Hollywood & Las Palmas, and knew they didn’t have a lot of money. But I also knew they loved Glam Rock and the Sunset Strip, so I decided to put aside three tickets for our next show just for them. On the way home from work, I saw them and handed them the tickets for our show. This simple gesture turned into years of friendship, and from then on, those girls would do anything for me. I’d see them on the strip and they would volunteer to pass out flyers for me, which was always a lot more successful if girls did it. In LA, a lot of people were too cool to approach the stage unless people were already up there, so the girls always sidled up to the front, which broke the ice like the first couple to dance at a high school hop. During the show, they’d make it a point to jump, yell and wave which I can tell you is priceless when you are playing live. If you see that going on, you lose any nerves and the fun comes pouring out of you like a river. This in turn affects the audience, and soon results in unabashed pandemonium. To this day, these are the shows that I love no matter who is playing. And to his credit, I believe that is what every Michael Jackson show was like, and that’s why his fans loved him. Today, I see most of this with country artists, which I find interesting.

  I guess the sisters had told their mom about me, so I gave them an extra ticket to the next show so she could come if she wanted. This led to a very famous incident that probably gave birth to the Vinnie Vegas dynasty. Their mom was a large woman and after our last song, she grabbed me by my legs and pulled me off the stage and into the crowd. I don’t recall who was doing what, but I remember getting dog-piled, people tearing at my clothes and having a bunch of boobs in my face with a few kisses thrown it. Matt and a security guard made a foray into the crowd to rescue me and I remember being pulled in two different directions at once. They rushed me up the stairs like soldiers running to a medivac copter, and from all accounts, it looked like I had survived a war zone. That is, except for the fact that I had a huge smile on my face. I never experienced anything like that in my life and thought stuff like that only happened to the Beatles. I’ll chalk that up as my third rock star moment of Hollywood and there would be more.

  After a while, the oldest of the sisters got pregnant by some navy guy in her apartments, so she disappeared from the scene leaving Julie & Michelle. They became known as some of our more famous fans and wanted to hang out with us more often. But LA being LA, they wanted to be treated like everybody else, and because of their ages, that was a hard thing to do. We invited them to an after-party one night and I soon realized that they did not drink or party; instead, they just wanted to be around people so I relaxed about the whole thing. But Matt was not as supportive, and would ask them if they wanted anything to drink, like maybe some milk or lemonade? The two girls would shoot nasty glares at him which made him back off. This led to a weird dynamic where whenever they met, Matt just wouldn’t let up on the cookies & milk crap. That is until one night, Julie, the feistier one of the two, laid into him in front of everybody about how much of an asshole he was being and that he could just fuck off. Matt getting owned by that little girl on the Sunset Strip in front of everybody was the funniest thing I saw and even Perris was rolling. Perris wasn’t bright enough to know when to let things go, so for months he’d warn Matt at inappropriate times, “Hey Matt, better watch out, that little girl’s gonna kick your ass!” This always led to him and I looking at each other and busting up; that one never got old! Matt never fucked with her again, but later on, Julie got pregnant as well, which left the shy girl Michelle as the Last of the Mohicans.

  My fourth rock star moment was in Las Vegas. I met a friend of mine from

  Illinois out there and we decided to catch a Skid Row concert. Inside the arena, a guy comes u
p to me and says, “Hey Vinnie, what’s going on?” I said hi and talked to him for about ten minutes about people I knew, and then he said good-bye and took off. My girl was a little put off because that whole time, I never introduced her to him. When she asked me who he was and I answered, “I have no idea who that guy was!” But somehow he knew me!

  THE HOLLYWOOD MAGIC - Vinnie Vegas

  Hollywood was a restless place to be and if I couldn’t sleep I’d head out to wander the streets. I’ve always liked to do this and I remember being in Innsbruck, Austria where there is an old part of town with skinny cobblestone streets. I roamed those streets and I felt like a vampire stalking that empty town at night. Sunset Blvd. was a great place for nocturnal roaming as well, with it’s tons of neon glowing in the night. There used to be a song by KISS called “King of the Night Time World” and Paul sang about being far from the city and the neon glow. As a kid this always gave me the urge to cruise around downtown at night, but my age and the geography of San Diego made that impossible. So now was my time to complete my fantasy and I did it often.

  There was something therapeutic about being alone on Sunset with the cars whizzing by and the warm California air blowing through your hair. The LAPD never gave me a second look; I guess they could spot trouble fast and I was not it. On the way back up the hill to the apartment, you’d pass beautiful craftsman style houses built in the 40’s and that part of Hollywood looked as suburban as it could get. Movie companies often filmed those houses and you’ve probably seen them before in movies you assumed were shot in Massachusetts.

  Bobby questioned me about my late night forays and I explained to him it was all in good clean fun, but I could tell by his the look on his face that he thought I was up to something far more sinister. Bobby was a cool guy, but had something smoldering just beneath the surface. The fact that he had such bizarre ideas of what I was up to, led me to believe that he was the one with the dark side. Bobby was the kind of guy who would roll down the window and shout at somebody who was driving like shit. He also suggested that I might be into gay sex, not because I was gay, but sheerly because of the deviant nature of the act. I was beginning to get concerned because a week earlier, Leslie had suggested that it would be fun to dress me up in diapers, whack me off into a spoon, then feed it to me like a baby! What was going on here? Where was all this stuff coming from? It’s funny how stuff like that can come all at once, but from completely different directions. It makes you wonder if somehow, someway, it was your fault. Now I’m a smart guy, so I knew better than that. But that’s almost worse because you still haven’t answered the original question! This can be life. This I’ve learned. As for Bobby, I told him one night, “You know, you’re the one always bringing it up. Maybe you’re the one grappling with gay feelings.” He never mentioned it again.

  As a final prank, I bought the raunchiest gay porno magazine I could find, and hid it deep in back of his closet. I knew that someday he’d be packing up his stuff and that mag would fall out in front of god knows who. And I’m sure it did.

  VINNIE GOES TO VEGAS - Vinnie Vegas

  Hooligan Stew actually made a foray in Vegas one weekend. I had planned on going anyway and the guys decided to tag along and see what the hubbub was all about. Matt booked us rooms downtown at the Golden Horseshoe which is in the seedy downtown area of Vegas. This kind of defeated the purpose of going to Vegas if you asked me, but nobody did. Not unusual. So instead of having fun on the strip or a giant drink at Slot’s O’ Fun, we shared cold stares with chronic gamblers playing the ponies. Perris and I decided we had enough of that fun and he called his cousin who lived in Vegas. She picked us up and took us back to her apartment where she and her boyfriend would get ready to go out. Her boyfriend took me aside and was asking me questions about what it was like to live in Hollywood. This was not unusual at all, lot’s of people were curious and wanted to know the truth versus the fiction. Anyway, he then began to ask me about the girls and I told him some of the same stories I’ve written here. By then we were talking in low hushed tones which got his girlfriend suspicious. She crept up to hear what we were talking about and when she heard, she picked up the TV and slammed it down onto a glass coffee table shattering both the table and the TV! The violence of that explosion made me jump up screaming “What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you crazy?!”

  Why do we ask these questions? Do we really expect an answer? Well she started screaming at the both of us and I said, “Well there, you broke both your TV and your coffee table, I guess you showed us!” At that point I got the hell out of there because I didn’t know what would happen next. I don’t know where in Vegas we were, but we were up on a slight hill and you could see the city glittering off in the distance about 10 miles away. I decided I was going to start walking in that direction and somehow I’d get there. I did but I don’t remember how. The rest of the weekend went just as bad and at the end of it all, nobody could figure out why I was spending so much time there. For them, I think it made about as much sense as going to Barstow. That Sunday, on the flight home, Perris met some people on the plane from Alabama and was drunkenly slurring insults about in-breeding and incest. I was glad to be going home.

  The Fish Guy - Cupkake

  Playing Rock N Roll in Hollywood was by far the funnest thing I’ve ever done, but all the gigs and partying were unfortunately tempered by good old-fashioned responsibility. Yeah we partied hard, but we made a point of paying our bills and that of course that meant work. One of my more notable jobs was at a place in West Hollywood called Aquarium Stock Company. When I first started this job, it really sucked! Lizzie had gotten me the job because he had worked there for years and had a lot of pull. I worked inside the store making minimum wage at the time, helping rich snobby people pick out the right doggie sweater for their spoiled poodle. You know, the Zsa-Zsa and Paris type! Most of the clients that entered this store had tons of money... I mean lots of it! There were people that I would assist that would spend thousands of dollars on fish tanks, and several hundred dollars on the fish they would put inside the tanks. These tanks were death camps for the poor, hapless fish. None of these rich assholes cared about the fish. They just wanted the rarest, most expensive fish they could find, so they could “showboat” in front of the rest of their friends. I started reading books on the maintenance of saltwater aquariums, so I could help end the destruction of sea life. It was not long before I was the expert in saltwater fish care. Me... the fish guy!

  After a few months of working as a slave inside the stinky pet store, the manager of Aquarium Stock Company had me start working as an assistant in the field. This job consisted of traveling to the enormous homes in Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Estates, and Santa Monica, to clean the fish tanks in homes of people I would never forget. It was overwhelming the first day out, and most people would not believe the star’s homes I would enter the very first day in the field. I was sent out with a senior partner. His name was Joe. Joe had been working for this company for a long time. Joe was your typical Hollywood stereotype. Yes, he was gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I did not know this when I first met him, but it did not take long to figure it out. Joe never made a pass at me, and he was always very professional on the job (thank god!).

  Michael Jackson - Cupkake

  Earlier this year, Michael Jackson died, which stirred up a whole bunch of memories. One of the first fish tanks I would maintain in my saltwater fish career was the Jackson tank. Yes, Michael Jackson had a fish tank at his family home in Encino, and I serviced it. When I first pulled up to the Jackson family front gate, I did not think much of it. I thought, ok, this actually seems fairly modest. The gates opened up and I drove on in. Boy was I wrong! This was a really cool home. The driveway was very long and before reaching the home, you had to get through two armed guards protecting the front entrance. After convincing the guards that you belong at the home, they would check your property for any camera or recording devices. After you cleared
the guards, you were basically on your own. I pulled up onto something like Disneyland. The mansion was made of gray stone, including the rooftops. Circular portions of the house made it look a lot like a castle. The front porch had a star just like what you would find on the walk of fame in Hollywood. In the star was Michael Jackson’s of course, and that was really cool. As you entered the giant front doors that were comprised of some type of old dark wood with steel hinges, the inside of the home was adorned with a medieval decor. The carpets at that time were a forest green and all of the wood was a dark, rich walnut. The fish tank was upstairs next to Michael’s room. Michael’s door had a large shield with swords, and the words Michael Jackson were printed across the shield.

  I would see Michael from time to time in the family home, kind of like catching a glimpse of Bigfoot. I would see him in the distance, and then he would disappear into thin air. After awhile he became more scarce until I never saw him at all. I would not see Michael again until he built the “Neverland Ranch.” Then you would see him on occasion, but not often. I would see Joe Jackson all the time. He strolled through the home, always dressed for success, and seemed very confident and happy.