by Vince Neil
When we came home there were hundreds of cars. They were parked on the grass, on the sidewalks up and down the street. Tami was at the back gate with a cigar box and she was collecting the money. We didn’t know they’d charge money to let people in; I can’t remember how much it was. Finally the police came with big bullhorns and made everybody leave. Oh my god. For months after that we were finding bottles of liquor in our yard, in the bushes, everywhere.
One thing I’d like to correct from The Dirt is the part about Odie dancing with all the girls and stuff. He was a grown man. He did not dance with the little girls.
After that party, we were there for every concert that we could possibly go to. We went to the Whisky, the Roxy; we went to every place in Hollywood Vince played. We were excited for him. We were thrilled. I remember thinking to myself, He can’t really sing, but he’s singing. I was pretty amazed, you know, because he’d never really sung before. I asked everyone, “Does he sound good to you?” Because, you know, I wanted to know if it sounded good to other people…. I’m just his mom, of course it sounded good to me. He’s got that high, raspy voice, and he’s got a lot of charisma onstage.
Over the years we got to know Tommy’s parents really well—they went to all the shows, too. The last time I saw Vincent, I asked, “How’s Tommy doing?” And Vincent turned around real angry and he said, “Mom, how come you always ask about Tommy? I don’t know what in the hell Tommy’s up to, okay?”
As the empty lots filled up with warehouses, the neighborhood went into further decline. Even the way we played was a little rough. My friends and I would meet in a deserted lot and play army with BB guns. Or I remember they were building this gas station, with huge, deep holes for the tanks, and we’d play there. We’d actually shoot each other. No goggles or protection or anything. I would come home bleeding and full of welts. My mother would yell at me as she dabbed the blood from some wound on my head or thigh. “You’re lucky you didn’t lose an eye!” But really, the BB guns were nothing. A lot of the kids I knew were more serious than that. Many of them were already joining gangs. I shit you not, by sixth grade kids were carrying knives in their lunch boxes. Several kids I knew had real guns. Everybody knows that kids around that age—thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—make the best foot soldiers. Look at those kid soldiers in Africa and Cambodia. I saw shows about them on TV. Ruthless. They become totally brainwashed. Same thing happens in a street gang, believe me. I’ve seen it happen. A guy you thought was your friend can change practically overnight.
For the most part, the kids I hung out with were pretty much normal rowdy kids. You know, just typical kid stuff. We’d throw rocks at cars going down the street. I remember people stopping and getting out of the car and chasing us. I actually got caught once. My dad was so fuckin’ pissed. This was a time when Evel Knievel was big, you know, so we would build ramps on the sidewalks and take our bikes and just see how far we could actually launch ourselves. Or we would make go-karts and tie them to the bikes and fly down the hill. Going from my house to school you had to walk up a big hill. You know—it was hard to get to school, but coming home was easy. We would launch the karts behind bicycles and then cut ourselves loose. The karts would come flying around these corners and down the hill. Or sometimes we’d use those old-fashioned skateboards. There wasn’t really the whole modern skateboarding thing going yet. Our skateboards had metal wheels. But we had no regard for anything, you know, ’cause there could’ve been a car coming around the corner at any minute and we would have just slid right underneath the car and killed ourselves.
One day when I was in sixth grade, four other kids and I—three black, one Samoan, and me—decided to pull a caper. We climbed this barbed-wire fence and snuck past two security guards into a warehouse full of souvenirs. There were giant conch shells, sponges, coral—all the expensive junk they sell to tourists at the beach. We took whatever we could carry in our backpacks and sold it on the street and at the Compton swap meet. I put some of the proceeds toward buying my first cassette tape, Cloud Nine by the Temptations. My parents were not particularly musical, but they played music a lot. My dad loved Johnny Cash and Creedence Clearwater Revival, you know, so I grew up listening to that a lot. My obsession with soul came from growing up listening to my mom’s Motown collection: Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Al Green, the Four Tops, as well as earlier stuff such as Mable John, Mary Wells, and Barrett Strong. I guess maybe you can see some early soul influence in my singing, too. All those groups have a tradition of great falsetto singers. I’m not sure you would call what I do falsetto, but it’s up there in that range. Maybe you could say that the classic rock power singing is a little like the soul falsetto… something to think about. It’s definitely up in the higher registers. Soul music is pretty much mainstream now, but back then it really was ghetto music. Of course everybody in the neighborhood listened to it also; it was a good thing to have in common with the other kids. My musical knowledge was expanded by listening to the radio, and before long I had a pretty impressive singles collection, cassettes and vinyl. I had Deep Purple, The Guess Who, Paper Lace, all kinds of stuff. Remember, I was only in like sixth grade. Thinking back, I remember my other obsession at the time was Matchbox cars. Pre-adolescence: You’re so all over the place. Thinking about sex, playing with toy cars. You’re in two worlds at once. So much can influence you. Most of it bad.
While some of this collecting was supported by my five-dollar-a-week allowance I got from my dad for washing the car and doing chores around the house—you could get a lot for five bucks at a swap meet back then—the rest of it was financed by my life of crime. My mom and dad were both working by now to help make ends meet. They really had no idea what I was up to. Things got pretty out of hand for a while, culminating with the time the police caught me running out of a warehouse in broad daylight with a box of stolen gardening supplies. They handcuffed me, threw me in a squad car, and brought me home. I know my parents were not pleased. I have no recollection of what happened. I’m sure I was punished big-time. I just don’t remember.
By this time, my sister and I were the only white people in the school. Things in the neighborhood were getting worse and worse. Whenever we left our house, my mother would cross herself and pray that none of us got shot by a stray bullet.
One evening my mom’s worst fears almost came true. There was a bullet shot through my sister’s bedroom window. She had the room facing the street. It was one of those houses with like the little porch out front. I still remember the name of the street. Dimondale Drive, right between Wilmington and Del Amo. I’m taking out my iPhone right now. I’m looking it up on Google Maps. I know exactly where it is. You go up 405 into Carson. There it is. Wilmington! There it is! And there’s Del Amo right there. And there… is… Dimondale. That’s it! Shit, I can show you my house! Here’s where I used to walk to school. Here’s the cul-de-sac near our house. I lived in… I think it was 1836 Dimondale. This house right here! No, it would’ve been 1832. Maybe it was this house? Eighteen thirty-four? Honestly, I don’t really remember the number, but I think it’s one of those houses. And moving across the map… this is my elementary school right here, Broadacres Elementary. It wasn’t very far. It was only a few blocks away. Wow. Shit’s still there; I’m shocked. Across the street was a giant open field—we would ride our bikes in there, until they finally built, like, an industrial complex on that spot. And once they built all that, that’s when me and my friends started breaking in there and just stealing shit. That’s where all those warehouses were. Right across the street. Talk about a target of opportunity.
So the night of the bullet, we were in the kitchen playing a board game. All four family members. The house was like you walked in and the garage is here to the right, front door is here in the center, and the bedroom would be front left. The living room was behind the kitchen toward the back, leading out to a sliding glass door. There were three bedrooms. As a family we liked to play board games like Monopoly. Or we played cards. My da
d and I would play this football game on the table sometimes, like it was this old-school electric football game, with the green metal field and the little guys on it that would like vibrate. My family was just a normal well-adjusted family, I guess. Maybe there was some drinking. I think my mom and my dad both liked to drink.
And then we heard gunshots. They were close. We heard them all the time, actually, but not usually that close. We turned off the lights and went in the living room because there were no windows to the street. We ended up all sleeping on the floor in the living room. It was pretty scary. I don’t remember myself being that scared, but I remember being really scared for my parents. Then the next morning we all went in my sister’s room and you could see there was a bullet hole in the window.
A couple of days after that, there was a news item or something in the paper or on the TV news about a couple of kids at the local high school throwing a teacher out of a third-floor window. That was it for my parents. They didn’t want us to go to junior high school in the same neighborhood, you know? When it’s so rough that the teachers are getting beaten up and thrown out the windows, who wants their kid to go there? So my dad and mom said “That’s it, we’re moving.” They put the house up for sale, but we finished out the rest of our school year. That summer, my parents sent me and my sister to West Covina to live with our aunt.
I started seventh grade using my aunt’s address while my parents looked for a house. This place where they’d moved me was way out north and east from where we’d lived, east of Pasadena, between the 210 Freeway and the San Gabriel Mountains. Halfway through the school year, my parents finally moved to this house in nearby Glendora. So then I transferred over to that school, Sunflower Junior High. This also corresponded with my mom getting a better job at a dental brace factory. The housing prices were higher in Glendora, I guess. I didn’t have a clue about stuff like that in those days. What kid does?
Basically, I confess, I was always a terrible student—with the exception of Mrs. Anderson’s class. As you could imagine, classes at the school in the better neighborhood, at Sunflower, were a lot harder than I was used to at Broadacres. To be honest, I had a hard time even writing a simple sentence. I found out eventually that I have dyslexia, but not really bad—I can read okay, though I don’t prefer to. I’m just so slow when it comes to reading. When I write it’s worse. When I go to write something down it really takes me a while because I will mix up numbers and it’s just, it takes me forever; it’s difficult. If somebody says to write a letter, it’s tough. It takes me forever to do it. And I mix up my writing and cursive or printing—I combine the two, which makes it even worse. But instead of getting tutored or something, or working on my problem, I reacted by avoiding the unpleasantness… probably people would say that that is my MO today, too. I just chose to skip school. What kid wants to admit he has a learning disability or whatever, you know? The school didn’t do much about it, either. They just kept on passing me to the next grade. Kicking me upstairs, I guess you could say.
One highlight in my new neighborhood was I actually joined a football team. It was flag football. Even though I was always better at baseball, I enjoyed it. I played special teams and defense. I think I was a cornerback. Moving to the school meant all new people. At the time I had a couple friends. But not a whole lot of friends. I just kind of went through the motions, you know what I mean? I didn’t really know anybody.
This was the time, I think, when the Beatles’ White album came out. I remember I had a music class and we were all fascinated with the Beatles back then and whether Paul was dead. We’d get into huge debates and discussions, looking for the clues, playing albums backwards and stuff, trying to find the supposed secret messages that were rumored to be on there. It was pretty fascinating. I remember to this day. I was already kind of going the music route even then. I was like one of the first people in my class to really grow my hair. I just dug the look, you know? People wore jeans and puka shells and that kind of stuff. I don’t remember ever trying to follow any trend or anything. It’s just kind of like what everybody wore—you know, what your mom got you at the store.
Walking to school one day in seventh grade I found this porno book. It was basically a sex manual with photographs, a paperback. The models, or whatever they were, appeared to be very straight-looking people. They were naked and all and they were doing the positions, but it just seemed like they were doing it for demonstration purposes—they looked grim, you know, like they were just doing it for a job, not enjoying it. It was weird. But of course everybody at school wanted to see the book, all my friends, all the guys in class. I decided I wasn’t just gonna give it away. I stashed the book in a pile of junk inside my neighbor’s shed. Every day, I’d rip out, like, ten pictures, then replace the book and go sell the pages to the kids at school for a quarter each. After about seventy pages being sold, the word was out all over school. A couple of idiots even taped the pages they bought from me to their lockers in the boys’ locker room. Of course the gym teacher had a cow; the kids caved immediately and ratted me out. Within an hour, I was suspended. On the way home, I came up with a plan. I was going to retrieve the book and make a final score—I’d sell what was left for five dollars; then my days as a pornographer would be officially over. I even had an idea in mind who I was going to sell it to. But when I got to my neighbor’s shed… the book was gone. Another of the great mysteries of childhood. My days as a pornographer had ended… for now.
Valerie Wharton Saucer Vince’s Sister
My grandma’s maiden name is Ortiz, but we’re not Mexican. We’re Spanish. My grandma spoke Spanish, but only to her sister. It’s funny because in one of Vince’s interviews he used to say that he was Mexican and my grandma got really offended and said, “What is Vincent doing? I’m not Mexican; we’re not Mexican. I’m Spanish!” Vince, I don’t think he really knew there was a difference. From way back they came from Spain. They might have immigrated to New Mexico. But they were from New Mexico, not old Mexico.
Vince and I were sixteen months apart. Everyone always used to think I was older. And I’m like, “No. Wrong. I’m younger.” When I was growing up my mom used to always say we were eighteen months apart. Then one time I did the math. And I’m like, “Mom, you know we’re sixteen months apart, we’re not eighteen.” And she’s like, “You are?” I think they call that Irish twins or something. But of course, we’re not Irish, either.
When we were little growing up, our little neighborhood was a nice neighborhood. We used to go outside and ride bikes and play hopscotch, just normal kid stuff. Later things got bad. I remember that time they shot into our house. I remember the gunshots; I remember us ducking in the living room. I don’t remember an actual bullet coming into the house. That doesn’t stick out in my head. But I just remember hearing it. My mom was home and my dad was at work. My mom yelled for us to get down and we lay down on the floor in the living room. When my dad got home and heard about it, he was like, “We gotta get out of here.” Because we basically had, like, a gang that lived across the street in this rental house. They would bother us all the time. My mom couldn’t even walk outside. She was a blonde. Like white blond hair. They would make comments to her and whistle at her and, you know, like flirt with her. She was scared.
My mom used to work nights. We would come home from school and she would just be leaving for work. We were home alone every weekday for probably about an hour or two. We used to fight over TV shows and what to watch, stuff like that. We weren’t allowed outside. We had to stay inside until my dad got home from work. So we had to do stuff together; it was just the two of us, so I guess we were close. We fought of course. But I think every brother and sister do. Especially when you’re that close in age; he used to try and boss me around. It seems like to this day Vince likes to always be with somebody. He doesn’t like being home alone. I don’t know why. I don’t know—maybe he’s just insecure that way. He just needs somebody with him.
Vince has a big heart
. Well, when I was in the sixth grade and Vince was in the seventh I wanted to go to the sixth-grade dance that was held at Sunflower Junior High. My girlfriends were supposed to come to our house and pick me up and we were all gonna go to the dance together. My girlfriends never showed up and I was crying so hard ’cause I wanted to go so bad. Vince said, “Val, come on and I’ll take you.” We walked into the dance and he made sure that my friends were there before he left. He knew how much that dance meant to me and it hurt him to see me so upset.
First he was in this thing where he used to go to this roller-skating place and they would have lip-synching. I used to go there and watch him sing—I remember I used to steal my mom and dad’s car at night and go down there to the roller-skating rink and watch him sing. And one time Vince came home and he was like, “Val, did you take the car?” And I’m like, “Yeah, please don’t tell Mom and Dad!” And he kinda got this grin on his face and he goes, “Val, just get in the house.” And I think that’s when the time came that Vince thought I was cool. ’Cause I used to be the goody-goody little sister. Now he was like, he thought, Well, shoot, now I have something on Val. She’s not a goody-goody. He was happy to finally have something to hang over my head.
In the beginning of Rockandi, Vince wasn’t this cool rock guy yet. They were just like a garage band, you know? They practiced in my garage. I think my dad bought him a microphone. In the beginning I think people… people always… you know, they said, “Oh, he sucks,” you know, “His voice sucks,” and stuff like that. Of course you’re going to get that with everybody. You know not everybody can like everyone. But I thought it was cool. You know, a couple of the songs I was like embarrassed. I think the very first song, the very first time I heard him, was at our party that we had at our house. And I was, I was actually embarrassed. And I thought, Oh man, he can’t sing very well. And I thought, Well, he’s having a good time and it’s fun. And, you know, everybody else seemed to be having fun, so I was like, Okay. But I did think, Oh shoot. He can’t sing very well. That was my first impression. I think I was just being judgmental. You know I was just being picky because… I don’t know. He was my brother. I was thinking, What’s he trying to do now? I honestly didn’t think anything would happen—I didn’t think he would become famous. Hell no. Uh-uh. I never thought that for one minute.