Tattoos & Tequila: To Hell and Back with One of Rock's Most Notorious Frontmen

by Vince Neil

  Growing up and being his sister is… Over time, I got to know that you don’t tell people who you are. I don’t. Well, I do have this thing on my e-mail signature line for my real estate business that says “Homes For You and Your Crüe,” but I don’t really go out of my way to explain it, unless somebody asks. Because you never really know if people like you or if they like you just because of who you are, you know, Vince Neil’s sister. I learned that really soon. And now I keep my mouth closed. I don’t say anything to anybody and I’ve been that way for years.

  One time Vince gave me this amazing ring. It was like a ruby ring or something like that. It was cool. I mean, it wasn’t my style. But it was beautiful. And then he gave me this really cool pair of sunglasses. And a couple of times I’ve needed money and I went to him. Not for very much money, but I was kind of at my wit’s end and I needed money and I went to him and he helped me. I’m not a person who’s going to ask for stuff. I don’t need anything—we’re doing just fine here in Utah with my parents right nearby to help take care of the kids. I don’t ask for stuff. I don’t need anything. I don’t ask him for, like, people say, “Well gosh, why don’t you ask him to buy you a car?” Or, “Why don’t you ask him, you know, to buy you a house?” Since I’m a Realtor and all. But I don’t do that. If Vince wanted to give it to me, then that’s fine, but I don’t ask for it. I mean, he gave my mom and dad a car. That was cool. He’s a good person. He’s a good person.

  I wanted to tell you the story of when I approached Vince and asked his permission to give my daughter her middle name. My daughter Samantha was born June 19, 1997. When I found out I was pregnant and decided to name her Samantha, I wanted to have her middle name Skye, you know, after Skylar. I was at Vince’s house with my husband, Guy, and my parents. And I asked Vince if I could have his permission to name Samantha after Skylar. Vince looked at me with tears in his eyes and he said, “Of course you can, Val. You can even name her Skylar if you want.” And I said, “No, I would never do that to you. I just want to name her middle name Skye.”

  Vince came over to me and said, “I would be honored.” That felt really good.

  When I was fifteen my dad gave me a ’53 Chevy pickup truck. I would actually work on my own; I did all the work on it myself. It was kind of a tease, you know? At fifteen you didn’t have a license, but you had a car. It was sort of fucked up. Like who puts that kind of temptation in front of a rebellious fifteen-year-old boy? But being a mechanic, I guess, my dad came across this deal on a truck that was too good to turn down. I will forever love him for giving me that truck. It was cherry. I mean, it needed a lot of work, but the guts were sound.

  The deal I made with my parents was that I wasn’t supposed to drive. But my mom and my dad both worked during the days. While they were at work I often drove to school. Even before I got my truck, I remember a few times I stole my mom’s ’68 Buick Riviera—a beautiful, classic car—and drove to junior high school. Nobody drove in junior high school. The parking lot was just for teachers.

  I loved my truck. I worked on it for years, adding improvements. It had running boards on it. It had no color; it was primer color—not gray but primer brown. And I had attached these chrome Thrush pipes, you know, side pipes under the running boards. It was a five-window pickup; my mom had made me some Hawaiian curtains for the back window. The upholstery was redone real nice—the side panels I did myself with button tuck, just like here, in the banquette at Feelgoods. I mean, I went and bought the foam, I bought the leather, I bought the buttons. You drill it out, take it up, stick it back, pop it on. And I had a mural on the tailgate of, like, an orange sunset. It was a stick-on. Right on the tailgate so everybody could see it when they drove behind me. Then I had my surf racks across the back of the bed. And big slick tires. It was a really cool-looking truck; the engine was a straight six, it had a three on the tree. Eventually I took that out and mounted a Hurst shifter on the floor. I mean, I did all this shit myself. I attached the pipes. I hooked up the linkage transmission. I was fifteen, sixteen years old. I’d ask my dad questions now and then, but I pretty much did everything myself. I was always good mechanically, always good at figuring out stuff. If something isn’t working, no matter what it is, I can always get it fixed. Around the house my wife likes that.

  Charter Oak High School was literally a block and a half from Sunflower Junior High. There was a huge park directly across the street—Charter Oak Park. They had a bunch of baseball diamonds, you know, one diamond here and then another baseball diamond facing the other way. It wasn’t like a forest, but there were trees and grass and fields and then like benches under the trees. Your standard suburban park, I guess. But this was where you hung out when you went to the high school.

  There were different cliques. There were the park stoner guys and another whole surfing clan. And then you had the high school jocks, the preppies, the cheerleaders—the socials, you know, the so-called in crowd. There were all these different cliques; each group had their own turf in the park. On the other side of the park was a continuation high school for kids who’d had to drop out of other schools for various reasons. (Eventually I went there, too, and so did Tami, the mother of my first child, more about whom later.) Those kids were also in the park; they were a wide assortment, none of them exactly on the straight and narrow, sometimes for no fault of their own, it’s just the way it was, the breaks. Believe me, I understand that plenty of people had a worse childhood than I did. If I had to pick a clique that I belonged to I would say I was a park hang-out stoner guy. But part of the reason I was even in the park all the time was because I had to actually cut through the park to go to and from school. My house was on the other side.

  I think the first time I got high on marijuana I was with a girl. She was kind of like my first girlfriend. Her name was Penny Panknin. We were at her house. And I think we had a joint or a couple joints or something and smoked them and fooled around. That was the first time I got high.

  The second time I had pot mixed with PCP, a horse tranquilizer known on the street as angel dust. I remember the first time I tried it. I was with four friends in a car at a drive-in theater, watching Silver Streak, a hilarious movie with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder. My friend John Marshall handed the pipe to me; I didn’t know how much to smoke. And I sure wasn’t gonna be a puss wad and ask. I just toked it down, big-time. I ended up getting so fucked up that I could hardly move or speak. Honestly, that was one high that I wanted to see come to an end. I remember we all freaked out when a security guard came up and knocked on the window. John rolled down the window and the smoke billowed out…. I was sure we were going to jail.

  But all the guard did was ask John to take his foot off the brake. His red brake lights were disturbing the people behind us at the drive-in.

  After that I got out of the car and staggered toward the snack bar, which was located at the rear of the drive-in. Even though I was fucked up, I was totally munched out, hungry as hell. The girl who served me must have thought she was dealing with an idiot, because I could hardly speak. I ended up having to point at the stuff I wanted. I got a big box of popcorn and some sodas, but I ended up spilling everything on the endless walk back to the car. It felt like I was on one of those primitive plank bridges over a gorge. I was lucky to even find the car. The next day I smoked more. Mostly because it was there.

  Soon after that I got turned on to white cross pills, a pharmaceutical brand of speed, I think it was, a little white pill with a cross on the top. It came in a little foil packet. I think they used to sell them to truckers and shit back in the day when they called speed goofballs. When combined with angel dust and pot, the white crosses made me into a frothing maniac. Totally incapacitated.

  I was fifteen. I was a freshman. We’d get fucked up on something every day. We’d do it in the park after school. I don’t ever remember having to scour around for drugs. Everybody was doing it, you know, it was kind of there. It was the times, the mid-seventies. It was like whoever had
something, they shared it with you. You just tried it. I don’t even really remember paying for it. Maybe five dollars here or there. Or I would just buy joints and they were like a dollar or something. You’d spend your lunch money on drugs. And then you would go to English class, like, lost in space. The teacher would ask me something and I’d stare back at her. Hello? I remember smoking angel dust before school one time and just walking the hallways and not knowing where I was, bouncing into things, ’cause you hallucinate on that shit. Once I got sent to the principal for being too fucked up in class. They found me a couple hours later walking aimlessly around the football field.

  When I met Tami, I had broken my leg at a skate park in Glendora—for some reason she found it cute or sexy or whatever that I was a crip. We ended up having sex in my truck in the parking lot one afternoon. It was really hot that day. I still remember the feeling of the sun shining down on my ass. I actually didn’t really like her at first; I liked her friend. A group of us hung out at the park. I liked this girl Laurie. Laurie Ruck. Tami was her friend. I don’t know how, but somehow I ended up with Tami and not Laurie. But I ended up dating Tami for a while. Seeing her. You know, we were having sex on a regular basis. I dated a bunch of girls in high school. Since my trusting (or disinterested?) parents were at work all day, I’d take girls home during lunch break. This one girl was named Candi Hooker—I shit you not. Her father had invented Hooker headers for racing cars. What was the guy thinking when he named her? I always wondered.

  Meanwhile, my friend John Marshall and I started going to this roller-skating rink not far from school. We would try to pick up girls there. For some reason we got it in mind to sign up for this lip-synching contest they had. We really got into it. We dressed up in bell-bottom flares and polyester shirts. Some people say we wore huge wigs, but I don’ t remember that part. We did a Bachman-Turner Overdrive song, “Let It Ride.” It was like air guitar–type stuff. That’s when I realized I liked to perform. I jumped around onstage, danced, threw the microphone around. The crowd ate it up. Particularly the girls. Not only did we win our first contest—I got laid that night.

  Next we went to another rink in the Valley. We wore different outfits and did “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks. And we won again! Soon we were lip-synching all over—there was a rink in Rancho Cucamonga, a mall in Diamond Bar; all these different places held contests. I’ve always said, “I’m an entertainer.” There is a bit of ham in me, I guess. I remember when the first Van Halen album came out. It was Halloween; I dressed up like David Lee Roth and did “You Really Got Me.” I came in second. It was all lip-synching, no singing. But the crowds were real. They weren’t exactly showing their tits yet, but the seeds were definitely sown. Later I remember Van Halen came to town; they were playing at the Long Beach Arena on their very first tour, and I was selling T-shirts outside to make money. But I could hear them playing inside. And I remember saying to myself, God, I wonder what they’re doing in there right now. I wonder what’s going on. And I remember fantasizing about being inside that arena and wondering what it would be like to be up on a stage that size, with a real band, really singing.

  Two months after the last time I hooked up with Tami, she came to me and told me she was pregnant. And she said she wanted to keep the baby. Just like that. It hit me in the gut. I mean, I felt a responsibility for the whole thing. It’s burned into you, you know, you have to do the right thing. I felt like I was supposed to love this girl I hardly knew and make a family. I didn’t really love her. I didn’t even want a steady girlfriend—I was having way too much fun (and success) fucking whoever I wanted.

  But when I realized that she was really going to have the baby, I tried to make it work; I tried to be just a regular doting boyfriend. I spent a lot of time with her; I was there for her when she was kicked out of school—they didn’t allow pregnant girls in class in those days.

  My son, Neil Jason Wharton, was born October 3, 1978. My own birthday is February 8, 1961. You can do the math yourself. I was a junior. No matter how you look at it, I was a kid with a kid.

  I was working as a roadie to make some extra money, loading equipment for a Runaways concert, when my mom wheeled into the parking lot and told me it was official: I was a dad. The reality didn’t really set in, however, until I actually saw this little life I had made. I couldn’t believe the sensations I was feeling. It was way too intense to even believe. I looked at him and fell instantly in love. And then I think I probably went out somewhere and got really fucked up. I can’t remember. I couldn’t fuckin’ believe it. I didn’t know what the fuck to do with a kid. It was a big joke around school: I was the only kid at Charter Oak High paying child support. Only it didn’t feel like a joke to me.

  In the beginning I really tried. I tried to be the boyfriend, husband figure, whatever. Father figure. I was so young. Tami was cool. We always got along. She never did anything wrong to me, ever. She was a cool girl. I liked her; I did. I just wasn’t ready to be a dad. Looking back, I wish I had been there more. But I couldn’t be. When Neil was born, it was hard to have that responsibility. Actually, my mom kind of took that responsibility on for me. For a while Tami lived at my parents’ house. Eventually I moved out, started living somewhere else. I mean I did try to make a go of it for, for a little while. But it just, I just couldn’t do it.

  As an escape, I guess, I started surfing more than ever. It was so peaceful. The drive to the beach, a couple of joints, and then it was just you and your buddies and the waves, the adrenaline rush of surfing. If you’re not from the coast and you’ve never surfed, maybe you’ve snowboarded. It’s something like that, I imagine. Going downhill fast on a board. The ocean was a long way from where we lived. We had to be dedicated. We’d pile in my truck or somebody’s car and drive to the coast. It took like an hour, depending on traffic. Sometimes I wouldn’t even go to school. I would actually throw my surfboard behind my back wall and I’d be like, “Okay, Mom, I’m going to school.” And I’d just go around the back of the house, pick up my surfboard, and then drive off. I’d pick up my friends; we’d go down to Huntington Beach, Seal Beach. I didn’t ditch class every day. I didn’t miss school for weeks at a time. It was more if like it was a particularly beautiful day, a great day for surfing. And we’d be like fuck it. It was like a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off situation.

  I wasn’t really that good a surfer, but I was good enough. There was a surf team from the school, too. We’d surf against other schools and stuff. It was informal, but it was still a team. After the meets or anytime really we liked to drink. I remember taking a thing of orange juice and a pint of vodka and pouring out some of the orange juice, pouring in the pint. One time I passed out from drinking too much. I actually woke up several hours later on the beach. When I’d passed out I had my hand across my chest. By the time I woke up, I was all sunburned… and there was an image of my hand burned into my chest. I got so sick that day. To this day I still can’t stand the smell of vodka orange juice. I mean it stuck with me that long. I got so sick. It was, like, traumatic obviously.

  A big milestone of high school for me was the time, during freshman year, that somebody stole my surfboard racks. His name was Horace. He was an asshole. A football player. This one time I came out to my truck at lunchtime and I noticed somebody had stolen my racks. I’m pretty sure I was amped up on speed and dust at the time. This was just, like, before shop class. Being pissed off, I obsessively looked in everybody’s car until I found my surfboard racks in the back of this guy Horace’s car.

  Horace was a barrel-chested muscle head who was constantly victimizing underclassmen and anyone else who came within range of his beady eyes. I went looking for him and found him inside school, walking with a bunch of the football players in the hallway. I confronted him, you know? I was, like, “Did you fuckin’ take my surf racks, you fuckin’ asshole?”

  He looked at me and lied to my face. He was like, “No. Fuck you.”

  So I go, “You know what? Fuck you, moth
erfucker.” And boom! I fucking punched him in the face and knocked him out cold. I can still see his eyes rolling back in his head. And then he dropped to the floor like a slab of meat and banged his coconut. It was just this sickening hollow sound, you know? Like craaaak! And this was a big, big football guy, you know? And he went down like a ton. And all his friends were in shock.

  I just stood there. I think I was shocked, too. And totally tweaked.

  Then the bell rang, so I went to class.

  Not even ten minutes later, here comes the principal. He looks at my hand. My knuckles were bleeding. It was an open-and-shut case. They actually had to call an ambulance for the guy ’cause he was unconscious when they found him. He had a broken nose and a broken jaw.

  I was suspended for two weeks. But when I got back… The funny thing was… all the football players actually liked me after that. They hated that guy. I became, like, an honorary jock. One of the players came up and said, you know, “I wish I did that a long time ago.” Nobody ever, ever fucked with me after that.

  Partially because of some of the new jock friends I made, when spring came I decided to go out for the varsity baseball team. To everybody’s surprise, I made it. I was pretty proud of myself. I mean I came from nowhere; people are serious about their baseball in California—all these kids had played club ball for years. I played center field and first base. I was an okay hitter, but I was a great fielder. No ball could get past me. Everybody was proud of me, talking about what a great asset I was going to be to the team. Even my parents were proud of me. Baseball was something they could understand. Maybe their son was gonna turn out okay after all, you know? Maybe this would be just the thing I needed after venturing down the path of drugs, surfing, and girls.