by Vince Neil
On that day, Los Angeles was under seige; bad storms and flash flooding was typical for this time of year, the rainy season in Southern Cal. This storm was especially bad, probably part of an El Niño; on TV it was like a scene from a fucking disaster movie. You can look it up in the archives. Governor Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency and urged everyone to remain indoors. The entire Sepulveda Basin had been flooded; six people lost their lives. There were road closures. Plus, you have to remember, we lived in an exposed house on a ridge in a pretty rural area, so everything seemed even worse: It was literally raining so hard you couldn’t see. As far as I was concerned, there was no need to risk my life to drive to rehearsal. There were plenty other days in front of us, you know? Why risk your life in a storm? I was like, I’m not going out in this shit.
The story goes that Nikki and Tommy and Mick waited four hours for me to come. Pissed, they had our tour manager, Mike Amato, send me a fax, asking where I was and ordering me to come to the studio immediately.
I was like, What the fuck, you know? Who is ordering me to do shit? What the fuck do you mean, immediately? Nobody talks to me that way. I am a grown man.
I called the studio hoping the fax was Nikki’s weird idea of a joke, but of course it wasn’t. Nikki started balling me out because my phone line had been constantly busy—maybe it was out. How was I supposed to know the line was out? And if it was out, how did I get the fax?
The funny thing about all this stuff—the thing that nobody says—is that the guys had been rehearsing with John Corabi this whole time. I didn’t know about it then, but I know about it now. So if you ask me, you can tell this story one hundred ways, but there’s only one truth. They just kind of masterminded some shit with this whole thing ’cause they wanted to get rid of me and replace me with Corabi.
I drove in to the studio. I don’t remember if it was in Hollywood or in the Valley. I don’t remember which one of my thirty cars I drove—probably one of the four-wheelers or the Hummer. When I got there Nikki and them start talking all this trash about how I was out the night before drunk and how they are thinking of… getting a new lead singer!!!!
When I heard that I think I went deaf and blind.
I was like, Fuck this shit, I’m outta here.
It sounded to me like I’d just been fired.
On Valentine’s Day, Mötley put out a press statement: “Race car driving has become a priority in Neil’s life, and he’s dedicated much of his time and energy to it. The Crüe’s relationship to Vince began to deteriorate because his band-mates felt he didn’t share their determination and passion for music. Vince was the only Crüe member who didn’t regularly participate in the song writing process.”
First of all, let me tell you, when they issued this, the racing season was over. I wasn’t even driving at the time. Then they blame my tardiness all the time? Are you fuckin’ kidding me? There was a fuckin’ storm that day—did they mention that in the press release? Was I racing cars that day? They just wanted an excuse to get rid of me. And that was it, cut-and-dry. It was a them-or-me situation—and it’s always been that way, since the accident days. It’s always them against me. They’re just not nice people. They don’t know what friends really are. They think friends are, “What can you do for me?” It’s like Tommy and Nikki were the center of things and Mick was the yes-man. Mick always agreed with whatever Nikki and Tommy said.
So when I got to rehearsal and it was basically just one of those situations. It was like: “Fuck you.” No. Fuck you. That was it. And I drove right home. A lot of people ask the question, “Were you fired or did you quit?” Because those guys say I quit.
If you ask me, the fired came first. I mean, it was a little outrageous. I’m supposed to be 25 percent of this thing and you’re firing me? And the band manager, Doug Thaler, was sitting right there! And I’m like, We’re the biggest band in the world and you’re going to watch it dissolve right in front of your eyes? Great management, you know?
If I was the manager, I think I would have taken some control at that point. As a manager I would have told everybody to go home, take a week off, take two weeks off, calm down. I would have counseled everybody to chill out for a bit. I thought it was weird that he didn’t do that, you know?
When I got home, Thaler called.
I take the phone, thinking he’s going to say what I just said—take a couple weeks off, everybody cool down.
But that’s not what he says. He says, “I think we’re going to let you out of your contract.”
That sounds pretty much like, “You’re fired.”
Don’t you agree?
Chapter 8
WHO’LL STOP THE RAIN
If I told you the breakup of Mötley Crüe didn’t affect me, I’d be lying.
At first I was pissed, especially about the way they announced it on Valentine’s Day and said I was “the only Crüe member who didn’t regularly participate in the song writing process.” That’s pretty funny, because when you look at all the songs, all the hits, you see the name Neil there. I wrote the melody for “Home Sweet Home.” I wrote the melody for “Wild Side.” I wrote the melody for “Same Ol’ Situation.” You look at all my songwriting credits and there can be only one conclusion: Fuck yeah, he contributed.
Then the anger cleared a little and I got excited. I realized maybe this was a blessing in disguise. I was finally rid of those bastards. Plus, I wasn’t that great in math, but I understood the concept of division. When you don’t have partners and you don’t have to split the proceeds, you can make a whole lot more money! Especially on tour. Lower expenses, higher share of the gate. The ticket prices are the same if you’re one person or ten.
I called up the head of Elektra at the time, Bob Krasnow, and said, “I’m not in Mötley Crüe anymore, where do I stand? What are my options?”
And he said… all together now, “First you gotta find a manager, then we’ll talk about it.”
Krasnow did let me know that the company retained an option on me for solo records. Bottom line: I had value. With or without Mötley, there would be money coming in, I could earn, I could have a career.
Thus fortified, I did what I always did… I decided to celebrate.
Sharise Rudell Neil Vince’s Second Wife
Skylar was no accident. We tried for Skylar. Vince had really wanted a baby. When I started dating him, Beth had left him a month before. She had taken Little Beth, obviously, and wouldn’t let her see Vince. I got to see the fallout from all that—Vince crying, Vince begging to see his baby. And Beth saying no. She was calling him, leaving lots of mean and nasty messages on his machine, and he would call her back and they would fight for hours on the phone. And I remember it was Little Beth’s birthday—I think it was her second birthday or maybe her third birthday. They were going to go to Disneyland together. So Vince went out to Toys“R”Us and bought her all these presents. One of them was this car that she could actually sit in and drive. It was like the BIGFOOT monster truck, you know, and you could press the pedal and it actually went—I think it was rechargeable. He bought all these toys and I wrapped them all for him, for her. And then that morning, the morning of her birthday, Beth tells him, “Don’t bring any toys; she can’t have them. I don’t want you bringing all that stuff.” So he was crushed. He wanted to be the daddy with the presents. I saw over the next two years him asking to see Little Beth. And I saw him be crushed every time that Beth said no. So when I became the age where I felt I was ready to have a baby, I wanted to have a baby; I couldn’t wait to give that to him again. And he was excited, too. I mean, we were so excited we were having a little girl, especially.
I think that he never considered himself a married man. I think that he always conducted himself as if he was single when he was not with me. When he was on the road, he acted as if he was single. This is what I hear that athletes do—when they all get on the plane to go to the game, all the guys kinda say, “Hey, did you bring your road dick?” It’s their opp
ortunity to be bad together. And nobody’s gonna tell. I think it’s the same mentality for rock stars. They all are bad and they all keep the secrets. If I found out he did something one time, there were probably twenty or fifty or a hundred times that I didn’t know about. But the one I did find out about happened. He was with that porno girl when I was pregnant. Before that, I thought we were doing great. Cheating on your wife when she’s pregnant is really the shittiest thing you can do to a woman. I guess it’s common. But I couldn’t really deal with it. I guess that’s when everything started to fall apart. That’s when the shit hit the fan.
After that it was like everything came crashing down in a way. When you cheat on somebody, it’s poison. It’s poison forever to the relationship. Nothing is ever the same. I kicked him out of the house—that’s where he lived, at the Bel Age, for the next six months. I said, “I’ll never get back with you. It’s not going to happen.” He wanted to go to counseling; over the next six months we went to counseling. We eventually got back together, but the only reason I wanted to get back together was so that he would know his daughter. I was completely done with him, really.
The weird thing was, Vince called me twenty times a day. This is why I could not believe that he would ever even cheat on me, because the guy stayed in constant contact with me. He was always like, “Come down to the studio.” He always wanted me right next to him. When he was on the road he would call me when he woke up. He’d call me before he ordered breakfast, when he got breakfast, or after he got breakfast. Before he went to the gig, when he got to the gig, before the show, after the show, and then when he went to sleep. Like that’s how many times a day he called me? So where was he fitting in time with girls? Like I just didn’t even think that that was possible, right? Why would he be calling me if there was a girl right there? That just doesn’t make sense in my world.
Then you know where he went the night that I had Skylar? He went to the porno chick’s house, but he told me he was going home ’cause he couldn’t sleep in the hospital bed. But later I found out that’s not what he did. I mean that’s just so… sick.
It was seven years of my life. I will say this: When I watch our home videos we were really good friends. We really got along great. We cracked up together. Every day of my life he told me, “You’re beautiful; I love you.” There were some great parts to it, which is why I stayed for as long as I did. You don’t stay for seven years if it’s just ugly, ugly, ugly. But these ugly experiences would come like every couple months. It got to a point where I was trying to control him because I didn’t want him to do something that would ruin the marriage. Because if he did that, I would have to leave. I would say, “Don’t go to strip clubs.” Because I knew that once he had nine drinks at a strip club he would have no control over what he did next. Girls just threw themselves at him. Then he would end up in bed with one. And he’d be like, “Ooops, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It just happened.”
It was essentially over with Sharise. Right before Mötley fired me—three days before, to be exact—we’d been celebrating my birthday at the Roxy with Robert Patrick, who played the mercury-based villain in Terminator 2, and a bunch of other people. At one point, me and Patrick were chatting up this porn star named Lenay. Sharise must have been pretty drunk. When she spotted us, she came storming across the room and threw a drink in my face, glass and all. She’s a big girl, remember. That glass had some force behind it. I was stunned. The next thing I knew the whole place was in an uproar; we both got thrown out of the club. Nice, right?
Around that time, I’d been hanging out with a girl named Shannon Wilsey. To the rest of the world, she was known as Savannah. She was this amazingly beautiful platinum blond Vivid Video star—that’s the company that features only the really hot-looking women. Savannah was one of their first big stars. The thing about her was she didn’t look like a porn star. Not at all. I have always been a sucker for a beautiful face, beautiful eyes, beautiful lips. She was the California dream girl personified. And she was hot. It was a sex thing between us, but she was cool, too. I mean I liked her, you know?
Savannah was sweet and she was funny, but she did way too many drugs. She was a heroin addict. Plus she was really into the coke. She had this friend, another porn star, Gina Fine, a brunette. They were a couple. The three of us would hang out and drink and do drugs and have sex at Savannah’s apartment on Laurel Canyon Avenue. We just had a lot of great adult fun.
When Savvy and I went to Hawaii after the Mötley breakup, the party was on, no holds barred. I was in full-rage fuck-the-world mode. We checked into the Maui Hilton; we partied four days straight on pills, alcohol, heroin, and cocaine. I remember on the fourth day, I think it was at nighttime. I might’ve been in the bar or something, I can’t recall where I was. But I remember they came to me and told me that somebody had called 911 for Savannah—she’d had a seizure or something in the room.
By the time I got to the hospital, she was already released. We went back to the hotel and they had packed all of our bags and put them at the front desk. They were like, “Good-bye, you’re out of here.” They actually kicked us out! So we checked into the Four Seasons Maui. Fuck ’em. The Four Seasons is one of my favorite hotels in the world—much better than the Hilton.
I never knew a girl who could party like Savannah. She had a seemingly bottomless capacity. She didn’t especially love sex on camera—she always looked bored and distracted in her films—but what a specimen she was, this gorgeous Barbie doll come to life. You just wanted to devour her. After we got back from Hawaii, she picked up Gina and met me up at Oxnard, where I was racing. While we were there, Sharise showed up with Skylar in her arms—our daughter was just about one year old at the time; her birthday was March 26, 1991. Luckily, when Sharise got to the room—she got access because she was my wife—me and the girls were not there. We were somewhere else. I can only imagine the look on her face when she found all these girls’ purses and clothes and all that stuff. I’m real glad I wasn’t there.
I’d see Savannah on and off for the next two years. In July of 1994, she asked me to be her date to the Adult Video News porn awards in Las Vegas. By then I was divorced; I told her I’d go. At the last minute I canceled. A few days later, after totaling her Corvette and banging up her face, Savannah shot herself in the head with a Beretta 9mm automatic pistol. She died in the hospital on July 11, 1994. I felt terrible.
I have always wondered secretly if I somehow contributed to her death. Another piece of guilt I guess I carry around. Everybody said she was really fucked up; she had a lot of problems. I think she was molested as a young girl. When someone becomes a porn star, you have to wonder. A lot of these girls really have deep issues. There is a sweetness inside of them, though; I think it’s part of what attracts me to these types.
Though I went to rehab one more time to appease Sharise, we finally separated.
In the spring of 1992, I got out of my house and moved in with Rob Lowe, who was sober after his own well-documented fall from grace. Looking back now, Rob’s was probably the first public sex tape scandal—an encounter with two women, one of whom was underage, at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. (How’s this for coincidence: You can read about Lowe’s sex-capades and about Savannah’s life and death in Mike Sager’s collection, Scary Monsters and Super Freaks.) In the aftermath of a lawsuit, the tabloids had latched onto Rob’s story. The former Brat Pack matinee idol took a hard fall. It’s one thing to be a rock star, another to be a squeaky-clean actor type like Rob. It was devastating to his career and personal life. As a result, his wife, Sheryl, left him. So here we were, the odd couple. Two studs at large on the town.
At the time, I think I was still flirting with sobriety; I was sober on and off. Rob was definitely on the wagon. He wanted to get his life back on track. I’m pretty sure I originally met Rob at an AA meeting; that’s how we became friends. It was really good of him to extend his hospitality. I could have gone to a hotel, but I didn’t w
ant to be alone just yet.
Rob’s house was in the Hollywood Hills. We’d wake up early and go work out every day together. We’d go to meetings together. We also went out a lot. I would take him to the Rainbow. He was a total fish out of water there, this really handsome preppy clean-cut guy. And then he would take me to, I don’t know, somewhere like Nobu, that famous Hollywood sushi restaurant where all the mainstream stars like to go. I mean, you don’t ordinarily catch me eating sushi all that much. But it has always been fun for me to see the other sides of life. I have always enjoyed trying new things—up to a point. I’m not the most adventurous eater. With me and Rob, it was kind of a cultural exchange for both of us. I’ll tell you this: That guy was a chick magnet. We always had girls over at the house; it was a lot of fun. It lasted for a while—until he got back together with Sheryl.
By then I found a manager, a guy named Bruce Bird. And I got a contract… for $4 million, thank you very much. I ended up signing with Warner Bros. because it was all part of the same company, Warner/Elektra/Atlantic. Warner Bros. and Elektra kind of shared me. I got a $2 million advance. The rest would come upon production of the albums.
I was like, Fuck Mötley Crüe! I didn’t need them anymore. I don’t know what happened to those guys. Once upon a time it was great. They just changed. But I was good with it. I was fine with it. Like fuck them, you know? This is the new chapter in my life. For good measure, my lawyer sued Mötley for 25 percent of their future profits and $5 million in damages for firing me. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.
Within a month I had a hit single, “You’re Invited (but Your Friend Can’t Come).” I wrote that song in twenty minutes with Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw from Damn Yankees, for the soundtrack of the Disney movie Encino Man, starring Brendan Fraser and Pauly Shore. (Incidentally, Pauly Shore took up with Savannah after we stopped seeing each other on a regular basis—Hollywood is a very small town.) That year, me and my solo band performed “You’re Invited” live on the MTV Movie Awards. Don’t tell me I can’t write songs, motherfucker. Vince Neil was back.