Diary of a Rock Superstar

I always thought that being in a band would get me laid… but I was not prepared for the effect it would have on my life.

Most people would assume that I have a carefree and happy existence, free from the worries of the “common man,” but they would be wrong.  I worry…  I worry about things as much as the next guy. In fact, I probably worry a little more than the next guy…  I live in Bel Aire, and my next door neighbor is Charlie Sheen… now, he worries.  He worries about all kinds of things.  Like, whether or not his father will get arrested for barricading an embassy with a bunch of pierced kids from Seattle. Whether or not his wife, Denise, is taken seriously as a bimbo… Whether or not people think he is a more serious actor than Ally Sheedy.  Whether or not people even remember Ally Sheedy… whether or not Anthony Michael Hall still knows how to find him.

But, I worry more than even Charlie, because I have reason to.  When my band, Vermin, first broke onto the national charts in 1987 with our hit “Big Love Butt,”  I thought that my world would never be troubled by doubt or even conscious thought again.  For Rock stars, the eighties were a self-destructive runaway train of sex, private planes, monkeys, spandex and videos featuring explosions and midgets.  We were all conservative Reaganites, and we were all cumsoaked and high on life… and, massive doses of Peruvian flake… they were good times.  Nobody expected much of us, all we had to have was a decent guitar player who could play scales really fast.  Throw in some lyrics comparing a girl’s ass to a Hostess cupcake, make a video with an exploding midget, and you had a hit…  Boom, more sex, more drugs, another monkey to replace the one your Guatemalan cleaning lady poisoned because he pissed in her hair.  It was just that easy.

The women were easy too…  on any given night on the Sunset strip you could find some poor, forlorn, silicone injected groupie who would gladly tantrically fellate you for hours on end, in the manner of a forbidden manuscript of the Kama Sutra, simply to have the distinction of having tantrically fellated you for hours on end, in the manner of a forbidden manuscript of the Kama Sutra…  because you were in a band…  because you had money, because you had big hair, because you were a sensitive artist who sang that power ballad about how hard it was being on the road, and how groupies who tantrically fellated you for hours on end, in the manner of a forbidden manuscript of the Kama Sutra meant nothing, as long as you knew that soon you would be going home to your sweet rose with the Hostess cupcake ass... once again, good times.

The dawn of the nineties really didn’t look that different to us…  except for the fact that now most of the songs had to be about rock n’ roll cowboy loners who wore fashionable faux-leather dusters,  and filmed guitar solos in the middle of the desert while wearing fashionable faux-leather dusters…  I looked good in a faux-leather duster, and cowboy loners are cool… plus, now that we were getting older, our audience expected us to grow up a bit, drop the fun boy party exterior, and get married to supermodels with huge tits.  Everything else just stayed the same, except now there were a lot of out of work exploding midgets… the party ended for them just a hair sooner than it would for us.

When we first heard grunge, we never thought it would change our world…  they were depressed, they were REAL druggies who sang about despair, about angst, and they never wore dusters.  They weren’t a threat, or so we thought…  but then Cobain changed everything.

All of a sudden, we had to be relevant.  We had to be political, we had to “matter”…

But most of us, didn’t know how.  It’s hard to write an overtly covert political song that encompasses the angst and alienation most rock fans feel… we tried.  I dashed off “I Feel Really Really Bad” in just over an hour...  it was angry, it was catchy… it was radio-friendly… it went nowhere.  I figured I had just not worded it strongly enough… the follow-up “Fuck You, We Have Angst, Cockshit Mutherfuckers” did even worse.   In desperation we did our first "farewell" tour.  It went well, until we got to Cleveland... Jesus what a disaster,  $80,000 worth of damage, and our T-Shirt sales were almost zero.

We tried an image change. We re-united publicly.  We dumped the dusters and the spandex, we started wearing flannel.  I stopped bathing. Our drummer, Crummy,  switched to heroin.  The supermodel wives were replaced, at great expense due to California’s division of property laws, by artsy girlfriends with glasses who said “right on” and fronted bands with names like “Angry Pussy…” nothing worked… and, the party wound down.  I’ll never forget the day the truck came and took the last of my monkeys to the zoo… he looked so heartbroken, I’m sure I did too.

We caught a break in 93’ when Crummy died of an overdose.  We released a greatest hits album, it charted.  We found a new drummer with a socially acceptable, but not fatal, drug habit.  He had the added plus of having a combative relationship with both the press and his alt-rock girlfriend…  We did our second "farewell" tour.  I thought we might make it back to the top.  I was wrong.  Because then, Cobain went and died…  and suddenly, being relevant wasn’t relevant anymore… unless you were gangsta relevant.  We weren’t.

We tried another image change, and after a band vote, and a public re-reunification decided that we would still be a metal band, who wasn’t too relevant, but who were now serious artists looking for that “new sound.”  It gave us time to figure out what to do…  

If we were lucky, we might get a cameo in some movie that cost less than one of our midget videos, playing the crazy loner who runs a gas station in the Texas desert with his dog and a one legged biker chick.  We wore more black and grew goatees, got more “serious” tattoos, and went to indie film premieres and talked about how important it was that different points of view were given the chance to express themselves…  we did another "farewell" tour... we had nothing else.

Then in the late nineties the Behind the Music thing started…  a chance to shine once again.  We did a one hour show on our career, we eulogized Crummy, we cried as we talked about how we had wrecked Ferraris because we were so young and foolish.  It worked, we were interesting elder statesmen now…

We made a record, it charted…  we got bigger roles, playing crazier loners, in better movies.  We had children with our socially relevant wives and went to premieres with them in tow… we got even more “serious” tattoos, we wore black Armani suits with no tie and a white shirt open at the collar and a five o’clock shadow on our faces to prove that we hadn’t “sold out.”  We did our first "together again" tour.

So, now we sit and we worry.  We have been on top, and we have been at the bottom.  It sucks at the bottom.  We don’t make albums anymore, too risky… might flop.  We do a single every so often and release it quietly…  if it makes any noise, we call it a toss off, and say we’re glad people are listening, but it isn’t important because we’re only doing it because as artists we felt the need to record something.  If it doesn’t make any noise, we never play the song again… not even in rehearsal for a bar tour.  But, we are always aware of our status… and we’ll do almost anything to keep it.  Anything, that is, short of selling out completely… And that’s it, my story.  I have to pack now, I leave for the celebrity “Real World” house tomorrow…  I really hope I don’t wind up in the same room as the guy who played “Booger” in “Revenge of the Nerds,” one of those damn Corey guys, or Vince Neal...  please God, let it be an aging, but lonely Supermodel with huge tits...  just for old times sake.

I have to say that I have been glad lately when I watch the news...  because once again, I get to see and hear the man who reinvigorated my passion for politics so many years ago...  Bill Clinton.

I have always been a fan of this man , and while he may make some on both the right, and left angry, I have always seen him as a true moderate.  A man who would make tough decisions on either side of the political fence, decisions that I didn't always agree with...  decisions which were in the interests of a true public policy...  and that is what made him so successful.  He, whether right or wrong, decided...  and made policy.  People called it waffling, I call it battle smarts.  His record is what it is, it stands on its own, I won't debate it here.

What I miss is Bill Clinton, the man...  he was and is flawed, funny, self-effacing, egotistic, right, and wrong...  but he is, in my humble opinion, the best thing that has happened to this country in many years, and the political genius of his generation...  he also was, and remains a most dedicated servant of the public good, and we could use him again right now more than ever.

I know he will never read these words, but to you Mr. President, thank you...  it's good to see you again.

To paraphrase "The Wild One," we're gonna miss you Johnny. It won't be the same without you...

Marlon Brando - 1924-2004

Hope you are riding in a car somewhere on a desolate highway with Jimmy, and Monty, and a bottle of hootch...