Evil Origins: A Horror & Dark Fantasy Collection (114 page)

This
picture is from a trip to New Orleans with the boys in the spring of 2001.Those
are plastic trees inside raised marble beds sitting in the hotel’s main lobby.
I could not have found anyone more deserving of this book’s dedication than its
recipient, pictured here. We should have specified where and which kind when we
told him to “go to bed, you’re fucking drunk.”

Proof
of Coolness

Hit
Explosion

The
incredible K-Tel release known as
Hit Explosion
hit the shelves in 1983
and was the first commercial recording I purchased with my own money. The
cassette was loaded with hits practically exploding from the tape heads. I wish
I could find some small kernel of hipness that I could salvage from this piece
of memorabilia, but alas, I cannot. “Eye of the Tiger?” Maybe.

Def
Leppard

Thankfully,
I did not get sugar poured on me at this show. As you know by now, my kinship
with Def Leppard’s Joe Elliot bordered on a mancrush. However, by early 1988, I
had begun to relent and stopped writing him letters begging for a private
Leppard show in my backyard. This was a landmark tour for various reasons,
including the debut of Rick Allen (the one-armed wonder) on his custom
electronic kit, Def Leppard playing arena shows “in the round,” which meant there
wasn’t a bad seat in the house, and Tesla as the opening act, clearly one of
the most underrated bands in the history of late 1980s Los Angeles hair metal
bands.

Monsters
of Rock

Although
not my first concert (that was Mötley Crüe at Pittsburgh Civic Arena in about
1984 on the
Shout at the Devil
tour), Van Halen’s
Monsters of Rock
was the first outdoor stadium concert I attended. My friend Jeff, a coworker
Rob, and I loaded up Jeff’s Datsun 210 with a moldy cooler (empty) and a
cassette deck stuffed with Iron Maiden before driving down to Three Rivers
Stadium for the eight-hour show. I vividly remember standing three rows from
the stage in front of Metallica’s new bass player, Jason Newsted, while people
hurled drinks and insults at him as if he were somehow responsible for Cliff
Burton’s death. I was stuck there on the AstroTurf infield for the Scorpions
set without drinking water but did get the benefit of being doused with a fire
hose as temperatures on the field approached ninety degrees. Jeff and I left
midway through the Van Halen set without our buddy Rob, who had gotten too
drunk to remember to find us at Gate A. In the days before cellphones, you
showed up where and when you were supposed to, or your ass walked home. Rob’s
ass walked home. He didn’t speak to us for months afterwards.

1988

This
seemed to have been a huge concert-going year for me. Seventeen years old,
working after school, and several friends at or near age twenty-one provided
the perfect storm of loud, sweaty, rock goodness. While not all of these shows were
memorable, and some kind of sucked (Whitesnake), they all gave me the
opportunity to ogle poufy-haired metal chicks in their natural slutty habitat.

1989

While
this ticket stub is from the
Dr. Feelgood
tour of 1989–1990, my first
concert was the Mötley Crüe show in 1984, the
Shout at the Devil
tour.
And it’s that legendary tour that spawned my “first concert” story.

I
was thirteen, and my brother was ten, which meant my parents would not allow us
to go without one of them. I guess my dad drew the short straw, because he
drove us to the Pittsburgh Civic Arena. I must begin by saying, that to this
day, I have never heard my dad drop an f-bomb. His favorite expression of
exasperation is “What the suck?” My brother and I now say this to each other
(when Dad is not around) all the time. I knew from the moment we pulled into
the parking lot that I was in for a bizarre mix of pre-teen titillation and an
all-out shamefest while walking next to my dad and my little brother. There was
enough Aqua Net and reefer smoke in the air to give anyone a decent contact
high. When we got into the arena, Dad (still being a good sport) purchased us a
Mötley Crüe headband and an official program. I still have the former, but not
the latter. The opening act was Y&T, and they began their set in total darkness.
Lead singer Dave Meniketti stepped up to the microphone to rip into “Summertime
Girls” and shouted, “Okay ‘summertime girls,’ let me see your big fucking titties!”
I didn’t want to look my dad in the face, but I couldn’t stop myself. He stood
there, stoic and unmoving as if someone had raised an American flag over Iwo
Jima. The rest of Y&T’s set continued as you would expect, with
pyrotechnics and forced sing-alongs. When the boys in the Crüe took the stage,
you know what song I wanted to hear, and damn if they didn’t open the show with
it. Hearing that riff in an arena full of people fist-pumping and screaming
“Shout, shout, shout at the devil” made me forget my old man was standing next
to me.

I
don’t remember much else from that night. My dad never spoke of it, and in a
strange coincidence, 1985 was the year I became old enough to attend rock
concerts without parental supervision.

1990

My
mother despised my earrings, my music, and my long hair. She’d threaten to cut it
off in my sleep (hair, not ears). I think she hated knowing that friends and
neighbors in church would see me walking down the aisle for communion and
whisper to their spouses, “Honey, isn’t that the Thorn boy? My God, look at his
hair. That just screams poor parenting.” Today, she has more tattoos than I do.
Go figure.

For
the memorable
The Razor’s Edge
tour, the boys in the band loaded up on
Angus dollars and dropped them from the rafters during “Money Talks.” The bill
you see is the one I grabbed after elbowing a young girl in the nose for it.

1991