Fargo Rock City (36 page)

For the next two and a half years, I felt as though I had to be drunk (or at least drinking) whenever I was out in public. I came to the conclusion that this was what people wanted from me, and—quite honestly—I'm pretty sure my perception was accurate. I became my own personal publicist and I created my own little public identity, and it quickly became reality. It's the same thing that happened to Tommy Lee (only he took it a million steps further). Being a predictable public booze hound is really just another example of constructed glamour: A band like Mötley Crüe told me what being a superstar drunk exemplified, and then I persuaded myself to embody it. Drinking became a job.

Speaking of my beloved Crüe (and about getting drunk), I recently watched VH1's
Behind the Music: Mötley Crüe
for about the eighth time. As a historical document, it's not all that insightful; the only thing I really learned was the reason they put umlauts over the
o
and
u
in their logo was because they were drinking Löwenbräu when they came up with the name. I also learned that Razzle Dingley, the drummer of Hanoi Rocks who died in Vince Neil's '84 car wreck, may have been from Finland (previous sources had always indicated Hanoi Rocks was a Norwegian metal band). Most importantly, I was reminded that hard-rock guys always refer to cocaine as “Krell” (according to David Lee Roth, “Krell” was the name of an extinct race of aliens from a 1956 movie called
Forbidden Planet;
Dave never explained the logic behind this slang, but he swears he fought some killer “Krell Wars” with Ozzy Osbourne when Van Halen opened Black Sabbath's '78 tour).

Behind the Music
is an especially delicious train wreck for old metal fans. It completely plays into the unhealthy voyeurism that former rock kids like me can't deny. All the episodes are structured exactly the same: An artist (1) starts with nothing but a dream, (2) rises to multiplatinum success, (3) succumbs to the drugs and booze and sex that come with that success, (4) crashes into bankruptcy, and (5) rises from the ashes. In Mötley Crüe's case, this happened three separate times.

Part of this comes off as pathetic. Rob Zombie told me he
despises
Behind the Music
and thinks it should be called VH1's
Stupid Idiots Who Lost All Their Money.
Zombie feels the reason people like these stories is because of social perversity: We enjoy watching heroes fail. “I can't understand why people think that's cool,” Zombie said. “Sometimes I think people want musicians to be stupid so they can laugh at them when they hit rock bottom. They want to be able to tell their friends they saw some loser from Guns N' Roses explain how he went broke.”

I don't doubt that there's some truth in that.
Behind the Music
certainly promotes the idea that musicians are stupid people who can't handle prosperity. However, these melodramatic rise-and-fall stories have a special meaning for people who used to have a very real “relationship” with these spandex-clad angels.

For example, take the aforementioned Vince Neil auto wreck. The year 1984 probably marked the height of my Mötley Crüe obsession. It was winter, and I was listening to
Shout at the Devil
every day (and I mean every day). My metal friends and I often discussed the upcoming Crüe record that was scheduled to hit stores later the following summer. We knew the word “pain” was part of the record's title, and—at least according to Nikki Sixx's interviews—it was going to be exactly what we wanted, regardless of what that might be (it was going to be “heavier,” “bluesier,” “harder,” and it was going to have a bunch of hit singles while still being “less commercial”).

Since we didn't have MTV and nobody listened to the radio, the North Dakota metal community found out about Vince's car wreck through the local newspaper. Mötley Crüe was just big enough to warrant an AP story whenever one of its members killed somebody, and I remember being mildly excited when I saw a nine-inch article about an accident involving Vince Neil Wharton, the lead singer from the “rock 'n'roll band Mötley Crüe.” To me, that line was the most offensive part of the entire article—Mötley Crüe was
not
a “rock 'n' roll band.” Bruce fucking Springsteen was in a “rock 'n' roll band.” Mötley was a
heavy metal
band. I immediately questioned the reporter's credibility.

At the time, this event did not seem like a tragedy. Before the death of Razzle, I had never even heard of Hanoi Rocks. Hardly anyone had; I'm sure the untimely death of their drummer was the greatest thing that ever happened to their commercial viability. My main concern was that Vince was okay—that is to say, okay enough to finish the new record.

Not only had Neil killed his co-pilot, he had also rammed into another car, badly injuring its two passengers (one of them was a woman who suffered permanent brain damage). As an adult, I now realize that normal people go to prison for this sort of thing. But that never crossed my mind as a twelve-year-old. I was somehow naive and jaded at the same time: Part of me didn't think
anyone
could go to jail for an
accident
(that was the naive part), and part of me already knew that famous people never go to jail for
anything
(that was the jaded part).

There was another kid in my high school named Eric; he was three years older than me and the vortex of the burgeoning Wyndmere metal scene. Eric had long hair and took guitar lessons (he could play “Smoke on the Water”!), and even though he was an honor student and a fundamentally good person, all the local parents hated him (especially mine). Today, Eric is a doctor, but in 1984 he aspired to be as sinister as most adults assumed he was: On a fateful autumn night in 1985, he and two other ruffians vandalized an abandoned schoolhouse with an axe (a crime that remains “unsolved”). This was about the same time Eric took to calling himself “Nikki.”

ANYWAY, I stayed over at Eric's (Nikki's?) house one night, and I remember that he had the Neil newspaper article taped to his wall. It would be easy to look back and suggest that he did this to “glorify” the act, but that was not the case. It was because this story validated the existence of Mötley Crüe. One of “our” people was making news in “their” world. This is a very common paradigm held in small towns. If somebody who grew up in your community wins a Nobel Prize, you cut out the newspaper story and put it on the bulletin board; if someone from your town grows up and becomes America's most depraved serial rapist, you
cut out the newspaper story and put it on the bulletin board. It's just nice to see someone doing
anything.

I can completely remember discussing Vince's accident that night; we were listening to Twisted Sister's
Stay Hungry
and had finished playing with Eric's Intellivision. The reason I remember it so vividly is because Eric was drinking a beer. This was a new experience for me. I wasn't even drinking—I was just
hanging out
with somebody who was. We were in the basement (Eric essentially lived in the basement), and he nonchalantly took an Old Milwaukee from the fridge and replaced it with a warm can from the storage closet. He asked me if I wanted one, and I said “no.” I'm not sure if Eric was showing off or trying to coerce me into drinking, but I really doubt it was either. He was not prone to such behavior (especially since we were the only people in the room).

In retrospect, this does not seem dangerous (or even very rebellious). But I'm stunned by the unknowing hypocrisy of my adolescent mind. I was unwilling to drink a beer, and I was mildly disturbed by the fact that my friend was, but I saw nothing wrong whatsoever about Vince Neil getting wasted and destroying a total stranger's brain. Here again, the separation between my reality and the world of my idols is staggering. I obviously felt no human kinship to Vince Neil at all. His lifestyle and his music were equally unreal. I did not see his drinking as good or bad; I simply saw his drinking as
his.

But that would not always be the case.

As I look back at my career as an alcoholic, I can usually break it down in one of two ways: by booze, or by the band that came with it. For the purposes of this discussion, I will do both. I began drinking earnestly during the second semester of my freshman year at college (roughly one year before the aforementioned hockey fiasco). This is what I normally classify as my “early whiskey period,” but it can also be referred to as the “Crüe months.” At the time, Mötley Crüe was still my favorite band, and since this was an introductory period to alcoholism, I used Nikki Sixx as a reference point. Nikki (along with Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony) was an adamant supporter of Jack Daniel's
whiskey, so that's what I liked to drink. And when I say “drinking,” I basically mean sitting in my dorm room with three other guys, watching movies, and getting loaded. Like most new drinkers, I was still struggling with beer consumption. Beer is like coffee; you have to force yourself to drink it for months before you actually think it tastes good, and then you want to drink it all the time. At this juncture, whiskey made more sense, because we'd mix it with Coke, and then it would taste like really bad Coke. One bottle of Southern Comfort could get four of us drunk (the reason we replaced Jack with SoCo was because we were always broke, and—when you get right down to it—what the fuck did we know about whiskey? In fact, I still don't understand people who know a lot about alcohol. I'm sure I'll never remember the difference between “whiskey” and “bourbon,” even though I'm more than willing to pour both down my gullet).

The summer after my freshman year (this is 1991), I lived with my goofball sidekick Mike Schauer. At the time, Mike was obsessed with Warrant, so I pretended to hate them. My main argument was that they had too many guys in the band; I was a big supporter of four-member groups, while Mike favored five-man ensembles (our other major argument was over whose Nintendo baseball team was more “popular” with the simulated Nintendo fans). Nonetheless, we still listened to a lot of
Cherry Pie
over those three months (as well as ample doses of Skid Row's
Slave to the Grind
), and that seemed to foster the consumption of Coors and Budweiser. Warrant was more of a populist party band, and their music was not founded on being wasted every moment of the day. In fact, Warrant even appealed to the three girls who lived next door to us, so we actually dabbled in “social drinking,” a concept Mike and I had never before understood. We still weren't very good at it—one of us usually puked (usually Mike, who was always prone to puking)—but it was still a different kind of booze-soaked insanity. Beer was much more user-friendly. I'm sure if Warrant had kept putting out decent records, I'd own one of those home-brewing kits.

Fall of 1991 was when we all “discovered” Nirvana and Pearl
Jam, and that prompted the Vodka Age. Beer suddenly seemed antiquated; frat boys and football players drank Budweiser. Of course,
we
drank Budweiser too—but only when we listened to Guns N' Roses. All those L.A. metal bands loved Bud, even after they got rich. It was another example of six-string patriotism: Heavy metal was the most American of musical genres. After a hard night of bloated commercialism and meaningless sex, Budweiser helped you unwind like a man, even though it's made from rice.

That spring, my friends and I started aggressively going to keg parties; this became the driving force in all our lives. All week long, campus conversations focused on where the parties were going to be that weekend. Friday night, you drank in your dorm room until it got dark (7:20 in the winter, 9:05 in the summer), and then you hit as many parties as you could. If keg cups cost $3 at the door, you viewed it as a wonderful bargain; if they were $4, you had to drink as much as possible to break even; if they were $5, you went somewhere else. Of course, if you were a girl, cups were always free, but you were halfway expected to eventually put out.

Here's how the process works at a normal keg party: As you drink yourself into a zombie, you walk around and ask everyone where they are going to party tomorrow night. Saturday night, you see these same people and ask them if they had a good time the night before. These are your “keg party friends.” You know nothing about them and you have never spoken to them sober, and that is perfectly fine. If you see these people during daylight hours, you will exchange a knowing glance that recognizes your relationship but does nothing to deepen the bond (and if you
do
talk, it will only be to figure out who is having a party). There are dozens of people I shared every weekend with for over a year, and I couldn't guess where 95 percent of them live today. However, I will never forget the street location of every good party house in Grand Forks (the top five were as follows: Sixteenth and Fifth, 123 Walnut, 2100 University Avenue, the kickass studio apartment across from the Ski & Bike Shop, and the loft above
Popolino's Pizza on Gateway Avenue). I can honestly say it was the happiest period of my entire life.

Unfortunately, this is also the hardest period to categorize musically. People who throw keg parties tend to play really shitty music. Sometimes they would just turn on MTV and jack the volume up, so I remember hearing Ace of Base constantly. I was also tight with a balding high school track legend named Shane who lived in a house commonly known as the Mule Barn, and his parties were dominated by solo Ozzy (
No More Tears, No Rest for the Wicked,
all that Zakk Wylde shit). Osbourne was a good role model for these gatherings, because the primary objective was to appear pathetically and psychotically drunk in front of as many people as possible. If you were going to throw back twenty-two glasses of warm beer and totally freak out and instigate a fight and start crying and punch through a TV screen, it was absolutely essential to do so with at least forty strangers in the house. Granted, this kind of behavior wasn't very “glam” (it's hard to look glamorous when three of your friends are trying to incapacitate you before the cops come), but it was very “metal.” It was wildly popular to play the “Jekyll and Hyde” card: You acted affable and happy and quiet whenever you were straight, and then you became a depressed, suicidal wild man after a dozen drinks. Lots of folks in my social circle were obsessed with behaving this way on a weekly basis; I guess we all thought this course of action would make people think we were “dark” and “misunderstood,” and somehow this would get us laid. Ozzy claims he did this every day for about fifteen years. Maybe it worked for him.