Tales Of A RATT (13 page)

The band was funded by a guy named Yurig Margward. He was a filthy rich, publishing type who had pieces of Penthouse Magazine, Poprocki Magazine, which was a European version of Metal Edge, and tons of other things. The guy was the principle financier for Vic, along with the label. He just decided he didn't want to pay for the Vergat thing anymore. The label picked up an option at EMI Europe, but dropped the new record stateside. Vic wound up going back to Europe and releasing the new album, but I didn't make the trip.

Tom was still in as the bassist, but Frankie Banali replaced me on drums. I never got the straight answer as to why, but in hindsight, I think it worked out for the best At that moment, though, it completely sucked! Just like that, I was done. No more band. No more answers.

I was, out of a gig. I had been touring Europe and America with Nazareth and Joe Perry, playing to 10,000 to 13,000 people a night, just a few short weeks before. I had gotten my Ludwig Drums endorsement, and my Paiste Cymbals endorsement while in Europe. Now, I didn't have a job, and a baby coming in a month. Jeni was still working, we took in a roommate to help with the bills, and I started looking for a new gig.

It was all the way back to square one.

I was trying to get into a band called Bruiser. I was talking to Rick Ramirez (not the serial killer, don't get excited) about the gig. Vinnie Appice (Carmine's brother) had recorded a monster album with these guys, but he wasn't going to tour with them. So, I was jockeying for the gig.

Ramirez kept me on the line forever. He was always telling me, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're going to do it. Any day now.” I learned the whole record, was ready to go at a moments notice, but they still kept me hanging for months.

During this down time, Stephen Pearcy had started coming around, and he was really pushing for me to join RATT. I had met Stephen through a guy named Dennis O'Neil, who was dating one of my roommates. So, I went to see RATT, and I didn't like it. I thought they were okay. It just wasn't what I was looking for. So, I turned him down.

About five weeks later, Stephen buzzed me up again, and was like, "What's going on, man. Did you get that thing?” I had told him I was trying to get the Bruiser gig.

"No, dude, they're still not doing anything.” So, he tells me that they're playing another gig, and they have a new drummer, but they don't really like him either. So, why don't I come down and check them out again?

I went and saw them a second time, but it wasn't that much different from the first. Same music with a different drummer who wasn't very good. But, I was sitting around doing nothing, so I thought, "What the hell. I'll join these guys until something better comes along.”

Thank God nothing better did, because it's fucking RATT! It's my life, now. And, it has been since that day. March 1, 1982.

Dennis O'Neil's mother's house was where we rehearsed; right in her garage. Juan Croucier drove me down there with all my shit in the back of his truck to play. Then he was heading off with this Top 40 band he was playing in.

The chemistry came pretty quick. I was a good drummer, and had a lot of experience. They could sense that, I think. Plus, we were all influenced by the same bands; Aerosmith, in particular. We were all close to the same age, and had the same influences, and that became a launching pad. We were just like, "Well let's have at it. Let's fucking do it.” And, that set the tone for the band.

At rehearsals, the bass player really wasn't good. I was trying to get him out of the band. I wasn't being malicious about it, or anything. I was just trying to get him tightened up some; more in sync with me as a drummer. I was trying to get the rhythm section of the band going so there would be a foundation to the music.

The first gig we played together was at the Country Club in Reseda. Our bassist took a hit of acid before the show, and was just gone; completely out of it. He couldn't play any of the songs. So I told those guys after that, "Hey, it's him or me. I'm not playing with this guy anymore. I've got Juan Croucier. We've been playing together since we were seventeen. He is great. He's great on stage.” So, I brought Juan into the mix.

Suddenly, RATT had elevated its music several notches in one big step. Juan and I were rock solid as a rhythm section.

I write songs, and I've learned to do it pretty well, but my strengths were always in arrangements musically. I could come up with parts. "How about going from this, to this to that, and maybe add this chord…” That sort of thing. So, instead of sitting down with a couple of guitars in a writing session, like those guys had been doing, we would take those sessions as a group and turn them into tunes. It wasn't that Juan and I "fixed" everything wrong with RATT. We simply brought out the potentials.

Warren was really young then. Seventeen or eighteen. And, he and Stephen used to butt heads a lot. It got so bad, that at one point in 1982, with Stephen's prodding, we actually got rid of Warren. Marq Torien, who's the lead singer for the Bullet Boys, came in and played guitar for us for a couple of months. He was an absolute wackjob, and we did not dig the whole thing.

Robbin Crosby, Juan and me, I can't remember if we really wanted Warren out, or if we were just tired of all the bullshit fighting between he and Stephen. It didn't matter, because we went out and got Warren back, then just continued on like nothing happened.

Our mentality was not so much a family mentality as it was just a gang. It was "us", out there to get "them". "Them" could be anything from an individual to the world, depending on the moment.

We were out to plant our flag and take what's ours.

Back in the early days, Stephen and I pretty much handled the booking. And, we were playing the same places, a lot. It wasn't like we had 35 venues that we circulated. For that matter, we weren't playing 30 shows a month, either. We would do anywhere from 3-5 shows a month, then we would go up north, or something. We weren't playing a lot, mostly weekend stuff, then occasionally during the middle of the week. But, we pretty much played every weekend.

Promotions was interesting. Stephen was a fanatic about it. We had a group of loyal fans, which they call street teams today, who would go out and flyer the gigs of other bands. Whatever was happening, at the Troubadour or the Whisky, we'd have someone there.

Pearcy was really into all that stuff. He'd always be out putting posters on poles and stuff. Me, I never did that kind of shit. I was just way to jaded. I was like, "I'm not going out into the cold, or whatever, to put posters and handbills up on telephone poles.” It was pure laziness, I'm sure.

It wasn't long after that we played with Glen Hughes and Pat Thrawl. They had the Hughes Thrawl band. We headlined there a handful of times with bands like Steeler opening. Tons of others.

One of the first big gigs that RATT did was at Magic Mountain, the amusement park. May 27, 1982. We did two shows there in this huge amphitheater, and Great White played with us. It was completely packed for both shows, and that was a huge crowd. We were like "Ho, boy. Here we go. This shit's on!” That place held well over 3000 people.

Then we did a gig at the USC Mardi Gras. Which had close to 15000 people. It was really weird. Everyone in LA was just freaking out over RATT at that time.

Beyond that, those early days were on the Hollywood Circuit. Sunset Strip. The Roxy, The Whisky a Go-Go, the Troubadour, all of those places. We did some gigs up in Northern California. And, beyond that, we really hadn't ventured outside LA yet.

To my recollections, Marshall Berle was the first real manager to come out of the woodwork when we started to get a bit of a name. That was around August of 1982. Let me put it this way, we were meeting with him in August, and after all the meetings and shit, we probably went with him about a month and a half later. So, by fall of 1982, we were with Marshall Berle.

When Berle first saw us, we had been doing much better at the live shows. We were a lot tighter of a band. It had reached a point where we obviously had to get a record out, and, Berle saw that. Almost immediately after signing with him, we were in the studio recording our self-titled EP.

Music Man Studios on Melrose was where we recorded and mixed. It was really cool, because you'd walk out and Melrose is just like the streets of New York; Stores, clubs, restaurants. It seemed like it was overnight, but in very short order, RATT was selling out shows all over the LA club scene.

Suddenly, this thing was getting exciting. Musically, it had stepped up significantly. RATT was no longer the so-so band it had been when I first saw them, and the crowds were eating it up.

I had been in popular bands around LA a number of times, but it was never like this. Literally, you'd pull up to gigs we were playing and there would be lines clear around the corner. We'd sell out two shows a night, that sort of thing.

Like most things in this business, when you start making a little noise, you tend to draw a lot of attention. We made a lot of fucking noise! Before we knew it, we started having agents, and managers sniffing around us, looking for that next big band. Mötley Crüe was already a monster on the club circuit, and we were right on their heels. In fact, we were becoming fast bros with those guys.

We got a call from Marshall Berle, Milton Berle's nephew. Everyone on the Strip knew who Marshall was. He was Van Halen's manager when they got their deal, and through their first couple of tours. And, now, he was managing the Whisky a Go-Go.

Marshall wanted to manage the band. He thought we were really good, and he and a partner were going to put some money up for an EP. Robbin, Stephen and I took that first meeting with him.

I never really had a good feeling about Marshall, and I told Robbin and Stephen about it.

"I don't know if I trust this guy.”

Marshall would never look you in the eye when he talked to you. That's always a bad sign. A person's eyes reveal too much, so if they're hiding them, that's bad news. But, like so many young bands, we were so eager that we signed a shitty deal. Marshall and his partner basically owned everything on the EP.

The recording of the EP was a whirlwind. We did all six cuts on the record in five days, working an average of eighteen hours each day. The engineer was a guy named Liam Sternberg, who is most noted for his work with The Bangles during their "Walk Like An Egyptian" days.

The EP was released on Time Coast Records, which was Marshall's record label. He had ties with Alan Niven, who was working for Enigma Records at the time. Enigma's distributor was Greenworld Distribution, so the deal was made and Greenworld distributed the record for us.

It was such a blur while recording for that record, that we really didn't have a chance to fuck it up. It couldn't be over-produced, because there wasn't time. There were no marathon runs of retakes, because there wasn't time. We couldn't risk screwing up and having to do it all again, because, you guessed it, there wasn't any fucking time!

As a result, the work on the EP is one of the truest representations of RATT that there is. It was raw, lean and nasty, just like the band. That's probably why it did so well, and put us on the map. It didn't have time to be pretentious. It just "was.”

We finished that record around 8:00 am on Thanksgiving morning, 1982. I remember walking out into the morning sun, feeling like I was being released from a solitary confinement prison cell; emerging into the light after years in inky darkness.

We each crawled off in our various directions. My day was just beginning. I got home, got a shower, and helped Jeni get the kids ready. Then we were off to Jeni's parents house, as we always did on holidays. I spent the whole of that day sleeping in the back seat of the car with my feet out the window. I was a daylight zombie.

But, we had an EP in the can, and it was a kick in the balls! I could hardly wait.

When the EP came out in 1983, we had a single being played on KMET and KLOS at the same time, which was very rare. Usually, it was just one or the other. KLOS had a show called "Local Licks", and they started playing "You Think You're Tough". They got such a response for it, they put it into rotation. I heard it on the radio while driving my Datsun B210, and had to pull over to the side of the road, I got so excited.

There was an immediate reaction in LA We started selling a lot of records. One thing I can promise you; when you sell a lot of records on your own, the labels that didn't want anything to do with you suddenly come around and started bidding.

RATT was on the edge of breaking in.

But, the dysfunction that would prove our undoing in later years was already starting to bubble up. Juan was still playing with Dokken. He had signed some stupid deal that kept him bound to that band in return for a slave wage regular paycheck.

Dokken had signed with Electra, but they weren't doing anything. So, it became like a race. Who would break first? RATT or Dokken? Juan was playing both against each other, not wanting to leave one and commit to the other.

We got into the studio first and recorded the RATT EP. Juan played on it, but he still wouldn't leave Dokken. The thing with Juan is that at his core, he is only interested in himself. Everyone has a selfish streak, and I understand that. But, he's a total mercenary in this business, for sale to the highest bidder. I understand that you've got to look out for #1, but he puts people through pain in the way he conducts his business.

On July 27, 1983, we were playing at the Beverly Theater in Hollywood. Lita Ford was the opening act. She was so pissed that she was opening for RATT, she decided to show up late. In fact, she was so late, that we wound up just bumping her from the show, and went on. The show was completely sold out.

There were label reps scattered all around the place, all wanting to meet with us "for a couple of minutes.” We were making the most noise around town, and everyone knew it. Doug Morris made it through the door before anyone. At the time, Doug was the President of Atlantic Records. He had heard of us through one of his A&R guys, Kenny Austin, who's father, Moe, was the legendary boss at Warner Brothers.