I Was A Teenage Rock Fan! 1r5p2r

I Was a Teenage Rockfan

Richard Cosgrove

Published 2021 First Edition New Haven Publishing www.newhavenpublishingltd.com [email protected]

All Rights Reserved The rights of Richard Cosgrove, as the author of this work, have been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988. No part of this book may be re-printed or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now unknown or hereafter invented, including photocopying, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the Author and Publisher.

Cover art ©Richard Cosgrove Cover design ©Pete Cunliffe

Copyright © 2021 Richard Cosgrove All rights reserved ISBN: 978-1-949515-26-8

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction* Chapter 2: In The Beginning* Chapter 3: Big Ten Inch Record* Chapter 4: Stranger In A Strange Land* Chapter 5: Malibu Beach Nightmare* Chapter 6: Revelations* Chapter 7: For Those About To Rock* Chapter 8: Boyz R Gonna Rock* Chapter 9: Metal Thrashing Mad* Chapter 10: For Whom The Bell Toll* Chapter 11: Cumin’ Atcha Live* Chapter 12: Black Diamond* Chapter 13: Just A Gigolo* Chapter 14: Raise Your Hands* Chapter 15: Watching You* Chapter 16: The Camera Eye* Chapter 17: Ode To Tipper Gore* Chapter 18: Falling To Pieces*

Chapter 19: Backstreet Symphony* Chapter 20: Out In The Fields* Chapter 21: Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock And Roll)* Chapter 22: Mix It Up* Chapter 23: Let’s Get Rocked* Chapter 24: We’re An American Band* Chapter 25: Strike Up The Band* Chapter 26: Evil Twin* Chapter 27: Social Disease* Chapter 28: Whiplash* Chapter 29: Do You Wanna Riot* Chapter 30: Can I Play With Madness?* Chapter 31: Up Around The Bend* Chapter 32: Revolution Calling* Chapter 33: Hello America* Chapter 34: Breaking The Law* Chapter 35: Talk Dirty To Me* Chapter 36: R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A* Chapter 37: 99 In The Shade* Chapter 38: Shot In The Dark* Chapter 39: We Care A Lot*

Chapter 40: Hollywood* Chapter 41: Addicted To That Rush* Chapter 42: Product Of The Working Class* Chapter 43: On With The Show* Chapter 44: From Out Of Nowhere* Chapter 45: Slow An’ Easy* Chapter 46: Efilnikufesin* Chapter 47: Nothin’ But A Good Time* Chapter 48: Let Me Go To The Show* Chapter 49: Fade To Black * Chapter 50: Tonight's Came From...* About the Author

Chapter 1

* Introduction*

I have a confession to make. I have an affliction that can be triggered at the most inopportune of moments. It can happen while I’m driving in my car, or browsing the racks in my favourite book shop, or even when I'm walking down the fresh fruit aisle of my local supermarket. Regardless of where it happens, though, my reaction is always the same. All it takes to trigger this Pavlovian reflex is the sound of an electric guitar - it doesn't even have to be cranked up to eleven - at which point my fingers begin to twitch and my body yearns to contort itself into the classic air guitar pose, subconsciously drawing on some deeply ingrained muscle memory. Thankfully I’m usually quick enough to suppress these urges if I’m in a public place, but the reality of my affliction is that when confronted with a surprise blast of AC/DC's Back In Black or Bon Jovi's You Give Love A Bad Name I struggle to stop the fingers of the left hand from assuming a chord shape (it doesn’t matter which one, we’re all virtuoso musicians on the air guitar) and the right hand strumming with an invisible plectrum. So what causes this reaction? To quote a certain Mr Bongiovi, who was good enough to provide an excuse for myself and the many, many others who suffer from this affliction , you can blame it on the love of rock and roll. Allow me to explain. I spent my socially formative years expressing my love for the likes of Mötley Crüe, Bon Jovi, and Metallica by listening to a lot of loud rock music and drinking a lot of beer in a variety of dark and dingy pubs and clubs in my home town of Nottingham. I also saw a great many bands, ranging from the local groups who were happy to have three men and a dog in the audience, and often did, to multi-platinum arena acts like Def Leppard and Iron Maiden. Back then, in the heady days of 1985 when I first fell in love, or more accurately

lust, with rock, the world of music was very different to the one we know today. There was no MTV, no Myspace, no Facebook, YouTube or Spotify; the internet was still the stuff of science fiction, and the chances of seeing a denim and leather clad band with a distortion pedal on Top Of The Pops on a Thursday night were very slim indeed. While it was true that the likes of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Thin Lizzy and Motörhead occasionally troubled the singles charts, and were duly given their three minutes of fame on national television, the general public largely saw rock music as something of a joke. Before I fell hard for the primal squeal of the electric guitar towards the end of 1985 I would watch these bands on Top Of The Pops with a certain curiosity, and though I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason why, the sight of Rob Halford belting out Breaking The Law dressed head to toe in leather and studs, or Bruce Dickinson whipping the crowd into a frenzy in one of Maiden’s live promo videos, or Lemmy craning his neck back to bark his lyrics into the microphone a foot above his head while giving his Rickenbacker a sound thrashing, grabbed my attention and I was vaguely aware that something inside was sitting up and taking notes. Throughout the early 1980s my musical diet had consisted largely of what had been force fed to me by the controllers of Radio One and the producers of Top Of The Pops. This aural smorgasbord included pop acts like Howard Jones and The Thompson Twins, punk survivors like Adam & The Ants and The Stranglers, new wave upstarts like Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, and electronic pioneer Gary Numan. Numan’s Down In The Park particularly stood out, the deep, rumbling synthesisers moving me in a way that music hadn't done before, awakening me to its powerful effects. Even now I struggle to explain why the opening bars of AC/DC’s Whole Lotta Rosie on their live album If You Want Blood make me shiver when I hear the crowd chanting 'Angus' after each of his signature riffs. I still get goose bumps listening to Churchill’s speech at the beginning of Maiden’s Live After Death, or the opening riff to Bryan Adams's Run To You, or the piano refrain from Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.

So what is it about this music that remains so important to me after all these years? Like many of my peers I was a young man in search of my true identity, and this music provided the soundtrack to my teens. For the first fourteen years of my life I had been something of a nerdy Clark Kent but by fate, chance or just dumb luck I happened to stumble across rock music and discovered my inner Superman. We were pretty much the last generation to discover music in what might now be deemed 'the old fashioned way', so when we read in the pages of Kerrang! magazine that the future of rock and roll was a group of badass hell-raising dudes from Los Angeles called Guns’n’Roses it created a palpable sense of mystery and excitement as to what they would sound like. We couldn’t just hit up Wikipedia to glean every last detail of their lives, or their music, legally or otherwise. It was only when the vinyl was on your turntable and you expectantly lowered the needle onto it that you had your first delicious taste of this new material. Fans of eighties rock music are a fiercely loyal breed. We still buy the latest albums by bands whose line-ups have long since ceased to resemble their original incarnations and we still go and see them when they reform, and then again when they undertake their absolutely, honest, final farewell tours (I’m looking at you Scorpions, Mötley and KISS). We still play the old classic albums because we genuinely love the music, and we’ve bought multiple copies over the years, replacing our vinyl with CDs, and then buying the deluxe, anniversary, and super deluxe anniversary editions of our favourites. The spark that ignited our ion for these bands all those years ago has never gone out. In certain cases it may have lay smouldering like the gently glowing embers of a late night fire pit – my own love for Metallica's output between 1991's eponymous album and 2008's Death Magnetic being a case in point – but it continues to burn to this day, occasionally becoming a raging inferno when we hear certain songs. While numerous musical movements have come and gone since the 1980s, none of them have come close to seducing me with the same ion that rock music

did, and still does. The rise of Grunge, spearheaded by Nirvana, may have effectively brought an end to my golden age of guitars but its fans were never as outwardly ionate about their idols as we were, no doubt largely due to the discouragement of any kind of adulation by the likes of Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder. Whereas David Lee Roth, Vince Neil, Bret Michaels et al positively revelled in their god-like status (and still do, though with a little less finesse and dignity than they used to), their Grunge peers craved anonymity, wanting to be respected for their music rather than their personalities. On the whole they got their wish, the exception being Cobain who by ultimately choosing to burn out rather than fade away elevated himself, somewhat ironically, to the deified status enjoyed by the likes of Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis and Bon Scott. Rock music, and in particular 80s rock music, quite simply, changed my life. It helped me to navigate the uncertain teenage waters between boy and man, it inspired me to pick up a guitar and to aspire to rock stardom, and most of all it brought me into with a lot of people who remain great friends to this day. It is this sense of discovery, of having been a part of something that was very special not only to me, but to the many other rock fans who shared these heady days, that prompted me to write this book, and in the coming pages I hope to share this sense of excitement, of discovery, and of belonging that I haven’t felt since, and probably never will again. If you were a part of it then you’ll know where I’m coming from. If you weren’t, then let me take you back there. Either way, grab yourself a cold beer, and if you must, some earplugs, because this tale goes up to eleven.

Chapter 2

* In The Beginning*

It was on a cold and rainy night in November 1985 that my life changed forever in my friend Jason Stapleton's bedroom. That night, like a teenage Manchurian candidate, something that had lay dormant in my subconscious for the best part of a decade was awakened from its slumber and I knew that I was destined to pledge my allegiance to the flag of rock and roll. Though I was born in the city of Nottingham, England - home of Robin Hood, the first of many infamous long haired men in tight tros that we'll be encountering in this tale, and the setting for much of this story, the seed that was to burst forth with life that night had actually been planted in my fertile cerebellum nine years earlier in a basement in Canada. Back in the spring of 1974 my father, Tony, had decided to relocate the Cosgroves to Canada and so he packed us all up - us being my mother Barbara, my younger brother John (born in the March of this year) and myself - and shipped us across the Atlantic to the land of mountains, moose and maple syrup. Our new home was in Silver Springs, a north-western suburb of Calgary, and my parents soon became friendly with the Vietnamese family who lived across the street. I’ve long since forgotten their names, sadly, but I exactly what their basement looked like. Huge tapestries woven with intricate designs hung from the walls and a couple of overstuffed sofas were arranged in front of a coffee table with a smoked glass top, and they had a state of the art, for the time anyway, stereo system, compete with four speakers. It was here in this subterranean seventies den that in 1976 the six year old me, sprawled on several large embroidered cushions that were strewn across the floor, first heard the record that was to ultimately change my life nearly a decade later.

That fateful night began much the same as many others we had spent in that underground leisure room. As was the norm my brother was fast asleep upstairs with his Vietnamese counterpart, and being the youngest in the room by a good few years I thought it was very cool to be allowed to hang out with the grownups while they smoked and drank beer and wine while I sipped my Kool Aid and demolished tubes of Pringles. After an hour or two of listening to Country & Western music – in Canada in the mid-1970s it was a pretty safe bet that your parents would be into Kris Kristofferson, C.W. McCall, or any number of down on their luck guitar wielding cowboys lamenting the loss of their wives, lovers or dogs (and often all three) - the eldest son of our Vietnamese friends asked Dad if he’d like to hear a new album that he’d just bought. Having always been open minded and willing to try something new when it comes to music, with the possible exception of anything containing the words ‘Celine’ or ‘Shania’, Dad was interested in giving this new album a go and so the stylus was lowered onto side one of the twelve inches of vinyl that were to change my life. The unique popping and crackling that defines the first few seconds of the vinyl experience issued forth from the speakers before the basement was filled with the sounds of dishes being washed while a radio played in the background. A radio announcer reports on an accident in which a youth from Pontiac, Michigan has died after being catapulted through the windscreen of his car following a collision with a delivery truck, and we hear the sound of keys being picked up and someone climbing into their car and turning on the ignition. The car stereo springs into life with a muffled, tinny burst of an upbeat song about wanting to rock and roll all night and party every day, and the driver guns the car’s engine, taking off into the night as a two note guitar riff kicks in, writing the first line on the first page of my rock and roll story. The album was Destroyer, the song was Detroit Rock City, and the band was KISS. Given the iconic status that both the song and the kabuki faced upstarts from New York went on to achieve I couldn't have asked for a better band to initiate me, however subliminally at the time, into the world of rock music. As Detroit Rock City screeched to a halt I had heard enough to sell me on KISS

but the further double whammy of King Of The Night Time World and God Of Thunder ensured that my six-year-old soul was signed, sealed and delivered to Messrs Simmons and Stanley for all time (even Crazy Nights couldn't shake my faith). The following day I discovered that many of my classmates at Silver Spring Elementary School were already familiar with KISS, largely thanks to their older siblings, and I hungrily devoured any morsel of information that they could provide about this awesome band. I was particularly intrigued by the rumours, which surely couldn't be true, of a long-tongued Demon that breathed fire and spat blood on stage. Incredibly this fiery, bloody rock and roll creature turned out to be real, which for a six year old who was already a fan of horror movies thanks to my fascination with the old Hammer and Universal flicks that I would watch as part of the Saturday afternoon Creature Features, was mind blowing. However, as is usually the case with six year old boys and their microscopic attention spans, my interest in KISS was soon replaced by a moderately successful space opera called Star Wars. Though KISS would go on to produce things good (Alive! II), bad (The Elder) and ugly (KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park), my young mind had temporarily forsaken rock music for a galaxy far, far away and it would be eight years before another theatrical and controversial quartet of rockers would show up to put me back on the path to musical salvation. Before the, in the autumn of 1978, October to be precise, the family Cosgrove returned to the shores of dear old Blighty as a result of Mum having contracted a particularly severe bout of homesickness. As I settled into my new school I became friends with Nick Webber, who by some strange coincidence had also just arrived back from Canada after his family had emigrated there around the same time that mine did, and Jason Stapleton (hereafter known as Stapes) whose dad Terry was a die hard rock fan. Over the next seven years I would be entranced first by punk, and then Gary Numan, who would be my first proper gig on his 1983 Warriors tour, while Terry ed his love of rock on to Stapes, taking him to the Monsters of Rock festival at Castle Donington in 1984 when AC/DC headlined, ed by Van Halen

and Ozzy Osbourne. Terry would regularly introduce Stapes to any new bands that he’d discovered, which Stapes would then share with Nick and I as we played computer games in his bedroom. Thus the scene was set for my imminent rock and roll epiphany. It was November 1985 and Nick and I were up in Stapes's centrally heated bedroom playing through our latest haul of pirated Spectrum games and listening to a selection of his extensive collection of rock cassettes. The walls were plastered with pictures of Maiden and Priest, and a huge commemorative AC/DC Donington poster hung over his bed, dominating the room. As we wrestled with the Spectrum’s infamous rubber keyboard, whatever had been playing on the stereo reached the end of the tape and Stapes ejected it before sliding another into the cassette cradle. ‘Check this out,’ he said and pressed play, unaware that he was about to change the entire course of my life. After the usual few seconds of silence that anyone who grew up with cassette based music is familiar with, the sound of a snare drum being beaten to within an inch of its life erupted from the speakers, followed by the abrasive scrape of a plectrum being dragged down a heavily distorted guitar string. Suddenly a voice that sounded as though the owner had been gargling with napalm screamed ‘You say you don’t want to run and hide,’ and I was transfixed, my head snapping upwards as this beautiful noise commanded my undivided attention. The song was I Wanna Be Somebody, the opening cut from W.A.S.P.’s eponymous debut album, and for only the third time in my life I was completely and utterly mesmerised by a piece of music. (The first time, of course, had been KISS and the second when I first saw Gary Numan perform Are Friends Electric on Top Of The Pops in 1979.) Though Detroit Rock City had technically been the first rock song to do this, I Wanna Be Somebody hit me between the eyes in a way that, as impressive as it had been eight years earlier, the KISS classic hadn't quite managed. If ever there was a rallying cry to recruit fresh-face young rock soldiers like myself then I Wanna Be Somebody was it. Blackie Lawless screamed about his desire for fame and recognition with such ion that I was nothing less than one hundred

percent certain that he wanted it more than you wanted your next breath, and given his background it wasn’t surprising. Going by the name Blackie Goozeman at the time, Lawless had been given his first major break when he ed the legendary New York Dolls for a whole two weeks in May 1975, standing in for recently departed guitarist Johnny Thunders for two shows in Florida. Following this he formed the Killer Kane Band with Dolls bassist Arthur Kane before putting together Sister with future Mötley Crüe founder Nikki Sixx and W.A.S.P. band mate to be Randy Piper. Sister are widely believed to have been the first group in the Los Angeles scene to use an inverted pentagram as their logo, something Sixx took with him when he left to found Mötley, as well as Blackie’s gimmick of lighting his boots on fire on stage. Lawless also enjoyed a brief tenure in an outfit called London which has since gone down in rock history as being the most famous band that never made it despite featuring, at various points, Nikki Sixx, Cinderella drummer Fred Coury, and three fifths of the classic Guns’n’Roses line up in the shape of guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin' and drummer Steven Adler, though none of them were ever in the band with each other By the time Lawless formed W.A.S.P. he was more than ready to make his mark and did so with a combination of high energy metal and a theatrical stage show that owed a hefty debt to Alice Cooper, including throwing raw meat into the audience, drinking blood from a skull, and the mock torture of a topless woman strapped to a rack. ‘I’ve just got to be / Up high where the whole world’s watching me,’ sang Lawless, and with W.A.S.P.’s controversial image and live shows he achieved his goal, although it wasn't long before he, and rock music generally, would be watched a little too closely by a group of Washington wives. Here in England the WH Smiths chain refused to carry issue 65 of Kerrang! featuring Lawless quaffing blood from a skull on the cover, grinning like a maniacal Hamlet as the red liquid ran down his chin. Not wanting to be outdone, an outraged Nottingham City Council tried to ban W.A.S.P. from playing at the Palais on September 25th 1984, claiming that their stage show was degrading to women and an affront to public decency. They

were right, of course, but the authorities and media never seem to learn that the minute they declare something to be forbidden they fan the flames of curiosity and make it indispensable to those of us who want to know just what it is that we're not supposed to be exposed to. The moment I heard Lawless declare his metal mission statement I felt something awaken inside me. Lawless wanted to be somebody and, goddamn it, so did I! Given that I couldn't play guitar or bass at this point, and I sang like a cat on fire (though with less range), I didn't have any idea exactly how I was going to achieve this goal, but it didn't matter. I instinctively knew that I’d found my calling. After three-and-a-half wonderfully relentless minutes, I Wanna Be Somebody gave way to L.O.V.E. Machine, The Flame, and B.A.D., all of which intoxicated me with their raw power, and then at the end of side one I heard for the first time the song that really spoke to me. School Daze opened with a chorus of children reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance (which I can still recall word for word even now), building my anticipation for the song itself in the same way that the beginning of Detroit Rock City had done all those years ago, before offering up some of the fiercest riffing I had ever heard. I had previously thought that Iron Maiden’s Run To The Hills was intense but this was in another league entirely; louder, faster, heavier. The abrasive, aggressive guitars quickened my pulse but it was the lyrics that I really identified with, and particularly the chorus. ‘School daze, I’m here doing time / School daze, My age is my crime,’ sang Lawless, and while I didn't have anything against school as such, if given the choice between sitting behind a desk listening to my teachers and doing, well, practically anything else, then anything else would win every time. Lawless seemed to understand where I was coming from and while I enjoyed the likes of Gary Numan, the Thompson Twins and Duran Duran, who had been the main musical influences in my life so far, Cars, Doctor Doctor and Planet Earth didn’t really say anything profound to me, even if we did find the video for Duran’s Girls On Film fascinating as none of us had seen an actual naked woman in the flesh and had certainly never considered that an ice cube could be

used for anything but cooling your drink. Despite my most pathetic grovelling Stapes was unwilling to lend me his tape, and as he didn’t possess a tape-to-tape machine he wasn’t able to run off a copy for me. This left me only one option; I just had to have my own copy of the album as soon as possible, and I knew just where to get hold of one.

Chapter 3

* Big Ten Inch Record*

Living in a city the size of Nottingham, the fifth largest in England, we were spoilt for choice when it came to record shops. We not only had a branch of each of the major chains of the day – an HMV in the Broad Marsh Centre and a Revolver on Wheelergate (both, sadly, long gone) - we also had a few good independent shops. My record shop of choice was Selectadisc on Market Street. This was one of two shops they had in Nottingham, the other being a dedicated second-hand emporium on Bridlesmith Gate that was to become a regular haunt as my rock collection grew over the next few years. Although I had been a regular Selectadisc customer for a while, or as regular as my two pounds a week pocket money allowed, I had never previously had any reason to investigate the ‘Heavy Metal’ section. Thanks to Top of the Pops I was already aware of bands with fantastic names like Iron Maiden, Motörhead and Judas Priest but here, literally at my fingertips, were Scorpions, Twisted Sister, Ratt, Dokken, Hanoi Rocks, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard and Mötley Crüe. As I flicked through the vinyl I was pleasantly surprised to discover a fair few albums in the rack by KISS, which stirred long dormant memories of Canadian basements and fire breathing demons, though the four naked faces that stared at me from the cover of the suggestively titled Lick It Up album, the first to feature the band sans make-up, were a bit of a shock. I made a mental note of this and continued flicking through the sleeves until I found my prize. As I held the sleeve of the debut W.A.S.P. album in my hands it was as though all my Christmases and birthdays had arrived at once. The cover depicted a postapocalyptic scene (a common theme I had noticed amongst the various sleeves) with the four of the band – Blackie Lawless, Chris Holmes, Tony Richards and the amusingly named Randy Piper – posing in front of a skeleton shackled to what appeared to be an MFI (the kings of flat-pack in the days before IKEA) torture rack. They were all pulling their best rock and roll faces, though poor old Chris

Holmes looked like he was suffering from chronic constipation, and wore tight leather pantsuits trimmed with what appeared to be spray-painted vacuum cleaner accessories. I handed over my money and for the duration of the twenty minute journey home I pored over the sleeve, absorbing every last word and picture on the inner bag. As soon as I got home I ran upstairs to my bedroom, lowered the needle onto the vinyl and proceeded to play the album virtually non-stop for the next few weeks. This didn't go unnoticed by my parents, who remarked that it was a bit of a departure from, and a little, well, louder, than my usual fare. To be fair, my parents were always very accepting of whatever music my brother and I played at home over the years, no matter how obnoxious, profane or just plain loud it got. This acceptance was pushed to the limits, however, when I decided to check out what else my new rock and roll heroes had released. A flick through the singles section of Selectadisc revealed that W.A.S.P. had already released two singles prior to crashing into my life. The second, School Daze, my favourite track on the album, had only just come out and was backed with Paint It Black, a cover of the Rolling Stones classic that I was unfamiliar with at the time but would grow to love later. It was their first single, though, that made me do a double take before breaking out in a broad grin. The name of the song itself, Animal (Fuck Like A Beast), was enough to tickle my sense of teenage rebellion, but it was the cover of the twelve inch that really grabbed my attention. It featured a life sized, bloodstained black and yellow codpiece fashioned from a large circular saw blade onto which the song's title had been painted, though a finger was strategically placed over the ‘U’ lest anybody be offended. That I was even holding it in my hands was something of a miracle. Wary of the potential legal ramifications of releasing the somewhat controversial single, W.A.S.P.'s record label Capitol had taken advice from Queen’s Counsel (the band, not the monarch), believing that if they put the record out in a plain black sleeve then they would avoid the possibility of being prosecuted for distributing obscene material. However, Queen’s Counsel advised them that this wasn't adequate precaution

against such a charge, stating that Animal “isn’t a normal song with obscene language. It’s a song about animal sex with no emotional or love involvement, which can be corrupting to young people”. Whether the song would have been deemed fit for release had the animal sex been promoted as an emotional and loving experience (perhaps preceded by dinner and a movie) we'll never know. Capitol, however, decided that they didn’t want to risk the wrath of the British legal system or, worse, the Daily Mail, and pulled the single from their release schedule. At this point London based label Music For Nations (MFN) grew a pair, stepped in and released Animal in the UK with the original sleeve and were duly rewarded for their bravery when it sold more than a quarter of a million copies in its first full year of release. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered Animal I added it to my fledgling rock collection and played it constantly, and though I didn’t really appreciate it at the time, W.A.S.P. were pretty much the poster boys for the world of sex, booze and rock and roll that I had taken my first tentative steps into, and which would effectively define my social life for the next few years.

Rock music is essentially a big old melting pot of clichés, the most famous and enduring of them being the classic ‘sex and drugs and rock and roll’. Though Nottingham was arguably the largest rock scene outside of London I can honestly say that while pretty much everyone I knew was having sex and drinking to excess, often at the same time, drugs rarely raised their ugly head in the circles I ran in, and even then it was just the occasional spliff or two. Heroin and cocaine may have been the drug of choice on Sunset Strip if the stories printed in Kerrang! about the likes of Mötley and Guns were anything to go by, but alcohol and the occasional packet of cigarettes were as adventurous as I ever wanted to get, as I knew with some certainty that no matter how wasted I got on booze, the only side effects would be the loss of a few brain cells and occasionally the contents of my stomach. If you were W.A.S.P. guitarist Chris Holmes, however, the best method of avoiding hangovers seemed to be remaining drunk, as he demonstrated in The Decline Of Western Civilisation Part II – The Metal Years, director Penelope

Spheeris's follow up to her acclaimed 1981 punk documentary. Focusing on the LA rock scene, it featured interviews with established artists such as KISS, Aerosmith, Motörhead, and Alice Cooper, as well as of (then) new kids on the block Poison, Tuff, Vixen and Faster Pussycat, and several live performances including Megadeth and a handful of the hopelessly optimistic bands that littered Sunset Strip at the time. It also featured some shockingly candid footage of Holmes and fellow imbiber Ozzy Osbourne. A good twenty years before Sharon Osbourne invited cameras into her home, Spheeris filmed Ozzy early one morning as he shuffled around his kitchen in a rather fetching dressing gown, mixing himself a ‘wake up’ cocktail of vodka and orange juice, already displaying the satellite delay thought process that would make him such an endearing yet tragic figure two decades later. A close up of Ozzy's hand shows him spilling orange juice all over the counter as the result of his alcoholic shakes, but in a 1999 interview with the website A.V.Club, Spheeris confessed that this footage was faked, and that the kitchen they filmed in wasn't actually Osbourne's. More disturbing, however, was a lengthy segment featuring a fully clothed, virtually comatose Chris Holmes reclining on an inflatable bed in the middle of his outdoor pool. As he floats beneath the starry Californian night sky, rambling incoherently about his alcoholism while pouring bottles of vodka over his head and down his throat, his mother sits at the side of the pool, the look of resignation and despair on her face speaking volumes as she seems to accept that her son is a lost cause, another casualty of the City of Angels. Before making The Metal Years, Spheeris had turned down the opportunity to direct This Is Spinal Tap, concerned that it would be perceived as taking the piss out of the rock scene. However, whereas the playful satire of Rob Reiner’s movie was embraced by the rock community with a knowing nod and a wink, and has become a part of pop culture, The Metal Years played more like a tragedy as one no-mark after another tried to convince us that their band was about to break through and, mark their words, would be the next big thing. One particularly deluded soul was so steadfast in his belief that he was going to make it that no matter how many times or different ways Spheeris tried to ask

him what he would do on the incalculably minute off-chance that he didn’t make it, his answer remained ‘but I will make it’. I had to ire the resolve and the self-belief of this guy, who was clearly so focused on his goal that not only did he refuse to consider an alternative to making it big, he couldn’t even conceive of not doing so. Somewhat inevitably this brief segment in The Metal Years turned out to be his own personal fifteen minutes of fame, but I have occasionally wondered over the years what happened to him. Despite the LA of The Metal Years highlighting the not so glamorous side of the rock scene, I was ready to fully immerse myself in this attractively debaucherous scene, and the first step on this path was getting hold of as many albums as I could. Thanks to the second-hand Selectadisc shop I was able to pick up my first Iron Maiden album, Piece Of Mind, and a decade after first hearing them in that Canadian basement I finally bought my very first KISS album in the shape of their 1984 offering Animalize. By this point, thanks to lacklustre sales and losing half of their original personnel, KISS had taken off their make-up and were doing their best impressions of badly coiffured middle-aged men in spandex, in what Gene Simmons later referred to as the Phyllis Diller years. Their historic unmasking had taken place on MTV on September 18th 1983 to promote their Lick It Up album, although somewhat confusingly they had released an album called Unmasked a couple of years previously which had, somewhat mischievously, failed to live up to the title's promise. As a reintroduction to KISS after so many years I was unaware that Animalize was a fairly atypical album and that apart from Heaven’s On Fire - still a classic rock tune to this day - was essentially metal by numbers. It wasn’t long until I discovered the classic KISS sound, though – essentially all of their 1970s albums - and began to pick them up as quickly as my pocket money and paper round wages allowed. At this point it hadn't occurred to me that there might actually be places outside of my bedroom where people got together to indulge their love of rock music (not to mention sex and booze). Thanks to a chance remark by a friend of a

friend, however, my eyes and my horizons were about to be opened wide. Things would never be the same again.

Chapter 4

* Stranger In A Strange Land*

Though my social and career aspirations were set firmly on the dizzying heights of rock and roll stardom, like many other hopefuls I still had to work my day job, which in my case meant attending Arnold Hill Comprehensive School. When we had made the transition from junior to senior school back in 1981, the powers that ran Arnold Hill had split Nick, Stapes and I up, placing me in Trent house while my two friends were put in Sherwood house where they drafted a kid called Brian into our circle who shared our love of computer games and 2000AD magazine. Before long Brian and I, along with his brother Darren who was a couple of years older than us, began going to a local computer club at the Arnold Leisure Centre where, thanks to Darren's extensive nationwide network of fellow Spectrum owners, we were soon earning a decent second income from the, ahem, unauthorised redistribution of software. Every Friday night we’d set up shop for three hours charging fifty pence a time for copies of the latest games, and while I am, of course, thoroughly ashamed of my illegal juvenile activities, the proceeds of my ill-gotten gains did allow me to buy concert tickets and expand my record collection at a substantially faster rate than my legitimate pocket money and paper round income alone would have done. More importantly, though, it was at the scene of my software crimes that I met a friend to be who was to play an important role in my rock journey, but we’ll get to Barlow in due course. In the meantime, it was one of Brian’s friends who was about to take me on the next step of my journey, into the heart of Nottingham’s rock community. Evans and Brian had been friends for many years, having met at junior school, but Evans had ended up going to a school in nearby Gedling while Brian had ed us at Arnold Hill.

Like Brian, Evans also had an older brother called Darren but whereas Brian's older sibling was into computers, Evans's was heavily into motorbikes and rock music, ions that Evans had also become smitten with. This was evident from his propensity to wear tight black jeans and a battered leather jacket, and the fact that he had much longer, curlier hair than all of us put together. As a result, as soon as he turned sixteen Evans became the proud owner of a motorbike which allowed him to ride over to Brian's and hang out with us much more often. (Well, I say motorbike, but with an engine capacity of 50cc it was more like a hairdryer on wheels, but even so it still trumped our push bikes by a good margin.) As a group we would usually end up hanging out in Brian’s conservatory, working our way through Darren's latest batch of liberated Spectrum games. It was during one of these gaming sessions that Evans and I got talking about music, probably triggered by one of the many cool rock t-shirts that he wore, and he happened to mention a club that he had started going to with his brother called the Palais where people got together twice a month to drink and listen to rock music. My curiosity was most definitely piqued, and sensing this Evans suggested that I come to the next one with him and his friends, an offer I didn't need long to think about, and so my date with destiny was set. Excited by the promise of this brave new world, I realised that I had a little under two weeks to find something to wear so that I didn’t stand out like a sore thumb or, even worse, be considered a trendy masquerading as rock fan. Fortunately, in my travels around Nottingham's various record shops I had stumbled across a small alternative clothing shop on a back street in the Hockley area of Nottingham called Void, but hadn’t actually ventured inside, mainly because I was a little apprehensive about what I might find lurking behind its blacked out windows. The following Saturday, armed with a couple of week’s worth of pocket and paper round money I found myself standing in front Void’s door. I felt a certain trepidation knowing that although this was merely one small step for man (well, boy), it was to be one giant leap towards my dreams of rock stardom. Steeling myself for this symbolic crossing of the threshold I took a deep breath and

stepped into the shop. In that moment I understood the sense of awe and wonder that the children who had discovered Narnia at the back of their wardrobe must have felt as my eyes darted around the dimly lit interior. The walls were lined with rack after rack of unusual tros, shirts and tops, almost all in black, with a few tartan numbers here and there, and trimmed with zips, chains, studs, straps and buckles. After several long seconds I ed to exhale and upon inhaling again I noticed that the air was heavy with a faintly sickly aroma - patchouli oil, a particularly prominent scent amongst the rock crowd as I was soon to discover. As I stood gazing around this Aladdin's Cave of spandex and straps the assistant looked up from the magazine that she was flicking through on the counter and it was immediately obvious that she was very different to the girls that I was used to seeing at school. Her hair was long and black, perfectly complementing her heavy black eye liner, long black fingernails, and black attire. As my synapses went quietly into overdrive I felt the colour rise in my cheeks as I stood there feeling uncomfortably out of my depth. 'Can I help you with anything?' she asked, flashing me a friendly smile and looking mildly amused to find that a fresh faced and momentarily smitten boy had wandered into her lair. Regaining my composure I mumbled that I was OK, thanks, and that I was just going to browse, quickly turning away to stop myself from staring at her and to hide my crimson cheeks. My initial discomfort soon evaporated as I flicked through the racks of tros, somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer variety on offer. I spent ages deliberating over zips, straps, and buckles, and various combinations thereof, before finally settling on the classic punk bondage tro design. My new strides were, naturally, black with two lines of zips down the thighs and shins on the front, a solitary zip down the back of each calf, and a couple of straps hanging loosely between the legs. John Lydon would have been proud. Or called me a twat. My money's on the latter.

Luckily for me, the tros came to well within my budget, leaving me with enough money for a shirt as well. After another lengthy trawl through the vast selection on offer I settled on a black shirt with shiny black patent leather straps on the cuffs and all the way up the front, from belly button to throat. I took my purchases over to the counter, still trying, and failing, not to stare at the girl, and handed over my money as she put them into a black plastic bag with the silver Void logo stencilled on it. Back at home, feeling like a rock star now that I was wearing what was definitely the coolest outfit that I had ever owned – well I thought so, anyway - I thought that once I mastered the guitar, which surely wouldn’t take that long there would be no stopping me. Well, apart from the fact that I didn't actually own a guitar yet, but that was a mere detail. As far as I was concerned, and at this point I would have been in good company with my delightfully delusional friends from The Metal Years, there was no doubt that I was a rock god in waiting. With my first and as it transpired only visit to The Palais mere days away, I was all set to knock ‘em dead, kid. The six days between my shopping spree in Void and my first visit to an honest to goodness rock club seemed like an eternity. Finally, as the snow fell outside my bedroom window on that Friday night in December 1985, I stood looking at myself clad in black bondage gear in the full-length mirror on my wall, and despite the fact that my hair wasn’t that long yet, I didn't own an instrument, never mind actually being able to play one, and I wasn’t exactly fighting off irers of the opposite sex, I felt like a million dollars. I also felt nervous. Very nervous. Though I’d been drinking in my local for a few months now and thanks to having friends with older siblings had graced a few ghastly Nottingham nightclubs in the name of sixth form socials, I was growing increasingly anxious about being denied entry into the Palais. Evans had assured me that he and his friends never had any problems with the bouncers, but while he’d told me this with the best of intentions it only heightened my paranoia that I would become the first to be sent packing. I checked one final time that all my buckles and straps were done up correctly

and that my hair was sufficiently gelled up, and tried to put my fears aside as I headed off into town. Half an hour later, I alighted at Victoria Centre and walked past the Owd Boots on Glasshouse Street (which was soon to become a regular haunt) towards the Palais. Having arranged to meet Evans inside I ed the small queue which consisted mainly of long haired boys about my age dressed in skintight jeans and leather jackets, many of which were emblazoned with the names of groups - Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, Twisted Sister, Ratt - that I had become familiar with. Reassuringly they all seemed to be strolling confidently past the monkey suited doormen without any trouble and my heart rate, which had accelerated the moment the Palais had come into view, began to slow down a little despite the pessimist inside my head trying to convince me that I looked about twelve and would be, as Wayne Campbell would later say, denied. Thankfully my fears proved to be unfounded and I handed over my money and ventured inside. As I made my way down the stairs into the basement I could hear a thundering cacophony of drums and guitars at a volume that I could only dream of experiencing in my bedroom without annoying the entire neighbourhood. Everywhere I looked there were long haired boys and girls - drinking, smoking, dancing, playing pool – who were obviously very comfortable with themselves. Some of the guys were wearing tight multi-coloured tros, custom shredded tshirts and bandanas, and one clearly stood out from the crowd. This was Ged and though we would become friends in the coming months my first impressions were equal parts iration and intimidation at how damn cool he looked and the effortless ease with which he carried it off. Watching how comfortable he seemed to be just being himself gave me the confidence to believe that I could dress and act like I really wanted to myself. The dance floor, which Dad had told me used to revolve back in his day but sadly appeared to be very much static now, was full of enthusiastic air guitarists nodding their heads in time to the music as they stood with their legs slightly apart, their hands making chord shapes on their invisible axes while strumming with imaginary plectrums.

Tearing my eyes away from the mesmerising sight on the dance floor, on which Ged was tossing his long mane of dark hair and performing the occasional high kick (which tested the thankfully sound workmanship of the crotch of his spandex strides) as he pranced around like a younger version of David Lee Roth, I spotted Evans across the room and made my way over to him. He jumped to his feet as I reached him and introduced me to his friends, whose names I promptly forgot, before we headed to the bar. My new found confidence at having successfully gained entry to the club was further boosted when the girl behind the bar served me without any hesitation, putting a smile on my face as we headed back to our seats clutching our beers. Though I didn't recognise most of the music that the DJ - a short, bearded biker called Metal Micky who looked exactly how you’d expect a short, bearded biker called Metal Micky to look – played, I was loving every minute of it. As I watched the perpetually full dance floor heave with air guitaring boys and suggestively gyrating girls (making my already tight tros tighter still) I found myself desperately wanting to in. I was conscious, however, that everyone seemed extremely proficient at playing their invisible instruments and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by going to strum an imaginary chord in the wrong place. I promised myself, though, that if Micky played something that I knew then I would throw caution to the wind and head for the dance floor. A little over an hour later my bluff was called as the opening riff to KISS's Uh! All Night (from their Asylum album, which I'd been listening to a lot recently) roared from the speakers and pretty much everybody in the group I was sitting with sprang to their feet and headed to the dance floor. Figuring it was now or never I thought ‘What the hell’ and followed them. Standing on the dance floor playing an imaginary guitar, moving my body in time to the music, I felt fantastic and knew without a shadow of a doubt that I belonged here. As Uh! All Night faded out Micky followed it with another KISS song that I was familiar with, the classic Love Gun, so I stayed on the dance floor, my confidence growing with every pretend power chord and guitar solo. After the double helping of KISS Micky resumed playing tracks that I didn’t recognise so I returned to our seats from where I was happy to spectate for

another hour or so, grinning like an idiot because both my rock club and air guitaring cherries had been well and truly popped. Being of limited funds a taxi home was out of the question so just before eleven - not the most rock and roll of hours, granted - I headed back up the stairs into the real world. As my boots crunched through the snow to the bus stop the smile on my face was a mile wide. Due to the management disbanding it the following month this turned out to be my one and only visit to the legendary Palais rock night. A few years later I would be back in that basement for plenty more rock nights under a different banner, but for the time being I had taken another important step into the rock world that was fast becoming my home.

Chapter 5

* Malibu Beach Nightmare*

Ever since W.A.S.P. had seduced me into the world of rock music back in November 1985 I had developed a hunger for any news that I could get my hands on about the latest bands, record releases, tours, and, well, anything. In April 1985, seven months before my musical epiphany, I had landed myself a morning job at our local newsagents. Six days a week, come rain or shine, I turned up at the shop at six in the morning to put the paper rounds together for the paper boys and girls. Rising at such an unholy hour wasn't without its perks, though. I was able to flick through the various magazines ordered by the customers, including a few surreptitious glances at the occasional copies of Razzle and Men Only before sealing them in the brown paper bags that they were delivered in, but the magazine that interested me the most went by the catchy name of Kerrang! Kerrang! came out every other Wednesday and was the only dedicated rock magazine in this country, packed with news of and interviews with the latest bands on the rock scene, reviews of singles and albums, and gloriously glossy photographs of live shows. The first thing I ever read in Kerrang! was a review of a KISS show from their Asylum tour in the US, complete with a full page picture of Paul Stanley in full on hair-teased, lip-pursed, finger-pointing rock star pose. Though no longer the kabuki faced Starchild that I ed from my childhood in Canada, that single picture conveyed to me the excitement and spectacle of a live rock show and I knew I had to experience one myself, and soon. Without the benefit of official websites or the social media presence that today's bands enjoy, the only alternative to Kerrang! for finding out about new rock bands was to check out one of the very few rock friendly TV shows that aired in the UK. The best of this small bunch was America’s Top Ten, presented by a perpetually excitable man called Casey Kasem who had voiced Scooby Doo's best friend

Shaggy. Thanks to the American record buying public embracing rock music more readily than their British cousins there were always a couple of long haired bands on the show, though until the latter part of the eighties they did tend to be either Foreigner, ZZ Top or REO Speedwagon. On this side of the Atlantic we had No Limits and Entertainment USA, a couple of light entertainment programmes that showed an interest in what was happening in the rock world and featured music videos. They were created by Jonathan King whose most heinous crime at that point was unleashing the dire Everyone’s Gone To The Moon single on the Great British public, but we'll return to him later. However, as welcome as these shows were, none of them featured more than a couple of minutes of any of the most current videos so Kerrang! was our fortnightly bible when it came to information about the big bad world of rock and roll and the larger than life characters that inhabited it. When I first started reading Kerrang! I had no real concept of the dark side of the rock scene - the alcoholism, drug abuse and violence that occasionally reared its ugly head - but I did know that when I read about Nikki Sixx snorting cocaine and trashing hotel rooms, or Ace Frehley driving at high speed up the wrong side of the freeway while pissed as a newt, there was something about this rebellious and anarchic behaviour that seemed pretty cool. As a teenager discovering his sense of individuality and taking his first steps into the exciting and forbidden subculture of rock, I found the whole ‘fuck you’ ethos incredibly intoxicating. It seemed that these guys who were becoming my heroes - or more accurately my anti-heroes - were living life on their own , answering to nobody for the consequences of their behaviour and its impact on others however outrageous or destructive it became. Nowhere was this perception of the bulletproof, untouchable rock star more perfectly encapsulated than by the outcome of a court case in the autumn of 1985 involving one of the bands that I was about to discover and become infatuated with. On Saturday December 8th 1984 Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil was throwing a party at his house in Redondo Beach, California, to celebrate starting work on

Theatre Of Pain, the band’s third album. Among the guests were three of up and coming Finnish rock outfit Hanoi Rocks - bassist Sam Yaffa, guitarist Andy McCoy, and drummer Nicholas ‘Razzle’ Dingle. At some point during the revelry twenty-four year old Razzle volunteered to accompany Neil to the local liquor store in the singer's brand new red Ford Pantera. Given that Neil’s driving was so notoriously reckless that the other of Mötley wouldn’t drive with him when he was sober, Razzle's decision to go along for the ride was somewhat brave, and ultimately fatal. After picking up a couple of hundred dollars worth of alcohol a seriously over the limit Neil was doing sixty-five in a twenty-five mile an hour stretch of the beach front Esplanade when he rounded a bend and found himself speeding towards a parked fire truck. Swerving onto the wrong side of the road to avoid it, Neil's Pantera smashed head-on into an oncoming car. Both Razzle and the other car's enger, twenty-year-old Daniel Louis Smithers, were taken to South Bay Hospital while the driver, eighteen year old Lisa Hogan, was rushed to the intensive care unit of the Little Company of Mary Hospital. Shortly after being itted, Nicholas ‘Razzle’ Dingle died from his injuries. Smithers, who had broken his leg and suffered serious brain damage in the collision, remained in a coma for a month before he could be transferred to a facility closer to his home where he could begin to learn how to speak again. Hogan’s arm and both legs had been broken in the crash and she suffered brain damage which left her permanently afflicted with psychomotor seizures. Neil, somewhat ironically given that the accident occurred on the first day of USA National Drink Driving Awareness Week, walked away from the wreckage without so much as a scratch. The Mötley singer was arrested and charged with vehicular manslaughter and driving whilst under the influence. He pleaded not guilty to the former charge but due to a previous drink driving conviction he faced a possible eight year jail sentence. However, in October 1985 he was sentenced to just thirty days in jail, two

hundred hours of community service, and ordered to pay a total of $2.6 million dollars to the families of the three people involved in the crash. As Mötley were about to head out on a world tour to their Theatre of Pain album Neil was allowed to defer his jail time until the following summer, eventually beginning his thirty day sentence on June 10th 1986. He ultimately served only twenty days, washing cars and serving food to the other inmates. The judge justified Neil’s somewhat lenient sentence by rationalising that he wanted him to be able to pay the damages to the victims of the crash in full, and that the only way the singer would be able to do this was to take advantage of Mötley’s increasing popularity and to continue working. New York thrash merchants Nuclear Assault included a song called Buttfuck on their mini-album The Plague in protest at the fact that Neil had not only permanently impaired the lives of two people and caused the death of a third, but had also effectively killed off Hanoi Rocks. Prior to the crash Hanoi had been on the cusp of great success after releasing their superb Two Steps From The Move album but they never really recovered from the loss of Razzle, widely considered to have a strong influence over the band’s style, and disbanded shortly afterwards. The message sent by Neil's sentence seemed to suggest that rock stars were beyond the reaches of conventional justice and that even if held able for their crimes they could serve their meagre punishments at a time that suited them. In fairness to Neil he did appear to be genuinely remorseful for his actions and has in recent years acknowledged that he should have been punished more severely. In an interview with Blender magazine he was quoted as saying ‘I wrote a $2.5 million cheque for vehicular manslaughter when Razzle died. I definitely deserved to go to prison. But I did thirty days in jail and got laid and drank beer, because that’s the power of cash.’ He went on to say, ‘It’s changed now. But you’re twenty years old and you’ve got a million dollars in your pocket and drugs and women and fame and there are lawyers to protect you. We just thought we could do anything.’

In an oddly prophetic moment of black humour, as Neil began his short stay in the State pen in October 1986 Kerrang! joked that Mötley would be covering Elvis Presley’s Jailhouse Rock on their next album. As it turned out they did just that, including a raucous live version of the song as the last track on 1987’s Girls, Girls, Girls record. Seventeen years later, in 2004, the controversy over Razzle’s death was in the music press once again when Mötley released a greatest hits box set called Music To Crash Your Car To, but as we shall see later they were far from being the only ones to court controversy. First, though, I was about to take another important step down my own highway to hell.

Chapter 6

* Revelations*

Early in 1986, a couple of months after my one and only visit to the Palais, Stapes came bounding into the school classroom where we were about to suffer an hour of science and handed me a Selectadisc bag. ‘You’ve got to hear this,’ he exclaimed, a huge grin on his face as he handed it over, ‘It’s awesome!’ He wasn’t wrong. Lurking in the bag was Iron Maiden’s Live After Death, their seminal live album which was about to become very important both to me personally and to the rock community as a whole, setting the standard for all future live releases and firmly establishing Maiden at the top of the rock tree. Recorded on their mammoth World Slavery Tour, Live After Death captured Maiden in full flight at the Long Beach Arena in California and at the Hammersmith Odeon in their home town of London. I was immediately entranced by the artwork on the cover. The gatefold sleeve was another Derek Riggs masterpiece, depicting Maiden’s malevolent mascot Eddie emerging from a grave, his face illuminated by a single bolt of lightning striking the middle of his forehead, right on the screw plate that he had received after having his brain removed for the Piece of Mind album. This dramatic tableau was framed by stormy skies and completed by the shadowy figure of Death himself lurking on the back cover. I opened up the sleeve and was confronted by a huge photograph of Maiden’s World Slavery Tour stage set. Eddie’s immense Powerslave burial mask stared out at me, dwarfing the rest of the band, while smaller pictures captured them in action, one of them showing a huge mummified Eddie leering menacingly over the tiny figure of Steve Harris. Scanning the track listing on the back cover I was pleased that I recognised every one of the songs thanks to having picked up second hand copies of

Maiden’s five albums to date, but as good as I knew they were in the studio, I wasn’t prepared for how ferocious and exciting they sounded live. I lowered the needle onto the vinyl and sat on my bed, holding my breath as the low rumbling of aeroplane engines and the roar of the Long Beach Arena crowd spilled from the speakers and filled my room. Over this glorious cacophony came the deep, solemn tones of Winston Churchill delivering his famous speech about fighting them on the beaches. ‘We shall never surrender,’ he barked, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the opening riff of Aces High rang out, stirring some powerful thing deep inside me that I hadn’t felt since hearing W.A.S.P.’s debut album several months previously. To this day I have the same reaction whenever I hear this intro, and I very nearly ed out with excitement when I finally got to witness it live on Maiden’s Somewhere Back In Time tour at Twickenham rugby stadium on July 5th 2008. Though Aces High sounded essentially the same as its studio counterpart, if a little faster, there was something more to it, something I couldn’t quite put into words but that I felt at a primal level. Somehow it sounded more alive, more vital than I had ever heard anything sound before, and at that moment I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I wanted to learn how to wield the kind of power that in mere seconds this recording had entranced me with. The band was tighter than the proverbial duck’s arse and singer Bruce Dickinson’s between song banter was confident and funny. Who else, apart from maybe David Coverdale, could get away with using the late British entertainer Bruce Forsythe’s cheesy catchphrase ‘Nice to see you, to see you nice’ and still retain their rock credibility? ‘Scream for me Long Beach,’ Dickinson commanded, and I almost did as I sat in awe listening to the remaining three sides before playing the whole album again and again for the next few weeks. As the tracks indelibly etched themselves onto my brain the desire to harness this kind of power over an audience was growing stronger by the day. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, like Blackie Lawless, I too wanted to be somebody, and that I would achieve this by being in a rock and roll band, but while I now had a crystal clear view of my ultimate destination in life I wasn’t

quite sure how to get there. Being a frontman was out of the question, not only because I couldn't sing though that didn’t hamper the vocalists in some of the bands that I liked - but because I didn't have the confidence to be the focal point of a band. The alternative, therefore, was to be a musician but the nearest I came to being able to play an instrument was having reached the far from dizzying heights of grade three pianoforte under the patient tuition of Mrs Agnes Shearstone. Though this sweet, elderly lady has long since shuffled off her mortal coil, I remain eternally thankful to her for teaching me the basics of reading music. In my limited experience of rock bands, however, I was pretty sure there was no place for a keyboard player (and was subsequently proved very wrong once I got wind of Bon Jovi) and so with Dave Murray and Adrian Smith incessantly trading licks on my internal jukebox I knew that in order to realise my dreams of headlining Long Beach Arena I needed to become a six string gunslinger. There were just three minor problems. Firstly, I didn’t own a guitar. Secondly, even if I had owned one I didn't have the first clue how to actually play it. And thirdly, even if I somehow solved the first two problems I couldn’t think of anyone I knew who wanted to be in a rock band. Little did I know, as I pondered these three challenges, that the solution to the first one was about to present itself to me. It wasn't long after picking up my own copy of Live After Death that I was proudly playing it to my friend and classmate Jason Huckerby, who though largely unimpressed by the album patiently listened to me as I waxed lyrically about my intention to buy a guitar, form a band like Maiden and conquer the world. On hearing that I was in the market for an axe Jason mentioned that his older brother was selling not only a guitar but an amplifier and speakers too, and if I wanted he would have a word with him. Needless to say I wanted, very much. The next morning, as we gathered in our tutor group at school, Jason told me that his brother was willing to sell the guitar and amp to me for the bargain price

of forty pounds. Seizing this golden opportunity I immediately agreed to buy them and, impatient to get my hands on my first guitar, told Jason that I would have the money by the end of the week. Fortunately, having a cool Dad paid off yet again. When I'd given up the piano a few years ago I'd sensed some disappointment, but from the smile on his face when I asked him for a hefty pocket money advance to buy a guitar I knew he’d help me out in my bid to become a rock star. After negotiating a repayment schedule that suited us both he drove me to Jason’s, and after handing over four ten pound notes I was the proud owner of an axe and an amp. The guitar was a copy Stratocaster, the model Dave Murray played, with glossy black paintwork and a white scratch plate. The amp, however, wasn’t quite the Marshall stack that I’d optimistically imagined, consisting instead of a battered hi-fi amp and a couple of old speakers that plugged into the back. It worked, though, and for now that was all I needed. As I lifted the guitar strap over my head, I felt a transformation take place. I was no longer a common or garden rock fan, worshipping my heroes from afar. Now I was a genuine, aspiring rock star with every chance of ing them up there on the world's stages. I plugged one end of the guitar lead into my axe and the other into the amp's input socket and switched it on, giddy with excitement. I turned the large round volume knob up until a low hum filled my bedroom and retrieved the plectrum entwined in the strings on the guitar’s neck. Having watched various rock guitarists on Top of the Pops it seemed that the only requisite for being a rock god was to look the part and be able to play a few chords. I mean, come on, how difficult could it be to put your fingers in these simple chord shapes and strum for all you’re worth? The answer to this question, as I was about to discover, was very difficult. Naturally I wanted to be the next Dave Murray or Adrian Smith by the end of the week but as I stood there, my new guitar already pulling heavily on my left shoulder, unaccustomed as it was to the extra weight, I realised that I didn’t have a clue what these 'simple' finger positions were for even the most basic of

chords. I cautiously plucked the top string, which I would soon come to know and love as the E string, and frowned. The dull plunking sound that limped pathetically from the speakers wasn’t quite the powerful noise that I was expecting to hear and after a quick run down the other five strings even my rudimentary knowledge of the guitar told me that it wasn’t in tune, not that I knew how to remedy this. Even worse, I realised that the act of pressing my tender fingers against the hard fretboard, trapping the thin strings in between, was actually quite painful and so ing the old saying ‘No pain, no gain’ I chose the former until I’d at least picked up a book of chords so there was some chance of the latter. Twenty-four hours and a quick bus ride to a music shop later I opened my new bible at the first page and, following the supposedly idiot proof instructions, attempted to tune my guitar. After an hour and change I finally achieved my goal and was ready to rock, just not tonight as my fingers felt as though they’d been repeatedly slammed in a car door. The following day I rushed home from school and picked up my newly tuned guitar, intending to make a start on learning some chords. When my fingers pressed against the thin nylon strings, though, my nerve endings screamed as if pins were being pushed into the tips and I put it down again, but after lowering the needle onto Live After Death and getting thirty seconds into Aces High I was inspired once more and picked up my instrument, determined to tough this out and give it my best shot. After a few hours of practice I got to the point where I could put my fingers in the right places on the neck for the C, D and A chords. However, actually making them sound in some way musical was another matter entirely, but I wasn’t about to give up on my dream that easily. I began to practice religiously - at the expense of my homework - and a couple of weeks later I had developed my first calluses and was able to competently play six (yes, six!) different chords, but I found that I was concentrating my efforts on learning the bass lines of songs rather than the guitar work, leaning more towards being the next Steve Harris than Dave Murray. It was then that I made two important discoveries that greatly enhanced the

standard of my playing with the minimum of effort. The first was the barre chord, which meant that by arranging my fingers two frets apart on adjacent strings and then moving this claw-like hand position up and down the fretboard I could play any major chord I wanted. The second, and much more fun, was the distortion pedal. Having saved up my pocket money for a few weeks I picked up the amateur rock guitarist's Holy Grail - a brand spanking new Boss Distortion pedal. Back in my bedroom I plugged my guitar into the pedal, and the pedal into my rudimentary amp and turned it on. I pressed my foot down on the pedal to click it on, the amp humming louder than ever before, and with a sense of great anticipation I formed a barre chord and strummed. Wow! I wasn't quite blown backwards across the room like Marty McFly in Back To The Future but the noise that was erupting from my speakers was, well, huge. With my new wonder pedal I actually sounded like a rock guitarist! Suddenly, being in a band and up on stage throwing shapes and being worshipped like my heroes didn’t seem like such a pipe dream, and though I knew that realistically this wasn't going to happen overnight, I was convinced that if I put in a lot of practice then it was a definite possibility, so that's what I did. Every night when I got in from school, and every spare minute at weekends, I put on my favourite rock records and attempted to play along with them. In the beginning I was hopeless, but as the weeks ed my efforts sounded more and more like the riffs that were blasting from my stereo speakers. My fingers began to harden up, enabling me to indulge in marathon practise sessions – two, three, four hours at a time - all the while dreaming of the day that I would put together my own band, and the global success that would surely follow. I was determined, driven, and deliriously happy as I spent hour after hour, day after day in my bedroom, my guitar slung low as was the rock and roll way,

practising tirelessly as winter turned into spring outside my window. This dedication to becoming the next guitar hero would continue for the next twelve months until a chance remark caused me to abruptly switch instruments, but in the meantime I was about to discover a new rock club, experience the first of many rock gigs, and have an interesting conversation with my careers teacher at school.

Chapter 7

* For Those About To Rock*

Three months had ed since my first and only visit to the Palais and I was beginning to think I'd have to make the memory of that awesome night last for a long time. All was not lost, however, as once again Evans came to my musical rescue with news that Zhivago’s nightclub, deep in the bowels of the Victoria Centre, were launching a weekly Monday rock night. He gave me a small silver flyer portraying a long haired guitarist with his head thrown back and his face a picture of musical ecstasy, and suggested that we check it out. The inaugural night was to be held on the Easter Bank Holiday Monday and featured Palais DJ Metal Micky and a promise that every third record played would be by Hollywood bad boys Mötley Crüe. Mötley were the current darlings of the rock scene, riding high on the success of their third album Theatre of Pain which though in retrospect not my favourite Mötley album (that honour goes to Shout At The Devil), I was particularly enamoured with it at the time because it was the first new Crüe album that had come out since I’d discovered them. For the first time I was experiencing new music by my favourite bands at the same time that my friends were, rather than playing catch up with back catalogues they were already very familiar with. Louder Than Hell, Keep Your Eye On The Money and Smokin’ In The Boys Room, a cover of an old Brownsville Station song, were great songs but it was Raise Your Hands To Rock, with lyrics about being ‘sixteen and dealing with those summertime blues’, and declaring ‘I wanna be a rock and roll star’, that really spoke to me as an awkward sixteen year old with a head full of rock star dreams. The jewel in Theatre Of Pain’s crown, however, was Home Sweet Home, Mötley's classic power ballad that set the precedent for two rock conventions that would crop up again and again over the next few years.

The first was the video. Shot on the road in moody black and white it revealed just what a hard life (no, really) it was being in a touring band. The huge distances spent travelling between gigs, the isolation from family and friends, the waiting around between sound checks, all of it worthwhile though once the band got to play for us, the fans. Sadly there was no footage of the debauched lifestyle that was extensively reported in Kerrang! and later in the band’s superbly entertaining autobiography The Dirt (that would have to wait for the Girls Girls Girls video and the 2019 biopic), but that wasn’t the image that Mötley wanted to portray this time around. Instead they invented, accidentally or otherwise, the serious, atmospheric 'on the road' video that would accompany so many ballads from here on in, most famously Bon Jovi’s Wanted Dead or Alive which borrowed extensively from it. The second was to become the bane of many a band. Figuring that ballads would sell more copies than more traditional up-tempo rock songs, record companies would inevitably release an album’s (often solitary) slow song as a single. The idea was to land that all important appearance on Top Of The Pops in the UK, and to break Billboard Hot 100 in the States, and then sell shedloads of albums and concert tickets on the back of that success. This was a double-edged sword, however. While it got the band noticed and into the singles charts it would then often hang around the group's neck like an albatross for all eternity, becoming the one and only song that were known or ed for, but we’ll return to the curse of the ballad later. Bank Holiday Monday rolled around and I met Evans outside Zhivago’s where he was already queuing with a couple of dozen other young rockers, all dressed in tight blue jeans and black leather jackets. I was now the proud owner of my own leather jacket, bought with my hard earned cash from my Saturday job and I felt very rock and roll wearing it. As the clock struck half past six the doors opened and we stepped into the darkened lobby of Zhivago’s, paying the fifty pence entrance fee before we began making our way down the seemingly hundreds of stairs that led to the club itself. Descending wasn't so bad, but after imbibing excessive quantities of the terrible

beer they served, ascending the hundred or so steps back into the real world was like climbing Mount Doom, especially when my last bus was due to call at the stop across the road at any moment. I lost count of the number of times that I cut my escape exceedingly fine, lingering on the dance floor until the last possible moment and then having to find one last burst of energy to race up the endless stairs. Zhivago’s décor was your stereotypical 80s club, all chrome railings and booths with plush red seats that had seen better days. A stainless steel dance floor marked the middle of the club, and became something of a death trap as successive drinks were spilled on it during the course of an evening, and on which I nearly lost my footing while in the throes of an air guitar solo on more than one occasion. Evans and I grabbed a couple of pints of what optimistically ed for beer from the bar and made our way to the balcony that overlooked the dance floor to set up camp. Before long several of his friends turned up and I sat quietly enjoying the atmosphere and the music, thinking that I had once again found somewhere that I felt really comfortable. Since my Palais trip I had undergone a crash course in eighties metal thanks largely to Selectadisc’s second hand shop and so I recognised many more of the tunes that Metal Micky was playing this time. After sinking a couple of beers I decided to bite the bullet and introduce myself to one of Evans’s friends who I’d been sitting next to for the last half an hour. I figured that if I was going to fully appreciate this new community then I needed to make the effort to get to know some of these people myself. ‘So,’ I said to the long haired guy beside me in the Scorpions t-shirt, ‘How do you know Evans?’ He turned and looked at me and for a moment I thought I was going to be told to go forth and multiply, but then his face softened and he smiled. ‘Oh, I’ve known him for ages. We used to go down the Palais.’ Putting his cigarette in his mouth, where it dangled in time honoured rock and roll fashion, he switched his beer to his left hand and held out his right.

‘Name’s Steve Wright,’ he said. ‘Rich,’ I replied, shaking his hand and a friendship was born which has lasted to this day. We started talking about music and our favourite bands and quickly found out that we were both guitarists. (Well, I owned a guitar and was learning to play it, so I could just about call myself a guitarist, no?) On discovering this Steve’s eyes lit up and he began telling me how he’d worked out the chords for Iron Maiden’s Aces High. He spoke of major chords and minor chords, of sustained E sevenths and harmonics, and I sat there smiling, nodding my head knowingly and wondering what the hell he was talking about. After two months my guitar playing was limited to six proper chords and the magical, all-encoming barre (power) chord. Steve, however, could actually play his guitar properly and it was only several weeks later, once we’d become firm friends, that I confessed that he might as well have been talking Klingon the night we met. I must have put on a convincing act at the time, though, as he hadn’t suspected a thing. For the remainder of the evening we sat chatting, drinking and occasionally gracing the dance floor to throw some impressive air guitar shapes, but before I knew it I had mere minutes to drag my drunken ass up Mount Doom to catch my last bus. That first night at Zhivago’s seemed to fly by in a heartbeat, as my sole visit to the Palais had, but as I hauled myself up the never ending stairs as fast as my inebriated body could manage - praying that the number fifty-six bus had left the Market Square a little late so that I wouldn’t have to walk home - I knew I’d be spending many a Monday down there.

Even though I was forging ahead with my KISS approved plans to rock and roll all nite, partying every day wasn't currently an option thanks to my legal obligation to spend my daylight weekday hours at Arnold Hill Comprehensive School. As our time in the fifth year drew to a close (year eleven in today’s money) we were all assigned an appointment with a careers officer who would talk to each

of us individually our futures, offering advice on which avenues might be best to pursue based on our academic and personal strengths, and hoping to send us out into the big bad world with at least some idea as to what we actually wanted to do with our lives. In theory this was a great idea. After all, these career officers were already adults and functioning in the real world so who better to come in and advise a bunch of sixteen year olds who already knew everything there was to know about everything? In reality, however, after listening to your hopes and dreams for fifteen minutes they would offer you one of two choices. For the girls it seemed your destiny was to become either a teacher or a secretary. For the boys your fate was to work in a bank if you were smart or learn a trade like mechanic or plumber if your grades pointed towards a more practical profession. Given that these meetings were compulsory I ambled along the corridor at my allocated time slot to where the careers officer had been installed, convinced that this was a monumental waste of everybody’s time because, after all, I already knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life. Having mastered half a dozen chords and, more importantly, looking every inch the cool guitarist I would soon be, I knew that I was going to a rock band, make several classic albums, tour the world a dozen or so times and then retire to Rio with a nice big wedge of cash in my Swiss bank . Certain that nobody in their right mind could conceive of any other profession for me (ironic given I had laughed at the likeminded wannabes in The Metal Years movie) I walked into the small room and sat down opposite a smartly dressed, serious looking woman. After a brief exchange of pleasantries and a few moments of small talk we got down to business. ‘So,’ she said, ‘do you have any ideas about what you want to do after you leave school?’ This was an easy one. ‘I’m going to be a rock star,’ I said, as sure of this fact as I was of my own name.

To her credit she didn’t break down in hysterical laughter. Instead she looked me in the eye and spoke in a soft, measured voice, not unlike the one you’d use when trying to explain a simple concept to a six year old. ‘That’s a nice idea,’ she said, smiling patiently at me, ‘but the reality is that very few people are able to make a living from performing. Is there anything else you’d like to do?' That was the end of the matter as far as she was concerned. I sat there with a perplexed expression on my face, trying to come to with the fact that she had dismissed my future in the blink of an eye. She hadn't even let me explain about my skill on the guitar, my immersion in the local rock and roll scene, or the fact that I was fully aware that, yes, it was a long shot, but one that I knew I could take and maybe even hit the bullseye with. I was working on the principle that while in all probability it was unlikely to happen, the fact remained that some people did actually make it as rock stars, so why not me? Why was it such an outrageous desire to want to pursue my dreams of fame, fortune and fillies? If a pub singer from Newcastle could end up cruising the highway to hell with one of the biggest bands in the world, or a factory worker from Birmingham could write some of the most iconic heavy metal riffs ever played, then why couldn’t I be the next Angus Young, or Eddie Van Halen? It was clear from the look on her face and the tone of her voice, however, that there would be no further discussion on the subject. I’m sure she thought she was doing the right thing by suggesting that with my good grades in Maths and English I might (surprise, surprise) want to work in a bank, but her dismissal of my dreams only strengthened my resolve to prove her wrong. I walked out of the meeting feeling deflated and confused. On the one hand part of me knew that she was right, that the chances of making it were infinitesimally small. On the other hand, however, I knew that if I didn’t follow my heart and at least give my dreams a chance then I would be effectively drowning at birth that slim possibility that I just might, against all odds, reach the dizzying heights of rock and roll stardom. I resolved there and then to give it the best shot I possibly could to turn these dreams into reality. Little did I know that I was about to become better

acquainted with someone who understood where I was coming from, and would go on to become one of my best friends and share my first experience of a real live rock band.

Chapter 8

* Boyz R Gonna Rock*

Undeterred by my careers advisor's best efforts to destroy my dreams of rock and roll stardom, I set about pursuing them with gusto, immersing myself in the rapidly growing Nottingham rock scene. I continued to meet Steve down at Zhivago’s most Monday nights, turning up just as the doors opened to spend four hours in rock nirvana wearing my new tight zebra striped spandex tros that I’d finally plucked up the courage to buy from Void. I thought they were awesome, but they left no doubt as to which way I dressed, and forced me to find somewhere else to put my wallet and keys when I went out as there were no front pockets and the back ones were so flush against my body that it would have required a crowbar to get anything in them. I sought out the back catalogues of the incredible new bands that I was hearing at Zhivago’s and became particularly enamoured with Shout At The Devil, Mötley Crüe’s second album, which came in a very cool black gatefold sleeve with a pentagram embossed on the front cover. Though I still loved Theatre Of Pain there was something heavier, darker and more aggressive about Shout At The Devil that really appealed to me. Even the song titles were more dangerous and suggestive, with the likes of Knock ‘Em Dead Kid, Ten Seconds To Love (not, perhaps, the most impressive of boasts, but a great song nevertheless), and Bastard quickly becoming personal favourites. Steve fed me a constant stream of Scorpions albums - his favourite band – and Dad would poke his head round my bedroom door when he heard new versions of songs he grew up with, like W.A.S.P.'s version of The Who's The Real Me, White Sister's take on The Beatles' Ticket To Ride and Motley’s version of the Fab Four’s Helter Skelter, encouraging me to delve into the past and pick up albums by Boston, Bachman Turner Overdrive and The Eagles. As the spring of 1986 began to bloom I found myself discussing music virtually non-stop at school, usually with Stapes, and it was during one of these conversations, this one about Maiden’s Live After Death album, when a kid in

our year called Dave Goldsworth piped up and declared that he was a huge Maiden fan. Dave bore a startling resemblance to a younger version of Maiden’s singer Bruce Dickinson, his hair long and straight and hanging way down past his shoulders, his eyes barely visible through his fringe. Following this revelation we naturally got talking and it turned out that a love of all things rock wasn't the only thing we shared. Dave was also a guitarist and the first person I'd met apart from Steve who was both ionate about playing guitar and listening to rock music, and seemed to be the perfect addition to my, as yet unformed, band. Though Steve and I also shared these ions, for some reason it had never occurred to me that we would ever end up in a band together, mainly because being a couple of years older than me I assumed he would be a much more experienced musician and way out of my league. Another factor was that Steve lived in Beeston, a suburb of Nottingham some nine miles from my home in Arnold, and though it wasn't exactly a huge distance the fact that neither of us drove (I wasn’t old enough and Steve didn’t want to) meant that it might as well have been nine hundred miles as far as the concept of getting together with our gear went. Dave, on the other hand, lived only a mile away which made this possibility much more likely. That first day that Dave and I spoke he was planning a house party for the coming weekend to celebrate his sixteenth birthday and invited me to come over and hang out. With his parents out of town the agenda consisted of cheap beer and loud music which all sounded very rock and roll to me, so I readily accepted his invitation and our friendship was born. Saturday soon came around and I arrived at Dave's to find the party already in full swing. Dozens of people were packed into the house and garden - drinking, smoking, and laughing - and though there were a couple of faces from school that I knew well enough to talk to I didn't recognise the majority of the revellers. I added my carrier bag full of beer to the rest of the considerable stash in the kitchen and ventured into the crowded living room where The Trooper from Maiden’s Piece Of Mind album was cranked up loud enough to measure on the Richter Scale.

As the pictures rattled on the walls Dave suddenly appeared, beer in hand, and I was heartened to see that we were dressed alike, in jeans, rock shirt and scuffed trainers. ‘Hello mate,’ he said, ‘glad you could make it.’ ‘This is very cool,’ I replied, instantly realising that speaking those words aloud made me sound anything but. I might have been well on the way to looking the part of the next big rock thing and practising my guitar like there was no tomorrow, but at fifteen years old I was still self-conscious enough to fall over my words and sometimes struggle to find the right things to say in any given situation. I’d rehearse all kinds of cool lines in my head and they’d sound great, but when put on the spot I more often than not reverted back to being the shy, uncertain geek that was still metamorphosing into a rock fan. I suddenly spotted Dave’s cherry red Stratocaster leaning against his amp in the corner of the living room and encouraged by this common ground I brushed aside any social inadequacies that were threatening to consume me. ‘Mind if I have a go?’ I asked. ‘Go for it,’ he said, and needing no further invitation I picked it up and began to musically doodle on it. Compared to my copy Strat, Dave’s genuine article felt fantastic in my hands. The neck was wonderfully smooth and the action was simply divine. Though I hadn't played many guitars at this point I instinctively knew that there was something very different in the way that Dave’s guitar played to the way that mine did. After a few minutes of running my fingers up and down the neck, picking out the few chords that I knew I spied Dave’s record collection stacked next to the stereo from which Iron Maiden was still pummelling the neighbourhood. I put the guitar down and moved over to take a look, discovering that while there were a few that we both had, mainly Maiden, Dave also had albums by the likes of Thin Lizzy and Marillion and several by a man with wild eyes and even wilder hair called Ozzy Osbourne.

Thanks to a Herculean intake of alcohol I don’t much else about Dave’s party, but having bonded over a mutual love of alcohol and rock music Dave and I had resolved to get together at some point in the next few weeks with our guitars for a jam session. In the meantime I turned sixteen myself and landed a Saturday job in the computer department of WH Smiths which meant that while I had to give up my free fortnightly fix of Kerrang!, the upside was that I was now pulling in considerably more money than before, my wages more than covering the essential expenses of beer and vinyl and leaving me a little surplus cash every week which I decided to invest in my first proper amp. Well, I say amp. It was really more of a glorified tape to tape player measuring about three feet by two feet, but it did have a reasonably large speaker which produced more than enough volume to fill an up and coming rock star’s bedroom. I'd spotted it while idly flicking through one of Mum's catalogues (several pages beyond the well-thumbed lingerie section) and had persuaded Dad - not that he took much coercing - into ordering it for me after which I would pay him the requisite nine pounds a week for the next six months until it was all bought and paid for. To further boost my coffers (and fund even more albums, gigs and musical accessories) I supplemented my position as a WH Smiths Saturday boy with a cushy, if somewhat underpaid, Sunday job at a nearby garden centre called Brookfields, for which I received the princely sum of one pound an hour and all the rubbish coffee I could drink. I soon discovered as well as playing my guitar through my amp, I could also begin to piece together songs by recording one guitar part, then playing that back while laying another over it, as many times as I wanted to. The sound quality suffered every time I added a layer (the song quality was suffering every time I picked up the guitar), with a nasty background hissing gradually building up but it didn’t matter. The important thing was that I now had the means to produce rough demos of songs which would prove to be very handy when I ed my first gigging rock band a couple of years later. Back in Dave G’s garage, though, despite the fact that I had amplification of

sorts it was no match for his dedicated guitar amp. At the flick of a switch Dave could turn his axe into a genuine rock and roll beast by way of the magical distortion button, allowing him to get a guitar sound that resembled what we were hearing on our favourite albums. Over a period of several weeks we got together fairly frequently to try and work our way through various Maiden tunes, chiefly Aces High which was our current favourite, but though we had a surplus of enthusiasm the reality was that we sounded nothing like Dave Murray and Adrian Smith. As our sessions continued through spring into summer the warmer weather allowed us to indulge our exhibitionist tendencies by rehearsing with the garage door open. We'd stand facing the outside world with our amps behind us like we were on stage, playing along to Maiden and throwing our best guitar shapes. Occasionally one of Dave’s neighbours would walk past and peer in at the source of this almighty racket that was belching from the shady depths of his garage. As we played on, trying to appear as professional, and more importantly cool, as possible they would either smile at us or give us a filthy look. ittedly we got far more of the latter, but we were undeterred. Every now and again a group of girls would walk past and I’d like to say that our playing filled them with boundless iration for us. I’d like to, but the truth is that they usually walked past giggling among themselves at this pair of long haired losers pretending to be rock stars. We didn’t care, though. As far as we were concerned we were legends in our own lunchtimes. Eventually, as summer took hold and the lure of girls and beer became ever stronger, our sessions tapered off and then stopped altogether but they’d taught me that I really enjoyed jamming with other people. It was a lesson that I ed and put to good use several months later when Steve put a proposition to me one night at a rock and roll paradise that I was about to discover called Rock City. My Friday nights would never be the same again.

It was on one of our regular Monday Zhivago’s nights that Evans casually mentioned that he was going to some place called Rock City the following

Friday with his brother. The name alone piqued my curiosity. “What's this Rock City place like?' I asked him. 'It’s basically like Zhivago’s,' he replied nonchalantly, 'But much better.' I didn't need to hear any more. I had to see it for myself. 'Do you fancy it?' I asked Dave, Steve and Stapes, knowing full well that any excuse to double the number of nights a week that we could hang out together, drink beer and listen to loud rock music would be welcomed. We arranged to meet up in a pub called the Tap and Tumbler that Steve was familiar with and which was to become a very important place in our lives for the next few years. Though Rock City had only just appeared on my radar it had previously been a variety club called the Heart of the Midlands, where legend has it two of a long forgotten soul singer’s backing musicians - guitarist Bernard Edwards and bassist Nile Rogers - decided to form disco legends Chic, before it was bought by George Akins, a prominent figure in the local bookmaking and amusement arcade scene and renamed. Rock City opened in December 1980 with a gig by the late, great John Peel's favourite band, Northern Irish punks The Undertones. This inaugural gig was supposed to have been by an up and coming metal band from London's East End called Iron Maiden but thanks to delays in the wiring of the electrics they were denied this honour. By the time I discovered it in the summer of 1986 it had already garnered a reputation as being the best music venue in the Midlands, and had hosted bands as diverse as the Rolling Stones, Duran Duran, Level 42, Nazareth, the Sisters of Mercy and U2. Friday eventually rolled around and Dave G and I made our way into town to meet the others in the Tap which was, and still is, located opposite the Royal Hotel (now called the Crowne Plaza). As I stepped over the threshold of my new favourite pub I felt instantly at home as I took in the Tap’s dimly lit interior. The pub itself was fairly large, snaking around a horseshoe shaped bar with an

annex tucked off towards the back where after stopping first at the bar we found Steve and a lot of faces that I’d seen down at the Palais and Zhivago’s. As we sat drinking and talking ten to the dozen the Tap’s jukebox played song after song that I had become familiar with over the last few months. AC/DC, Whitesnake, Ozzy, Maiden, Sabbath and many others that had begun to swell my collection blared at near-deafening volume from the speakers. Though I could have happily sat listening to The Tap's jukebox all night the reality was that we were still at school and therefore surviving on a combination of pocket money and the meagre wages from our respective weekend jobs. Not being able to afford the three or four pounds that a taxi would set us back to get home if we stayed until the end of the evening we had a curfew of sorts dictated by the last bus home (usually around eleven o'clock, when things really started to hot up according to the regulars). That meant that if we were going to find out what this Rock City wonderland was all about then we had to head up there around half past eight, thirty minutes after the club opened for business. We necked our pints and made short work of the short walk up to Talbot Street where we were greeted by the huge neon lettering that spelled out Rock City above the entrance and a glass wall filled with multi-coloured posters adverticoming gigs by a variety of up and coming bands. We handed over the two pounds ission and stepped across the threshold into the dimly lit reception area, my boots sticking to the dirty carpet through which the neon Rock City logo proudly shone. We could hear the muffled rumble of frantic bass and drums bleeding through the black walls, which every few seconds became a deafening blast of what sounded like pure unadulterated noise as one of two sets of double doors at the top of a small staircase were opened by punters coming and going. Though I didn't yet know it as thrash metal this sonic assault filled me with excitement and anticipation as we rushed up the stairs, pulled open one of the double doors and were hit full on by this beautiful cacophony that filled every corner of the cavernous black space that was Rock City. As I looked around the room my eyes were drawn to the huge dance floor in front of the main stage on which I would see numerous bands in the coming

years, where a number of young men in denim, leather, studs and spikes were furiously nodding their heads. Whereas the Palais and Zhivago’s had been all about the more melodic side of rock music this was something different entirely, something I had never experienced before. I looked at my friends and smiled, and then walked into Rock City to begin my thrash metal education.

Chapter 9

* Metal Thrashing Mad*

Nowadays there seems to be almost as many categories of rock music as there are bands. Wikipedia lists almost two hundred and fifty genres ranging from Acid Rock to Zuehl (no, I hadn’t heard of it either but apparently it’s a form of 1960s French prog rock). Back in the day, though, when I first darkened Rock City's doorway there were only two camps that mattered - you either liked rock or you liked thrash. Of course it wasn’t quite that simple. You could argue that Judas Priest and Iron Maiden were ‘metal’, that Marillion and and Rush were ‘prog’,that Mötley Crüe and Ratt were ‘glam’, and that Bon Jovi and Poison were ‘rock’ (or ‘crap’ depending on who you asked) but thrash was just no frills thrash. You could immediately tell a thrash band by its name. There were no clever, fluffy sounding names like Bon Jovi, Def Leppard or Pretty Boy Floyd. Even the edgier names like Mötley Crüe, Ratt and Poison couldn’t hold a candle to the likes of Sodom, Death Angel, Cannibal Corpse, or possibly the greatest thrash band name of all time, Lawnmower Deth. The 'Deth were a home grown Nottingham quintet consisting of vocalist Qualcast Mutilator, guitarists Concorde Faceripper and Schizo Rotary Sprintmaster (later replaced by the snappily named Baron Kev Von Thresh Meister Silo Stench Chisel Marbles KP), bassist Mightymo Destructimo and drummer Explodin’ Dr Jaggers Flymo (who despite his name didn't follow in Spinal Tap sticks man Mick Shrimpton's footsteps, which were all that was left of him after his on-stage detonation). Their splendid pseudonyms weren't their only attraction, though. The ‘Deth also had their own unique brand of audience participation known as the 'Fish Dance' which encouraged their fans to lay on their backs waving their arms and legs in the air with wild abandon. Thrash really came into its own, however, with the advent of a quartet of American bands who became known as the 'Big Four'. Though to the casual

listener most thrash bands sounded like a bag of spanners being forced down a garbage disposal unit, each of these four bands - Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer – had developed and defined their own distinctive sound and attitude. For a kid whose real love lay with the traditional song structures employed by Bon Jovi, Poison, Mötley and Leppard, much of the thrash catalogue was too abrasive for my groove-attuned ears. For some reason, though, Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth appealed to me, possibly because they were influenced by the NWOBHM and artists like KISS and Alice Cooper, as evidenced by Metallica’s numerous cover of Diamond Head’s Am I Evil? and Budgie’s Breadfan, Anthrax’s stab at KISS’s Parasite and Megadeth’s take on Cooper’s No More Mr Nice Guy. It wasn’t just me, though. While very few of the tracks that were played during Rock City’s first couple of hours were given an airing in the main part of the evening (after the lighting rig had been turned on and the place finally resembled a proper club), a considerable number of tracks by Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax were embraced by the mainstream rock crowd. Megadeth’s spirited cover of the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy In The UK and the infectious, thumping bass line of Peace Sells filled the dance floor, along with Anthrax’s Indians, Madhouse, and I’m The Man, a ground breaking rock-rap crossover. Originally appearing as a light hearted b-side, I'm The Man had been embraced by the wider rock community and was ultimately released as a single, foreshadowing their Bring The Noise collaboration with fellow New Yorkers Public Enemy a few years later. Metallica were by far the darlings of thrash, though. Jump In The Fire, For Whom The Bell Tolls and the six minutes and thirty six seconds of genius that was Creeping Death were very popular, but there was one song that always filled the dance floor, and had stood out from the relentless wall of noise the first night I went to Rock City. The track was Whiplash, the closing cut from their Kill ‘Em All debut, and it became the soundtrack to my first proper headbang, coaxing me on to the dance floor to bang my head like I’d never done before. I paid dearly for it over the next few days as my poor neck muscles recovered from the abuse they'd

sustained in my attempt to shake my skull free of my shoulders but it had been worth it. Over the coming weeks and months I was introduced to two more thrash related to add to headbanging, namely moshing and stage diving. While thrash songs generally seemed to dispense with melody, rhythm and groove, they were big on riffs, and big, fast, heavy ones at that. When it came to moshing, there were two distinct elements that even the most delicate of ears could identify in a thrash track. The first was the actual riffs themselves, usually played at close to warp speed and alternating between verse, chorus and screeching solos, all of which sounded uncannily like listening to a variable speed power drill. The second was what could be described as the ‘mosh part’. This was the point in the track where the hitherto hundred-yard dash slowed right down, like flicking the speed on an old record player from forty-five to thirty-three rpm (or even sixteen rpm if your gramophone was really old), and became a slow, heavy giant’s heartbeat. At this point the guys on the floor, and it was invariably guys as women on the dance floor during Rock City's thrash hour were rarer than rocking horse shit, ceased trying to liquidise their brains and proceeded to, well, lope around in a circle like a group of Neanderthal Morris dancers. No track seemed to embody this bizarre ritual better than Anthrax’s Indians, with Joey Belladonna’s cry of 'Wardance' (or to be more accurate, 'Waaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrdaaaaaaaaance!') triggering the thrashers on the floor to lope around in a circle as if they were channelling cavemen playing hopscotch. Thrash also saw the rise of the lemming-like practice of stage diving. While not a new phenomenon, having been a feature of Black Flag gigs going back to the mid-seventies punk rock scene, the sheer popularity of it was surely never as high as during the reign of the Big Four and even led to a complete change in the way that thrash gigs were policed by the security companies. As it became obvious to security guys that the practice of young men riding the crowd like demented surfers, legs and arms akimbo, hell-bent on climbing the safety barriers before hurling themselves back into the audience with the kind of

gleeful abandon usually found only where small suicidal mammals and steep cliffs were in close proximity was being positively encouraging by thrash bands, their attitudes relaxed and the way that security was handled at gigs began to evolve. It quickly became the norm for security to actually help the fans who had either moshed their way to the front or surfed there over the crowd's heads, often losing various items of clothing and footwear along the way, to climb atop the security barrier and launch themselves into the eager arms of the audience. Diving into an audience when the venue was packed was a wonderful experience. You couldn’t really do yourself much damage as due to the density of the crowd and their willingness to catch you - and more importantly their relative inability to do anything except catch you - you were guaranteed a fairly soft landing as you launched your twelve stones of sweaty youth into the air. The mark of a truly dedicated stage diver, however, came when the venue wasn’t quite so busy. These were the faithful few who would risk life and limb no matter what the size of the crowd, the extreme sportsmen of their day, the adrenaline junkies. I was at an Annihilator gig at Rock City where the turnout was paltry to say the least, the crowd making up the mosh pit barely five or six rows deep. This deterred the amateur divers in the audience, myself included, but one particular guy who from the happily deranged look on his face was either drunk, stoned or insane (and quite possibly all three), climbed onto the barrier and held his arms aloft in the typical pre-dive pose. Now it’s one thing to catch a diver when you’re actually part of the aforementioned packed crowd as there’s a certain amount of weight distribution involved that cushions the blow somewhat, not only for the diver but also for his human crash mat. When you’re in a fairly sparse crowd, however, it crosses your mind that you could be the unlucky sap that gets the whole weight of the diver crashing down on his head. Clearly the crowd around me shared this concern as we all strategically moved out of the daredevil diver's way just as he launched himself from the barrier. He arced gracefully through the air and landed in a crumpled heap on Rock City’s hard wooden dance floor

For a moment we feared the worst, that this brave (or stupid – you decide) guy was going to be stretchered out of the gig with a broken neck, back or both. After a brief moment, however, he struggled to his feet with his maniacal grin intact, and began making his way back to the barrier for another go. You could almost feel the wave of iration from the rest of us as this brave soldier went back to the front. As heavy as thrash bands were on vinyl, when experienced in the live arena they were even more fearsome and impressive, and no band embodied this more than Metallica. In 1986, shortly after the release of Master Of Puppets, Metallica brought their Damage Inc. tour to the UK for half a dozen gigs (ed by Anthrax) before heading off to Europe, a tour that was notable for a couple of reasons. The first was that Metallica had temporarily become a five piece following a skateboarding accident which had left James Hetfield unable to play guitar due to a broken wrist. Rather than cancel the tour, roadie John Marshall assumed Hetfield's six string duties, giving Metallica fans the almost unique experience of seeing the moody frontman stalking the stage with just a microphone, a state of affairs he was reportedly unhappy with. (Hetfield broke his wrist a second time the following year in another skateboarding accident, with Marshall once again stepping in to assist.) The second was much more shocking and had a huge impact on both me and rock community as a whole. Though many of the thrash bands routinely addressed death as a lyrical concept, for Metallica it was about to become a tragic reality.

Chapter 10

* For Whom The Bell Tolls*

The concept of rock stars dying young is as old as rock music itself. The first rock star that I actually shuffling off their mortal coil was the King himself, Elvis Presley, though.at the tender age of seven it wasn’t so much the news itself that burned into my memory as Dad's reaction to it. Up to this moment I had never seen him really upset about anything. The Dad that I knew was a fun Dad, full of life and a constant source of amusement to my three-year-old brother and I. The minute the news came across the airwaves, however, Dad’s mood instantly changed as he was hit by the grief that the entire world was sharing at the loss of their first proper rock and roll hero. It’s easy to be blasé about the death of a celebrity these days (especially given the sheer number cut down by the grim reaper in 2016) but back then there genuinely hadn't been anybody like Elvis. He had been the first to push the boundaries of what was deemed acceptable behaviour by an entertainer and in the process had become the first bone fide icon of teenage rock and roll rebellion. Dad was devastated by the loss of his childhood hero, and had looked up to him as one might to a distant older brother. I felt much the same way about the rock stars of my youth, seeing the likes of Nikki Sixx and Blackie Lawless as people to look up to and be inspired by. However, it wasn’t until the tragic events on an icy Swedish road on the night of September 27th 1986 that the reality of losing a hero came sharply into focus for me personally. Having recently conquered England on their Damage Inc. tour, Metallica were taking their show around Europe in of Master Of Puppets. The previous evening they had played at the Solnahallen in Stockholm and were en route to their next gig when the band’s bus allegedly hit a patch of black ice, causing the coach to first skid, and then roll over onto its side after the driver lost control.

Bassist Cliff Burton had been asleep in the most comfortable bunk on the bus having won the privilege by drawing cards with the other band (he drew the ace of spades). As the driver lost control Burton was thrown through the window of the bus, which then rolled onto him, killing one of the most talented up and coming bassists in the rock world. Back in England, there was confusion as rumours began to circulate that Cliff Burton was dead and the offices at Kerrang! were deluged with enquiries from rock fans desperately wanting to know what was happening. It wasn’t until the Kerrang! hit the news stands the following Wednesday that the terrible rumours were confirmed. I sat reading the magazine over and over again, scarcely believing that this frighteningly talented young man who was fast becoming an influence in my decision to switch from playing guitar to bass was no longer with us. Unlike Elvis, Bon Scott and the other rock and roll casualties whose tragic stories my fellow rock fans and I were familiar with, Burton had not only played on current albums that we had in our collections but just weeks earlier had performed live on stage in front of some of us on the Damage Inc. tour. Much has been written about Cliff Burton’s death and it’s not my intention to retread ground that has been covered with authority elsewhere (particularly in an article in the excellent British rock magazine Classic Rock by Geoff Barton, a long-time friend of the band, and also by the band themselves in Back To The Front, Matt Taylor's superb and exhaustive book about the Master of Puppets album and tour), but it's a testament to the tenacity and professionalism of Metallica that just two months after Burton’s death they were back in action. Believing that Burton wouldn’t have wanted them to be denied the hard-earned success that they were finally beginning to enjoy, they recruited to fill his shoes. Metallica made their phoenix-like return playing an unannounced spot with fellow Bay Area thrashers Metal Church under the name Damage Inc, with newly recruited ex-Flotsam and Jetsam bassist Jason Newsted. While Burton's presence was sorely missed on and off stage, both the band and its fans believed that he would have wanted them to carry on the Metallica legacy and become what Lars Ulrich had always known they would be – the biggest rock band on the planet.

With Metallica almost single-handedly bringing thrash into the metal mainstream (and then into the general music mainstream with 1991’s eponymous ‘Black Album’), the floodgates were opened for numerous other thrash bands to come across to the UK and attempt to follow suit, performing on the hallowed Rock City stage which, along with The Marquee in London, had garnered a reputation among American bands as being an essential place to play. On the whole, though, while I enjoyed the more mainstream edge of thrash Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth – the more hardcore bands didn’t excite me the same way the likes of Mötley, Poison, and Guns ‘N’ Roses did. I just preferred bands with more of a groove. There was one band, however, who not only managed to combine the extreme riffs of thrash with a generous helping of groove and melody, but were a huge influence on both myself and just about every hard rocking band of the day. This inspirational quintet hailed from the East End of London, and were the band that finally popped my live rock and roll cherry.

Chapter 11

* Cumin’ Atcha Live*

By mid-1986 I was beginning to amass a decent collection of rock music. I had a fair few vinyl albums but the majority of my music library consisted of tapes that my friends and I traded amongst ourselves. These were, after all, hard times for a teenager whose regular fix of albums, pubs and clubs was funded only by a small (but reasonable) allowance and the wages from his Saturday and Sunday jobs. While I was content to tape albums by most bands this simply wasn't an option with the new Iron Maiden release Somewhere In Time and I was happy to hand over five pounds of my hard earned cash for the genuine article purely because it had one of the most amazing covers that I'd ever laid eyes on. Maiden’s ever present but ever changing mascot Eddie stood in the foreground in his latest incarnation as a futuristic cyborg. Surrounding him was an incredibly intricate and detailed Blade Runner-esque cityscape that contained numerous references to both Maiden’s past and to Steve Harris’ influences. I literally sat for hours poring over the artwork, making sure that I had discovered every last reference and in-joke. The devil, as they say, is in the details and this was never truer than in Riggs’ cover artwork for Maiden’s 1990 number one UK single Bring Your Daughter (To The Slaughter) which has the dubious distinction of being the only British number one to feature an erect penis on the sleeve – google it and check out the salacious looking little devil to the bottom right of the picture. Shortly after the release of Somewhere In Time, Maiden announced their customary world tour which Dave, our friend Phil Boxall and I had already decided we were going to see come hell or high water. When we saw that they were again calling at the Royal Concert Hall as they had done on their World Slavery Tour a couple of years earlier, we were beside ourselves with excitement. After all, in 1986 none rocked harder than Maiden, and for me personally I was getting the chance to see the band who had inspired me to pick up a guitar.

Tickets were due to go on sale at nine o’clock on the following Saturday so Dave and Phil, who both had full time jobs that didn’t entail working weekends, queued up at six o’clock in the morning outside the box office to ensure that we got good seats. Meanwhile I turned up for my job in the basement computer department of WH Smiths as per usual and waited expectantly for them to appear. After what seemed like an eternity Dave and Phil came bounding down the stairs with huge grins on their faces. Not only did we have tickets, we were in the third row of the stalls! This was going to be a major event for the three of us and we intended to be fully prepared. The album itself was getting plenty of action on our respective stereos and the lyric sheets were becoming dog-eared as the words were dutifully digested so that we could sing along to whatever Maiden chose to throw at us on October 22nd 1986. The big day arrived and we gathered at Phil’s house dressed in classic rock fan gear with our tight jeans (blue) and Maiden t-shirts (black), the sleeves strategically removed to reveal our less than muscular arms. We thought we’d got it all covered but then Phil held up his hand clutching the most essential items for a Maiden concert and indeed any metal concert of the mid-eighties – three disposable lighters. We’d all seen Maiden’s Live After Death video many, many times and during the song Revelations the audience held up, en masse, a sea of lighters. Not wanting to miss out on replicating a part of Maiden mythology should the opportunity arise we pocketed our lighters and set off for the bus stop and the rock gig of our lives (or so we hoped). Outside the Royal Concert Hall we ed the congregation of predominantly male Maiden fans, most of who were dressed in the regulation uniform of denim, leather and studded belts and wristbands. As we made our way into the foyer I was buzzing with the anticipation of my first full rock and roll gig experience, and wanted to commemorate it by handing over my hard earned in exchange for one of Maiden’s legendary tour shirts. We spent the best part of twenty minutes deliberating over the various merits of each of the half a dozen shirts on offer before I finally decided to push the boat

out and spend a wallet busting eight pounds on a black and grey short sleeved baseball jersey with cyber-Eddie on the front and the tour dates on the back. It didn’t matter that the numerous dates were small enough to require a microscope to read them, it was enough that one of them read ‘Oct 22 1986 – Royal Concert Hall Nottingham’ – proof that I was really there. It’s a testament to the quality of the garment that I’ve resurrected this very same shirt on many of the nine further occasions I’ve seen Maiden since then, and it’s still going strong even now, more than three decades after I bought it, and happily still fits me. Having successfully negotiated the merchandise stand the next item on our rock and roll agenda was a beer. The Royal Concert Hall, in common with most venues that weren’t used to hosting regular rock events, had woefully underestimated the ability of a rock crowd to consume vast quantities of alcohol and seemed to be operating only a skeleton bar staff. After a quick discussion we decided that as Phil had just turned seventeen and was therefore the elder statesman of our group and least likely to be refused service, he should be the one to run the beer gauntlet. After a much shorter wait than the queue had suggested, Dave and I were relieved to see Phil threading his way back through the crowd towards us, a grin on his face and, more importantly, three pints of beer cradled in his hands. The unnecessarily shrill bell that signalled five minutes until show time rang out and we headed towards the auditorium, beers in one hand, tickets in the other, and presented them to the usherette (the tickets, not the beers). 'You can’t take those in there with you', she announced, gesturing to our pints. We looked at each other, shrugged, and poured them down our necks as fast as we could, ensuring that we would be bursting for a piss halfway through the gig, handed over our tickets and headed into the auditorium. The air was heavy with anticipation and the unmistakeable scent of patchouli oil. As we made our way to our seats it occurred to me that I had never been among such a large group of like-minded rock fans. The Royal Concert Hall holds just over two thousand people and had sold out the same morning that tickets had gone on sale.

Looking around the auditorium from our excellent third row seats, centre stage no less, I was adrift in a sea of long hair, Maiden t-shirts and as seemed to be the norm at metal gigs, a few topless young men - we’d have to wait until half way through the gig before we got the obligatory flash of breasts from an excited rock chick in one of the side balcony seats. As curtain time drew nearer I grew more and more excited at the prospect of seeing my first live rock band, and not more than fifteen feet away from where I was sitting. This was to be a rite of age, the popping of my rock cherry, and I intended to savour every moment of it. The lights suddenly went down and a deafening roar went up from the crowd as Maiden’s intro music started. The roadies swiftly removed the covers from the set, revealing a huge backdrop identical to the Somewhere In Time cover. The intro music played on. The lighting guys sitting precariously high in the rafters quickly flashed their spotlights on and off to ensure that they were ready. The intro music played on. And on. For nearly six minutes. What were they trying to do to me? I thought I was going to burst from the excitement that had been building inside me for the last few weeks, and particularly in the last few hours. Just when I thought we could take no more of the seemingly eternal intro music there was an explosion, the stage lights came on and there they were. Iron Maiden. Right in front of me in all their glory. They literally hit the stage running - with the exception of drummer Nicko McBrain who hit the stage drumming (I'm here all week, try the fish!) launching into the title track from Somewhere In Time. My eyes darted all over the stage, from one member to another to another, my brain simultaneously

overloaded and enthralled by the moment, taking it all in and wanting it to last forever. After all, you only lose your virginity once and unlike the carnal version, which had proved to be somewhat anti-climactic, this was an experience that I wanted to for all the right reasons in years to come. As far as the set list went, Maiden didn’t disappoint. Despite not playing Revelations, rendering our lighters redundant, we got a large chunk of the new album and welcome selection of classics. Run To The Hills, The Number Of The Beast, Hallowed Be Thy Name, The Trooper and Flight Of Icarus all got an airing along with Running Free, the sing-a-long-a-Maiden left-versus-right audience contest that is great fun but shredded our throats before ending in the predictable draw. As much as I enjoyed the songs, and getting to hear Bruce utter ‘Scream for me Nottingham’ at us, what I was really looking forward to was seeing Eddie in the flesh, as it were. Eddie usually puts in a couple of appearances during a Maiden set, once as some kind of giant walking creature inspired by the current album cover and then again, in a larger and more spectacular form, at the end of the main set as they played Iron Maiden. For weeks before the gig Dave, Phil and I had speculated long and hard about how and when Eddie would manifest himself and while we were pretty sure that the walking Eddie would be a clone of the album cover's cyber-Eddie, we had no idea about the huge Eddie that we knew would appear during Iron Maiden. Our predictions about the walk-on Eddie turned out to be spot on, and as he lumbered on from the left hand side of the stage, all twelve hulking feet of demon and machine, we grinned at each other with 'fucking hell, did you see that' expressions and mile-wide grins on our faces. As Maiden's main set ended, heralded by the opening riff to Iron Maiden, we all looked at each other again, excitedly anticipating Eddie’s return. After the awesome cyber-Eddie that we’d seen a few songs earlier, every bit as good as the Eddie-mummy of the World Slavery Tour as far as I was concerned, we had high hopes for the uber-Eddie that was about to appear before us. Steve Harris began his mid-song bass run - the conclusion of which would trigger the moment we had be waiting the whole gig for – and I held my breath

expectantly. How could they possibly top their Live After Death finale? The moment of truth arrived accompanied by a deafening explosion, flashbombs spewing white smoke across the stage, and my eyes darted this way and that, trying to see where Eddie was going to appear from. As the smoke cleared and the band continued into the last minute or so of the song I could see that there was a slight problem. There was no Eddie! As the three of us exchanged puzzled glances, wondering where on earth our favourite rock and roll zombie was hiding, the drum riser slowly began to, well, rise, and two platforms at either side of the stage began to lift into the air. Then, at an excruciatingly slow, Spinal Tap-esque speed, huge painted balloons representing Eddie’s head and hands began to inflate beneath them, giving the impression that he was holding Dave and Steve in one hand, Bruce and Adrian in the other and balancing Nicko on his head. Had this all happened in an instant, the effect would have been nothing short of spectacular. However, Eddie was still inflating by the time the song, and the main set, had finished, and not being a band to indulge in extended jams – Running Free's sing-a-long shenanigans aside – the of Maiden were left stranded on their elevated platforms, waving at the audience while they waited patiently for Eddie to finish inflating. After slowly returning to terra firma and running to the wings, Maiden swiftly returned to perform a classic-laden encore and then it was all over. Despite the fact that I felt a little deflated at not having had an uber-Eddie experience to rival my World Slavery Tour aspirations (something I finally got to see in person during 2008’s nostalgic Somewhere In Time tour at Twickenham stadium), it took nothing away from the sheer euphoria I felt at having seen my first honestto-goodness rock gig. I would have been happy to have lost my rock gig virginity to any one of the bands that were residing in my ever growing record collection, but the fact that it had been Maiden made it a particularly poignant and memorable experience, and one that heralded the start of my need for a regular gig fix.

Just fifteen days later I was off to see another of my favourite bands. Like

Maiden, this band had been an important influence on my life, kick-starting my journey down rock and roll’s highway to hell, so I was looking forward to seeing W.A.S.P. live in all their bloody glory. I’d hadn't even been aware of them when they made their controversial visit to Nottingham’s Palais in 1984, and they hadn't toured The Last Command on this side of the pond, so it wasn’t until the release of their third album, the underrated Inside The Electric Circus, that Blackie Lawless finally brought his motley crew back to Europe. Having been outraged by Lawless torturing topless models and parading around in arse-less leather chaps, the powers that be at Nottingham City Council had decided that a second W.A.S.P. show in my home town would herald the end of civilisation as we knew it and promptly banned them from performing here. Fortunately the moral guardians of Derby, a smaller city ten miles to the West of Nottingham, were either unaware of W.A.S.P.’s particular brand of entertainment or had decided that humanity might just survive a visit by Lawless and his band of angry young men. Accordingly a date was announced at the Assembly Rooms, a venue more commonly associated in 1986 with world championship snooker than grand guignol rock theatre, and Stapes and I couldn’t wait to get hold of tickets so we could witness first-hand the hedonistic spectacle that W.A.S.P. would surely deliver. We knew that there was a circus theme for the new album, which led us to think that the show might be just a little more KISS and a little less Alice Cooper than it had been previously (or as Kerrang! scribe Howard Johnson described the album – ‘less Gene, more Paul’), but thanks to Blackie’s bravado in the press about how he refused to compromise for anybody we weren’t prepared for the reality of Lawless ditching the nudity and red stuff completely, and replacing his saw blade codpiece with a, literally, sparkling new version. Our first hint of this new direction had come a few weeks earlier on Saturday September 20th 1986 when BBC2 took a rare plunge into what at the time was still considered alternative culture. Under the Rock Around The Clock banner it presented an evening of long hair, tight tros and loud guitars live from the Town and Country Club (now The Forum) in London’s Kentish Town, the highlight of which was to be a performance by W.A.S.P. kicking off at the stroke of midnight.

Prior to Blackie and his boys taking to the stage, however, Aunty Beeb decided to hold an air guitar competition, and in doing so destroyed any semblance of credibility that the evening may have intended to bring to the rock scene. Six hopeful contestants (or lambs to the slaughter, depending on your point of view) took to the stage, one of them in full Paul Stanley Star Child make-up, and were each given thirty seconds to prove to the world that they were indeed ‘the man’ when it came to spanking their invisible plank. Lawless had the dubious honour of judging this contest, awarding the title to Cheltenham’s own Nick Renshaw, who carried away a Washburn HM-5 Rambo Burst guitar and a Marshall mini-stack, but left behind any self-respect, social standing and hope of ever getting a girlfriend again. To be fair to Mr Renshaw, though, he was only doing what the rest of us were doing on the dance floors of rock clubs up and down the country or in front of our bedroom mirrors. The only difference was that we didn’t have to go into work or school the next day after indulging in imaginary fretboard wankery on national television. (That said, we didn't have a free guitar and amp either...) Nick Renshaw may actually have been an unwitting trailblazer, as to this day there is an annual World Air Guitar Championship with several global heats, one of them in London (which I entered in 2010, didn't win, but did have a lot of fun doing), and a grand final which is held in the small town of Oulu in Finland. This amusing contest, taken deadly seriously by many of the contenders, was the subject of Alexandra Lipsitz’s very entertaining 2006 movie Air Guitar Nation, which followed the efforts of David ‘C-Diddy’ Jung and Dan ‘Bjorn Turoque’ Crane as they travelled the globe in their efforts to become the first American to wear the air guitar crown at the 2003 finals. The battle was ultimately won by CDiddy, though Bjorn Turoque left his literary mark with his great book To Air Is Human. With the air guitar shenanigans out of the way I counted down the minutes to the witching hour, excited at the realisation that I was about to see W.A.S.P. performing live, albeit on television, and still expecting a show full of blood and boobs (well maybe, this was the BBC after all). At this point I wasn’t even aware that guitarist Randy Piper had been ejected from the band so I was more than a little surprised to see Lawless playing guitar

and ex-King Kobra man Johnny Rod on the bass, his long blonde mullet simultaneously impressive and ridiculous. Explaining the personnel change, Lawless announced that he had ‘dumped the tool of ignorance’, which dismayed me a little as I had just switched from playing guitar to bass so that I could my first band, but we’ll get to that shortly. Despite this low blow W.A.S.P. played a blinding (if short) set, debuting the fantastic 9-5 Nasty but disappointingly, though hardly surprisingly, not giving Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) a good seeing to. Though we were blissfully unaware of it beforehand, the climax of W.A.S.P.'s set was to be the unveiling of Blackie’s new codpiece. However, just as Lawless was about to impress us with his sparkling ejaculation Aunty Beeb decided that this was too much for the viewing public to handle, even at half past midnight, and instead cut back to presenter Mark Ellen, thus saving the youth of the nation from irrevocable corruption. We had to wait until the Rock Around The Clock review in the next issue of Kerrang! to finally see Lawless holding his BC Rich guitar over his head, grinning like a naughty schoolboy as the firework strapped between his legs showered the audience with sparks. As thrilled as I was to have finally seen W.A.S.P. performing live I couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed at the lack of bloody debauchery and half naked chicks, but reasoned that while they had obviously been unable to get away with their usual antics on the BBC, Lawless would undoubtedly be cranking it up to eleven on tour in November. Before I knew it November 4th had arrived and Stapes and I were boarding a Way Ahead coach outside Ye Olde Salutation Inn (or 'The Sal' as it was known) on Maid Marian Way for the short journey to Derby’s Assembly Rooms. Thirty minutes later we stepped off the bus into the chilly evening air and were herded into the small venue, stopping briefly to check out the disappointingly bloodless and obscenity-free t-shirts before taking our places in the crush near the front of the stage. German rockers Warlock were the act and we were charmed for half an

hour by their elfin-like singer Doro Pesch as she ran around the stage in a tight leather bodice, her long blonde locks flowing behind her. She did, of course, have a band with her, but for the life of me I can't recall what any of them looked like (did I mention the tight leather bodice?). After Doro left the stage we had just enough time for a trip to the bar before the lights went down and covers were pulled from the previously shrouded stage set to reveal a distinct lack of heads on poles, torture racks and meat buckets. Instead there were rows and rows of fairy lights and a huge striped canvas, echoing the cover of Inside The Electric Circus, though thankfully without a naked Blackie Lawless. After the brief calliope introduction that also opened the album W.A.S.P. hit the stage with the title track and delivered a blistering set, drawing heavily on the new album and their debut record, but largely ignoring their second offering The Last Command which disappointed me as I thought it was a great album, and still do. Lawless oozed charisma, but to my dismay the main set came and went with nary a drop of blood or a pair of breasts in sight and I resigned myself to the fact that the most exciting visual tonight was going to be Lawless’ phallic firework display. Rather than the magnificent climax that Lawless clearly thought it was, however, when the time came and he lifted his guitar above his head, a paltry spray of sparks issued forth from between his legs. I actually felt a little embarrassed for the guy but not as much as Lawless himself must have felt on stage in Ireland a few days later when his codpiece backfired, sending a shower of sparks out of his backside. Though the torture rack made a comeback the following year at my first Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington, more of which later, it would be another eleven years before Blackie returned to his shock rock roots with a vengeance, pulling out all the stops when W.A.S.P. finally played at Rock City on February 7th 1997. Leaving us in no doubt that he was back to his bad old ways Lawless dismembered a pig with a chain-saw, showed hard-core pornography on stage side televisions as the set climaxed (along with the on screen players) with Animal, and strapped on a huge Se7en-esque bladed dildo to simulate the rape of a nun tied to a cross (who was actually, amusingly, my

roadie friend Ian ‘Mole’ Etheridge). That first night I saw them back in '86, however I left the Assembly Rooms with mixed feelings. It had been a great gig and we’d thoroughly enjoyed it, just not in the way we'd expected. Though he'd been a contender for a brief moment, Lawless had lost out in the grand guignol rock stakes to Alice Cooper’s The Nightmare Returns spectacular that was thrilling audiences with impaled babies, strangled nurses, impressive 'how did he do that' illusions, and a spectacular climactic beheading. For me, though, the most positive thing to come out of seeing W.A.S.P. was that it further reinforced my desire to be in a band of my own, a dream that had taken a step nearer to reality just a few weeks earlier in the hot, sweaty darkness of Rock City.

Chapter 12

* Black Diamond*

‘Do you want to be in a band?’ Given that I played guitar (kind of) and was surrounded by a variety of musicians in local bands it was somewhat inevitable that sooner or later somebody was going to ask me this question, and somehow fitting that it was Steve one fateful night at Rock City in early September 1986. Having reached that point in any alcohol fuelled evening at which a great many ideas begin to look both appealing and sensible I immediately said yes. A mere thirty seconds after g my rock and roll soul away I hit the first obstacle in my quest to become the next rock guitar god. ‘Have you got a bass?’ Steve asked, and the fact that I didn’t have one might have been the end of the story if I hadn’t suddenly come up with a cunning plan involving a figure from my past. A couple of years earlier while I had been sailing the high seas of software piracy at the local computer club I had become friendly with a guy called Barlow. He was a couple of years older than me, had long curly ginger hair and was a major rock fan, though this was of no relevance to me at the time as I had yet to be introduced to Blackie Lawless and the world of rock and roll. After the club had folded Barlow and I had lost touch but the previous month I’d run into him again early one Saturday morning on the top deck of the number fifty-six bus. Barlow was on his way to that year’s Monsters of Rock festival (at which Def Leppard would make their triumphant return) and as we sat reminiscing about the computer club days he happened to mention that his ZX Spectrum's power supply had just packed up. Seeing an opportunity to help out a friend I told him to bring it into the computer department where I worked the following Saturday so that I could have it sent off and repaired for free. This act of generosity rekindled our friendship and I began going round to Barlow’s house to marvel at his extensive collection of rock albums and be

impressed by his guitar playing. Barlow also had a bass guitar but having become as adept on his six string as I was inept on mine he found that he rarely played it. Consequently I had picked it up a couple of times and quickly found that playing the bass suited me very well indeed. At that point, though, despite his hints that he might be selling it I had decided to stick with the guitar. In the six months or so that I had been playing I had learned half a dozen chords and I could play just about any solo you liked as long as it was the one from Poison's Talk Dirty To Me. I had noticed, however, that I found myself gravitating towards playing the bass lines of my favourites songs on the E and A strings of my axe, partly because it was easier than learning to contort my fingers into unnatural positions in order to play all but the most rudimentary of chords, and partly because I actually preferred the feel of playing these bass lines. It seemed like fate, then, that I was now being asked to a band as a bassist. I happened to know that Barlow was also at Rock City that night so after Steve had asked me the sixty-four thousand dollar question I took off at speed to locate him among the throng of long haired, spandex clad punters and find out whether his bass was still for sale. Luckily it was and we agreed that I would take it off his hands the following day for the princely sum of sixty pounds. That hurdle overcome I danced my way back to where Steve was standing and announced that I now had a bass and was ready to sign on the dotted line. ‘Dude!’ Steve exclaimed, and began to tell me about the band and who else was in it. Steve would be handling rhythm guitar duties, a guy called Dave was playing lead, Evans would be beating the skins and another guy I knew slightly called Hopkins would be singing, strutting and generally emulating Paul Stanley’s best moves for us. With me completing the line-up on the bass we had a band. I went home that night with an industrial sized spring in my step. I had ed my first band which surely meant that fame and fortune were but a few short

months away. The next day I walked to Barlow’s house, still springing, and picked up my first bass. It was a heavy no-name guitar with a matt white body and a thick wooden neck, lovingly described by Barlow as 'the plank'. While it may have lacked the graceful, sexy curvature of a Fender or a Rickenbacker, what mattered was that this weighty, ugly instrument was mine. The moment I got back to my bedroom I excitedly plugged the bass into my amp, expecting to be playing along to Metallica or Bon Jovi within minutes. I quickly discovered, however, that it was one thing to pick out the bass lines on my thin guitar strings but to attempt the same on strings several times thicker was another proposition entirely. I persevered for an hour or so but had to give up after parting company with most of the skin on the fingertips of my left hand and spent the next couple of days wandering around with a pained expression on my face. Once the initial swelling had gone down I was determined to keep at it, building up the calluses on my fingers by playing along to the likes of Poison’s Look What The Cat Dragged In, Cinderella’s Nightsongs and Ratt’s Out of the Cellar. Over the next few weeks it became a nightly after school ritual to stick my favourite records on one after another and try and play along with them. At first my attempts were atrocious. I murdered songs left, right and centre as I tried to emulate Bobby Dall, Eric Brittingham and Juan Croucier, but as the days and weeks ed a combination of sheer determination and a love of actually playing the bass meant that I soon became competent enough to attempt some of the songs that we’d agreed to run through during my new band's first practice. Largely at Steve’s request we’d decided to try some Scorpions songs, in particular Rock You Like A Hurricane, Blackout, Can’t Live Without You and The Zoo. I was particularly happy with the latter as the bass line was particularly straightforward. I volunteered to find a room for us to rehearse in, and began ringing around local places, figuring that as we were all from different areas of Nottingham it had to be closest to one of us so it might as well be me.

After calling several rehearsal rooms only to be told that they were either fully booked up or way out of our minuscule price range, I tried one last place in Sherwood out of sheer desperation, not imagining for a moment that they would be able to accommodate us. As luck would have it they could and so, somewhat ironically for a band consisting of five teenagers with considerably more enthusiasm than talent, we secured a regular Thursday evening booking between six and nine at the Nottingham Centre for the Deaf. Steve and I were the first to arrive on our inaugural Thursday quest for world domination, pulling up in our chauffeur (OK, parent) driven cars. We quickly set up our gear and began trading licks with each other until Evans turned up shortly afterwards and I got my first taste of the realities of performing live, namely that the drummer always takes an eternity to set their kit up. Hopkins was the next to arrive, breezing into the rehearsal room with true star attitude as if he was Paul Stanley walking on stage at Wembley Arena, followed by Dave who was always the last of us to report for duty. Before long we were all set up and ready to rock. Hopkins had come up with a couple of riffs and strapped on his cherry red flying-V to share them with us. I hadn’t really known Hopkins that well until we began rehearsing but it was quickly evident that he was a guy with tremendous aspirations and dedication to making it as a rock star. As Hopkins played through his ideas he started trying to put my lyrics to them and within half an hour we had written our first song. With that in the bag we turned our attention to trying one of the covers that we’d learned, but it turned out that we’d all tried to master different songs, apart from Dave who hadn’t bothered learning any of them, reasoning that as he was the lead guitarist he just had to play a blinding solo over whatever we were playing at the time. This was to prove both amusing and frustrating over the coming weeks but for the moment we decided that as we were all reasonably au fait with Blackout by the Scorpions we’d give that a go. Steve cranked out the opening riff, a challenging single repeated chord, and we launched headlong into it, not letting the fact that Hopkins didn’t actually know the words hinder us in the least as Steve, being a huge Scorps fan, gave us the

nod when we got to the chorus which consisted of Hopkins repeatedly shouting ‘Blackout’. This worked pretty well until we reached the guitar solo where Dave came into his own and began working his fretboard like his life depended on it, his face contorted into that unique lead guitarist expression that sits somewhere between ecstasy and agony. Realising that we didn’t know where to go next with the song the four of us stopped playing and stood looking at each other with puzzled expressions on our faces. I say the four of us because by this time Dave was completely lost in widdly widdly world, backed up against the wall which he was slowly sliding down. We stood watching Dave for another three or four minutes, grinning at each other as he peeled off note after note until he suddenly realised that he was the only one still making any noise. His fingers stopped moving and he looked up at us from his almost horizontal position on the floor. For a moment there was complete silence and then with a puzzled expression he simply said 'What?' at which point we cracked up laughing and decided it was time for a break. Having developed finely attuned alcohol detectors, Steve and I quickly discovered a small shop across the road from the Deaf Centre where we could pick up some tins of beer. Over the next few months this became a weekly ritual with the ratio of rehearsal time to break/beer time increasingly shifting in favour of the latter. Back in the rehearsal room, with the exception of Hopkins who was teetotal at this point, we cracked open some tins and got down to the serious business of choosing a name for the band. The initial suggestions, made between inspirational sips of Trent bitter and Skol lager (the cheapest beers on offer thanks to our somewhat limited rider budget) were along the lines of ‘errrm’ and ‘dunno’, until Hopkins broke the deadlock and in the time honoured tradition of naming your group after one of your favourite band’s songs suggested that we call ourselves Black Diamond after the closing track on KISS' debut album. Given I was a KISS fan too I was more than happy with his proposal and due to a lack of alternatives it met no opposition

from the rest of the guys. That sorted we played on for a while, butchering several more Scorpions songs until nine o’clock rolled around and our chauffeurs (OK, parents) arrived to drive us home. As I told Dad about how cool the previous three hours had been I felt both exhilarated and excited, knowing that the seeds had been planted for Black Diamond to become the next big thing.

Chapter 13

* Just A Gigolo*

In the months before my first brace of live rock gigs - Maiden, W.A.S.P. and Bon Jovi (who we'll get to shortly) - a number of albums were released that began the important push that took rock from the dark, sweaty confines of specialist clubs like Rock City and thrust it into the mainstream. Two of the most influential, as far as my friends and I were concerned, were the 1986 offerings from David Lee Roth and Bon Jovi. Having left Van Halen a good year before I'd discovered the joys of spandex and hairspray, ophthalmologist’s son David Lee Roth had ignored the speculation that he would amount to nothing without his former band and instead quickly recorded and released his Crazy From The Heat EP. This four-track mini-album confounded critics and fans alike by containing some interesting, though given Roth’s predilection for the theatrical, not completely unexpected song selections. Leading with a cover of The Beach Boys classic California Girls that made it sound as though Brian Wilson and Mike Love had written it especially for him, Roth schmoozed his way through a couple of vintage sounding original tunes Coconut Grove and Easy Street - and a medley of old standards Just A Gigolo and I Ain’t Got Nobody. In anyone else's hands such a bold move would have been career suicide and treated with disdain before sinking without trace, but then nobody else had what Diamond Dave possessed by the truckload – charasma! Shrewdly hooking up with Pete Angelus, his partner in crime and other half of the Picasso Brothers, Roth launched his solo career with a cheeky video for California Girls featuring scores of scantily clad models and even landed himself a spot on Top Of The Pops on Valentine’s Day 1985. Roth's one-two sucker punch was completed with a humorous, tongue-in-cheek video for Just A Gigolo / I Ain’t Got Nobody which not only introduced the

world to Dave TV (‘all Dave, all night!') but put Roth firmly back on the rock and roll map. Lampooning several of the popular artists of the time - Billy Idol, Cindy Lauper, Culture Club and Michael Jackson - Roth sashayed his way through nearly six minutes of smile-inducing visuals that proved he was far from finished. As a result expectations were sky high for his forthcoming full-length solo album, the suggestively titled Eat ‘Em And Smile. Metal Micky and the Rock City DJs had started playing an advance track from Eat ‘Em And Smile called Yankee Rose which literally had people stopping in their tracks for a moment before heading en masse to the dance floor. The reason for the pause was that Roth’s new guitarist had seemingly gone one better than Eddie Van and was actually making his guitar talk! ‘David,’ it seemed to say, 'What do you see?', the strings being teased into vocal patterns by some guy called Steve Vai who had cut his teeth playing for Frank Zappa prior to hooking up with Roth, before erupting into an infectious laugh that had us looking at each other and thinking ‘How the fuck did he do that?!’ After hearing this on the dance floor a few times I finally saw the video on Entertainment USA and was blown away for a second time. For three minutes and change Roth danced and high kicked his way across a huge stage set while Vai and an impossibly talented bassist called Billy Sheehan displayed the dazzling fretboard skills that led to them becoming known as the Power Twins. Rounded out by drummer Greg Bissonette, who pounded his kit with an effortless cool manner (though if you blinked you’d miss him in the video), Roth’s new musical outfit was eclipsed only by his own outfits which consisted of numerous items of spandex in various combinations and the ultimate accessory, a giant inflatable microphone that, coincidentally I'm sure, bore more than a ing resemblance to a massive phallus. Phil was the first of us to pick up Eat ‘Em And Smile and I heard it in full for the first time in the hours before my first Maiden gig. Having been more than impressed by album opener Yankee Rose it was the second track that made our jaws drop.

Shy Boy, written by Sheehan while he was with his previous band Talas, contained the most impressive bass guitar work I had ever heard. It was so fast and fluid that it made even Metallica bassist Cliff Burton’s work seem like that of an enthusiastic amateur. Sheehan played the notes so fast that you'd have be forgiven for thinking that he'd attached his plectrum to a high-speed drill, a daring feat that he and guitarist Paul Gilbert actually pulled off when I saw Mr Big play at Rock City several years later. The rest of the album was equally impressive, and became a regular fixture on my stereo for the latter half of 1986 but it had serious competition from an album that was to capture the general public’s hearts and minds and catapult the band in question, and the rock scene in general, from small theatres to the world's largest arenas and stadiums in less than twelve months. Ever since its release in August 1986 Bon Jovi’s Slippery When Wet had been a frequent visitor to my turntable. From the opening pomposity of Let It Rock to the widescreen sprawl of Wanted Dead Or Alive, the first five tracks were, and remain, outstanding examples of everything that was great about eighties rock music. You Give Love A Bad Name and Livin’ On A Prayer have become a part of the general public's musical consciousness, the latter’s opening bass riff instantly recognisable to anyone under retirement age (and I may be wrong, but I think it’s illegal not to play this tune at wedding receptions), but Wanted Dead Or Alive is where it’s at. Not quite a ballad, not quite a rocker, it carves out its own niche as a cinematic celebration of the whole Jon Bon Jovi ethos – the cowboy, the rebel, riding his steel horse from town to town, playing for you because he was born to be your baby (well, maybe). Sometimes he sleeps. Sometimes it’s not for days. He's seen a million faces, though, and you better believe he’s rocked them all. A few weeks after Slippery came out I was sitting in one of the science rooms at school when Stapes leaned across and whispered to me, ‘Bon Jovi are touring. Wanna go?’ After thinking carefully about it for almost a second I decided that yes, I did want to go, very much, and asked Stapes where and when they were playing and

more importantly, when the tickets were going on sale. Fortunately he had all this information to hand and so after a quick trip to Way Ahead a couple of days later we were the proud owners of a couple of Bon Jovi tickets for their November 11th 1986 gig at the Odeon Theatre in Birmingham. Though we didn’t know it at the time (much like the band themselves I suspect), we were about to witness the beginning of Bon Jovi’s rapid rise to mega stardom.

Chapter 14

* Raise Your Hands*

Despite my first two rock gig experiences having both ended with mildly disappointing climaxes, I had high hopes for the third, with reviews of Bon Jovi's recent American shows reporting that they were delivering maximum rock and roll entertainment on a nightly basis. Though it was their first shot at topping the bill in the UK it was far from being their first trip to these shores. KISS had brought them over in 1984 as the act on their Animalize tour, and the following year headliners ZZ Top had invited them to appear at the annual Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington, hitting the stage before Marillion and after Metallica, Ratt and Magnum. In 1986, however, Bon Jovi were just beginning to work their way into the general public’s consciousness which meant that we got to see them in the relatively snug confines of the Birmingham Odeon, rather than the arenas and stadiums that were to become their regular haunts soon afterwards. November 11th rolled around and Stapes and I once more boarded a Way Ahead coach outside the Sal, though there were noticeably more girls this time, and as we headed down the A453 and M42 towards Birmingham the atmosphere in the coach was teeming with teenage hormones. Even in the few weeks since scoring our tickets the Bon Jovi buzz had been gathering momentum at a cracking pace, despite their appearance on the Friday November 7th edition of The Tube, the popular Channel Four live music show fronted by Jools Holland and the late Paula Yates. Though the band had looked great, their performance was plagued with terrible sound and a largely unimpressed audience who didn't quite know what to make of them. To add insult to apathy, not only did Jon have his scarf stolen while on stage, a group of girls mobbed him after the show, one of whom kneed him in the balls and made off with his leather jacket. The coach dropped us outside the Odeon Theatre, an old converted cinema, and

we made our way inside. At the merchandise stand I picked up a hefty album sized tour programme for the very reasonable price of four pounds that was packed to the gills with pictures and essays on the band. My original intention had been to give it to a girl at school that I had a crush on, but once I'd flicked through it I decided it was too good to give away and I still have it to this day. (Sorry, Fiona!) Our next stop was, naturally, the bar where we handed over sums of money for bargain basement beer while we speculated what they would hit the stage with. The Birmingham Odeon itself was a magnificent building, retaining the crushed velvet majesty of the days when you could go and watch a film under giant glass chandeliers surrounded by heavy red flocked wallpaper, but all good things must and the venue was closing its doors forever the following month, on December 5th, after a final three-night stand by Alice Cooper on his Nightmare Returns tour. We took our seats in time to see band FM, an entertaining and competent British AOR band, finish their set. After a brief interval in which the air crackled with the electricity of anticipation the lights went down and the auditorium erupted in a deafening roar as Pink Flamingos, the intro to album opener Let It Rock, gave way to Raise Your Hands. Stapes and I leapt to our feet with the rest of the audience as Jon appeared centre stage at the top of a flight of stairs, silhouetted behind a Venetian blind bearing the distinctive yellow diamond shaped Slippery When Wet logo. The band knew they had the audience in the palm of its hand from the outset and they didn’t disappoint. Jon bounded across the stage with endless energy and enthusiasm, occasionally strapping on his guitar (emblazoned with the cheesy but somehow perfect motto ‘Life’s A Beach’) to rock out with his partner in crime Richie Sambora. Bassist Alec John Such firmly planted his feet three feet apart and fixed the audience with his best thousand yard while on a couple of raised platforms keyboard player David Bryan grinned like a deranged Phantom of the Opera and drummer Tico Torres hammered away at his kit with his New York cool. Despite Messrs Sambora, Such, Bryan and Torres giving it their rock and roll all

there was no doubt who the fans were there to see. Jon’s every move and between song rap was greeted with piercing screams from the large contingent of teenage girls in the audience. As clichéd as it sounds, that night every boy in the audience wanted to be Jon and every girl wanted to be with him. Richie Sambora finally got his moment in the spotlight when he walked on stage for the first encore with his fancy double necked guitar and transfixed us all with an atmospheric and moving intro to Wanted Dead Or Alive. As we climbed back onto the coach for the hour long trip back to Nottingham, Stapes and I reflected on the awesome show that we had just seen and concluded that in our expert opinion Bon Jovi were here to stay. Despite our glowing endorsement, not even the band themselves could have been prepared for the meteoric rise that was about to happen in the nine months between my first Bon Jovi gig at the Birmingham Odeon and my second in a field in Leicestershire.

Chapter 15

* Watching You*

Bon Jovi appearing on The Tube was pretty much the beginning of a new era of music television for rock fans in the UK. Though America had been enjoying MTV since August 1981 (although, ironically, the New York area where the channel was produced didn’t actually get to see it until two years later), over in the UK pickings had been much slimmer. Prior to the rock renaissance that kicked off in earnest in early 1987 our weekly fix of Top Of The Pops had been the only real opportunity to see videos by our favourite bands. Channel Four had made an attempt to bring rock music to British television in 1985 with a program called ECT (Extra Celestrial Television) that had aired ten episodes between April and June of that year, the concept being that it would be a totally live format, giving four bands ten minutes each to strut their stuff. Kerrang! even offered free tickets to the first show with the proviso that fans ‘must dress outrageously or you may not gain ittance.’ Prospective attendees were encouraged to ‘wear as many studs and spikes as you can and get your gear truly metal oriented.’ In other words, try your best to look like Judas Priest singer Rob Halford. Though a great idea in principle, ECT couldn’t attract the cream of British rock such as Def Leppard and Iron Maiden, both of whom were making major waves at the time, instead featuring the likes of Waysted, Rogue Male, Hawkwind, and the distinctly gothic Lords Of The New Church, with Motörhead the only ‘name’ band that appeared during the show’s run. In addition, the show was plagued with appalling sound quality and amateurish camera angles, all of which turned ECT into the first of many missed opportunities to promote rock music to the general public. Later the same year, in November 1985, a satellite television channel called Music Box managed to set aside an hour a month (yes, a whole hour) dedicated to rock music.

The Power Hour was presented by the marvellously mulleted Gaz Top and Kerrang! scribe Dante Bonutto, and was soon moved to a fortnightly slot thanks to a positive response from viewers. However, due to the prohibitive cost of buying a satellite receiver back then, the closest that my friends and I got to witnessing The Power Hour was by reading about it in the pages of Kerrang! All this was to change, however, thanks to the vision of a man who had been an important player in the music business, but who was to spectacularly fall from grace at the turn of the millennium. Jonathan King had first come to the public's attention in 1965 when, at the age of twenty-one, he had written and recorded the abysmal top ten hit single Everyone’s Gone To The Moon. Despite this he went on to become a producer of note, winning industry magazine Music Week’s Producer of the Year award three times in the early seventies, before changing his focus from music to television at the beginning of the eighties. He began presenting occasional reports from America on Top Of The Pops, which led to a series of his own being commissioned by BBC2, called Entertainment USA, which at its peak pulled in an impressive nine million viewers a week. Entertainment USA gave us our first glimpse of the emerging rock scene in America where bands like Foreigner, Survivor and a host of other middle of the road (MOR) acts regularly infiltrated the higher reaches of the charts. As harder rocking bands like Van Halen, Poison, ZZ Top and Bon Jovi began to make waves across the pond they also began showing up on Entertainment USA and I found myself tuning in religiously as I finally got to see video footage of the bands that were part of my rapidly growing record collection. King also produced a UK focused version of Entertainment USA called No Limits, and even managed to achieve the near impossible by shoehorning a Heavy Metal section into the 1987 Brit Awards featuring Ozzy Osbourne and Iron Maiden. Fourteen years after this astounding feat, however, King fell from grace when he was convicted of sexual offences against young teenage boys in the 1980s and

jailed for seven years. He was released on parole in 2005 and has continued to this day to protest his innocence but his reputation was damaged beyond repair and his otherwise impressive legacy remains overshadowed by these events. Around the same time that Entertainment USA was hitting its peak Channel Four began showing The Chart Show, a programme without presenters that focused on one of several charts each week. When it was rock week, as well as airing videos from the likes of Bon Jovi, Poison and Def Leppard, it also gave lesser known bands that were never played on the radio the all-important opportunity to reach a wider audience than they would normally have access to. When MTV Europe launched on the Sky Television satellite network at the beginning of August 1987 it brought with it Headbangers Ball which after a brief stint by VJ Adam Curry became the domain of Riki Rachtman, a prominent figure in the Los Angeles rock scene (and whom I received a personal message from for my 50th birthday courtesy of my brother John). Well known among rock fans as the co-owner of LA’s infamous Cathouse Club along with Faster Pussycat singer Taime Downe, Rachtman allegedly landed the gig thanks to his friend, Guns ‘N’ Roses singer W Axl Rose, putting in a good word for him. Due to the cost of installing Sky Television, the satellite network that carried MTV Europe, being beyond the budget of those of us with just enough money to indulge our drinking, gigging and record buying habits it was a godsend that Headbangers Ball spawned a British equivalent that aired on late night terrestrial television. The UK version featured a number of hosts over the years, including the ubermulletted Bailey Brothers who became regular fixtures on the UK rock festival circuit for a while, Vanessa Warwick, whose husband Ricky Warwick fronted Brit rockers The Almighty and ultimately Black Star Riders, and an enigmatic and almost certainly insane presenter called Krusher. Steve ‘Krusher’ Joule was the bearded, corkscrew-haired, metal loving ex-editor of Kerrang! who would appear on screen and launch into imioned rants about a particular band or video from time to time. Coming across like David Lee Roth’s more wayward and eccentric cousin, Krusher would urge us to ‘shake

your cakes’ in a voice that wrestler Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage would have been envious of. Krusher embodied everything that appealed to me about the rock scene. Both in print and on screen he always came across as being on the wrong side of several Jack Daniels, and got to hang out with all of the bands I loved, seemingly tailing them around the globe like a particularly persistent ligger (the lucky bastard). I wasn’t the only one to be touched by his entertaining brand of madness. When I ed my first proper rock band in 1989 (Black Diamond, though a lot of fun, was in retrospect merely a training ground) our guitarist was as fervent a fan as I was and we would often end up quoting Krusher at each other before dissolving into fits of laughter that brought puzzled glances from the rest of the band. This proliferation of music programmes meant that it didn’t take record companies long to realise that not only were music videos important – vital, even - marketing tools for their acts, who ran the risk of being left behind if they didn’t get on board with them, but that the right video on MTV could catapult a band from obscurity to superstardom almost overnight, as was to happen with Bon Jovi.

Chapter 16

* The Camera Eye*

With the advent of MTV it was no longer enough to follow Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry's advice and let the music do the talking. The music video had suddenly become a powerful and essential weapon in the promotional arsenal of record companies. As a result bands suddenly had to be more aware of the way they looked, which wasn't a problem for many of the Los Angeles groups whose skills in applying make-up and eye liner eclipsed their ability to actually play their instruments, but inevitably there were casualties. Californian rockers Y&T had reached the dizzying heights of number fifty-five on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1985 with Summertime Girls, but fearing for their survival in this brave, pretty new world they sacked Leonard Haze, their drummer of sixteen years, citing his image, or rather lack of it, as the reason. Birmingham quintet Duran Duran were one of the first bands to fully embrace the potential of video, producing iconic, innovative and expensive promos for Rio, Hungry Like The Wolf and the saucy Girls On Film which got them noticed and turned them into the biggest band in the world for a while. They were also clever in then packaging these videos on a VHS tape and selling them to fans at twenty pounds a pop. Duran might have been the darlings of the MTV age but the concept of the rock video had been invented by another British band nearly a decade earlier. Back in 1975 when Bohemian Rhapsody had hit the top of the singles charts and stayed there for nine weeks, Queen's touring commitments wouldn't allow them to perform the track live on Top Of The Pops every week, as was the norm in those days. The alternative would have been for the show’s resident dance troupe Pan’s People to perform a routine to the song, as usually happened when a band was unavailable, so the band instead commissioned a short film to enable them to effectively appear on TOTP while they were on the road.

This short film for Bohemian Rhapsody has subsequently been credited as instigating the modern promotional video and paving the way for record companies to ensure maximum exposure for their artists. In the wake of Duran’s very effective wake-up call to the MTV generation, rock promos soon followed suit in moving away from the bog standard performance clips that had been sufficient for the opening years of the eighties and began producing videos involving ridiculous, larger than life concepts featuring themselves clowning around and having a blast. This trend for funny videos had been kicked off back in 1984 by Twisted Sister’s promos for We’re Not Gonna Take It and I Wanna Rock. Both starred Mark Metcalf, an American actor best known for his role as the obnoxious ROTC leader Doug Neidermeyer from National Lampoon’s Animal House, and featured him reprising some of his more famous catchphrases from the movie. 'What do you want to do with your life?' he screams at a kid, his face contorted with rage, to which the kid answers with the immortal words 'I wanna rock!' Metcalf is then, over the course of the two videos, literally blown out of his shoes, his head punching through the ceiling into a gymnasium, launched through several windows and a wall, and generally abused like a hapless human Wile E Coyote as he tries, and fails, to take out Dee Snider and the boys in a variety of over-the-top set pieces, interspersed with clips of the band performing live. Thanks to the inspired and humorous preambles that set up each clip’s premise the full videos run for almost twice the length of the actual songs and set a precedent for similar prologues throughout the remainder of the eighties. Inevitably the videos would be cut for running times on TV, and so the only way to see them was to buy the inevitable long form video collecting all the recent promos from a particular album, usually framed with specially shot, often humorous, segments to string them together. Well, most of them were anyway. While the so-called hair metal bands were able to laugh at themselves, thrash bands tended to take themselves much more seriously, none more so than Metallica who had steadfastly refused to make any videos for years before finally caving in and producing arguably one of the most stylish and influential rock promos of all time for One, the first single from their

1989 …And Justice For All album. The video used samples of dialogue and scenes from Dalton Trumbo’s movie Johnny Got His Gun, which had inspired the lyrics, intercut with black and white footage of the band playing the song in a rehearsal room and became a firm fan favourite that nearly three decades later still regularly appears in the upper reaches of any greatest music video list. Like most people, when I first saw the video I was blown away by the intensity of it. There was no humour, no mugging to the camera, just seven minutes and change of depressing but captivating visuals that perfectly complemented the song’s dark subject matter. While I was very impressed by the video for One, my favourite promos remained those that mixed comedic situations with clips of the bands looking like they were having the time of their lives, which was exactly what I wanted out of this whole rock and roll trip. Motörhead’s Lemmy Kilminster wasn’t quite so sure about this brave new world of video clips, though, but he did acknowledge that unless he embraced the medium then his band would be left behind. ‘Our fans are young,’ he complained, ‘most of them are on the dole. I can’t see them paying twenty pounds for our video, I really can’t. They cost far more to make than they’re worth. The trouble is, people are geared to video now, and we can’t afford to be left out.’ In true mischievous Lemmy style, though, he went on to say that ‘I think Motörhead will be the first band to use a video nasty as a promo.’ David Coverdale was another sceptic of the new rock promo revolution, claiming that he had never been keen on videos and that ‘Most of the new groups look very nice on tape, but when it comes to a live situation they can’t play.’ While he might have had a valid point in certain cases on this latter claim he did a complete U-turn regarding videos when he reinvented Whitesnake and released their 1987 album accompanied by expensive and lavish promos featuring not only Coverdale’s new ‘LA’ image – his bleached blonde tresses a far cry from his blues roots - but also his future ex-wife Tawney Kitaen who writhed around

on the bonnet of a sports car in a virtually transparent white dress for the Here I Go Again video. Of course, while such frivolity, recklessness and saucy antics went down a storm in the rock community, as did the comedic depictions of violence against parents and teachers in the aforementioned Twisted Sister videos, they attracted the unwelcome attention of Tipper Gore and the dreaded Parent’s Music Resource Centre. These self-appointed guardians of public decency set their sights firmly on eradicating this filth from the face of the earth, and would become a serious threat to rock music as the decade progressed, its influence so great that it even subpoenaed Dee Snider to appear before the United States Senate in September 1985 to defend his music.

Chapter 17

* Ode To Tipper Gore*

As a lifelong fan of horror movies the intervention of political and moral bodies to prevent the world from drowning in an ocean of filth and depravity was nothing new to me. In 1984 the British Government had ed the Video Recordings Act which in turn led to the publication of the ‘video nasty list’ or ‘DPP list’ which named 39 films that it considered to be worthy of prosecution under obscenity laws. Of course, to an increasingly rebellious young horror fan like myself (and thousands more just like me) this list became an invaluable check list of movies that we now considered essential viewing, if only because we were being told that we couldn't see them. As a teenager there’s nothing quite like the feeling of being into something that your parents and society as a whole deem to be forbidden and this feeling of rebellion was further amplified in 1985 by the creation of the PMRC, a committee formed by four women who were to become known as the ‘Washington Wives’ thanks to their husbands' prominent connections to the federal government. By attacking rock music as being partially responsible for the increase in rape, teenage pregnancy and teen suicide, the PMRC made it ‘officially’ dangerous. Led by Tipper Gore, wife of then Senator and later Vice President Al Gore, this quartet of moral crusaders was completed by Susan Baker, wife of Treasury Secretary James Baker, Pam Howar, wife of realtor Raymond Howar, and Sally Nevius, wife of Washington City Council Chairman John Nevius. The seeds of the PMRC were sown after Gore was listening to Prince's 1984 Purple Rain album with her daughter Karenna. As they got to the end of side one the lyrics to Darling Nikki caught Gore’s attention. One can only imagine the look on poor Tipper's face as the late, great Purple One sang 'I knew a girl named Nikki / I guess you could say she was a sex fiend / I met her in a hotel lobby / Masturbating with a magazine.'

The less than subtle references to sex and self-love shocked Gore enough to begin an investigation into the world of rock videos, her conclusion being that 'The images frightened my children, they frightened me! The graphic sex and the violence were too much for us to handle.' Her friend Susan Baker had been equally horrified to find her own seven-year old daughter singing along with Madonna, whose lyrics she considered to be inappropriate. Becoming sisters in outrage, Baker and Gore ed forces with Howel and Nevius and formed the PRMC in May 1985. In an attempt to prevent rock music from 'infecting the youth of the world with messages they cannot handle' the PMRC suggested that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) adopt a voluntary rating system, similar to that operated by the movie industry. This request led to the introduction of an iconic piece of music history that was to become a badge of honour amongst rock fans and which would help rather than hinder sales of many a controversial album - the black and white ‘Parental Advisory Explicit Content’ sticker. Echoing the DPP’s video nasty list, the PRMC released their own list, known infamously as the Filthy Fifteen, detailing the songs they considered the most objectionable, nine of which belonged to rock bands. The list helpfully added what they found objectionable by classifying them as containing Sex, Masturbation, Violence, Occult, Drug and Alcohol Use, and Language (though, a pedant writes, it didn't specify bad language, just language as a whole, and so could technically be applied to any non-instrumental song). Judas Priest’s ‘Eat Me Alive’ bagged the highest rock position, at number three, with Mötley Crüe’s ‘Bastard’, AC/DC’s ‘Let Me Put My Love Into You’, Twisted Sister’s ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’, W.A.S.P.’s ‘Animal (Fuck Like A Beast), Def Leppard’s ‘High And Dry (Saturday Night), Mercyful Fate’s ‘Into The Coven’, Black Sabbath’s ‘Trashed’ and Venom’s ‘Possessed’ keeping it company. This led to several US chain stores, primarily Wal-Mart, refusing to stock any stickered albums or limiting their sale to adults, a trend that continues to this day to the extent where some artists – usually, but not exclusively, rap acts - record

'clean' versions of their albums to ensure they aren't blacklisted and, more importantly, excluded from a potentially massive retail marketplace. Ironically, though, the publication of the Filthy Fifteen list and the subsequent investigation in November 1985 by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee into the ‘pornographic content of rock music’ only served to raise the profile of bands like W.A.S.P., Mötley Crüe and Twisted Sister who were hitherto largely unknown outside of the rock scene. Twisted Sister vocalist Dee Snider was catapulted into the spotlight when he appeared in front of the committee alongside John Denver and Frank Zappa to present his views on ‘the subject of the content of certain sound recordings and suggestions that recording packages be labelled to provide a warning to prospective purchasers of sexually explicit or other potentially offensive content’. And breathe. Unfortunately for the PMRC, as Snider recalls in Sam Dunn, Scot McFadyen and Jessica Joy Wise’s superb 2005 documentary ‘Metal : A Headbanger’s Journey’, they were expecting a dumb, foul-mouthed rock star, a ‘lamb to the slaughter’, but what they got instead was an articulate, intelligent and extremely well spoken musician well equipped to defend himself. In the documentary the of the committee are seen to be visibly taken aback at Snider’s insightful and compelling arguments against the introduction of a mandatory ratings system over and above the ‘Parental Advisory’ sticker, or ‘Tipper Sticker’ as it became known. Deliberately playing up to the stereotype that the committee was expecting, Snider had arrived dressed in his customary denim jacket, his long hair wild and unkempt, and made a big display of removing his handwritten speech from his back pocket, loudly unfolding it and smoothing out the creases on the table like an errant schoolboy producing his homework before launching into his testimony. Snider explained to the committee that he was married, had a three-year-old son, was born and raised a Christian and still adhered to those principles, declaring that 'Believe it or not, I do not smoke, I do not drink, and I do not take drugs.' He argued that it was the responsibility of parents, of which he was one himself, to 'monitor what their children see, hear and read during their pre-teen years'. He

further stated that 'The full responsibility for this falls on the shoulders of my wife and I, because there is no one else capable of making these judgements for me'. When questioned about the lyrics to ‘Under The Blade’, the title track from Twisted Sister’s 1982 debut album which supposedly contained references to sado-masochism, bondage and rape, Snider expertly turned the accusation around. Explaining that the lyrics were actually written about guitarist Eddie Ojeda’s operation to have polyps removed from his throat, Snider declared that 'songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences and dreams into the lyrics. People can interpret it in many ways', before delivering his killer blow 'Ms Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it.' Snider 15, Gore 0. Snider followed this with the observation that Gore had actually misquoted his lyrics and that he was curious as to how this had happened 'since we make it a point to print all of our lyrics on the inner sleeve of every album'. Snider 30, Gore 0. Focusing on the subject of lyrics, Snider then suggested that perhaps the PMRC had confused the lyrics for We’re Not Gonna Take It with the video as the track itself, rated ‘V’ for violence in the Filthy Fifteen, contained ‘no violence of any type either sung about or implied anywhere in the song.’ Snider 40, Gore 0. Furthermore, Snider continued, the violence in the video was no worse than that found in a cartoon – it was essentially ‘human actors playing variations on the Roadrunner / Wile E Coyote theme.’ In fact the promo was deemed inoffensive enough by the United Way of America - an organisation of volunteers, contributors and charities that helped people in their own communities – that it had been selected for inclusion in a video on the subject of the changing American family because of its ‘light-hearted way of talking about communicating with teenagers.’ Game, set and match, Snider.

Though the motion to introduce a mandatory rating system ultimately failed, even before the hearing had ended the RIAA had effectively caved in and voluntarily agreed to put the ‘Parental Advisory Explicit Lyrics’ stickers on selected releases at their own discretion. The RIAA weren’t the only ones to cave, though. Despite Blackie Lawless vigorously and articulately defending his freedom of speech and expression in the press he did it in an article in Hit Parader magazine in March 1988 that the reason he had toned down W.A.S.P.’s stage show in the Electric Circus era (much to our disappointment) was out of fear that the PMRC would effectively make it impossible for them to book shows or have record stores stock their music, thus ending their career. Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx also waded into the debate with some typically bombastic comments about Gore. When asked his opinions on her and the PMRC by Kerrang! magazine he replied ‘When I think about her I fantasise about tying her naked to a table and showing her the Nikki way.’ He wasn’t the only one to strike back at Tipper. Frank Zappa, who had testified at the hearing, included snippets of audio from it on the track Porn Wars on the US edition of his album Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers of Prevention, and Bay Area skate punk band NOFX released an EP in 1987 called ‘The PMRC Can Suck On This’. Dave Mustaine launched his own venomous attack on the PMRC in the form of Hook In Mouth, the closing track on Megadeth’s superb 1998 So Far, So Good…So What album, the lyrics to which declared ‘This spells out freedom, it means nothing to me / As long as there’s a PMRC.’ (Bassist David Ellefson made his own personal protest by often playing with a 'Fuck the PMRC' sticker on his bass.) Warrant included the minute-long Ode To Tipper Gore on their 1990 Cherry Pie album which consisted of nothing but rapid-fire swear words recorded at various live shows edited together, while Rage Against The Machine’s protest in Philadelphia at Lollapalooza 1993 saw them walking on stage naked apart from duct tape over their mouths, each member (of the band, that is) sporting a painted letter spelling out PMRC. Though the irony was no doubt completely lost on Tipper Gore and her fellow

crusaders, the controversy that they stirred up in their pursuit of the allegedly morally bankrupt rock scene actually did many of the bands more good than harm. Like many of my peers I saw it as my duty as a rebellious teenager to actively seek out any albums that were deemed controversial or anti-social enough to have earned the Tipper sticker. This didn’t mean that the rock scene was innocent and virtuous, though, not by a long chalk, as we shall see shortly, but while Tipper Gore and the Washington Wives were embarking on their crusade in the US I was continuing on my own crusade to further my rock and roll career, so without further ado, let’s get back to the deaf school. The Filthy Fifteen (with reasons for offensive lyrical content)

1 Prince - Darling Nikki (Sex) 2 Sheena Easton - Sugar Walls (Sex) 3 Judas Priest - Eat Me Alive (Sex) 4 Vanity - Strap On Robbie Baby (Sex) 5 Mötley Crüe – Bastard (Violence) 6 AC/DC - Let Me Put My Love Into You (Sex) 7 Twisted Sister - We're Not Gonna Take It (Violence) 8 Madonna - Dress You Up (Sex) 9 W.A.S.P. - Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) (Sex / Language) 10 Def Leppard - High n' Dry (Drug / alcohol use) 11 Mercyful Fate - Into The Coven (Occult) 12 Black Sabbath – Trashed (Drug / alcohol use) 13 Mary Jane Girls - In My House (Sex)

14 Venom - Possessed (Occult) 15 Cyndi Lauper - She Bop (Sex)

Chapter 18

* Falling To Pieces*

By the beginning of 1987 the rock scene's new found popularity both here and in the US was gathering momentum at an exhilarating speed. In the rehearsal room at the Nottingham Deaf Centre my first band Black Diamond was still plugging away at the various covers that we somehow all managed to accidentally learn, though more often than not the conversations would go something like this.

Steve: OK, let’s have a go at Rock You Like A Hurricane. Dave: I don’t know the chords for that one, but I can play No One Like You. Me: I don’t know that one, but I know the bass for The Zoo. Steve: I don’t know the guitar part for that one. Evans: Well, what do we all know? Martin: I don’t know any Scorpions songs, but I can sing pretty much any KISS song. Dave: I don’t know any KISS songs. Steve: Fancy a beer? Me: Yep.

As the weeks went by our patience with each other and enthusiasm for the band decreased rapidly until towards the end, a few weeks after my seventeenth birthday in April 1987, we would pretty much just turn up, tune up, play for half an hour then sit around drinking beer. A couple of weeks before we all decided to call it a day the woman who

supervised the room bookings cornered us as we were packing our gear away to ask if we would mind playing a short set for a benefit gig they were putting on to raise funds for the Deaf School. We all looked at each other, silently weighing up the pros and cons before turning her down, fully aware of the irony that the gig would be largely attended by the students of the Deaf School and therefore in theory we could play anything, badly, and get away with it, but knowing that in reality we weren’t good enough for our own standards. A couple of weeks later it was all over for Black Diamond and it would be another six months before I ed my next band, the one I would finally perform live with. In the meantime, however, Steve and I threw ourselves headlong into Nottingham’s flourishing rock scene, determined to experience as many of the dozens of local bands flaunting themselves shamelessly around the city’s gig circuit as possible. The spiritual home of this local scene, and the Holy Grail for any band to play, though very few ever did, was Rock City, but thanks to the plethora of venues to play in the city, from the smallest pubs to the makeshift stages in various nightclubs, local bands were given plenty of opportunity to perfect their stagecraft and perform to a healthy community of their rock peers. Chief among the pubs to play was The Narrowboat, a spit and sawdust establishment down on Canal Street that put bands on in a tiny upstairs room. Sadly it was pulled down in the 1990s as part of a redevelopment project and is now home to the offices of the Nottingham Evening Post newspaper. The Old Angel, located on Stoney Street in the heart of the old lace-market district of Hockley, was another popular pub venue and remains so to this day. The Angel even managed its fifteen minutes of global fame in 2006 when it was featured in the second series of Gene Simmons’s Rock School. The Newshouse, on St James’s Street across from where the Way Ahead rock shop would move into when it got too big for its cosy original location in Hurt’s Yard, was another spit and sawdust venue, and another one sadly defunct thanks to its conversion into a trendy sports bar

Last but not least of the pubs was Fagins, just around the corner from Rock City, and the one pub venue in which you could guarantee a decent sized audience due to the fact that punters would inevitably wander upstairs to the first floor bar to check out whoever was making that particular night’s racket. If your band could attract a halfway decent sized fan base then the next step up from the pubs was to play at the Mardi Gras, a subterranean venue located on Carrington Street, opposite Nottingham's magnificent Edwardian railway station. Furnished like a downmarket bierkeller, the Mardi Gras was the largest venue you could play in Nottingham before you graduated to Rock City and regularly hosted up and coming out of town bands like Cardiff’s Tigertailz and Scarborough’s Little Angels, both of whom performed there prior to securing record deals and going on to achieve considerable domestic success. It was here that my first pair of spandex tros, a rather fetching silver and black zebra striped design that I’d bought from Void, made their live debut. Sadly they weren’t wrapped around my legs at the time but were instead sported by my friend Bob whose band Lady Mercy were playing there. I met Bob a couple of weeks after I'd started my Saturday job in the WH Smith computer department, having taken the cargo lift up to the large storeroom to retrieve the week’s delivery of new games. As I walked through the high ceilinged maze lined with shelf upon shelf of stationery and books I could hear somebody singing a tuneful a capella version of Hotel California. As I drew closer to the small storeroom office it turned out that the Eagles fan was Bob, a short bespectacled chap a few years older than me. Over the next few weeks we'd regularly talked to each other about music and discovered that we were both rabid rock fans, though Bob’s tastes ran more to the progressive rock bands like Genesis, Rush, King Crimson and the like. We soon developed a firm friendship which would lead to us not only being in a band together a couple of years down the line but also sharing a flat in the selfcontained rock community that was the Victoria Centre. The week before the Lady Mercy gig, their first as it happened, I had picked up the aforementioned black and silver spandex strides in Void and was eager to show them off to Bob, thrilled that I was working with someone who shared my enthusiasm for rock music and ridiculous tros.

As we stood iring them in the locker room, Bob asked if he could borrow them for the following week’s gig. What the hell, I thought. After all, Bob and his flatmate Rig were always more than happy to let me to crash on their sofa after an inevitably messy night at Rock City so the least I could do was lend him my smoking hot strides for Lady Mercy’s debut performance, which would also be my first time seeing a local band live. Lady Mercy comprised Bob on drums, Rig on the bass, Ged Mayer on vocals, the David Lee Roth wannabe that I had marvelled at on my first visit to the Palais, and Andy Simpson on guitar who had just about the tallest and most impressive hair of the whole Nottingham scene and who played like a demon. When they took to the stage at the Mardi Gras they pinned the audience to the walls for their half hour set, finishing with a blistering cover of Van Halen’s Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love which showcased Andy's digital dexterity on the fretboard while Ged pouted and high-kicked his way across the tiny stage, filling the venue with his personality and voice, which for my money was always one of the strongest on the Nottingham scene. Bob and Rig proved their metal mettle too, holding down a rhythm section tighter than a gnat's chuff and inspiring me to want to be in a band as good as Lady Mercy. For my first experience of seeing any of the local talent live, Lady Mercy set the bar high and blew me away, but as was common among Nottingham rock bands, their hairspray fuelled flame burned brightly but briefly. Their demise proved to be personally beneficial to me, though, both as a musician when I ed a band with Bob a couple of years later, and as a fan when Riggy threw his lot in with an outfit called Who Cares Anyway who became one of the best local bands to ever grace the city's stages. These two bands were to forces for a gig in September 1989, giving me my first taste of actually playing to my rock scene peers, but for the time being the disintegration of Black Diamond had put my band plans on hold and I instead concentrated on fully immersing myself in Nottingham's rock pub and club scene.

Chapter 19

* Backstreet Symphony*

For a city the size of Nottingham I always find it amazing that we haven’t produced more (OK, any) world class bands, but in 1987 it seemed that pretty much everybody in the local rock scene was either in a band or knew somebody who was, and Steve and I were no exception. Steve was from a suburb of Nottingham called Beeston, west of the city and home to the largest concentration of rock fans outside of the city itself as well as a number of decent rock pubs, chief among them The Beech Tree where many of the local musicians hung out. The most popular and successful band in Beeston was a quintet called Whip Me Harvey, led by enigmatic singer Simon Swain, and featuring brothers Andy and Paul Townsend on drums and guitar respectively, Tom Warren on bass and Simon’s sister Rachel on backing vocals. Whip Me Harvey were polished, had great songs and were every bit as professional on stage as any of the bands coming out of LA at the time. I even auditioned for them at the start of 1989 when Tom left the band, but didn’t get the gig as he quickly re-ed. As is often the case, though, great talent isn't enough to guarantee fame and fortune and they never got beyond playing the local pub and club circuit. Simon did eventually manage about seven and a half minutes of fame when he formed a band called Chain Gang in 1990 who attracted some serious attention, most notably from Iron Maiden’s management company Sanctuary. However, despite the fact that we were convinced that Chain Gang were about to be the next big thing and become the most famous band ever to come out of Nottingham, not even a slot on Suzi Quatro’s UK tour could save them from the killing blow of grunge the following year. The only other band of note to come out of Beeston was Bangkok Shakes. Singer Rob Reid exuded that feel-good spirit that the best LA front men

possessed, and after the band split he went on to entertain festival crowds across Europe performing as Ozzy Oddbin in the superb Black Sabbath tribute band Sack Sabbath, and Fish in the Marillion tribute band Real To Reel, as well as setting up his own rehearsal studio (Magnet Studios in Beeston). We can at least claim to have had one reasonable success in the eighties rock explosion, though, in the form of thrashers Sabbat and their self-styled ‘Satanic Opera’. Comprising vocalist Martin Walkyier, guitarist Andy Sneap, bassist Fraser Kraske and drummer Simon Negus, Sabbat followed in the theatrical footsteps of Alice Cooper, incorporating all manner of props in their live show including broadswords, crucifixes and bibles. I did see and was suitably impressed by one of their early shows at the Mardi Gras, after which they were snapped up by the German label Noise Records, though they had to wait until guitarist Sneap turned eighteen before they could actually sign the contracts. Sabbat went on to achieve critical success in the rock scene and even played the Eindhoven and Dynamo festivals as part of a European tour. Due to a series of internal disputes, however, they split a few years later. Walkyier formed a new outfit called Skyclad while Sneap went on to become a celebrated rock producer, counting Onslaught, Accept and Megadeth among the artists on his resume, before ing metal gods Judas Priest in 2018 when Glenn Tipton was forced to step down after revealing he had Parkinson’s Disease. There were a couple of other Nottingham bands who achieved a modicum of fame, and are worthy of a mention. Sleeze Patrol were in the Ratt and Motley vein, led by imposing local legend in his lunchtime Punky Wayne, and became infamous for almost literally bringing the house down at one of their gigs when a plastic pig full of explosives placed in the lighting rig was detonated at the beginning of their song Time To Die and brought the rig crashing down. The other was Wraith, formed from the ashes of another local band Deuce by guitarist Greg Russell. Wraith had attracted the attention of the late Pete Way after the UFO bassist had bought a second-hand Jaguar from bassist Scott ‘Scarey’ Carey, and ended up co-writing a track called Under The Hammer, remixing their debut album Danger Calling and taking them out on tour. Despite Way’s endorsement, however, success wasn’t to be, and Russell became

a tattooist, a male stripper called Ice, and the guitarist in the version of Tigertailz fronted by original singer Steevi Jaimz (the band replaced him with Kim Hooker after their debut Young And Crazy album) before finally realising his fifteen minutes of fame as the boyfriend of Lea Walker, a contestant in the 2006 season of popular UK freakshow Big Brother. It wasn’t just Nottingham that was failing to produce any world class bands, though. England as a whole didn’t produce a single one in the eighties renaissance who weren’t already reasonably established in the first half of the decade before rock became an accepted form of music among the general public in the latter years. Though it took the release of Hysteria in 1987 to strike a major chord with the British public, Def Leppard had broken America four years earlier with their Pyromania album (on which fellow Brit and synth wizard Thomas Dolby played keyboards under the pseudonym Booker T Boffin). Maiden had pretty much ruled the world since 1982 after recruiting Bruce Dickinson and releasing The Number Of The Beast, and continue to do so, and even evergreens like Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake and Judas Priest had proved themselves long before I had my rock epiphany 1985. That didn’t mean that there weren’t any great British bands, however. Far from it. FM, The Quireboys, Dogs D’Amour, Little Angels, Tigertailz, The Cult, and Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction were all met with great enthusiasm and regularly sold out venues the size of Rock City and The Marquee. None of them could seem to be able to capture that certain something that their American bands had, though, and I have to it that I too was captivated by these Yanks who would come over and play at Rock City, adding their albums to my collection at a frightening rate. It wasn’t just albums I was buying, though. Thanks to the hyperactive imaginations of the various record company marketing departments, 1987 marked the beginning of a glut of increasingly irresistible limited edition vinyl releases that, like a magpie collecting shiny objects, I just had to have for myself.

The concept of actually walking into a record shop (assuming you can find one) and buying a physical single release has become somewhat obsolete these days thanks to streaming and digital s. In fact the only time you might do so is on one of the Record Store Days, and then it’ll usually be some kind of coloured vinyl. Back in the late 80s, however, there was much more creativity and imagination involved in the release of a new single, particularly when it came to rock music where the record companies quickly realised that fans like me were only too willing to shell out for pretty much anything with our favourite band’s name on it. (KISS condoms, anyone? KISS Kasket, perhaps?) Thus they became increasingly inventive in supplementing the bog standard seven and twelve inch picture bags with multiple collectable versions to feed our addictions and fill their coffers. There was the gatefold sleeve, previously only the domain of albums like Iron Maiden’s Piece Of Mind, with its gorgeous wraparound Derek Riggs artwork, that the record companies knew would sell enough copies to justify the additional production expense. Poison’s Nothin’ But A Good Time twelve inch (stop sniggering at the back) came in a particularly eye-catching lime green gatefold sleeve adorned with dayglo pictures of the flamboyant foursome. Great song, garish cover. Poster bags were another popular format which were, understandably, more common among the better looking bands and gave us the opportunity to plaster our walls with spandex-clad, long-haired, mascara-wearing men. Which was nice. The next tier in the collectible hierarchy was the picture disc, a format that allowed the marketing departments to be particularly creative, offering them in a multitude of guises. There were the bog standard seven and twelve inch picture discs that would replicate the regular edition’s artwork, some of which were particularly effective. For my money (of which they got plenty), Iron Maiden were not only one of the most prolific producers of picture discs, issuing them for pretty much all of their eighties output, but they were responsible for one of my favourites which featured Derek Riggs’ awesome artwork.

The Aces High twelve inch a-side offered the opportunity of having Maiden mascot Eddie’s life size face, topped off with an attractive World War Two flying helmet, revolve forty five times a minute on your record player, while the flip side produced the motion sickness inducing effect of spiralling down towards the English countryside in a crashing fighter plane. London quartet Dogs D’Amour, combined the best of both worlds by having a gatefold sleeve into which the twelve inch pictures discs for both their Satellite Kid and Trail Of Tears singles could be inserted. Each of the singles featured a cartoon strip drawn by singer Tyla, who designed all of their covers, which when placed correctly into the illustrated gatefold sleeve enabled you to read the whole story (which wasn't very good, but that wasn't the point). In addition to the usual circular picture discs there were shaped picture discs, which due to the limitations of the area available to actually score the grooves into the vinyl usually carried identical tracks to the seven inch release (though not always, necessitating yet another purchase if you wanted every track by your favourite artist). One of my favourite shaped picture discs was W.A.S.P.’s PMRC-baiting Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) single which faithfully (and virtually life size, no less) recreated the bloody buzz-saw codpiece sported by Blackie Lawless on the cover of the regular twelve-inch picture bag. One of the most imaginative picture discs ever released was Guns’n’Roses’ Paradise City single. The vinyl came as an eleven-inch disc cut into the shape of a gun, which was cool enough on its own, but the icing on the cake was the snakeskin effect holster shaped cardboard sleeve it came with, into which the 'gun' fitted very nicely, thank you. While not as exciting as picture discs, shaped or otherwise, I was occasionally tempted by a coloured vinyl twelve inch and managed to build up quite a palette of them. I had silver (Queensryche’s Silent Lucidity), gold (Ozzy’s So Tired), yellow and blue (the excellent Dan Reed Network’s two disc Rainbow Child release), white (Whitesnake’s 1989 redux of Fool For Your Loving), red (Judas Priest’s Painkiller) and even luminous green (Poison's cover of Your Mama Don’t Dance). I was particularly enamoured, however, with Bon Jovi's show of patriotism for

their Lay Your Hands On Me single. Releasing no less than three seven inch coloured vinyls - in red, white and blue - I thought it was both a clever marketing ploy and a great addition to my increasingly large collection. As if three versions weren’t enough, though, they ensured that my wallet was thoroughly cleaned out by also releasing it as a shaped picture disc. Every now and again a black PVC sleeve would appear on the shelves, to which I found myself drawn like a moth to a flame. Maybe it was due to the risqué nature of the shiny, sweaty material - after all I had tros made from the same stuff - or perhaps due to my addiction to limited edition packaging spiralling dangerously out of control, but I somehow found myself in possession of possibly the worst KISS single of all time, Crazy Crazy Nights, in a PVC sleeve. The Cult raised the stakes further by releasing their Sun King single not only in a twelve inch black PVC sleeve but with a hologram sticker affixed to the front that for ten minutes or so I thought was the coolest thing ever. Not wanting to be outdone, W.A.S.P. pushed the envelope further still by releasing their I Don’t Need No Doctor single in a special blood pack, but if there were an Oscar for the most original and outrageous single format of all time then it would surely be awarded to Bay Area thrashers Vio-lence. The band (featuring a pre-Machine Head Robb Flynn) came up with the ultimate in offensive packaging when they decided to release their Eternal Nightmare single in a special ‘vomit pack’. Despite being sealed in a clear plastic sleeve into which the single could be inserted, the ‘vomit’ - actually vegetable soup and vinegar - still gave off enough of a vile aroma to induce the genuine article if you got too close, especially on hot days. While it did little to raise the band's profile, nor their record sales thanks to it being banned from some record shops, it did guarantee them a place in music marketing history. Sadly the days of interesting formats seem to have gone the way of 8-tracks, cassette singles and decent Aerosmith albums, but back at the height of my collecting frenzy I was happier than a pig in poop every time another limited edition came along. Though I was fascinated and consumed by collecting rock vinyl, the thrill of getting my hands on a rare record was nothing compared to the buzz of watching

the bands perform live. Thus, ten months after my first live experience courtesy of Iron Maiden I was about to go and stand in a field just down the road and reacquaint myself with W.A.S.P. and Bon Jovi at the most important event in the eighties rock scene’s calendar.

Chapter 20

* Out In The Fields*

If there was one event during the 1980s that encapsulated the entire rock experience it was the annual Monsters of Rock festival, held at the world famous Donington Park race track at Castle Donington in Leicestershire. Being invited to play at Donington was a sure sign of a band's popularity, with the ultimate honour being asked to headline. In 1987, the year of my first visit to the festival, this honour was bestowed upon my old friends, New Jersey boys done good Bon Jovi. In just nine short months they had gone from playing small theatres like the Birmingham Odeon to headlining the most prestigious rock festival in the world. This ensured their place in history as of an elite club with AC/DC (who headlined Monsters an unprecedented three times), Iron Maiden and Whitesnake (both topping the bill twice, although the two incarnations of Whitesnake were very different beasts), Metallica, Aerosmith, ZZ Top, Status Quo, Rainbow, Ozzy Osbourne (who technically also co-headlined in 1996), and KISS, who laid the traditional Monsters of Rock festival to rest in style on August 17th 1996. Any rock band worth their salt wanted to play Donington. Even the bands near the bottom of the bill were thrilled to be given the opportunity to be ignored by the majority of the crowd at two o’clock in the afternoon without a light show or decent sound. ing Bon Jovi on the bill were Dio, Metallica, Anthrax, W.A.S.P. and Cinderella, and given that I really wanted to see five of the six bands, particularly San Francisco's kings of thrash who were making their European debut with new bassist Jason Newsted, when Steve started talking about attending it was a no brainer that I would be losing my Donington virginity. Steve was a veteran of the festival, having attended a couple of times before, and even Stapes had been three years previously with his dad to witness the awesome spectacle of seeing AC/DC, Van Halen, Ozzy, Gary Moore, Y&T, Accept and Motley Crue on the same bill. In fact, Stapes remarked that the only thing that could have improved the day was if Michael Anthony had shortened

his somewhat lengthy bass solo by, well, all of it. Prior to Monsters, my experience of large rock crowds had been limited to relatively small venues like Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall and Rock City and Derby’s Assembly Rooms, none of which held more than two or three thousand punters. Although I’d seen pictures of previous Monsters of Rock festivals and was aware that it was a big event, I really wasn’t prepared for the mind-blowing reality of what a hundred thousand people standing in field was going to be like. The big day, Saturday August 18th 1987, finally arrived and we all met up outside the Sal on Maid Marion Way, home to Nottingham’s biker community and the only pub in town that had a dress policy stating that if you looked too smart then you weren’t coming in. The sun shone down on us as we stood waiting for the coaches to arrive with a couple of hundred other fans, all dressed in denim and leather and surrounded by dozens of bags containing all manner of alcoholic beverages. One of the great things about Donington was that you could take your own booze into the arena - literally as much as you could carry - the only proviso being that you had to transfer it all into plastic one gallon containers that were conveniently on sale outside the entrance for a couple of quid a piece. The coaches arrived and we all piled on, my excitement levels going through the roof now that we were actually on our way. Before we’d even cleared Nottingham city centre some of the more enthusiastic fans had already cracked open beers, clearly starting as they meant to go on, and the air was filled with the sounds of laughter and chatter about all things rock. Less than an hour later we were approaching the Donington site, falling in line with the dozens of coaches that wound their way down the narrow Leicestershire lanes, parting the sea of fans arriving on foot, all lugging heavy bags full of beer towards the entrance. The coach pulled into a space in the car park and after an stern warning from the driver to where he was parked unless we were planning on walking home later, we filed off the bus and I set foot for the first time on the hallowed Donington ground. As we walked towards the entrance I glanced at the signs in the coaches we

ed. Fans had arrived from literally all over the world to stand in a muddy field, drink gallons of beer and watch their favourite rock bands. In the crowd around us people carried flags from countless countries, some of which I recognised - America, Canada, Brazil, Australia – and many others that I didn’t. We trudged up to the entrance and stood alongside our fellow boozers, decanting our impressive collection of two litre bottles of Trent Bitter into the huge plastic containers, and then Steve, Stapes and I made our way up the slight grassy incline towards the main arena, the distant sounds of Cinderella drifting through the air. The stage was still out of sight at this point thanks to the lay of the land but as we came close to finally cresting the hill Steve and Stapes began to exchange glances, broad grins on their faces. Being Donington veterans they knew exactly what my reaction would be, having experienced the same thing themselves on their own first visits. As we reached the top of the slope I finally saw the stage and the ocean of people and Steve and Stapes both burst out laughing as I uttered the immortal words ‘Fucking hell!’ There were about a dozen of us in our little group so we set up a base camp about a hundred yards from the stage. Steve’s sister Sue, who happened to be a hairdresser, had come up with the idea of weaving brightly coloured wool into her hair so that we could all find our way back to our temporary home during the course of the day. As Cinderella left the stage to a decent ripple of applause we set out to check out one of several merchandising stands set up around the arena, all of which offered a huge selection of shirts, programs, badges, scarves and a myriad of other items. After much deliberation I handed over my hard earned for one of Metallica’s Crash Course in Brain Surgery tees and two very cool baseball shirts, one featuring a picture of the Bon Jovi boys on the front, with the mildly risqué slogan 'The Wetter The Better' on the back, and the other an official Monsters of Rock shirt with the line up on the front and the date of the event on the back just in case you forgot, which given the amount of alcohol that we planned to consume during the course of the day was a distinct possibility. Back at our little encampment, which we found easily after homing in on Sue's hair beacon, I slowly turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees, taking in the

view. Almost as far as I could see in every direction was a sea of long hair, denim and leather, punctuated by dozens of flags of varying colours. It was an awe inspiring feeling, being among tens of thousands of like-minded souls, all there to revel in the love of loud guitars. As we got settled the heavens suddenly opened, rain falling heavily for several minutes before stopping as quickly as it had started just as W.A.S.P. hit the stage. Blackie Lawless and Chris Holmes ran out first to the roar of the crowd, and then bassist Johnny Rod emerged from the wings at full tilt, getting half way across the stage before slipping and landing heavily on his backside, much to the delight of the crowd. Not the most dignified of entrances, but definitely a memorable one. After delivering a greatest hits set W.A.S.P. finally gave the crowd what they’d been waiting for, wheeling out a crude torture rack with their trademark topless, hooded woman (actually Linzi Drew, glamour model and editor of the British edition of Penthouse magazine), though from where we were standing she may as well have been a Barbie doll. While not quite the all-out debauchery that we’d been promised by Lawless in the run up to Donington it was a fitting end to their set and as if on cue the heavens opened once again for another short shower as they left the stage. I wanted to be as close to the front as possible to see Anthrax so ten minutes before they were due to hit the stage I began making my way towards it, employing every crowd negotiating trick I knew and eventually winding up about twelve rows from the front. The sounds of the Blues Brothers burst forth from the PA and Anthrax hit the stage in a riot of surf shorts and kinetic energy, turning the front of the crowd into the world’s largest mosh pit. As the New Yorkers pummelled the crowd with their frantic riffing I was pitched and tossed from pillar to post in the human sea that crashed relentlessly against the front of the stage. The day was warm already but after fifteen minutes of feeling like I’d gone ten rounds in the Death Star’s trash compactor I was sweating like a pig and ready to extract myself from the crush so that I could use my lungs to their full capacity again instead of snatching a quick breath here and there. Given that Anthrax were a thrash band there seemed only one fitting way to get

out of the crowd. I gestured for the guy next to me to give me a leg up and hoisted myself skywards to get my first taste of crowd surfing. Rolling around on top of people’s heads, a forest of hands keeping me afloat on this organic ocean as I was carried to the front of the crowd and into the waiting arms of the security team was at that point the most surreal and sublime experience I’d ever had. Firmly back on terra firma I was ushered quickly from the pit area and found myself deposited back in the crowd at the left hand side of the stage. Resisting the temptation to plunge headlong back into the fray for another go I made my way back towards Sue’s woolly beacon as Anthrax finished their set and left the stage to thunderous applause. After a short break, the late, great Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy Of Gold (otherwise known as the theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly) filled the warm Leicestershire air, heralding the arrival of Metallica and prompting the crowd to once more throw up a deafening roar. Metallica proceeded to bludgeon the crowd with classic after classic from their three superb albums. Master of Puppets, Battery, For Whom The Bell Tolls, and a particularly brutal version of Whiplash brought the crowd to fever pitch, and Metallica to within a whisker of stealing the day from Bon Jovi. I’d love to wax lyrically about Dio’s set but the truth is that we didn’t watch it. In hindsight, and particularly as Ronnie is no longer with us, I wish I'd paid more attention, but on that particular day they were nothing but background noise as we instead concentrated on working our way through the last of the beer before the main event. The sun was beginning to set as Dio left the stage, and as it slowly sank behind the western horizon several small fires were lit in the crowd providing suitably anarchic illumination for one of Donington’s long-standing traditions, the bottle fight. I'd known this was coming thanks to Steve and Stapes but until I witnessed it with my own eyes I could never have imagined just what an impressive spectacle it was. One minute the skies were a clear, deep purple sea of tranquillity, the next they were filled with thousands of plastic bottles, most of which were empty but every few seconds one would fly overhead leaving an arc of beer or piss in its wake. For several minutes there was a whirling dervish of bottles above our

heads as they were launched again and again with wild abandon and it would have been rude not to in with this sacred ritual so we gave it our all along with the rest of the crowd until it finally died down. As the last salvos succumbed to gravity and the sun finally disappeared the crowd roared their approval as the five of Bon Jovi appeared, striding confidently onto the stage to the strains of Pink Flamingos for the biggest gig of their career thus far, before going nuts as it segued into Raise Your Hands. It had been one thing seeing them in the small confines of the Birmingham Odeon but to be among a hundred thousand people cheering loud enough to on the Richter scale sent a shiver down my spine and was a feeling that I’ll never forget. Having toured the world non-stop for the last nine months the band were firing on all cylinders and effortlessly proved that they were more than worthy of headlining the most celebrated rock festival in the world. Richie Sambora broke out his fancy dual necked guitar for Wanted Dead Or Alive, mesmerising the crowd into silence with his extended intro, and Jon proved he was truly magic by disappearing for a couple of minutes before reappearing right on the top of the stage, a hundred feet above the audience. Towards the end of the set the band were clearly having fun as they covered Drift Away, Grand Funk Railroad's We're An American Band (with Bruce Dickinson, Dee Snider and Paul Stanley helping out on backing vocals), and The Rolling Stones’ Not Fade Away, and then before we knew it they were taking a bow and it was all over. Feeling extremely satisfied and supremely knackered we somehow managed, more by luck than judgement, to find the coach. As we cruised back towards Nottingham and our very inviting beds Steve turned to me with an exhausted grin and said ‘Told you it’d be good didn’t I?’ which may well have been the understatement of the year. Having just seen arguably the biggest band in the world a mere nine months after catching them on the rise in a much smaller venue I had no idea that in the next couple of months I’d be seeing two more bands in the cosy confines of the Royal Concert Hall and Rock City respectively who would repeat Bon Jovi’s meteoric rise to fame.

One of them hailed from just up the M1 motorway in Sheffield and was in the process of pulling off a remarkable resurrection, and the other was fresh from the streets of Los Angeles and was doing its best to live up to their growing reputation as the most dangerous band in the world.

Chapter 21

* Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock And Roll)*

While Kerrang! was undoubtedly our bible for all things rock and metal, the most insightful and informative source of information about who the hottest new bands were came not from the news pages, but from a regular advert. Located in a small dingy basement in St Anne’s Court just off London’s famous Wardour Street, Shades record shop was renowned as being the authority on all things hard and heavy. Every fortnight they ran a half page ad packed to the rafters with dozens of new singles and albums, many of them imports from the US that had yet to be released over here. Most importantly, though, they seemed to have a knack for spotting the next big thing and in February 1987 they raved about an up and coming band from Los Angeles who, as they put it, were 'the new Aerosmith – excellent trash rock – gonna be huge – this mini live LP will be an ultimate collector’s item in years to come.' They weren't wrong. The band in question was the interestingly named Guns’n’Roses, a quintet that had first caught my attention in a tiny article in the news pages a few weeks earlier where they had been described as the most dangerous band on the planet. To be raved about by Shades was high praise indeed so I headed down to Way Ahead, which while not quite the equal of Shades was still a good source for imports and rarities, to pick up a copy for myself. This mini live LP that Shades were raving about, the bizarrely titled Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide, set me back a fiver, which at the time was about the price of a full length domestic album. However, as Shades had predicted, it did indeed become a much sought after item as I found out when I sold my copy seven years later for forty times what I’d paid for it. Though it would be revealed years later that the album wasn’t actually live at all – the tracks were studio recordings with crowd noise dubbed over them - there

was no denying the energy and power behind the four songs on offer. Opening with Reckless Life, Guns set out their stall with a vengeance. W Axl Rose’s high-pitched vocals perfectly complimented the frantic pace of the song which careered along like a speeding freight train, threatening to leave the tracks at any moment. Next up was Nice Boys (Don't Play Rock And Roll), a cover of a Rose Tattoo song, whose singer Angry Anderson would become very familiar to the general public of the United Kingdom the following year thanks to, of all things, a daytime Antipodean soap opera, more of which later. The flip side kicked off with Move To The City, a powerful bluesy song that I'd have recognised as owing a huge debt to Aerosmith if I'd been familiar with their earlier work at the time, and wrapped up with Guns wearing this influence on their filthy sleeves by covering the Boston quintet's Mama Kin, In the space of fourteen adrenaline soaked minutes Guns'n'Roses had confidently established their music credibility, and the black and white picture on the back of Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide convinced me that they were the real deal, looking as though they'd literally just wandered in off Sunset Strip and been photographed in their street clothes (which as it happens, they had). Leaning against an old car, W Axl Rose, drummer Steven Adler, guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin' and bassist Duff ‘Rose’ McKagan looked just like everybody that I knew in the Nottingham rock scene, the only difference being that they were rapidly moving from being wannabes to being the band that we wanted to be. Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide spent an inordinate amount of time on my record player and I could soon play all four tracks, not that any of them were particularly taxing, and I figured that if I could play bass as well as Duff then there was no reason why I couldn’t achieve my dreams of rock stardom too. Before long the debut full length Guns’n’Roses album – the provocative and dangerous sounding Appetite For Destruction – was announced and their European live debut confirmed for June 11th 1987 at London’s legendary Marquee Club. By now the buzz around Guns was snowballing and I, like a great many rock fans, desperately wanted to see them live but finances and the logistics of getting to London on a Thursday night scuppered any chance of me being there.

As it happened the gig was ultimately cancelled when Axl was involved in a fracas with the Los Angeles Police Department, resulting in him being hospitalised with serious injuries. This, of course, only added to their growing reputation as the most dangerous band in the world and as a consequence they went up even further in my estimation. A little over a week later Guns finally made it to the Marquee, selling out three nights - June 19th, 22nd and 28th - due to overwhelming demand. Kerrang! ran a glowing review and I began to hope that, in common with many of their LA compatriots, they’d soon be back and playing at Rock City. In the meantime Appetite For Destruction was released and Barlow kindly taped me a copy, filling up the rest of the ninety-minute cassette tape with the eponymous debut album by another up and coming LA band called Faster Pussycat. Though the Guns album was superb, an hour of raw, energetic, down and dirty rock and roll that I (and the thirty million other people who have bought it to date) love even now, there was something about the Faster Pussycat album that really hit me between the eyes. If Guns were street punks and Mötley were glam whores, then Faster Pussycat were shameless alley cats who played the most wonderful, Jack Daniels soaked sleaze, so when Guns announced a five-date UK tour for October 1987 it was co-headliners Faster Pussycat that I was more excited about seeing. In many ways the pairing of these two bands was a stroke of genius. They both came from the gutters of LA, they both had albums that rocked like the proverbial hurricanes, and in Taime Downe, Faster Pussycat’s blonde, rakish, rake thin singer they had a front man who was the carefree, bubble gum yin to Axl Rose’s troubled, incendiary yang. As soon as the dates went on sale I picked up a couple of tickets for the Rock City show on October 5th 1987. In the meantime I played the tape that Barlow had done for me relentlessly, quickly mastering both albums on the bass and displaying my air guitaring skills whenever Metal Micky played It’s So Easy or Bathroom Wall down at Zhivago’s. Thanks to Guns' cover of Mama Kin I was also discovering that there was so much more to Aerosmith than my first encounter with them a year earlier had suggested, when they had participated in something of a cultural revolution in

the rock scene that reverberates to this day.

Chapter 22

* Mix It Up*

Though they'd been a major rock act in America in the seventies, and are still among the top rock acts in the world today, Aerosmith were largely absent from the rock scene for the first half of the 1980s after the band had imploded due to internal conflicts and chronic drug addictions (singer Stephen Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry were known as the Toxic Twins for their gargantuan narcotic habits), culminating in Tyler collapsing on stage during their 1982 tour. If this had turned out to be the final dramatic chapter in the Aerosmith story and for bands of less robust constitutions it almost certainly would have been then chances are I would have remained blissfully unaware of them as they became just another forgotten seventies rock act. However, four years later, in September 1986, it turned out that Aerosmith's vacation wasn't quite so permanent after all when New York rappers Run DMC released their cover of the Boston quintet's Walk This Way as a single to promote their Raising Hell album. Featuring Tyler and Perry and accompanied by an entertaining video in which the two acts attempted to play one louder than each other in adjacent studios before coming together for a t live performance, the single shot into the Top Ten on both sides of the Atlantic. It was a big hit on the Rock City dance floor as well, retaining enough of the original 1975 version's feisty spirit to strike a favourable chord with the older rock fans while turning more than a few younger heads, mine included, by fusing it with the beats and rhymes of the emerging rap scene. Though Run DMC provided the courtship for the fusion of rock and rap, it was another New York rap trio that really consummated the union. The Rock City DJs (including future promoter Andy Copping) had picked up on the buzz surrounding Beastie Boys and had been igniting the dance floor with Mike ‘Mike D’ Diamond, Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz, and the late, great Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch’s infectious fusion of riffs and rhymes for a good while before the mainstream cottoned on.

Not only was this heady mix of rock and rap somewhat ground-breaking on the Rock City dance floor, it also heralded the arrival of a solitary video screen in the club on which the video for Fight For Your Right (To Party) was shown, complete with the two minutes of humorous preamble culminating in the now iconic cry of 'Kick it!' that always heralded a mad dash to the dance floor. As an introduction to Beastie Boys it was flawless, and I was so impressed that the next day I bought their debut album, the still superb Licensed To Ill. Though Fight For Your Right (To Party) had brought them to the attention of the rock crowd, it wasn’t the Beastie Boys’ first single or video, or the first time they had used rock guitars in their music. Pre-dating Run DMC’s sampling of Aerosmith’s Walk This Way by a year the Beastie Boys had lifted the riff from AC/DC’s Back In Black for their 1984 debut single Rock Hard but the track was almost immediately deleted after AC/DC’s lawyers threatened them with a lawsuit for their unauthorised use of the sample, and remains unavailable - officially anyway. Licensed To Ill was peppered with rock riffs, with Led Zeppelin’s When The Levee Breaks and Black Sabbath’s Sweet Leaf sampled for album opener Rhymin’ And Stealin’ and Zeppelin’s Custard Pie and the Steve Miller Band’s classic Take The Money And Run appropriated for closing track Time To Get Ill. Their coup de grace in of rock credibility, however, was getting Slayer guitarist Kerry King to play on No Sleep To Brooklyn, a collaboration no doubt aided by the fact that both bands were on producer Rick Rubin’s newly formed Def Jam Recordings label. Rock bands were to become a popular source of samples as Slayer themselves proved, with the riff from their controversial 1986 track Angel Of Death having been borrowed no less than three times, most famously by Public Enemy for She Watch Channel Zero from their 1988 It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back album. The year after Licensed To Ill came out Anthrax released I’m The Man, the bside of their I Am The Law single, creating one of the earliest examples of rap metal that bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park would appropriate in the early two-thousands. Inspired by a quote from the Rodney Dangerfield movie Fast Money, I’m The Man featured the band rapping over a basic drum and guitar riff

and became a firm favourite on the Rock City dance floor. Fellow New Yorkers Public Enemy must have been taking note as they name checked Anthrax in their 1988 song Bring The Noise, apparently due to Chuck D being flattered by guitarist Scott Ian’s regular wearing of a Public Enemy shirt on stage, before collaborating with them on the thrash band's 1991 cover of the song and then touring with them. Van Halen provided the inspiration, and riffs, for a number of artists, including Liverpudlian outfit Apollo 440 who sampled Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love for their 1987 chart hit Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Dub and Californian rapper Tone Loc who used the Jamie’s Cryin’ riff from their 1978 debut album for his worldwide smash Wild Thing two years later. Back in the latter half of the eighties, the fusion of rock and rap as pioneered by Anthrax and Beastie Boys was fresh and hitherto unheard of outside of America's underground hip hop clubs where freestyling over all manner of riffs and drum loops was commonplace. Licensed To Ill seemed to connect with the rock scene, though, and found its way into the collections of many a fan, opening up the eventual acceptance of less traditional rock bands like Rage Against The Machine, Faith No More, and even Prodigy, who would eventually headline . Though Ad-Rock, Mike D and MCA would end up troubling the UK’s gutter press with their giant inflatable penises and caged dancing girls when they toured here with Public Enemy in October 1987, it was Sheffield’s Def Leppard who would stunningly redefine what live rock shows should be all about when they embarked on their Hysteria world tour a couple of months earlier.

Chapter 23

* Let’s Get Rocked*

In the weeks between Stapes and I picking up Guns’n’Roses tickets and actually witnessing the world’s most dangerous band take Rock City by storm, the rock and roll landscape was hit by the equivalent of a small earthquake as Sheffield’s returning heroes Def Leppard released Hysteria, their long awaited fourth album. Building on the success of 1983's Pyromania which had elevated the band to superstar status in America despite being largely ignored in the UK, Hysteria didn't so much raise the bar for rock albums and live shows as launch it into outer space. Prior to the release of their Animal single in July 1987 I hadn't been particularly aware of Def Leppard’s music other than a couple of tunes that Metal Micky regularly played at Zhivago’s, but I was well aware of the band itself as Kerrang! had been gearing up for the return of Sheffield's prodigal sons for the best part of a year following their well-received appearance at the 1986 Monsters Of Rock festival. This had been a particularly poignant and important performance for the band due to it being the first time they’d played in England since drummer Rick Allen’s near-fatal accident on New Year’s Eve 1984. Allen, along with his then girlfriend Miriam Barendsen, had been driving his Chevrolet Corvette along a country road near Sheffield on his way to a party at his parent’s house when he lost control of the car on a bend. The Corvette somersaulted over a stone wall into a field, throwing Allen and Barendsen clear but severing his left arm in the process. Allen was rushed to hospital where, after a lengthy and gruelling operation, surgeons managed to reattach his arm but infection set in and it had to be removed again. While he convalesced in hospital Allen began formulating an idea that despite losing his left arm he might still be able to play the drums using his left foot – typically used for the hi-hat pedal and little else – to effectively play the snare drum.

With the help of former Status Quo drummer Jeff Rich, Allen designed a drum kit that he could play with his three remaining limbs. From these designs electronic drum manufacturer Simmons created a prototype consisting of drum pads that triggered snare and tom samples - to be played with his right arm combined with a series of pedals that triggered other pre-recorded drum sounds. Once Allen had mastered his revolutionary new drum kit the newly energised Def Leppard returned to the task of following up Pyromania, reuniting with producer Robert John ‘Mutt’ Lange with whom they’d worked on Pyromania. The result was Hysteria, originally called Animal Instinct but renamed as a nod to Allen’s experiences at the time of his accident and the global media coverage that followed it. When I first heard the album it pretty much blew me and just about everybody else I knew away with the strength of its material and the incredible production values. The first British single Animal (they opted to go with Women for the US market) not only lodged itself in my brain with its insanely catchy chorus and circus themed video but crucially also captured the imagination of the general record buying public. As a result, and helped by a further five hit singles (six in the US), Hysteria was a runaway success, going on to sell 25 million copies worldwide, twelve million of those in the US alone, putting Leppard in the esteemed company of only a handful of artists, including The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Eagles, Bruce Springsteen and Van Halen, who have achieved Diamond certification for having sold ten million copies of two or more albums in America. Soon after the album hit UK shelves in August 1987 the band announced a comprehensive theatre tour including a date at the Royal Concert Hall on September 1st and so Dave G and I picked up tickets, desperate to see Leppard perform live. Back in the eighties the time between a tour being announced and the actual performance dates was much shorter than it is now. These days it seems that every gig I get tickets for is several months away (and that was before Covid-19 postponed everything for a further year or more) but back then we only had to wait a matter of weeks and so before we knew it Dave and I were returning to

the Royal Concert Hall. We weren’t quite as near as we had been for Maiden, but we were still only a dozen rows from the stage which suited us just fine. One noticeable difference, though, was the abundance of young rock chicks, many of whom were particularly enamoured by bassist Rick Savage, who even I had to it was one of the coolest men in rock at the time and a damn fine bassist to boot. came from Sacramento, California quintet Tesla who we had become familiar with thanks to a couple of tracks off their recently released debut album Mechanical Resonance – Comin’ Atcha Live and the very popular, and deservedly so, Modern Day Cowboy - having been played extensively at Rock City and Zhivago’s in the previous weeks. I’d picked their album up the week before and was playing it relentlessly (it still gets a regular airing now) so having them as was the icing on the rock cake as far as I was concerned. Tesla’s set was amazing and went down extremely well with the audience. What made it even more impressive, though, was that drummer Troy Lucketta was playing with a full neck brace after injuring himself several weeks previously. As the lights went down signalling Def Leppard's imminent arrival on stage I felt the same sense of anticipation and excitement that I’d felt eleven months before at Maiden, but there was something more in the air. After kicking of the Hysteria tour with three shows in Ireland and Northern Ireland (the first in Dublin followed by a pair in Belfast), this was only the band’s second gig in England since their triumphant appearance at the previous year's Monsters Of Rock festival, the first having been in their home town of Sheffield the previous night, so there was a real feeling of welcoming a group of conquering heroes home. Opening with Stagefright, an apt and knowing choice, the band appeared a little hesitant for the first few numbers, perhaps still not sure how well they would be received after four years away but they needn’t have worried. The show was nothing short of awesome, particularly the audio/visual assault of Gods Of War as dry ice, strobe lights and the deafening sound of helicopters filled the auditorium. The most impressive thing about the gig, though, didn't really occur to me until

some time after it had finished. Despite the fact that for the first couple of songs I (and I'd wager a good portion of the audience) had been fascinated by the sight of Rick Allen playing his new drum kit, it spoke volumes that for the rest of the gig I'd all but forgotten about his unique circumstances. Instead, as a fledgling bassist, I found myself focusing on the other Rick as he covered several miles worth of stage during the set, looking cooler than the other side of the pillow and making his bass playing look utterly effortless. This was the kind of bassist I wanted to be. Sav's extensive stage prowling was made easy by the fact that, like guitarists Phil Collen and the late Steve Clarke, he was sporting one of these newfangled wireless transmitters, freeing him from the trip-over-the-lead problems that us lesser guitarists had to contend with and prompting my own purchase of such a gadget three years later. Given my intense dislike of seeing bands in enormodomes and aircraft hangers it was a pleasure to have been among the relatively few fans that witnessed Leppard in such intimate surroundings on this seventeen date ‘get back in the saddle’ trek. By the time they returned to the UK the following April they were frequenting the likes of Wembley Arena and the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre (NEC) and wouldn't play smaller venues like the Royal Concert Hall again for a good few years. Five weeks later I was repeating the small venue experience with another band that were about to take off into the stratosphere but unlike Leppard they would never return to the country’s smaller stages.

Chapter 24

* We’re An American Band*

On Monday October 5th Stapes and I met up at Zhivago’s for a pre-gig pint or two before heading up to Rock City to experience the emerging phenomenon that was Guns’n’Roses. From my experience of Rock City I should have known that the place was going to be hotter than hell, especially as the gig was sold out and then some, and dressed accordingly. Instead, having been inspired by the impressive dragon's head that Gene Simmons was sporting on his leather jacket in the promo pictures for KISS’s new Crazy Nights album, I had spent most of the weekend painting a similar design on my own and I was determined to show off my handiwork. So, a couple of pints and twenty minutes of queuing outside Rock City later we were in the middle of the packed dance floor, eagerly awaiting band Faster Pussycat. As soon as Taime Down and his gang of street urchins hit the stage running we were jumping up and down, sending the temperature on the dance floor soaring to sauna levels. Sweat condensed on the ceiling above us before raining back down, running into my eyes and a nasty cut that I’d managed to inflict on my hand after catching it on my jacket’s zip. I managed to endure the heat for the first few songs before fighting my way to the back of the crowd, in danger of ing out from dehydration. (Thankfully I’d used enamel model aircraft paint for the dragon’s head on my jacket which ensured it remained firmly on my back and not all over everybody else’s.) Stapes and I replaced our lost fluids with a couple of pints while we watched the remainder of Faster Pussycat's blinding set. The band more than lived up to my expectations of a sleazy, reckless LA band, and had the gig concluded as they stumbled triumphantly from the stage then I would have gone home a happy boy. However, even better was to come. Though it would only be a mere four years later that Guns’n’Roses began to implode amid internal squabbles and Axl’s delusions (or should that be illusions)

of grandeur, back in October 1987 they were still a lean, mean outfit, starving hungry for success and remain to this day one of the most impressive bands I have ever seen at Rock City. There was a feeling throughout the hour long set that despite the band playing tighter than the proverbial duck’s backside the whole thing could fall apart at any moment, which in a way it did. After leaving the stage at the end of their main set the audience did their best to blow the roof off with their applause and chanting, expecting the band to quickly return for an encore. Word quickly began to filter through the crowd, however, that Axl was pissed off about something and that consequently the band were done for the night. The rumour turned out to be true and while I was disappointed that we were being denied another blast of this awesome band, it didn't harm their reputation as the most dangerous and unpredictable band in the world. Though I saw both Guns’n’Roses and Faster Pussycat again in the coming years, neither band were ever as good as they had been that night, or ever released another album that sured their respective debuts. One band that did manage this was LA’s White Sister, who I had seen play a blistering set at Rock City with Brit rockers FM in February 1987. I’d become aware of them thanks to Metal Micky playing Promises and Can’t Say No from their self-titled debut down at Zhivago’s, but their second album, Fashion For ion, blew me away. To this day it’s one of my all-time favourite melodic rock records, but despite their talent and strong songs, White Sister soon faded into the background, denied the success that they deserved. Happily, for me anyway, bassist Dennis Churchill-Dries returned a few years later with a band called Tattoo Rodeo more bluesy but equally as hard rocking as White Sister had been – and produced another couple of albums (1991’s Rode Hard, Put Away Wet, and 1995’s Skin) that I still play regularly. On the live front, Ratt was another LA band who I really wanted to see, having loved their first two albums, 1984’s Out Of The Cellar and the following year’s Invasion Of Your Privacy. Thanks to them concentrating on the American market, though, I didn’t get the chance until October 24th 1990 when they

finally played at Rock City but they’d already peaked by this point and I was somewhat disappointed by the gig. Another band that made me wait for an eternity before they graced these shores was Poison, who finally hit Rock City on August 15th 1990 for their debut European gig that also served as a warm up for their appearance at that year’s Monsters Of Rock festival. Back in 1986 I’d been stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the cover for their debut album Look What The Cat Dragged In on the wall in Way Ahead. Staring down at me were four attractive, come-hither wenches, all lipstick pouts and tousled hair, or so I thought. In fact I’d just laid eyes on Bret Michaels, Bobby Dall, Ricky Rockett and CC DeVille, whose immaculately applied mascara and rouge gave the likes of Lisa Dominique and Lita Ford a run for their money. It wasn't just their looks that killed, though. Look What The Cat Dragged In was a masterpiece of disposable bubble-gum rock, all three minute songs and throwaway lyrics about wanting action, crying tough and looking like the proverbial feline after a heavy night on the tiles. When they announced that they were hitting Rock City, ed by up and coming British rockers Thunder, they sold the place out in no time and knowing they had to pull something special out of the bag after years of empty promises to grace these shores with their presence, Poison delivered in spades. The makeup and frilly shirts were long gone by this point, replaced by jeans and t-shirts, and for an hour and a half they didn’t put a foot wrong, surprising me (and a lot of other people in Rock City that night) by actually being a very tight, hard rocking outfit. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though, as the misconception that Poison were merely a bunch of hairspray drenched clothes horses who could barely play had been previously shut down in late 1988 when none other than J R Ewing himself, Larry Hagman, shared more than a few bottles of Jack Daniels backstage with them and declared 'I can’t believe how good these guys are, they really know their fucking instruments.' As well as knowing their way around their instruments, Poison were adept at utilising the primitive new-fangled home computer technology of the day to set up their own groupie computer. As Bret Michaels explained to Kerrang! at the

time, girls would have their details entered on this wonderfully wrong database where they could be 'Cross referenced by city, name, colour of hair, name of pet and the type of act that they’ve especially excelled at.' Interestingly, Slash auditioned for Poison before they found CC Deville, and would have gotten the gig if not for his refusal to dye his hair blonde – a wise choice in my humble opinion – and so ended up ing Guns’n’Roses instead. As my album collection grew, so did my desire to be in a band again. With Black Diamond having fallen apart some months previously, my next calling as far as bands went came from a most unexpected quarter but proved to be, in its own small way, a ground breaking experience.

Chapter 25

* Strike Up The Band*

After the dissolution of Black Diamond I had continued playing my bass every day, but what I really wanted was to be in an actual band again. It wasn’t just the pleasure of being in the same room as other musicians that I missed, it was the feeling of camaraderie and belonging to something tangible that being in a band brought with it. Though I wouldn’t another proper band until the autumn of 1988, a year earlier I was given the opportunity to be part of a band dynamic again and also to perform live for the first time, albeit to a captive audience. The school that I went to, Arnold Hill Comprehensive, had a tradition of putting on an annual Christmas pantomime, and as I was in the upper sixth form at the time (year thirteen these days) we were expected to follow in the footsteps of our predecessors. Rising to the challenge, a committee was put together and we soon had a script for our comedic take on the classic high school musical Grease (which we renamed Crease for some reason I can’t now). In previous years all of the music used in the pantomime had by necessity been pre-recorded and no doubt in violation of all kinds of copyright and performance rights laws, but it occurred to my friend Pidge that we had enough musicians in the upper sixth form to put together an actual band and perform all of the music live. This had never been done before at Arnold Hill so naturally we all jumped at the chance to break some new ground. Pidge was banging the drums, though he could have easily played any of the instruments on offer and a whole host that weren’t, I would handle bass duties, and on guitars were Brian, who had recently started playing and so was in, and Spen who was a pretty mean guitar player, and also taking on the role of T-Bird bad boy Kenicke. With the musicians in place we set about deciding which songs were to be included. There were the obvious choices like Greased Lightning and Summer Nights but we needed to decide which other popular tunes to include and were

given special dispensation by our teachers to cut class every Tuesday afternoon to rehearse in the school’s youth club while we figured out our set list. To get us warmed up and used to playing with each other we decided to learn a few covers. We were all fans of The Smiths so we had a crack at a few of their tunes - namely The Queen Is Dead, Barbarism Begins At Home, What Difference Does It Make, and Death Of A Disco Dancer - as well as a brace of rock and roll standards like Johnny B Goode, You Really Got Me, and Queen's Tie Your Mother Down and Another One Bites The Dust. We quickly gelled as a band and after a few rehearsals we had about an hour’s worth of material and just needed to name the band. Fortunately for us a certain Steven Patrick Morrissey came to the rescue. Pidge and I were sitting in the sixth form common room one afternoon pretending to be studying but actually reading magazines. I was, as ever, knee deep in the latest issue of Kerrang! and Chris was reading the NME (New Musical Express). The Smiths had recently broken up following guitarist Johnny Marr’s departure and Morrissey, that week's cover star, was being interviewed about his future plans. As Pidge read he suddenly piped up, 'I’ve got a name for the band!' 'Uh huh?' I grunted inquisitively, looking up from the hirsute pages of Kerrang! 'Well Thank You But No,' Chris replied with conviction, and just like that we had our name. To this day I love the name. It was snappy, original, and stemmed from Morrissey’s response to being offered a cup of tea at the beginning of the interview session, an explanation we trotted out many, many times. Eventually the dates for Crease rolled around, December 15th and 16th, and I finally got my chance to play in front of a real live audience, even if it did consist of the younger pupils at Arnold Hill who had been offered no choice in the matter. Ironically, my most vivid memories of these two days aren't of my official live debut with Well Thank You But No, but instead from the gig that Pidge and I went to on the night of the first Crease show.

Having seen the likes of Bon Jovi, W.A.S.P., Metallica, Anthrax, Def Leppard, Faster Pussycat and Guns’n’Roses in the last few months, it seemed like something of a change of pace to be heading to Rock City to see a band like Big Country. In reality, though, despite the fact that Stuart Adamson and his band of shorthaired, plaid-shirted Scots appeared to be more at home in the pages of Smash Hits than Kerrang!, Big Country had a sound every bit as big, loud and anthemic as anything that Jovi and Leppard had to offer. That night, the first of many times that I ended up seeing Big Country live, I left Rock City as physically and emotionally drained as I had been after any of the bone fide rock gigs that I'd been to. I was also left with one of my favourite live memories of any band I’ve seen to this day. After playing Chance, a top ten hit in 1983 and a perennial live favourite, the crowd, myself and Pidge included, continued to sing the chorus for a good five minutes after the song had finished. On stage the band were genuinely amazed. I’ll never forget the look on Stuart Adamson’s face as he stood there wearing a mile wide grin and laughing out loud as we sang his song back to him. Fourteen years later, almost to the day, I thought about him standing there on that stage looking happy and seemingly without a care in the world as I learned about his suicide in a Honolulu hotel room, the tragic culmination of his long battle against depression and alcoholism. Reading the report of his death on the BBC News website I felt a real sense of loss. I had been a fan from his early days with post-punk band The Skids and had seen Big Country live some half a dozen times. Each and every time had been special but none more so than the final time I saw them when they played at Nottingham’s Wollaton Park in the mid-nineties. I was working for Scottish & Newcastle Breweries at the time and thanks to the fact that we sponsored an annual music festival at Wollaton Park, site of a magnificent stately home (used as the exterior for Bruce Wayne's mansion in 2012's The Dark Knight Rises), I was able to get backstage es to the gig. As a result I stood at the side of the stage, not twenty feet from bassist Tony Butler, as Big Country rocked the thousands of people who had come out to

enjoy a few beers and some great music on a balmy summer's evening. I’d also been able to get backstage es the previous year and though I didn't end up at the side of the stage that time I did spend a delightful few hours getting very, very drunk with another Scottish singer who happened to be a friend of a friend. Ex-Marillion frontman Fish had headlined the festival that night and I was privileged to be able to sit talking with him and half a dozen friends until the wee small hours although I have to be honest, after the first few pints his Scots accent was so pronounced that I couldn’t understand a word he said. He was, however, extremely charming and remains one of the most genuinely ego-free musicians that I’ve ever met. (For the record, he could and did drink like, well, you know what.) Following the two Crease performances, which went down very well, we were given an encore of sorts a week later when Well Thank You But No were asked to be the first contemporary band to appear alongside the usual classical music recitals at the school’s annual Christmas concert. Given the more formal nature of the evening we performed suited and booted and once again went down a storm. As a result of this positive response and the fact that we all enjoyed playing together we decided that we should give Well Thank You But No one final fling before we all went our separate ways at the end of the school year. Capitalising on our relatively high profile and popularity we persuaded the powers that be to let us stage an end of term gig in the main school hall on May 20th 1988 and began to put a set list together. Thanks to having learned a dozen or so covers as part of our rehearsals for Crease we weren't short of songs, or singers for that matter, so we decided to split the gig into two sections. The majority of the performance was to be fronted by a guy called Jon who had established a reputation as something of an entertainer and would sing the various Queen and rock and roll songs that we knew. The other section was to be fronted by Don who had become something of a reluctant heartthrob amongst the school’s female population thanks to his turn as Danny Zuko in Crease, and who just happened to be a huge Smiths fan who idolised Morrissey

This gig was to be a turning point for me. As the Crease house band we'd been largely invisible but this was to be my first real outing in a genuine band, playing in front of an audience who were actually coming to see us of their own volition rather than being marched into the school hall and forced to endure us. A few before the gig Steve informed me that a friend was selling a Westone bass guitar, and that if I was interested then I could have it for the very reasonable sum of one hundred pounds. Having put up with my heavy white plank all this time - which to be fair had served me well in Black Diamond and for the Crease performances - I was definitely interested in getting my hands on a more professional instrument, and Dad once again came to the rescue, agreeing to lend me the cash, and I became the proud owner of a Westone Thunder 1A bass guitar in a beautiful black gloss finish. To further enhance my feeling of being a genuine musician, Steve volunteered to roadie for me, a role that he would reprise when I ed my first proper rock band some months later and which to this day I'm thankful for as it made me feel like a proper rock musician. Of course, not everything went to plan that night. The DJ who was ‘ing’ us introduced the band as Well Thank You But Yes, and as Don took the stage the dry ice machine suddenly went into overdrive prompting him to remark ‘we appear to be on fire.’ Minor mishaps aside, I thought the gig itself was amazing, my personal highlight being the quartet of songs that we performed with Don. We covered three Smiths tunes - The Queen Is Dead, What Difference Does It Make and Barbarism Begins At Home, the bass line for which I had practised long and hard to prefect and (though I say so myself) pulled off flawlessly - and Morrissey’s debut solo effort Suedehead. The rest of the set was a blast, too, as I got to pretend to be Nikki Sixx for an hour, prowling the stage in my tight bleached jeans and ripped Mötley Crüe shirt. I even got a rousing cheer for my bass solo during Barbarism Begins At Home. After the gig we indulged in our own version of the after-show party, chugging beers and basking in the iration of our peers at Webster’s house, riding high

on that singularly unique feeling of having just performed on a stage. As we partied into the night (his parents were away), closing the brief but enjoyable chapter in our lives that had been Well Thank You But No, I knew that I wanted more of the same and resolved to find myself another band as soon as possible. As it turned out my next on stage appearance would be more than a year away but it was well worth the wait. In the meantime I had some of the world’s biggest rock acts to see and a full-scale riot to contend with when one of them pulled out of a gig at the last minute. Before all that, however, let’s step back a couple of months before the Well Thank You But No gig to an episode in which one of my favourite bands became involved in quite possibly the most bizarre rock and roll story of all time.

Chapter 26

* Evil Twin*

While we were in the final weeks of rehearsals for Well Thank You But No's debut and farewell headline appearance, a story was breaking in Kerrang! about my favourite LA bad boys Mötley Crüe that was bizarre even by their standards. A young, tattooed Tampa, Florida resident called Matthew John Trippe claimed that he had replaced Sixx in Mötley Crüe five years earlier following an automobile accident in which the Crüe bassist had sustained injuries serious enough to leave him unable to continue in the band for the foreseeable future. Having just ed KISS on their Creatures Of The Night tour, and with the buzz around the band red hot in anticipation of their second album, Trippe alleged that Sixx’s accident left Mötley’s managers - Doc McGhee and Doug Thayler of McGhee Entertainment - with a huge problem. They had a breaking band on their hands with the potential to earn them millions of dollars who suddenly found themselves without their bassist and, more importantly, songwriter. To solve this problem McGhee and Thayler allegedly enlisted Trippe to write, record and tour as Nikki Sixx while the real Sixx recuperated from his injuries. Trippe claimed that his tenure in the band came to an abrupt end in 1986 after he was arrested on an armed robbery charge in South Florida, giving a fully recuperated Sixx the perfect opportunity to quietly re the band while Trippe was left to rot in jail. He filed a lawsuit against McGhee Entertainment in January 1988, citing civil theft and other relief, claiming that he had never been paid royalties for songs that he'd written whilst a member of the band, specifically Danger and Knock ‘Em Dead Kid from 1983’s Shout At The Devil album and You’re All I Need, Wild Side, Dancin’ On Glass and the title track from 1987’s Girls, Girls, Girls. This claim was ed by the claim that the publishing credits for these songs were attributed to Sikki Nixx Music rather than the usual Nikki Sixx Music, a claim echoed by Roger Hemond, Trippe’s former band mate in Sixx Pack, the

outfit he formed after eventually dropping the lawsuit. Hemond further claims that he had seen copyright forms processed by the United States Library of Congress which, with the exception of Sixx, contained the full names of the Crüe . Vince Neil, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee were identified as Vincent Neil Wharton, Robert Alan Deal and Thomas Lee Bass respectively, but rather than being represented by his birth name of Frank Carlton Serafino Feranno, Jr the bassist was identified only as Nikki Sixx, along with his social security number. While this was undoubtedly due to the fact that Ferrano had legally changed his name to Nikki Sixx some years previously, Hemond insisted that the social security number on the copyright form was the same one that he had seen on Trippe’s social security card. Hemond also claimed that on Halloween 1985 Trippe had been inducted, at the grade of Setian 10, into a Satanist organisation called The Temple Of Set, an offshoot of the Anton LeVay inspired Church Of Satan whose philosophies revolved around the concept of enlightened individualism. It was in Runes, the Temple Of Set’s official magazine, that Trippe’s bizarre claim was originally published before British music weekly the NME (New Musical Express) briefly reported it in their January 2nd 1988 issue. Trippe claimed that it was his interest in Satanism that had inspired Mötley's Shout At The Devil album and that it was originally going to be called Shout With The Devil before the title was altered due to the group’s decision to tone down their Satanic imagery in the wake of pressure from groups like Tipper Gore’s PMRC. However, given that the PMRC formed two years after Shout At The Devil was released, before which Mötley Crüe and the rest of the rock world had been pretty much left to their own devices by the establishment, Trippe's claim doesn’t ring true. Feeling that the full story would be given a fair hearing in the pages of Kerrang! the Temple Of Set provided the rock magazine with photographic evidence to back up their claims. This so called evidence was far from conclusive, however, not least because the photographs were all taken from different angles and in wildly different locations, and while there were certain facial similarities

between Trippe and Sixx, it was clear to anybody without a white stick and a dog that the pictures were of two different men. One of the most amusing pieces of photographic evidence supposedly showed that while the real Sixx had an ‘inny’ bellybutton, Trippe had an ‘outy’. However, due to the fact that one of the pictures was taken of Sixx on stage during the Theatre Of Pain tour, and the other of him in a shower after one of the shows, it was hardly conclusive. The only semi-credible shred of evidence was Trippe's near perfect duplications of Sixx’s tattoos right up to Mötley's Theatre of Pain era, which prompted the real bassist to get his first Japanese sleeve shortly afterwards to prevent any further xeroxing of his body art. Showing solidarity with his band mate and perpetual partner in crime, Mötley drummer Tommy Lee got his own Japanese sleeve done at the same time. Trippe eventually dropped the lawsuit on December 10th 1993. Capitalising on the publicity – and infamy - that had been generated by his claim he put together a band with Hemond called Sixx Pack but after producing just one song – Lifetime - which was featured on a phone line set up by Kerrang! the band folded. Hemond subsequently claimed that during his time in Sixx Pack, Trippe couldn’t even how to play some of the Mötley songs that he had allegedly written and that unlike the real Sixx he was no virtuoso bassist. Though the whole doppelgänger incident remains strangely absent from The Dirt, the band's otherwise exhaustive warts and all tale about life in the Crüe, it hasn't been completely erased from Mötley's history. During the sessions for 1989’s Dr Feelgood album the band recorded a demo of a song called Say Yeah that Sixx had written about Trippe but which ultimately didn’t make the final running order. It eventually turned up on their 2003 Supersonic & Demonic Relics compilation along with a brief liner note from Sixx who wryly observed ‘So the guy finally got his fifteen minutes of fame. The guy he wanted to be wrote a song about him.’ Though all the evidence, or lack thereof, points to the story being a wishful fabrication by Trippe, Hemond noted in a 1998 online interview with the Chronological Crüe website, 'I’ll tell you one thing, if I were going to try and

pull (off) what Matt alleges that Thayer and McGhee did I would probably pick someone a lot like Matt to do it with because nobody would believe him completely – he was a lunatic!' Matthew John Trippe ed away on 1st December 2014, but will remain a footnote in the annals of rock and rock roll. While the whole doppelgänger incident briefly caused Nikki Sixx and Doc McGhee a degree of concern and hassle, a much bigger story was breaking in the world's press, one that couldn’t be made to go away with expensive lawyers and that had the potential to change the landscape of not only rock and roll but society in general, forever.

Chapter 27

* Social Disease*

Though the rock bands of the eighties didn’t pioneer the clichéd trinity of sex, drugs and rock and roll that defined their lifestyles, they certainly practised it to the max. On the narcotics front Mötley Crüe’s Nikki Sixx was snorting marching powder like there was no tomorrow, which there nearly wasn’t for him on December 23rd 1987 when he overdosed on Persian heroin after partying with Ratt’s Stephen Pearcy and Guns’n’Roses’ Slash and Steven Adler. Though he was pronounced clinically dead for two minutes it didn’t stop him from checking himself out of the hospital and returning to his Hollywood home where he locked himself in a cupboard to shoot up again. Drugs were, of course, nothing new in rock music. The Beatles standard Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds was rumoured to be influenced by LSD despite John Lennon’s denials, and The Eagles’s Hotel California was their multi-million selling ode to addiction if popular interpretations are to be believed. My own awareness of the rock and drugs connection had come when the British media gleefully reported that Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious had overdosed on heroin in a New York hotel room in the early hours of December 2nd 1979. Vicious had been celebrating his release on bail after being charged with the murder of his girlfriend Nancy Spungen, and had in the process guaranteed his place in rock and roll history. On the sex front KISS’s Gene Simmons was seemingly on a mission to not only sleep with every woman on the planet but to document each and every one of his conquests with his trusty Polaroid camera. He claimed to have bedded almost five thousand women and had the photographic evidence to prove it before he and former adult film star Shannon Tweed burned them all on the Gene Simmons Family Jewels reality television show after their 2011 marriage. While groupies were a widespread rock and roll perk in the 1960s and 1970’s none more so than the dynamic duo of Pamela Des Barres, who counted Jim

Morrison, Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Iggy Pop, Jello Biaffra and Keith Moon among her conquests, and Cynthia Albritton, whose notoriety for making plaster casts of rock star cocks was immortalised in the KISS song Plaster Caster (though Gene laments that he was never asked to, ahem, model himself, despite his enthusiastic tribute) - the overt celebration of sex had been largely absent in rock music until the 1980s. There had been oblique references to the two backed beast, of course, but Let’s Spend the Night Together by The Rolling Stones had merely hinted at what might go on behind closed doors while Free’s Feel Like Making Love wrapped the act up in soft focus lights and romantic overtures. This all changed in the early eighties, however, as the floodgates of carnality were smashed open and sex streaked out of the shadows in all its glory. Suddenly all bets (and clothes) were off as KISS demanded that we Uh! All Night, Rogue Male celebrated ejaculation with All Over You and W.A.S.P. displayed their tender side with PMRC favourite Animal (Fuck Like A Beast). While the eighties brought this new found freedom to sing explicitly about what you wanted to do to whom, it also brought a new and deadly threat to the sex and drugs aspect of the rock and roll lifestyle in the form of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, or AIDS as it became commonly known. Originally detected in New York at the turn of the decade, AIDS didn’t really enter the public’s consciousness until the mid-eighties. Initially considered to be a ‘gay plague’ due to some seventy-five percent of the early diagnosed victims being homosexual men, the disease was even known as GRID syndrome, or Gay Related Immunodeficiency, for a short while. This mistaken belief prompted less enlightened and tolerant religious leaders to declare that AIDS was God’s way of punishing homosexuals for their ‘immoral’ lifestyles, a point of view that got Robert Sweet of Christian rockers Stryper into hot water with Kerrang! readers following an interview in October 1986. When asked by Kerrang! scribe Howard Johnson whether he thought the AIDS outbreak was a punishment from God or divine retribution Sweet replied ‘It could be. Who are you to say that it’s not? Who am I to say that it is?’ Resting on his shovel as he dug himself deeper into a hole he went on to say ‘There are always consequences to be paid for your actions. AIDS and Herpes

are a consequence of people being overtly promiscuous. People don’t want to die for a quick thrill.’ With the homosexual aspect of AIDS dominating public perception, the fact that it could also be ed on by drug s sharing contaminated needles and through heterosexual sex with an infected person was largely overlooked. As a result bands continued to celebrate and indulge in the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle and in hindsight it's incredible that of all the musicians in eighties rock bands who enjoyed the groupie culture there were very few who actually contracted or died of AIDS or related symptoms. The most high profile victim, of course, was Queen singer Freddie Mercury who died on November 24th 1991 from bronchial pneumonia resulting from AIDS, but of the bands that I had grown up it was the death of Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby on June 2nd the following year that really hit home for me. Crosby had publicly itted that he had full-blown AIDS in 2001, and though the official cause of his death was a heroin overdose rather than from the effects of AIDS itself, the fact that he had contracted the disease, either through unprotected sex or via his drug addiction, highlighted just how dangerous the lifestyle that the bands of the eighties had been living was. With the emergence of AIDS into the public arena, it was inevitable that there would be a degree of homophobic backlash from the rock world. Some of it was childish and puerile, like The Macc Lads calling their 1987 tour the ‘Don’t Catch AIDS Tour’, while other examples were overtly offensive. During Ozzy Osbourne's 1988 New Year’s Eve show in Long Beach, California his guitarist Zakk Wylde told the audience that ‘if there are any homos out there tonight then they can all fucking leave now.’ Unfortunately for Ozzy and Wylde the show was reviewed the next day by a writer for the LA Times who also happened to be a leading light in the local gay rights movement, prompting Ozzy to first claim that the comment was ‘supposed to be a joke’ before appearing on the radio the following day to make a public apology. Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach also got himself into hot water after pulling on a t-shirt that a fan had thrown onto the stage without looking at the slogan first

which read Aids Kills Fags Dead. After initially making a joke of the incident on MTV, Bach later apologised profusely and made a substantial donation to an AIDS charity. Despite these regrettable incidents, however, rock fans proved themselves to be very tolerant and accepting of the homosexual community. Roddy Bottum, Faith No More’s keyboard player, was one of the eighties rock scene’s first openly gay men before, to nobody’s surprise, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford came out in 1988, a ‘revelation’ that didn’t damage either his or Priest’s popularity one iota. With HIV emerging as a real threat that reached far beyond the gay community the press got firmly behind the need to educate young people about the dangers of AIDS and drugs, running regular full-page adverts in Kerrang! warning of the dangers of unprotected sex and sharing needles. Even bad boy Michael Hutchence proved himself to be socially responsible, risking arrest in his native Australia on the charge of ‘threatening behaviour in a public place’ after throwing condoms into the audience during an INXS show. Hutchence’s act of defiance was in protest at Queensland Premier Sir Joh BjelkePetersen advocating restrictions on the availability of condom machines. At the time Queensland had the highest rates of AIDS infections and unwanted pregnancies in Australia. Despite the very real threat of contracting the disease given the extreme rock and roll lifestyle that many of my idols were leading, it didn’t seem to curb their enthusiasm for sex or drugs, but thankfully AIDS all but ed the rock and roll community by without leaving a trail of casualties in its wake. However, I’m not here to preach – I’m here to rock - and as 1988 rolled on I continued my quest to see as many bands live as I could, a quest that over a seven week period in the late summer would find me at the epicentre of a fullscale riot, and experiencing an uncomfortably close brush with death in a Leicestershire field.

Chapter 28

* Whiplash*

In the spring of 1988, as the weekly rehearsals for Well Thank You But No’s debut and final headlining performance continued, I was not only keeping up with the current releases by the likes of Alice Cooper, White Lion, LA Guns, White Sister, The Cult, AC/DC, Dokken, and Zodiac Mindwarp And The Love Reaction, I was also making plans to see the last three. With Heatseeker packing the Rock City dance floor, AC/DC announced their 1988 Blow Up Your Video tour, though being one of the world’s biggest bands it was no great surprise when the nearest gig to us turned out to be at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham on March 7th 1988. What was a nice surprise, for me anyway, was the announcement that Dokken were ing them. I loved Just Got Lucky from their 1985 Under Lock And Key album and Into The Fire from the previous year’s Tooth And Nail, but had really fallen for them when they released 1987’s Back For The Attack which included the Dream Warriors single from Freddy Krueger's third cinematic outing, A Nightmare On Elm Street 3 : Dream Warriors. I was a huge fan of the Elm Street movies so the combination of my favourite maniac and Dokken appearing together on MTV to promote the movie should have been awesome. However, the whole thing turned out to be so cheesy that even as a major fan of both parts of this unholy alliance, I still find it excruciating to watch to this day. At the NEC Dokken hit the stage to a rapturous reception and played everything I wanted to hear from Back For The Attack as well as Just Got Lucky, Into The Fire and a particularly powerful version of their popular ballad Alone Again. It was well documented in the rock press at the time that there was no love lost between Don Dokken and guitarist George Lynch, with reports of actual fist fights before they took the stage on occasion, and though the band was tighter than a gnat’s chuff it was obvious that there was an atmosphere between the two men. It came as little surprise, therefore, that after their subsequent tour of the Far East, which spawned their Beast From The East live album, the band broke

up. (The original line up did reunite in 2016 for a bumper payday to play six dates in Japan, as well as a warm up show in the US, but that seems to have been the final chapter to the classic line up's story.) As good as Dokken were, when AC/DC took to the stage both Dave and I were completely blown away. I’ve seen many, many bands over the years but AC/DC were, and still are, one of an elite few that can hold the crowd in the palms of their hands for the entire show. My personal highlight was when Brian ‘Beano’ Johnson hoisted Angus Young onto his shoulders and walked out into the audience during The Jack, from their 1976 album High Voltage. It would be another fifteen years before I saw AC/DC live again, in 2003 at a ‘secret show’ at the venue formerly known as the Hammersmith Odeon in London, and another twelve years after that when I saw them for the third and final time at Wembley Stadium in 2015, but both times the levels of energy and sheer professionalism that they displayed that night were almost identical to those on display at the NEC in 1988, as was the set list, but with such an amazing catalogue of classics, why fix it if it ain’t broken? Six months after being blown away by AC/DC I was back at the Birmingham NEC, on September 29th 1988 to see Metallica’s debut performance there on their Damaged Justice tour. I’d missed their last jaunt through the UK on 1986’s Damage Inc. tour and though they'd been very impressive at Donington the following year, seeing them perform a truncated set in daylight hadn’t completely satisfied me. for the evening came from Danzig, the solo vehicle for ex-Misfits singer Glen Danzig whose previous band’s huge influence on Metallica had been acknowledged by their cover of the classic Last Caress for their 1987 $5.98 Garage Days Re-Revisited EP. Though Glen Danzig projected a commanding stage presence just by being there, much as Henry Rollins does, I was more impressed by his drummer. Flying in the face of rock drumming tradition he eschewed the usual supersized kit (I'm looking at you, Alex Van Halen) in favour of an almost pitifully small set-up consisting of just a single bass drum, a snare and a couple of toms.

Though this made him look somewhat lost and vulnerable on the huge NEC stage the sound he made with this minimal kit was incredible and their rendition of Mother was brutal, heavy and completely won over the audience. Well, nearly all of them. In the seats in front of us a couple of fans who had clearly taken full advantage of the bar’s dubious offerings managed, somehow, to not only sleep through all of Danzig’s set but most of Metallica’s performance as well. As Metallica walked on stage to the familiar strains of The Ecstasy of Gold, they were greeted like conquering heroes. In contrast to the cross laden stage of the Damage Inc. tour, the only concession to stage props on this tour was the gradual building of the album's cover girl Lady Justice behind Lars Ulrich’s drum kit throughout the gig. This culminated with her destruction at the end of the main set accompanied by an unexpected explosion in the lighting rig which made several audience , myself included, jump as it appeared to crash down onto the crowd, before swinging wildly but safely above them. Metallica themselves were on top form, and it was particularly gratifying to hear Jason Newsted's bass contributions to the …And Justice For All tracks finally boom out, giving them a much heavier presence live than they ever had on vinyl due to the still controversial mix that all but removed his playing. The biggest surprise of the evening was Kirk Hammett’s guitar solo. I had been expecting a dazzling display of shredding but instead he drew upon his blues roots, delivering a soulful and atmospheric break from the otherwise intense set that cemented their ferocious live reputation and laid the foundations for them becoming one of the biggest bands in the world when they released The Black Album a couple of years later. Earlier in the year, a couple of weeks after Well Thank You But No’s one and only performance, Stapes and I had found ourselves at Rock City watching former Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine’s band Megadeth when they rolled into town on May 17th 1988 in of their So Far, So Good…So What! album. I’d been a big fan of their first two albums - 1985’s Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good and 1987’s commercial breakthrough Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? - but as far as I was concerned So Far, So Good…So What! was,

and remains, my favourite of all their offerings, despite receiving a critical panning by the music press. With a wall of camouflage covered Marshall amps for a backdrop Mustaine, bassist Dave ‘Jr’ Ellefson, guitarist Jeff Young and drummer Chuck Behler tore Rock City apart, the highlight being an emotionally charged In My Darkest Hour, Mustaine’s tribute to his late friend Cliff Burton. I was particularly impressed by Mustaine's ability to perform the most intricate guitar work while he worked the microphone. Whereas James Hetfield was content to be a very competent rhythm guitarist to Kirk Hammett's lead, Mustaine’s hands flew up and down his fretboard like lightning as he snarled and spat his lyrics at the audience. I’d been similarly impressed, but for different reasons, a couple of months previously on March 16th when I’d been to see London sleaze rockers Zodiac Mindwarp And The Love Reaction on the same stage with my friend and future band mate Sean Homer. Mindwarp - the alter ego of Mark Manning, one time editor of London’s Flexipop magazine - had decided that he wanted to experience the debauchery of the rock star lifestyle for himself and so put together The Love Reaction and secured his own moment of legendary excess in the process. g to Phonograph records for an advance of one hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds, and the first eighteen issues of Marvel’s Silver Surfer comic, Manning proceeded to spend it all on toys, comics and, in his own words, ‘I’ll give you three guesses – it begins with B, ends with E and has got double-O Z in the middle.’ This led to him being fired by his own band before they'd recorded a single note, but he was allowed to re after he asked if he could come back on the not very rock and roll proviso that he behaved himself. With their enigmatic frontman back in the fold, Zodiac Mindwarp And The Love Reaction produced one of the finest raw rock and roll records by a British band in the 1980s. Back Seat Education was an entertaining collection of twelve ultra-sleazy yet commercial tunes, the highlight being first single Prime Mover which was

accompanied by one of my favourite videos of the era, and formed the backbone of the set that they played when I saw them at Rock City. Flanked by guitarists Cobalt Stargazer and Flash Bastard, bassist Trash D Garbage and drummer Slam Thunderhide, the band didn't take themselves at all seriously, enjoying their fifteen minutes in the spotlight with their tongues jammed firmly in their cheeks. This was particularly evident when they played an unexpected but surprisingly good reworking of Wham!’s I’m Your Man, completely winning over the audience with their chutzpah. While all of these gigs had been positive, very enjoyable experiences, there’s always an exception that proves the rule, and back in July 1988 I discovered this first hand when I attended a gig that has gone down in Nottingham rock history for all the wrong reasons.

Chapter 29

* Do You Wanna Riot*

Monday July 18th 1988 was a particularly memorable day for two reasons. The first was that after a summer of doing little else but play my bass and hang out at rock clubs I had finally bowed to pressure from Mum to get a proper job, and had reported for duty on my first day of full time employment. The second was much more exciting in that for the first, and to date only, time in my life I found myself caught up in the middle of a full-scale riot. Since leaving school in the middle of May after taking and ultimately failing all but one of my A-levels I had spent the best part of two months living the rock and roll lifestyle. With compulsory education behind me forever, my only responsibility had been turning up for my job at WH Smiths every Saturday, usually hungover and suffering from sleep deprivation, in order to fund my alcohol, gig and vinyl addictions. As July dawned, however, Mum had begun not so subtly suggesting that while it was nice that I'd taken a couple of months to enjoy my departure from the educational system, it might not be a bad idea for me to start thinking about finding myself a job. To cut a long story short, a couple of days later I found myself wandering into the drab, largely beige Job Centre on Front Street in Arnold, and shortly thereafter climbing the stairs of the same building to the top floor offices of Shelton & Co Chartered ants for an interview with the senior partner, a man called David Atkinson. As I stepped into his office I was enveloped by a thick fog of cigarette smoke and half an hour later I had agreed to sell my soul to the gods of ancy for the princely sum of thirty pounds a week, starting the following Monday. After making the most of my last few days of adolescent freedom I turned up clean-shaven and fresh faced for my first day of genuine gainful employment, though if I’m honest nothing really went in to my brain that day as I couldn’t think of anything but the Ozzy Osbourne gig that I was going to at Rock City

that evening. Five o’clock eventually rolled around and I raced home, did a quick change, threw some dinner down my neck (though thankfully not my shirt) and jumped on the bus into town to meet with Steve, his sister Sue, and Stapes. After a quick couple of pints in Fagins we made our way up to Rock City and ed the expectant crowd in the main hall. This was the first time that Ozzy had played venues this small for many years and anticipation was at fever pitch for three reasons. Firstly it was a rare chance to see Ozzy up close and personal. Secondly it was our first opportunity to see his newest guitar prodigy Zakk Wylde, who had replaced Jake E Lee the previous year. Thirdly, and most importantly in of rock history, Geezer Butler was handling four string duties on this tour and so we'd effectively be seeing half of the legendary Black Sabbath on the same stage. During the summer of 1988 it seemed that every other band that played at Rock City was ed by London melodic rockers Jagged Edge, who played a forgettable set then left the stage, at which point the atmosphere suddenly cranked up a few gears. While the roadies ran through their sound checks the audience became increasingly boisterous as we waited impatiently for the Prince of Darkness to grace us with his presence. Show time for the main band at Rock City was usually around half past nine which meant that given most bands played for ninety minutes or so it was possible to dash from mosh pit to bus stop just in time to catch the last bus, avoiding expensive taxis – a rare treat on our meagre wages at the time - or long walks home through some of Nottingham’s less appealing neighbourhoods. As the clock ticked onwards past ten o’clock, however, rumours began circulating that Ozzy wasn’t going to show which we naturally dismissed as complete bollocks. We were all aware of Ozzy’s drink problems at the time – they had, after all, recently been extensively documented in The Metal Years but he wouldn’t let them get in the way of a gig would he? Surely not. Not Ozzy. The rumours began gathering momentum as the time crawled towards eleven o’clock and the audience became increasingly agitated. Undeterred, the DJ continued playing the usual quality selection of tunes but I began to get a sinking feeling in my gut, aware that even if Ozzy hit the stage in the next few minutes

then we’d have to bail soon afterwards in order to get home at a reasonable time. I didn’t really want to turn up for my second day of work tired and hungover. Finally, just after eleven o’clock, an announcement came over the PA informing us that Ozzy was having problems with his throat and wouldn’t be performing tonight. My disappointment swiftly become apprehension as a dozen or so police officers walked on to the stage, obviously expecting trouble after the announcement of Ozzy’s no-show, and we felt the mood of the crowd turn ugly. The officer in charge, a slight but severe looking man who wore his bright yellow hi-vis jacket and black peaked cap with a visible sense of pride appealed for the by now very agitated crowd to begin leaving the building in a quiet and orderly manner. For a long moment there was a deathly hush as the well-oiled crowd stared him down, unwilling to accept the reality of the situation, then from out of nowhere a plastic glass sailed through the air and hit the lead copper squarely on the head. There are moments in life where the split second choices we make in reaction to something can hugely influence the outcome of a given situation, and for the police officer in the fluorescent vest this was one of them. Perhaps if he’d remained calm and just accepted that the crowd were upset and annoyed at having been forced to watch Jagged Edge without an upside then he might have got his wish for us all to leave the building in a disappointed but peaceful fashion. Instead he inexplicably chose to leap off the stage into the inebriated and extremely volatile crowd to apprehend the young man who had thrown the glass, and in doing so effectively lit the blue touch paper of a highly explosive situation. Unsurprisingly this decision didn’t go down well and suddenly there were dozens of irate rock fans swarming all over the stage, pulling down the speaker stacks and attacking the police who had ventured into the crowd in a vain attempt to restore order. As soon as it all kicked off I looked at Steve and motioned that we should get the fuck out of there. Now. The four of us gripped hands and jackets to ensure we didn't get separated as we

pushed our way towards the exit along with most of the rest of the crowd. Somewhere behind us I heard the sound of glass smashing as fruit machines were pulled over by the rampaging crowd, and I thought that it would be just my luck to end up on the wrong side of a cell door on my first day at work. We made it outside, and realising that we’d missed our respective buses we consoled ourselves with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken as we discussed just how pissed off we were that Ozzy had cancelled. I was particularly annoyed because unlike Steve, Sue and Stapes I had never seen him live but we all shared the frustration at having come so tantalisingly close to seeing the Prince of Darkness in such an intimate venue as it was unlikely that he’d ever do a gig on such a small scale again. I was still incensed when I eventually got home and was so determined to vent my spleen that I sat on the edge of my bed and spent half an hour writing my first and only letter to Kerrang! before falling asleep. The following morning I put my letter in an envelope and launched it towards Kerrang! Towers via a post box on my way to work and promptly forgot all about the whole thing until I picked up Kerrang! the following Wednesday. I hadn’t expected my letter to be read, let alone printed, so I was pleasantly surprised when I flicked to Kerrang!'s letters page and found it there in almost all its glory, with only my more libellous thoughts on Ozzy's no show having been sensibly removed. Though I did get the chance to see Ozzy in an intimate venue when Dave G and I saw him at the legendary Hammersmith Odeon in 2011, I did finally see him live for the first time the following year on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, but more about that later. Thankfully I’ve never been in another riot, though I did find myself in some pretty riotous mosh pits over the years, but seven weeks later I would be caught up in another ugly crowd experience, only this time it would end in tragedy.

Chapter 30

* Can I Play With Madness?*

Twelve months after I’d seen Bon Jovi become the world’s biggest rock band at the Monsters Of Rock festival in August 1987 I was heading back to Donington Park for a second helping. I'd seen three of the six bands on the bill – Iron Maiden, Megadeth and Guns’n’Roses - in the last couple of years and was looking forward to reacquainting myself with them, but it was the other two major names (I wasn't particularly fussed about openers Helloween) that had me ridiculously excited at the prospect of seeing them live. Ever since Eat ‘Em And Smile had hit the shelves and my turntable, and thanks to a double cassette bootleg of the US tour that I’d picked up at a record fair and subsequently almost worn out, I had been desperate to witness the majesty of David Lee Roth live with my own eyes. I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be seeing the Power Twins in action, Billy Sheehan having left the band after Skyscraper’s release to form Mr Big with singer Eric Martin, guitarist Paul Gilbert and drummer Pat Torpey, but at least Roth still had Steve Vai on seven string duties. Ordinarily the prospect of seeing Diamond Dave in the flesh would have put anything else well and truly in the shade but even he couldn't compete with the euphoria I felt at learning that KISS were playing Monsters this year. Despite not being impressed with their latest album Crazy Nights, I had been desperate to see the band that had subconsciously planted the seeds of my rock and roll infatuation way back in the mid-seventies when my Canadian friends and I had spoken in hushed tones of the blood spitting Demon in the halls of McKay Road Elementary School. Ironically, despite the fact that it is generally considered by KISS fans to be among the band’s weaker offerings (even Paul Stanley itted years later it was the band’s attempt to regain their dwindling audience by shamelessly borrowing from the bands who were making waves in the mid-eighties) Crazy

Nights sold by the truckload, and even spawned a top ten UK single in the shape of Crazy, Crazy Nights which reached number four, their highest chart position to date. The quality, or lack thereof, of Crazy Nights didn’t matter to me, though. I just wanted to see Gene and Paul with my own eyes. Though this wasn't the reunion gig that fans had been desperate for ever since guitarist Ace Frehley and drummer Peter Criss had left almost a decade earlier – we would have to wait another eight years for that – the mere fact that KISS were playing at Donington at all was enough to make us salivate. With the extremely attractive proposition of KISS and Diamond Dave on the bill it was going to take a legendary act to pull off a conquering headline set. With the release of their Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son album Iron Maiden were at the top of their game and were booked for a well-deserved first headline slot, the first of a record breaking six headlining slots at the Donington site – they returned in 1992, releasing the performance as their Live At Donington album the following year, and then headlined the first festival in 2003 and again in 2007, 2013 and 2016. They would have made it seven in 2020 but for the cancellation of practically every live music event due to the worldwide impact of the Covid-19 virus. After the traditional decanting of alcohol into white plastic gallon containers we set off to make camp as close to the stage as we could without being trampled and then hit the merch stand while Helloween did their thing, where after much deliberation I opted for my usual Monsters baseball shirt. Once the German thrashers left the stage a tangible buzz of anticipation rippled through the crowd as we waited for the imminent arrival of Guns’n’Roses. I’d been one of the lucky few to catch them up close and personal on their five date club tour the previous autumn but since then, thanks largely to their regular presence in Kerrang! and the various other rock publications like Raw and Metal Hammer, their profile had gone stratospheric and it seemed that just about everybody in the audience was either desperate to see them or curious to see what all the fuss was about. Of all the bands playing that day it was Guns that I wanted to get as close to the front of the stage as I could for and so I employed every trick I knew to push, pull and slide my way through the rain soaked crowd - it had been gently

drizzling for most of the day - until I found myself about a dozen rows back on the left hand side of the stage. The crowd went absolutely nuts when Guns hit the stage, tearing into It’s So Easy, and I found myself being thrown left and right in the undulating crowd, struggling to remain upright as my feet scrambled for purchase in the mud underfoot, but somehow thanks to the camaraderie of my fellow rockers we all managed to remain on our feet. For a while, anyway. About midway through Guns’ set the crowd surged forward and suddenly the section of the audience that I was in began to go down. We found ourselves slipping in the thick mud, falling to our knees as our feet lost traction and before I knew it I was underneath a pile of people. I began to panic, fighting to get to my feet while clinging desperately onto the others around me but none of us could get a decent foothold. I’d been in pretty intense mosh pits before but I’d never felt as frightened or claustrophobic as I did then and I knew that I had to get out of there. To their credit, the security guys were pulling people out of the crowd as fast as they could and I fought my way towards the crash barrier, my lungs gasping for air, my face hot and wet with sweat and panic. I could feel people under my feet as I moved in what felt like slow motion towards the stage and while I was concerned that I was trampling on them my survival instinct had kicked in, and though it feels selfish now, I was more worried about not being able to get out than the welfare of my fellow rock fans. Once I was within striking distance of the barrier I thrust my arm out and felt a huge surge of relief as a strong hand gripped mine and pulled me out, a strange momentary weightless sensation overtaking my body as other of the crowd boosted me over the barrier into the arms of one of the security guys. As I found my feet again, regaining my sense of balance, I stepped over a prone body on the wooden platform before being hustled off in the direction of the backstage medical area. Dazed, I made my way into a tarpaulin covered corridor and finding space against the wall I felt my knees buckle and I allowed myself to sink to the floor, my back against the wall as I regained my breath.

For several moments I just sat there, my overloaded brain processing the information that I was out of the crush and safe, and then a wave of relief washed over me and I felt tears spill from my eyes. Looking back, I’m convinced that the body I stepped over on my way to safety must have been one of the two poor souls that lost their lives in that crush. Alan Dick and Landon Siggers had arrived that morning along with over one hundred thousand other fans to see some of their favourite bands and but for fate, chance or just dumb luck it could have been me or any of the other people there that day who wouldn’t be going home that night. I don’t anything of Megadeth’s set. Instead I sat in that tarpaulin corridor for a good while until one of the St John’s Ambulance personnel came to check that I was all right. Satisfied that I had just been a little shaken and needed to catch my breath, he smiled and pointed me in the direction of the exit. I wandered back into the main arena, still a little dazed and at that point, like the rest of the crowd and the bands backstage, unaware of the tragedy that had occurred. Guns’n’Roses were similarly oblivious until after they'd left the stage and were later unfairly criticised in the press for having continued to play amid the chaos even though they had halted their set when asked to and attempted to calm the audience. I headed to one of the beer tents and downed a pint of overpriced watery lager that had never tasted so good to help me regain my composure. At the time I didn’t think that anything more than a particularly intense crowd crush had occurred - not an uncommon event at rock gigs - and headed back to our base camp, ready to enjoy the rest of the day. I wasn’t too upset at missing Megadeth, having seen them up close at Rock City back in May, and any feelings of fatigue that lingered from the Guns crush were soon banished as David Lee Roth took to the stage. This was his first UK gig since parting company with Van Halen and he was lean, mean and hungry to prove himself outside of the confines of his old band. Roth’s second solo album, Skyscraper, had come out a few months previously and formed the backbone of his set but he didn’t disappoint when it came to the classics. Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love, Panama, Hot For Teacher and Jump all got an airing, all performed note perfect by Steve Vai, who would return to the

Donington stage just a couple of years later in the headlining slot as part of David Coverdale’s revamped Whitesnake. Roth more than proved he was the consummate showman and while a set in the broad afternoon daylight meant that there were no boxing rings or flying surfboards, both of which would make an appearance at London’s Hammersmith Odeon a week or so later, Roth didn’t need them. After all, he had charasma! All too soon Roth and his band were waving goodbye and walking off stage, leaving the audience with satisfied smiles on their faces. As the stage lights dimmed and the Bailey Brothers resumed their DJ activities I began to feel a nervous anticipation for the imminent arrival of KISS, who I hoped wouldn’t disappoint me after all these years of wanting to see them live. ‘You wanted the best, you got the best. The hottest band in the world,’ declared a booming voice through the PA and KISS hit the stage, opening with Deuce from their eponymous 1974 debut album. Perhaps sensing that they had to live up to their legacy their seventeen song set drew heavily on their make-up days and had me and a good section of the crowd pumping our fists in the air and singing until we were hoarse. Though I thoroughly enjoyed their set and was thrilled to finally see Paul and Gene in person - albeit from a considerable distance - I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed that after years of anticipation there hadn’t been any pyro, stage set or even the KISS logo. Maiden didn’t disappoint, though, hitting the stage with Moonchild as if they had been practising for this very moment their entire lives. Showcasing much of their Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son album - the second best concept album of the eighties, more on the best one later - Maiden stalked their gargantuan set for just shy of two hours and delivered a nineteen song set packed to the rafters with classics. Eddie, of course, made his customary appearance, rising from behind the iceberg-covered back line during Seventh Son’s title track in all his skeletal glory, and more than made up for the lacklustre inflatable that we’d witnessed at the Royal Concert Hall two years earlier. After Maiden left the stage following their final encore of Sanctuary an

announcement was made over the PA system informing us of the two fatalities earlier in the day, prompting a sudden flashback to my rescue from the front of the stage during Guns’n’Roses set, and of stepping over the prone figure on the wooden decking in the photographers pit. A lengthy inquest followed the tragedy at Donington, eventually ruling that the deaths of Alan Dick and Landon Siggers were accidental. Despite the official verdict exonerating the bands and the promoters of any wrongdoing, however, the short term fate of the festival was sealed – there was to be a year’s sabbatical. Though Monsters of Rock returned in 1990, headlined by Whitesnake and featuring Aerosmith, Poison, The Quireboys and Thunder, it was to be another six years before I made my way back to Donington Park in 1996 to witness the triumphant return of classic KISS. In the meantime I was about to leave a band I’d ed the week before Donington, audition for another, and finally a third that would result in my long awaited, for me anyway, live rock debut.

Chapter 31

* Up Around The Bend*

Ever since experiencing the exhilarating rush of performing on a stage with Well Thank You But No back in May 1988 I'd been itching to find myself another band. I'd briefly considered calling Steve to see if, in true Blues Brothers style, we should get the old band back together but I knew that while Black Diamond had been a valuable and enjoyable learning experience - mainly in how to drink beer and still be able to play the bass - it wasn’t going to be my vehicle to fame and fortune. Instead I found myself regularly perusing the ‘musicians wanted’ section of The Recorder, our local free newspaper, and in early August 1989 one of the ads caught my eye. ‘Hardcore band requires bassist. Must have own gear. Gigs waiting.’ I called the number and a few days later found myself on the third floor of the Arnold Labour Club auditioning for a guitarist/singer and drummer. I managed to impress them enough with my bass playing that they asked me to the band, which I did, despite it being called Bowel Movement. After going to Donington the following weekend, however, seeing Guns, KISS and Diamond Dave made me realise that despite them being nice guys and us gelling both musically and personally, in my heart I really wanted to be Nikki Sixx, not Dee Dee Ramone. The following Monday I called the guitarist up, intending to explain this and let them down gently, but when I heard the enthusiasm in his voice for some reason I told him I’d broken my hand in the mosh pit at Donington. He was very sympathetic, and I felt like a prize asshole for lying to him, but I did learn two things from it. One, don’t lie to avoid feeling awkward, and two, the term ‘musical differences’ provides the perfect get out of a band free card. One good thing did come out it, though, in that before my audition I’d been playing the bass with my fingers but when I struggled to keep up with the speed of the hardcore tunes the guitarist/singer suggested that I try using a plectrum,

which improved my technique no end and gave me a second way to play my instrument. The next band I auditioned for, in January 1989, was Whip Me Harvey, which as we already know came to nothing as their bassist Tom, who played like the bastard son of Lemmy and Cliff Burton, re-ed shortly afterwards. Although I was a little disappointed at my auditions having come to nothing my spirits were lifted one Friday night a few weeks later when I was in the Tap and Tumbler talking to my friend Bob about wanting to be in a band again. In the couple of years since we’d met I'd been a Saturday lad in the WH Smiths computer department and lent him my tiger striped spandex tros, Bob had become something of a mentor and a big brother figure to me, not only interested in what I had to say, but in a band who were regularly playing at some of Nottingham's best venues. Bob suggested that I speak to a guy called Sean Homer, a guitarist who'd recently ed the company and was working in the music department, and so the following Saturday I took Bob’s advice and made my way to the other side of the basement where the music department was located and introduced myself to Sean. We hit it off immediately and Sean suggested that I bring my bass over to his shared house in West Bridgford the following week to have a jam and see what might happen. Thus the seeds were sown for what would become my first proper rock band. I turned up at Sean's run down shared house on Musters Road and hauled my bulky bass amp into his ground floor room which was as cold as an ice box and had paper peeling off the walls. As we sat there - Sean on his bed, me on my amp - and began to jam through Metallica’s Seek And Destroy, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama and Paradise City by Guns’n’Roses there was a definite spark of musical chemistry between us. Having satisfied each other that we were both pretty good on our respective instruments we started kicking a few of own our riffs around and before long we had the bare bones of two or three original songs. Building on the foundations of that original session we continued to jam every

week, slowly putting together a handful of songs that we were convinced were the greatest rock anthems known to man and would surely have record companies fighting each other in the streets to sign us. When Bob found himself without a band after Lady Mercy broke up, he suggested that we all get together in a rehearsal room and knock some tunes out along with someone he knew from the rock community in the Victoria Centre flats who might make a good singer. Just like that we were suddenly a band, and my dreams of rock stardom once again began to seem attainable. I booked some rehearsal time at Subway Studios, located in the basement of a small office block on the corner of Alfreton Road. Subway consisted of three rooms, all of which had dull green carpet covering the floor and walls, infused with the stale sweat of every other band that had ever rehearsed there. On the upside, though, it was relatively cheap. We’d made a block booking for the ten until two slot on Sundays and so I hauled myself out of bed at what was previously an ungodly hour for the Sabbath in my post paper round days and loaded up the car. After swinging by West Bridgford to pick up Sean, and the Victoria Centre flats to collect Bob and his drums, which made for an extremely cramped final leg of the journey, we pulled up outside Subway at quarter to ten, eager to get up and running and see what we might come up with. We hauled our amps, guitars and drums down Subway’s narrow staircase, set up and ran through a couple of Guns’n’Roses covers while we waited for our new singer to arrive. Considering we’d never played together before we gelled in no time, belting out Paradise City, Welcome To The Jungle and Sweet Child O’Mine as if we’d been playing them for years. The rehearsal room door was suddenly thrown open and a tall, skinny guy who bore more than a ing resemblance to Joey Ramone walked in. This was Joe, our singer and another of the Victoria Centre Flats community who shared flat 4/11 with his friend Tom, an amiable long blonde haired guy with round glasses who also happened to be going out with his sister Camille. Joe had a certain reserved aura to him, like a dog who’d been kicked a few times and was wary around people, but dressed head to toe in black denim and leather as he was, he still looked like more of a rock star than the rest of us with his

long, feathered black hair and his angular Joe Perry jaw line, and even without hearing him sing a note I had decided that he was the man for the job. We decided to warm up by running through a few tracks off The Cult’s Electric album. Bob counted us in and Sean launched into the riff for Lil’ Devil before, encouragingly, Joe came in on time and close enough to being in tune for me. Three minutes later we stood looking at each other, four smiling faces realising that we actually had the makings of a pretty good band. We ran through Love Removal Machine and then Rain by which time I was feeling as though I was finally in a band that not only felt great to be a part of, but had the potential to go somewhere. Over the next few weeks we learned pretty much all of Appetite For Destruction to add to our extensive Cult repertoire as well as a handful of Metallica classics, notably Creeping Death and their version of Diamond Head’s Am I Evil? Once we were satisfied that we were tight as a unit we began working on our own original material starting with the songs that Sean and I had previously written. Most of these didn’t have any words but in Bob, a voracious reader like Sean and myself, we had our very own Neil Peart who provided us with the majority of our lyrics. Unlike my own attempts at writing lyrics which tended to slavishly follow the by-numbers convention of eighties rock and roll (boy meets girl, boy fucks girl, girl fucks boy over, boy whines about it, boy gets drunk, parties and repeats ad infinitum) Bob’s efforts tended to be a little deeper and more intelligent. Musically we were a very tight unit. Bob and I locked in well as a rhythm section and Sean’s distinctive style, an inventive hybrid of The Cult’s Billy Duffy and Metallica’s James Hetfield, fit perfectly over the top of us. Though Joe wasn’t a particularly powerful singer and, the occasional eardrumskewering yelp aside, rarely strayed more than an octave either side of Middle C, he used his limited range well and delivered the lyrics with a convincing rock and roll attitude. By late spring 1989 we'd written a set’s worth of original material and mastered several note perfect covers but thanks to our desire to make our debut performance one to we didn’t actually step onto a stage until nearly

six months later. In the meantime we all hung out together most Friday and Saturday nights, either at Rock City or in the Victoria Centre's local pub The Owd Boots, and Sean and I often crashed on either Bob or Joe’s sofas after band drinking sessions that carried on until the early hours as we planned our global domination. It was during one of these sessions that we came up with our first band name. For weeks we’d been kicking various ideas around but nothing seemed to be just right until one night Bob blurted out 'Alter Ego' and we all looked at each other as invisible light bulbs pinged on above our heads. Though we already felt like a proper band, complete with the gang mentality that the likes of Mötley and Guns had, it wasn’t until we had our name that we began to feel we were more than the sum of our parts. As we began our routine of rehearsing every Sunday throughout the summer of '89 I was about to be given a fantastic opportunity to travel overseas, but in the meantime my record collection had been expanding as wave after wave of new bands emerged onto the rock scene.

Chapter 32

* Revolution Calling*

Though the first half of 1989 was a little quiet for me on the gig front (in stark contrast to what would be an insanely busy latter half), my record collection had continued to grow at a ridiculous rate as a huge number of new bands exploded onto the scene as record companies signed anyone with a guitar and a can of hairspray in an attempt to find the next Bon Jovi, Guns’n’Roses, or Def Leppard. Among the bands I had become enamoured with in the latter half of 1988 were a trio of New York outfits. Winger’s eponymous debut album had exploded in the US thanks to the heavy rotation on MTV of singles Madeline and the devilishly catchy Seventeen, and White Lion, led by shaggy maned Dane Mike Tramp and featuring guitar virtuoso Vito Bratta had come crashing onto my radar with the release of their second album Pride and single Wait, which catapulted itself onto the MTV play lists, and the band into rock’s first division. Living Colour caught my and the rock world’s attention not only with their debut album Vivid, a record as vibrant and imaginative as any I’d heard, but because the band themselves stood out in the predominantly white rock arena as a quartet of massively talented black musicians who had the potential to become as big as the last great black rock star, Jimi Hendrix. Though there had been a number of other black rock bands since Hendrix, notably Washington, DC hardcore punk outfit Bad Brains, none had really broken through from the underground until Living Colour released their debut single Cult Of Personality. Bucking the trend of good time party music that was defining the rock scene at the time, Cult Of Personality set out the deeper thinking agenda of the band by using samples of speeches by three iconic Americans. Opening with an edited quote from Malcolm X ('And during the few moments that we have left…We want to talk right down to earth in a language that everybody here can easily understand.'), it was clear that Living Colour were suggesting that music was the ideal medium to convey their intellectual and thought provoking messages. The song also featured the classic John F Kennedy

'Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country' quote and ended with Franklin D Roosevelt declaring 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' Living Colour were championed by fellow New Yorkers Anthrax, who took them out on tour, and rapidly built themselves a reputation as a stunning live band. The band that really stopped me in my tracks in the latter part of 1988, though, were Seattle’s Queensryche whose third album Operation Mindcrime, an intelligent concept album, became and has remained one of my favourite rock records of all time. The concept album was a rare beast indeed in the 1980s with only Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son magnum opus achieving any major success with the format. Arguably the biggest rock band in the world at the time, releasing a concept album wasn’t much of a risk for Maiden whose huge dedicated fan base guaranteed that it would at least be given a fighting chance, but for a relatively unknown band like Queensryche it was a much greater gamble. Nevertheless, Queensryche singer Geoff Tate’s tale of Nicky, a heroin addict disillusioned with the American way of life who is drafted into a conspiracy to assassinate its leaders by the mysterious Doctor X, captured the rock audience’s imagination and catapulted the band into the spotlight. Featuring lush orchestration by celebrated composer Michael Kamen, no stranger to concept albums having worked on Pink Floyd's classic The Wall, Operation Mindcrime was accompanied by lavish videos for several of the songs which guaranteed the band heavy rotation on MTV. These elaborate videos set the bar for the when the band eventually performed Operation Mindcrime in its entirety on their 1991 Empire world tour, which I saw at the Royal Concert Hall on November 4th that year, and which was a superb hour of dystopian rock theatre to rival anything I’ve seen on a West End stage. Returning to simpler and more cheery themes, Joan Jett’s Up Your Alley, Ratt’s Reach For The Sky, Cinderella’s bluesy sophomore effort Long Cold Winter and Bon Jovi’s New Jersey had all became repeat offenders on my stereo.

The most anticipated album release event for me, though, coming at the tail end of 1988, was actually a stopgap offering from Guns’n’Roses. One side of the album was a reissue of the legendary Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide EP that already graced my record collection but the other side featured four brand new, previously unreleased acoustic tracks. The album kicked off with Patience, a gentle ballad that featured one of the great whistling refrains in any musical genre and went on to become a top ten hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Next up was Used To Love Her, an old country tinged Izzy Stradlin' song written as a joke after hearing a song on the radio by a guy moaning about his girlfriend, but which was actually about singer Axl Rose’s dog. The acoustic version of You’re Crazy was actually the original, more laid back version of the song, but it was the final song, the semi-acoustic One In A Million, that was to catapult G’n’R Lies into the media spotlight both in and beyond the usual rock and roll publications thanks to its lyrical content which brought accusations that Rose was racist and homophobic. In the first verse of the song he sang ‘Police and niggers, That’s right, Get out of my way, Don’t need to buy none of your gold chains today’, and in the second, ‘Immigrants and faggots, They make no sense to me, They come to our country, And think they’ll do as they please, Like start some mini Iran, Or spread some fucking disease.’ Rose attempted to defend his lyrics at the time, claiming that he'd used the nword to signify ‘somebody that is basically a pain in your life, a problem,’ and that he didn’t racism, pointing out that Slash’s mother was black. Slash himself stated in a 1991 interview with Rolling Stone magazine that while he had told Rose that he didn’t think the lyrics were cool, and that the band had tried to get Rose to drop the track from the album, he didn’t regret recording the track, just the fallout from it and the public perception that accompanied the lyrics. The following year Rose stated, ‘It was a way for me to express my anger at how vulnerable I felt in certain situations that had gone down in my life. It’s not a song that I would write now.’ The song has subsequent been all but erased from the band’s history, and wasn’t included on the otherwise extensive Super Deluxe

Edition of Appetite that was released in 2018. Despite the controversy, One In A Million was a solid tune and G’n’R Lies a good enough interlude before the band’s pair of Use Your Illusion albums three years later. In my eyes, though, it was their last decent release before the band began to self-destruct, and despite the huge success that the Guns Mk2 line up that toured the Illusion albums to arenas and stadiums around the world had, it just didn’t feel like the band I’d seen at Rock City and Donington any more. On the live front I’d managed to discover a couple of British bands who really spoke to me, both of who I ended up seeing several times. The first were Little Angels, who I first came across when they ed Cinderella on their Long Cold Winter tour at Rock City on November 22nd 1988. I’d been desperate to see Tom Keifer’s bluesy quartet play a full show, having caught only the briefest glimpse of them at Donington the previous year, and they didn’t disappoint, but their opening act all but blew them off stage that night. Hailing from the windswept North Yorkshire seaside town of Scarborough, and originally going by the somewhat clumsy name of Mr Thrud, Little Angels impressed me with their energy and the strength of their songs. Singer Toby Jepson had the audience in the palm of his hand from the first number until the last, and by the time they left the stage I had discovered my new favourite band. Three months later Little Angels were on the road again and so Steve, Sue, Stapes and I piled into my car on the night of February 21st 1989 and drove the ten miles west to see them headline the Rockhouse in Derby. The Rockhouse was a long narrow room with a bar down one side and a small stage about the size of your average front room at the far end, but Jepson, guitarist Bruce John Dickinson and bassist Mark Plunkett stalkied it like hyperactive wolverines while drummer Michael Lee battered his drum kit behind them. Even keyboard player Jimmy Dickinson got in on the act by regularly strapping on a portable keyboard (or if we must, keytar) and hanging over the edge of the stage in front of us. After the gig the band came out into the audience, chatting to all and sundry and

g autographs, something that their American counterparts rarely seemed to do (though to be fair, when I saw Anthrax at the Royal Concert Hall on June 17th 1989 they chatted and signed things for fans for a good while after the show). This acknowledgement of their fans raised my already high opinion of the band further still and pre-MySpace, Facebook and YouTube served as a valuable and essential way of interacting with a growing fan base that would ultimately determine whether they would survive or perish. Another promising band were London’s Dogs D’Amour, who had a similarly relentless approach to touring and seemed to appear at Rock City every other month throughout 1989. Led by the enigmatic, self-styled bulletproof poet Tyla, the Dogs were the absolute epitome of the London rock and roll scene. Dressed like gypsies and wearing their hearts brazenly on their frilly sleeves they prowled the smaller stages of the country with their guitars slung low, their booze-soaked riffs and Tyla’s desperate lyrics sounding unmistakeably English, something they had in common with their fellow Londoners The Quireboys, who were to get their moment in the spotlight the following year I first fell in love with them when their single I Don’t Want You To Go started getting regular plays down at Zhivago’s and Rock City, the band’s booze-soaked riffs and Tyla’s desperate lyrics referencing all manner of distinctive London landmarks and leading us on a merry stagger through his genuinely alcoholic lifestyle sounding unmistakeably English, something they had in common with fellow Londoners The Quireboys, who were to get their moment in the spotlight the following year. Threatening to fall off the stage at any moment, a cigarette permanently hanging from the corner of his mouth and a bottle of something potent never far from hand, Tyla did just that when the band played at London’s legendary Marquee Club on, somewhat ironically, April Fool’s Day 1989. He broke three ribs in the fall, though to his credit he did make it to the end of the encore, putting him in good company with Alice Cooper who once finished a show only to find that he had cut his leg deeply enough with his theatrical sword (which had belonged to the swashbuckling Errol Flynn) to require medical attention but had carried on regardless due to the adrenaline that fuelled him while he was on stage.

As a result of Tyla’s tumble the Marquee banned the Dogs D’Amour from the venue on the grounds that they had deliberately incited crowd trouble, but that kind of genuine rock and roll attitude was what made me smile as I reflected that the first half of the year had been pretty damn good in of the bands I’d seen live, unaware that the second half of year would be even busier in of gigs. For the time being, though, my attention was focused on my overseas rock and roll adventure.

Chapter 33

* Hello America*

In March 1989 I received a letter from the fourth circle of hell otherwise known as the Inland Revenue. With a sense of dread I opened the ominous brown envelope and was pleasantly surprised to discover that rather than the usual demand for another pound of flesh it was instead that rarest of things, an ission that they had half inched too much for the last seven months and that my next wage packet would contain a refund to the tune of a couple of hundred pounds. Given my modest wage of ninety pounds a week this was a major windfall. My mind raced with the possibility of a new guitar, a new amp, maybe even a flashy four-track Tascam portable studio on which to record demos, but it was Webster who came up with the best idea. Back when we were still perpetuating the myth that we were studying for our Alevels at Arnold Hill an American girl called Mechele had ed our class. Her mother, Mrs Lokar, had come to England for a year on a teacher exchange programme, and Webster and I had immediately hit it off with Mechele, the three of us becoming firm friends within a matter of weeks, largely due our mutual pitch black sense of humour. When her mother’s exchange year was up Mechele and her family had returned to their home in Rochester, a city that despite being located in New York State was still further away from New York itself than the entire length of England. In those pre-Zoom days Webster and I kept in touch with Mechele by way of letters and recording alcohol fuelled cassette tapes on which we played her our favourite music – invariably loud and guitar based - and generally talked bollocks for the duration of the ninety minute running time. From the minute she arrived back in her home country Mechele had been demanding that Webster and I come over and visit her, offering to put us up in the apartment that she shared with her fiancé Paul. All it would cost us was the airfare and so armed with my windfall from the Inland Revenue we decided to grab the devil by the horns, so to speak, and embark on what would be the first

holiday that either of us had taken outside of the country without our respective parents. Thus several weeks later, on the morning of Thursday June 22nd 1989, we were in the departure lounge of Manchester International Airport clutching our plane tickets, brand new ports and carefully doctored National Union of Students identity cards to make us appear to be twenty-one years old, the legal drinking age in America. Unlike Christopher Columbus in 1492, though, we knew exactly what adventure lay ahead of us in the New World - two weeks of having no parents to answer to and an ocean of Budweiser to drink our way through. Being a scheduled flight we were entitled to complementary drinks for the entire eight hours we would be in the air but having been warned of the heightened effects of alcohol at high altitude by our parents we had decided to take it easy during the flight. Besides, we were taking off at ten o’clock in the morning which was a little early for beer. Wasn't it? Three quarters of an hour into the flight one of the immaculately dressed stewardesses stopped by our seats and asked us the sixty-four thousand dollar question. ‘Would you gentlemen like anything to drink?’ Webster and I looked at each other, our resolve to take it easy in the air holding fast for a good three seconds until we ed that the only thing that we couldn’t resist was temptation. ‘Two beers, please,’ I said, and we were off and running. Eight hours and as many beers later we touched down at Toronto Pearson International Airport (its call sign immortalised by local legends Rush in their song YYZ) and staggered off the plane. Being the largest and busiest airport in Canada, we had about an hour to sober up between disembarking from the plane and stepping up to the plate at immigration control, where we presented ourselves to a moustachioed security officer with eyes colder than a Candian winter.

‘How long are you staying in Canada?’ he asked, looking at my long hair and Mötley Crüe t-shirt as if he’d just scraped me off the sole of his shoe. ‘Fourteen days,’ I replied, smiling my warmest, most genuine smile at him. ‘And what is your itinerary, Sir?’ ‘We’re staying in Toronto tonight,’ I said, ‘then Rochester for ten nights, and then…’ ‘Rochester is not in Canada, Sir,’ Mr Moustache barked at me, like R Lee Ermey’s drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, and it was all I could do not to jump. I stood there looking at him, my heart hammering in my chest as I suddenly ed that Canadians do not, on the whole, like to be lumped in with their cousins to the South. Moustache Man held my gaze for a long minute and I was convinced that he was going to refuse me entry into the country before he lowered his eyes, stamped my port and handed it back to me. ‘Have a nice day, Sir,’ he said, icicles hanging from his words, and I hurried away into the arrivals area to catch my breath and still my beating heart which was doing a fair impression of Alex Van Halen’s Hot For Teacher intro. Having run the gauntlet of port control we retrieved our luggage and met Mechele in the arrivals hall. After a hearty round of warm hugs and a lot of excited chatter at having been reunited after so many months apart we headed for the car park and our ride out of there. We loaded up Mechele’s battered old, or 'classic' as she preferred to call it due to it being over twenty-five years old, Chevrolet and all climbed into the front seat to set off into the Toronto dusk in search of our hotel. Having spent part of my childhood in Calgary (Canada’s third largest city after Toronto and Montreal) I was already familiar with the concept of everything in North America being bigger and more spaced out than in England but it felt different this time because I was seeing everything through the eyes of an adult (well, technically anyway) rather than those of the child that I'd been when I’d left it more than a decade earlier.

After a couple of miles cruising along a ten lane highway that comfortably eclipsed our largest UK motorways Webster spotted our Howard Johnson and we pulled off and parked up. After a brief pit stop at the liquor store next door where our fake IDs allowed us to pick up a couple of cases of Molson – when in Canada and all that - we checked in to settle down for the night. Having been being brought up on English beer, Webster and I soon discovered that despite the fact that we rapidly polished off half a dozen bottles of Molson a piece, the effect on our sobriety was roughly similar to having downed a pint of bitter shandy back home. Mechele on the other hand, in spite of the fact that she had been exposed to proper strength beer for the year she had spent in England, was feeling the effects of the couple of bottles she had nursed as we polished off the rest of the case between us before finally succumbing to travel fatigue. In the morning we loaded up the car and set off for the Hard Rock Café in downtown Toronto, looking forward to what I was sure would be our first genuine overseas rock and roll experience. In my mind I had built up a picture of a dimly lit bar full of rock and roll memorabilia, with various celebrities slumped in dark booths drinking neat Jack Daniels. As I stepped through the door, however, I was slightly dismayed to find that the ‘legendary’ Hard Rock Cafe was in reality nothing more than a glorified barcum-diner, though to be fair it did have some ittedly very nice memorabilia dotted around the walls, including a guitar used by Mick Mars on Mötley Crüe’s Theatre Of Pain Tour. Overall, though, I wasn’t particularly impressed and we quickly finished our drinks and left, climbing into Mechele’s old, sorry, 'classic' Chevrolet to begin the eighty mile journey to the Canadian/American border, blissfully unaware that in a little under two hours we would have to resort to desperate measures to get into the United States.

Chapter 34

* Breaking The Law*

As Toronto disappeared in the Chevrolet’s rear view mirror I pushed one of the dozen or so C90s that Webster and I had brought with us into the car’s cassette player. These days I can travel with several thousand of my favourite songs on a piece of technology about the size of an overweight credit card, but back in 1989 the world had only just discovered the Walkman so before our trip Webster and I had drawn up a shortlist of essential music that we absolutely had to have as the soundtrack to our rock and roll adventure. This included both of Tesla’s offerings to date (their Mechanical Resonance debut and the recent released The Great Radio Controversy), a ninety minute Mötley Crüe compilation, Guns’n’Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, and the complete solo works, at that point, of David Lee Roth. As we left the Toronto city limits Diamond Dave’s Eat ‘Em And Smile blasted from the speakers, the volume cranked, naturally, up to eleven. The wind whipped through our hair as we rolled along at sixty-five miles an hour, a reasonably sedate pace compared to the speeds we normally hit on the motorways back home. Though it was technically (OK, actually) illegal to transport beer in anything but the trunk of a car Webster and I, with Mechele's encouragement, chugged from bottles of Molson as we drove south, feeling like bad boy rock stars as we blatantly flaunted Canadian law. About half way to the border another car pulled alongside us, full of young shirtless men who were also knocking back beers and we all saluted each other, laughing out loud as we savoured the moment. American cars are generally automatics so Mechele drove with her bare left foot up on the dashboard, the wind tousling her short dirty blonde hair as the sun began its descent towards the western horizon. As dusk approached we began to see signs for Niagara Falls and the Rainbow Bridge – the gateway to the US - so not wanting to fall foul of the border guards

we downed the rest of our beers and stashed the empty bottles in Mechele’s rucksack. Though we were hoping to get a taste of the American rock and roll lifestyle that we had read about in the pages of Kerrang! this didn’t extend to experiencing it from the inside of a jail cell. The sun was disappearing beneath the horizon as we drove on to the famous Rainbow Bridge, so called because of the almost permanent rainbow created by the way the water spilled into the basin below, only disappearing in winter when the water froze solid. We came to a halt a couple of hundred feet from the checkpoint and took our place in the long line of cars queuing up to cross the border, waiting patiently to be waved through while David Lee Roth’s Skyscraper album blasted from our open windows. The sky was turning a deep twilight purple when we finally found ourselves at the head of the queue and we turned the stereo right down as a border guard, leaned into our open window and asked to see our ports. We handed them over expecting to be waved quickly on our way but instead he flicked through the pages of both documents several times and then gave us a worryingly long stare before strolling slowly over to his colleague, taking our ports with him. ‘That’s weird,’ Mechele said, ‘They usually just wave us through,’ and Webster and I looked at each other apprehensively, figuring that if Mechele thought it was weird then something was definitely amiss. The guard walked back over to us, his face suggesting that all was not in order. ‘Step out of the car and come with me please,’ he said without a hint of emotion and so we did, moving in the slow and deliberate manner that we'd been taught from US cop shows. After all, he had a big gun strapped to his leg and we didn’t. We followed him into a small office on the American side of the bridge, shooting worried glances at each other, my mind imagining that we were to be mistaken for fugitives or drug dealers and locked up until we were ready to draw our pensions back home. The office was small, the walls lined with various maps and charts, and he walked to the far side of one of the two neat desks before turning to face us with a very stern look on his face. His colleague at the other desk, who appeared to be

his superior, continued shuffling through a pile of papers. ‘I cannot let you into the United States, Sir.’ he said. ‘Err, why is that?’ I asked, quickly tacking a ‘Sir’ onto the end of my sentence as my stomach did a back flip. ‘You do not have a valid visa to enter the United States from Canada,’ he said. Webster and I glanced at each other again, our brows furrowed. What the hell was he talking about? Nobody had said anything to us about needing a visa to cross from Canada into America. I took a deep breath, gathered my courage and gave him my most pathetic stupid tourist look. ‘I didn’t think we needed a visa to enter America,’ I said, ‘Sir.’ ‘No Sir, you do not,’ he replied, ‘if you are entering the United States directly from the United Kingdom.’ ‘Oh,’ I said. After a long moment in which we all stood looking at each other like gunfighters in a Serge Leone movie, I realised that the guard was waiting for one of us to break the silence. ‘Errr, what are our options, Sir?’ I asked, beginning to get an inkling of where this conversation might be heading. ‘Well, you can return to Toronto and apply for a visa at the embassy on Monday morning, Sir.’ he helpfully informed us, his words trailing off as if he was waiting for me to fill in the gap. Weighing up the prospect of having to seriously curtail our holiday plans by spending another three days in Canada, I decided to try my luck. ‘Umm, is there any way around this, Sir?’ I asked, trying to look naïve as my heart beat a tattoo on the inside of my ribcage. Webster looked at the floor as the guard turned to the man at the other desk who after a long moment gave a small, almost imperceptible nod.

‘Well, Sir, my colleague and I are going to step outside for a moment. Should there be one hundred dollars on that table when I return then I’m sure we can resolve this situation.’ As the door closed behind them leaving us alone in the office I let out the breath that I hadn’t realised I'd been holding. I couldn’t believe that we were effectively about to bribe these border guards to let us into America but given the alternative I conceded that we didn’t really have a choice and the guard knew it. Webster and I quickly pulled our wallets out and placed fifty dollars each on the table. It crossed my mind that it was entirely feasible that the guard could now come back in and arrest us for attempted bribery but thanks to the beers we had downed in the car I was feeling lucky. The guard stepped back in, glanced at the money on the table and silently stapled a square of white card into each of our ports. ‘Welcome to America,’ he said, handing our ports back to us with a smug smile. Not wanting to give him the opportunity to change his mind - or worse, arrest us after all - Webster and I quickly walked back to the car and got in. ‘What happened?’ Mechele asked. ‘Just drive,’ I said, ‘we’ll tell you in a minute.’ Mechele started the car and we drove off the Rainbow Bridge and onto American soil. As we began the remaining ninety-mile journey to Mechele’s apartment in Rochester, NY we related our story to her, laughing with nervous relief as we chugged another much needed beer. Though we were pissed off at having to shell out a hundred dollars of our holiday money for essentially nothing, at least our adventure was back on track.

Chapter 35

* Talk Dirty To Me*

While spending the best of part of two weeks in Rochester, NY wasn’t ever going to be quite as rock and roll as ten days on Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, we did still manage to have a few rock star moments. Being Englishmen in New York, well New York State anyway, Webster and I were welcomed by most of the local residents that we met with the kind of enthusiasm normally afforded to bona fide rock stars, purely because of our accents. We were inundated with invitations to have dinner with people we’d never met before, we were never carded at any of the local liquor stores when we picked up our daily case of Bud, and one memorable night a Mexican guy who lived in Mechele’s apartment block, who she only vaguely knew, invited us over to his place. The moment we stepped though his front door he excitedly led us into his kitchen and threw open the double doors of his gigantic refrigerator proclaiming, 'My beer is your beer!' Every shelf was packed with bottles of Budweiser, and even better he had a giant television, for 1989 anyway, in his front room and the relatively new Nintendo console which we all proceeded to play long into the night as, not wanting to be rude, we availed ourselves of his kind hospitality and did our best to empty his fridge. On several occasions we were asked whether we knew any of the Royal Family, and so given our warped sense of humour and ability to keep straight faces we managed to convince a couple of the locals that everybody in England was invited to tea at Buckingham Palace once a year on a rota basis. As well as enjoying the wonderful American hospitality that we frequently found ourselves on the receiving end of, we were able to experience a great American institution first-hand.

Mechele’s fiancé Paul's sister had graciously invited us to attend her high school graduation when they had learned that Webster and I would be coming to visit. My only previous experience of graduation ceremonies had been what I’d seen in American teen movies and even then they usually cut quickly from the ceremony itself to the subsequent partying, and for good reason. After lengthy speeches by the Principal and the Valedictorian, every single one of the several hundred graduating students were called up to the stage in turn to receive their certificates, which I’m sure was a wonderful experience for them and their watching families and certainly one I wouldn't deny them, but after the first hundred or so rounds of applause Webster and I were sneaking looks at each other as we lost both the will to live and the skin from our palms. Later that evening Mechele took us to a Mexican restaurant where she used to work and thanks to her connections (and our fake IDs) managed to get Webster and I a huge complimentary jug of sangria, complete with floating cherries. Mechele couldn’t partake as she was driving and in any case the management were well aware that she was under age but Webster and I happily sank glass after glass, downing them the good old-fashioned rock and roll way - in one. As we clinked glasses and I poured my fourth or fifth large sangria down my neck I suddenly became aware of something in my throat that felt roughly the size of a bowling ball. Time slowed to a crawl as my mind identified the object, which had managed to stick fast and was doing a very good job of blocking off my air supply, as one of the cherries that had, moments earlier, been floating in my glass. Thankfully my gag reflex quickly kicked in and my body gave an almighty retch that sent the offending cherry flying out of my throat and into the middle of the table stopping Webster and Mechele's conversation dead as they looked first at the offending piece of fruit and then at me before rushing to my side with a glass of water which I drank down in a couple of gulps, the cold liquid feeling wonderful as it slipped down my throat. I’d been longing for the full on rock and roll experience on our American adventure but choking to death on a cherry while drinking sangria in a Mexican restaurant wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind.

One thing I had assumed we'd be able to do, particularly in a reasonably large city like Rochester, was go to an honest to goodness American rock club but Mechele wasn't aware of any in the local area which made me realise how spoiled I'd been for the last few years by having the likes of Rock City and Zhivago’s on my doorstep. (We did, however, go to a comedy club where Mechele thoughtfully sat us in the front row so that once the comedians realised we were English we graciously become their straight men.) Though the dearth of rock clubs was a little disappointing Mechele did come up with the next best thing by taking us to a shop called House of Guitars which, as the name suggested, was home to literally hundreds of guitars. For a couple of hours Webster and I were in rock and roll heaven as we wandered up and down the rows and rows (and rows) of instruments, occasionally picking up an axe to have a widdle on without fear of any ‘No Stairway’ stipulations (Wayne's World was still three years in the future), though this would have been irrelevant to me anyway as I could no more play Stairway To Heaven than actually build one. I did, however, fall completely in love with a jet-black BC Rich bass guitar like the one that W.A.S.P.’s Blackie Lawless played, and had talked myself into buying it until I was informed by the helpful clerk that shipping it to England would virtually triple the cost. As I reluctantly bid the BC Rich bass farewell we wandered into a large room at the back of store crammed full of racks containing all the latest US tour shirts for my favourite bands. Feeling like the proverbial kid in a candy store I excitedly flicked through the racks where I discovered Cinderella shirts, Ratt shirts, Bon Jovi, Poison and Winger shirts, all of which I agonised over before taking an armful, including two for the shop itself (one for me and one for my faithful roadie Steve) over to the counter. As we drove away from the House of Guitars we decided to take a break from the cassettes we had brought over with us and listen to the radio instead, a decision which proved to be extremely fortuitous. In between the fine selection of quality tunes that seemed to epitomise American radio at the time an advert came on for an Ozzy Osbourne show that was rolling into town in a couple of days at a place called Darien Lakes. After the riotous fiasco at Rock City the previous July my ears pricked up, hoping that not only was this Darien Lakes place within striking distance, but

that we could score some tickets for the show. I asked Mechele whether it was feasible to get there and could barely contain my excitement when she informed us that Darien Lakes was only about an hour’s drive from Rochester. Of course, this being 1989 we couldn't just hop on the internet and book tickets so when we got back to Mechele’s apartment she spent half an hour ringing agencies to find out whether there were any tickets left while Webster and I sat on the sofa drinking beer, our fingers crossed. After what seemed like an eternity Mechele turned to us with a smile and handed me the phone so I could give them my credit card details. We had tickets to see Ozzy! Even better, the acts were two up and coming bands that I really wanted to see.

Chapter 36

* R.O.C.K. In The U.S.A*

After my near miss with Ozzy at Rock City the previous July it seemed somewhat ironic that I ended up travelling several thousand miles to America to see a rock star born fifty miles down the road from my home town of Nottingham. That wasn’t my only encounter with someone from home, though. While we were at Mechele’s mum’s house one day Webster and I were introduced to a girl called Claire, who was a year older than us. Claire was the daughter of a teacher that Mechele’s mum had become friendly with while she was over in England on her exchange programme, and was staying with her after finishing a six month solo trek around America that had taken her to no less than twenty-six states. The first thing that struck me about Claire was her bright red Rush t-shirt from their Hold Your Fire tour a couple of years previously. That and her long blonde hair and winning smile. We immediately got talking about our love of rock music and within an hour it was as if we’d been friends for much longer. As we swapped stories of bands we'd seen live I happened to mention that we were going to see Ozzy in a couple of days before heading back up to Niagara Falls for the Fourth of July celebrations. Claire’s face lit up and she asked if there were any tickets left. I looked at Mechele but she was already way ahead of me saying that the four of us could go up there and try and buy another ticket from a scalper, as the Americans charmingly call their touts. By this point in the holiday Webster and Mechele had finally consummated their growing feelings for each other one day when I had acted as a decoy to get her fiancé Paul out of the apartment for a few hours, so this was the perfect opportunity to set up a double date.

Their not so secret tryst hadn't gone completely to plan, however, as Paul and I had returned a little too early and he'd walked in on them in flagrante delicto. Needless to say he hadn’t been overjoyed but fortunately for Webster this wasn’t the first time that Mechele had cheated on him, as she’d previously confided to us, and so rather than kick the crap out of him, Paul merely accepted it, having apparently become used to his betrothed's serial infidelities. Two days later the four of us headed out to Darien Lakes to see Ozzy. I was particularly excited because not only because this was my first rock gig on another continent but I was going to be spending some time with Claire who seemed to really like me despite the fact that I was convinced she was well out of my league (she was). We were unable to snag another ticket from the scalpers so Webster and Mechele decided to sell the third ticket and spend some time together in the adjacent amusement park while Claire and I headed into the gig. Once inside I picked up a White Lion shirt from the merch stand and then we headed to the bar where Claire proceeded to match me pint for pint, or 'large beer' for 'large beer' as the Americans called them in lieu of pint measures in the US. After we’d sunk a couple of beers, enjoying the warm evening and the festival atmosphere of an open-air gig, Vixen hit the stage. Following in the footsteps of the Runaways, whose most famous alumni were Joan Jett and Lita Ford, and the Go-Gos, who had given the world Belinda Carlisle, and to a lesser extent Jane Wiedlin, Vixen were one of the few all girl eighties rock groups. Though they never really made any serious waves in the UK, their single Edge Of A Broken Heart - written by rising AOR star Richard Marx and The Tubes singer Fee Waybill - had become a regular fixture at Rock City and on MTV. Live Vixen proved that they could cut it and delivered a good short set but it was the next band that I really wanted to see, more than Ozzy if truth be told. I’d fallen in love with White Lion after their Broken Heart single had been played relentlessly at Zhivago’s and adored their second album Pride. They were on the road to promote their third offering Big Game which hadn’t been released in the UK at this point so I was more than a little curious to hear their new songs, which was just as well given that their set was heavily stacked in favour of this

latest record. Thankfully White Lion delivered the live goods and several of the new tracks that roared from the speakers particularly stood out, namely Dirty Woman, Baby Be Mine and their cover of Golden Earring’s standard Radar Love, though at the time I wasn’t aware of the original and only discovered it several years later. The main event, however, was never in doubt. Though White Lion were the band I had been most interested to see, even back then Ozzy was considered one of those artists that you should see at least once in your lifetime. Having parted company with guitarist Jake E Lee in 1987 and then appearing in The Metal Years the following year as a shambling drunk, Ozzy was seriously in need of the proverbial shot in the arm (which would come with MTV’s The Osbournes three years later). Thankfully for him a New Jersey gas station attendant by the name of Zakk Wylde sent a demo tape to Ozzy when he was auditioning for Lee's replacement, thinking that he had nothing to lose. To his surprise Wylde was hired - while he was still tuning up and before he’d played a single note at the audition if the guitarist is to be believed, though he does have a reputation for winding up interviewers - and so along with Ozzy, exSabbath bassist Geezer Butler and drummer Randy Castillo (who lost his fight with cancer on March 26th 2002 after a stint in Mötley Crüe) he rolled into the open air Darien Lakes arena in late June 1989. The show was superb. I’ve seen Ozzy three times over the years but this was the most vibrant and entertaining show I saw him perform as he prowled the stage like the man he purported to be, ordering us to 'Go fucking craaaaazzzeeeeeeeey' at regular intervals, which of course we did. Geezer stood virtually motionless for the duration of the gig but still quietly exuded more charisma than many of the bassists that I saw in the eighties. Wylde, on the other hand, completely owned the stage, proving that he was every bit the equal of his hero and Ozzy's late partner in crime Randy Rhoads, who as an aspiring guitarist Wylde had built a shrine to. Though the show was to be the last real rock and roll moment of my trip it was a hell of way to bow out of our American adventure. After Ozzy left the stage for

the final time Claire and I met Webster and Mechele in the car park and drove the hour or so back to Rochester, raving about the gig we’d just seen. All too soon it was time to bid New York State farewell and so the four of us, plus Paul who had insisted on accompanying Mechele (no doubt to keep an eye on her), loaded up the Chevrolet and headed up to Niagara Falls for our last couple of nights in North America. At Niagara we put on our tourist hats (which went very nicely with my tie dyed Batman shirt and bright yellow Anthrax style surfer shorts – no, I don’t know what I was thinking, either) and boarded the Maid Of The Mist, sailing close enough to the mighty falls to get thoroughly soaked. The falls aside, Niagara itself was underwhelming, all arcades, tacky gift shops and tackier attractions like Louis Toussard's House Of Wax, which sadly we didn’t have time to visit though I’m reasonably certain that we didn’t miss much, but my biggest disappointment was missing meeting with my good friend Dave Bartram who was doing a six week tour of Canada with another friend of ours Paul Cator, and had by coincidence booked a couple of nights in town at the same time as Webster and I. We’d arranged to be at a particular statue that we’d seen in a travel brochure on the dot of one of four hours on the Fourth of July itself. Webster and I made it to the designated spot for the first couple of hours before the lure of beer, and in my case Claire, meant that we missed the third and fourth hours. Naturally, Dave and Paul turned up on the dot of hour three by which time I was indulging in the unholy trinity of sex, drugs (in this case alcohol) and rock and roll and so we missed each other. Later that night I slipped out of the room the five of us were sharing to drink in the atmosphere of Niagara one last time before we headed home. As I stood in the car park I noticed something move out of the corner of my eye. Overcome with curiosity and with more than a little alcohol-fuelled bravado I found myself on my hands and knees next to a car, face to face with a raccoon the size of a large cat. Not being overly familiar with the health risks of getting so close to a wild animal, and being far too inebriated to care even if I had been, I began calling to it as if it were a domesticated animal.

The raccoon stared at me, its beady eyes unsure what this strange human thing was doing. We gazed at each other for a good minute until it decided it had seen enough and scampered off into the darkness. Feeling pleased that I had shared a moment with the cute critter I got up off my knees and returned to the room. The next morning I mentioned my close encounter to the desk clerk as we checked out and she looked at me in horror. ‘You did what?’ she exclaimed, before informing me that most of the raccoons in the area were rabid. I smiled at her, feeling more than a little stupid, and then bid her farewell as we loaded up the Chrysler for the journey back to Toronto and our plane home. After a tearful farewell at the airport, which turned out to be the last time we ever saw Mechele, Webster and I retired to the British Airways departure lounge to sink a final few Budweisers before boarding our flight home. As we soared across the Atlantic at thirty thousand feet I watched the sun setting in the distance and reflected on what an interesting trip it had been, full of unexpected pleasures and some great memories.

Chapter 37

* 99 In The Shade*

But for the slight inconvenience of being over the Atlantic Ocean as they took to the stage at Darian Lakes, I would have got to see Bon Jovi and Winger in America as well. However, lady luck was smiling on me as when I arrived home from my American adventure I found that I was going to get my chance to see Bon Jovi for a third time after all. Due to the tragedy at the previous year's Monsters Of Rock festival, when rock fans Alan Dick and Landon Siggers had lost their lives during Guns’n’Roses’ set, the promoters had decided to put the festival on hiatus for a year. Never ones to miss a trick, though, Bon Jovi seized the opportunity to host a major rock event in the UK and announced that they were bringing their New Jersey show to the Milton Keynes Bowl on Saturday August 19th. This in itself was reason enough to rejoice but the deal was further sweetened by the fact that not only were they bringing pomp rockers Europe along for the ride, who I’d missed on their previous tours, but also Vixen and new bad boys on the block Skid Row. Of all the bands to emerge in 1989 Skid Row excited me the most and had caused almost as big a commotion in the rock press as Guns’n’Roses had a couple of years earlier. Guitarist Dave ‘Snake’ Sabu's childhood friend Jon Bon Jovi had signed the band to his and Richie Sambora's newly established Underground Music Company and given them the hugely coveted slot on Bon Jovi’s 1989 US tour which, coupled with the release of their superb selftitled debut album, catapulted them into the big leagues. This success didn't come without a price, however, as the band were to discover after realising that one crucial clause in their publishing deal with Underground was that they had waived all of their rights to royalties from their debut album. That would be the album that went five times platinum. Unsurprisingly, a rift developed between the bands that lead Skid Row's singer Sebastian Bach to frequently attack Bon Jovi in the music press. Jon Bon Jovi

stuck to his guns, insisting that a deal was a deal and was happy to hold onto his spoils of war, but his partner Richie Sambora later relented and returned his share of the money to Skid Row. The album itself was a triumph of pop-rock that gave them three huge singles with 18 And Life, I You, and one of the defining rock tracks of the 1980s, Youth Gone Wild. As a result the hype and expectation that built up in the weeks prior to the gig, their European debut, was immense. On the day of the gig, Steve, his sister Sue, Stapes and I boarded the Way Ahead coach outside The Sal as the sun shone brightly on what ultimately turned out to be the hottest day of the year. As was customary for the summer rock festival experience we were laden down with gallons of beer but when we stepped off the coach an hour and a half later we were in for a nasty surprise. The management of the Milton Keynes Bowl had decided that no liquids were to be allowed into the arena, leaving fans with no alternative but to purchase the overpriced beer on the premises, but in its' infinite wisdom it had neglected to highlight this somewhat important point in any of the advance publicity. Naturally we and the vast majority of the other punters were somewhat pissed off that we’d spent a lot of money of beer only to be told that we’d have to leave it all in huge piles outside the arena, but the choice was simple as far as the security personnel were concerned. You either left your beer outside or you didn’t come in. This ultimatum prompted some fans to start necking all the booze that they’d brought with them, but given that it was only eleven o’clock in the morning and the sun was already beating down on us we decided to cut our losses and reluctantly tossed our beer onto the towering pile of discarded alcohol. In an ironic twist, however, before Skid Row, the first band on the bill, had even taken to the stage the Bowl had not only run out of beer but also bottled water, having seriously underestimated the drinking prowess of a capacity rock crowd. This being Skid Row’s first show on this side of the Atlantic they took no prisoners when they hit the stage, more than living up to expectations as they blasted through most of their album. Towards the end of their set Bach announced that they were playing a suddenly not so secret gig the following day at London’s legendary Marquee Club which led to the weekend becoming what

felt like one of the longest of my life, but more of that later. After kicking off the day with a performance worthy of a headlining act and leaving the frenzied crowd wanting more, Skid Row handed over to Vixen who rose to the challenge as magnificently as they had done when I'd seen them perform at Darien Lakes a couple of months earlier. Faced with the unenviable task of following Skid Row and Vixen and with expectations for their set being fairly low, having been ridiculed in the pages of Kerrang! for The Final Countdown (somewhat unfairly, I have to say in their defence), Europe turned out to be the biggest surprise of the day. Knowing that they had everything to prove seemed to fire Europe up and they delivered a blistering set that certainly put me in my place and had me and everyone else that I spoke to after the event praising them to the high heavens. (When I saw them at the Royal Albert Hall in London twenty-nine years later in 2018, they were still kicking serious ass.) As good as their three well-chosen acts had been, the day was always going to belong to the headliners. Though they could never sur my experience of having first seen them at the compact Birmingham Odeon in 1986 and then conquering the Monsters of Rock festival the following year, Bon Jovi proved that the third time was the charm, putting on the show of their lives and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were a live force to be reckoned with. Drawing heavily on material from New Jersey and Slippery When Wet the band gave us exactly what we wanted and then some by bringing Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler and Joe Perry on to perform Walk This Way at the end of the show. As the stage lights faded and we made our way back to the coach Stapes and I were in agreement that we absolutely had to go down to London the following day to see Skid Row’s first European headlining show at the Marquee. Stepping off the coach into the balmy night air on Maid Marion Way a couple of hours later I told Stapes that I’d come and pick him up as soon as my band finished rehearsing. This was to be my first gig in the capital, having missed out on seeing David Lee Roth the previous year due to work commitments, and I was so excited that I wondered if I’d actually manage to get any sleep.

Little did I know as I finally crawled into my bed in the early hours that Sunday August 20th 1989 was to turn into one of the longest and most exhausting days of my teenage years.

Chapter 38

* Shot In The Dark*

Whoever declared Sunday to be the day of rest obviously never had to juggle band commitments with a full time job, but this particular Sunday was going to be anything but restful. As usual, I was up at eight o’clock to down a quick cup of tea before loading my bass guitar and amp into the car and driving over to West Bridgford conveniently located on the opposite side of town to where I lived - to pick up Sean and his guitar and amp. From there I swung into town and picked Bob up outside the front of the Victoria Centre where he was waiting with his shopping trolley full of drums, before attempting to break the world record for the number of instruments and people that could be packed into a single car as we drove the mile or so to Subway Studios on Alfreton Road. Being a Sunday morning most sane people were either tucked up in bed or having a leisurely breakfast so it was easy to find a parking space in the empty street outside Subway from where we could lug our gear down the narrow stairway into the rehearsal room. For a change Joe was bang on time and with good reason. A couple of weeks previously Bob had been talking to his flatmate and ex-Lady Mercy bassist Riggy about his new band Who Cares Anyway’s gig at the Yorker pub. Out of the blue Riggy had asked Bob if we wanted to them, giving us our chance to introduce Alter Ego to the world at long last. Never being one to resist a challenge Bob had readily agreed on our behalf and we suddenly had a goal - to be the best band in Nottingham by the middle of September. Well, the second best band, as we were all in awe of Who Cares Anyway who, had they lived in Los Angeles, would have easily given any of the bands out there a run for their money and could have been serious contenders. Spurred on by this deadline we practised more intensely than ever for our

allotted four hours, leaving us drenched with sweat and ready for a pint or two at the Yorker. Thanks to Sebastian Bach’s revelation the previous day, however, I was going to have to forego any liquid refreshment and instead drop Sean and Bob off and head back to Bestwood - conveniently located on the opposite side of town to London - to pick Stapes up for our road trip. An hour or so later Stapes and I were speeding down the M1 motorway, excited not only about the prospect of seeing Skid Row up close and personal in a small club, but the fact that this small club was the legendary Marquee. Though Rock City was a frequent winner of Kerrang!’s best rock club of the year award and was without a doubt the second best rock venue in the country, the Marquee was the holy grail of live music having played host to more classic rock bands than you could shake a stick at, including Guns’n’Roses who had played their debut European shows there a couple of years earlier. I’d never driven to London before and set off somewhat naïvely thinking that all we had to do was point the car south on the M1 and drive all the way into the centre of the city. As it happens I was half right as the M1 does indeed go straight from Nottingham to London but it terminates a few miles north of the centre, at which point we were forced to use our wits to snake through a series of narrow, winding streets which contrary to popular belief were neither cobbled nor paved with gold. We eventually found ourselves on Charing Cross Road where the Marquee had been located since moving there the previous year after twenty-four years at its most famous address at number 90 Wardour Street and began looking for the famous red marquee. Originally sited at number 165 Oxford Street the Marquee had opened its doors in 1958 and was where The Rolling Stones had given their first ever live performance on July 12th 1962. From there it had moved to Wardour Street in 1964 where over the next two dozen years it had hosted just about every major rock act known to man including The Who, David Bowie, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd, The Sex Pistols, The Police, The Jam, The Cure, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Marillion, Prince, and Genesis. When the Wardour Street site was redeveloped in 1988 the Marquee moved to

105 Charing Cross Road where it remained for another eight years until that site was redeveloped and a major part of rock and roll history closed its doors for the last time in the twentieth century. A new Marquee opened in 2002 in the London borough of Islington but closed less than a year later before rising phoenix-like in 2004 for another eighteen months in Leicester Square. It was resurrected for one final six month hurrah on Upper Saint Martin’s Lane near Covent Garden before finally closing its legendary doors forever on February 10th 2008 following a headlining set by Colchester rock band Torn Asunder. We soon spotted the Marquee's familiar canopy (immortalised on the cover of Marillion's Incommunicado single) thanks to the queue of long haired punters that snaked from the front doors all the way down Charing Cross Road before disappearing into a narrow alley. We parked up and walked back towards the Marquee, glancing up at the Marquee's marquee which had Skid Row plastered across it in foot high letters, and began making our way to the end of the seemingly endless line of people. We followed the queue as it snaked down Tottenham Court Road and disappeared around another corner. As we walked I mentally counted the number of bodies in the line as I racked my brain trying to what the Marquee’s capacity was. I figured that as Skid Row were currently one of the hottest properties in rock there would be a sizeable guest list but surely there would still be enough room to accommodate all of the people we were ing in the line, and us. We finally reached the end of the queue and settled in for a long wait. After what seemed like ten minutes short of forever the line finally began to move. As we shuffled like extras in a Romero movie towards the first of the two corners that would take us onto Tottenham Court Road I tried to suppress the rising sense of dread that we would get to the very front of the queue only for a bouncer to stick his arm out and say 'Sorry lads, that’s it.' We rounded the first corner at a snail’s pace and began the infuriatingly slow crawl towards the final turn that would put us in sight of the entrance. At last we stepped onto Charring Cross Road and the home straight and I estimated that there were approximately a hundred or so people in front of us.

Still we kept moving forwards, and I counted down the bodies between us and our goal – ninety, eighty, seventy, sixty – beginning to relax, feeling sure that we would make it and that within the hour we’d be sinking a pint or two of rubbish ale and watching Messrs Hill, Bolan, Affuso, Sabo and Bach tear the legendary stage apart. Suddenly the queue stopped and a disappointed groan came from the front of the line causing my stomach to sink down into my cowboy boots as I instinctively knew that, despite getting so close to our goal, our quest was over. At least it hadn't rained. As we walked through the quiet London streets I mentally kicked myself for not having left rehearsal earlier given that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see one of my favourite bands play such an important gig. Hindsight, however, is a wonderful thing. (Even more wonderful, however, was the opportunity to spend not one, but two nights drinking with Seb Bach in the hotel bar at 2017’s Hair Metal Heaven festival in Hull, where he led an all-star band including George Lynch and Vinnie Appice through a set of Skid Row, Dokken, and Black Sabbath covers.) We returned to the car, and consoled ourselves with a Skid Row tape on the stereo as we began our long journey home. Even this wasn’t without its drama, though, as we’d barely been driving for twenty minutes when the orange light on my dashboard came on, signifying that I had about ten miles worth of petrol in the tank. For the next nine and a half miles we frantically searched for an open petrol station (this being a Sunday) before fate finally smiled on us. A couple of hours later I dropped Stapes off at his house, looking forward to crawling into my own bed not long afterwards. However, given the way our day had turned out so far I should have known that my long weekend wasn’t quite over yet. With a mental image of my tired head hitting my soft, cool pillow, I pulled up at a set of traffic lights a couple of miles from home and patiently waited for the red light to turn green. After a long minute it finally obliged but just as I let the clutch out and started to pull away the car died on me. Cursing, I turned the key in the ignition, expecting the engine to roar back into life but I got nothing. Nada. The car was dead.

I sat there in the dark as the lights returned to red and waited patiently for a few minutes while I hoped the car would somehow miraculously fix itself. It didn’t. Had this happened today I would have just pulled out my mobile phone and called Dad or a breakdown recovery service, but in 1989 mobiles were still gadgets of the future and so with a heavy sigh I got out of the car and, leaning on the open driver’s side door, began to try and push the ton or so of metal onto the side of the road. Thanks to the exertions of the last couple of days, however, I could barely move it a couple of inches. I was completely and utterly exhausted. Just then the darkness lit up with a flash of blue as a police car pulled up behind me. Two officers, a man and a woman, got out and walked over. 'Evening Sir,' the man said, looking at me suspiciously. I couldn’t blame him, really. I looked like shit and probably stank to high heaven from four hours of rehearsal that morning, another couple in the hot sun outside the Marquee, and what seemed like a fortnight driving home. Thankfully the officers didn’t give me a hard time, and instead helped me push the car onto the grass verge at the side of the road. I was hoping that they might take pity on me and give me a lift home but just as we got the car off the road the WPC's radio crackled into life and a minute later they were speeding off into the darkness, their flashing lights scything through the darkness. Feeling like death warmed up I slowly trudged home, finally turning my key in the door just before three in the morning. As I climbed the stairs Dad’s voice called out from his bedroom asking if I’d had a good time. I briefly relayed my woeful breakdown tale and was ready to hit the sheets when he appeared at the door, having pulled on some clothes and insisted that we go and tow the car home as he wouldn’t have time to help me in the morning. Ten minutes later we pulled up next to my car and I got into the driver’s seat as Dad began produced a length of tow rope. Figuring I had nothing to lose I put my key in the ignition. Expecting to hear the same dry click as before I turned it and to my surprise the engine turned over. I looked at Dad, too tired to do anything except give him a weak smile. He smiled

back at me and said, 'Let’s go home, son' which we did. As my head finally hit the pillow for the four hours before my alarm went off for work I reflected on the weekend. While I was more than a little disappointed at having missed out on seeing Skid Row at the Marquee (which I never did get to see the inside of), I had thoroughly enjoyed the Bon Jovi gig at Milton Keynes. Finally succumbing to exhaustion I drifted off, my long weekend finally over but the exciting prospect of Alter Ego's live debut to look forward to, as well as another dozen gigs before the end of the year.

Chapter 39

* We Care A Lot*

A week before Bon Jovi had kicked off my long weekend at the Milton Keynes Bowl, the band had been enduring a long weekend of their own fifteen hundred miles away in Moscow, the capital of what was then still the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics). The reason for their trip behind the Iron Curtain was to play a benefit show for their manager Doc McGhee's new drink and drugs rehabilitation program, the Make A Difference Foundation. Under this banner McGhee had organised a rock concert in Moscow’s Red Square to promote world peace and to establish international cooperation in fighting the drug war in Russia. The reality behind the creation of the Make A Difference Foundation, though, was that it had been a condition of the penance demanded of McGhee after being found guilty of smuggling eighteen tons of marijuana into the United States the previous year, along with a seven-year probationary sentence for his crime and an order to go into rehabilitation, where he remained for one hundred and fifty days. McGhee's obligations aside, the staging of the concert was an important step forward for the USSR where after decades of Communism the concept of democracy was building momentum thanks to Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, which promoted freedom of information and transparency in all of the government’s institutions. Prior to the Peace Festival the concept of democracy, and particularly the perceived anarchy of rock and roll, had been viewed as undesirable by the rulers of the USSR. As a result McGhee had reasoned that bringing some of the world's biggest rock bands to play a gig behind the Iron Curtain would give the youth of Russia a chance to experience Western culture first hand and promote harmony between East and West. While McGhee's motives may have been pure, or as pure as the motives of a drug smuggling rock and roll manager hoping to dodge jail time for his crimes could be, there was little harmony among the bands that were drafted to play in

Red Square on August 12th and 13th 1989. Bon Jovi were ed by Ozzy Osbourne and a quartet of bands who were also on the McGhee Entertainments roster - Mötley Crüe, Skid Row, Cinderella, and the Scorpions – though one of them spectacularly and acrimoniously left the stable before they flew home. The sole band on the bill representing the USSR was Gorky Park, who had left the country two years previously to pursue a record deal in the US. They had come to the attention of first Frank Zappa and then Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora who had helped them to land deals with Mercury Records and McGhee Entertainment. Considering the gig was intended to promote a strong anti-drugs and alcohol message, the inclusion of acts like Mötley Crüe and Ozzy was something of a joke. Mötley bassist Nikki Sixx even went as far as to tell Kerrang! journalist Mick Wall that 'It might be an anti-drugs concert to some people, but it’s not for us. It’s anti-abuse that we’re talking about. If you cross the line between use and abuse, then that’s really tragic.' Sixx wasn’t alone in missing the point of the gig, though. On discovering that McGhee had made an eleventh hour change to the running order which meant he would be playing before Mötley Crüe, Ozzy threatened to pull out of the show, only agreeing to play when his original billing was reinstated. This wasn’t the only stunt that McGhee pulled. Having told Mötley that all of the bands would be playing stripped down shows that would let the music do the talking without their usual theatrics, drummer Tommy Lee was so incensed when a huge pyrotechnic display went off at the start of Bon Jovi’s first night set that he tracked McGhee down backstage and punched him to the ground, knowing full well that such a display would have required permits to be filed well in advance. Having lied to them twice in connection with the gig, first about Mötley’s billing and then about the pyro, Lee fired McGhee as their manager. As if losing one of the biggest rock bands on the planet didn't sting enough, Lee then rubbed salt in McGhee's wounds by convincing his partner Doug Thayler to split from McGhee Entertainment and take Mötley on as his first client in what became the

Top Rock Development Corporation. Though drugs, alcohol and management sackings were prevalent backstage, the gig itself was something of a triumph despite being almost universally ignored outside of the rock press, and became the last great hurrah of the eighties rock scene. Whether or not it had any bearing on the eventual dissolution of the USSR two years later is a matter of debate, but it did at least further prove that of the traditionally self-indulgent rock and roll community could occasionally attempt to make a positive difference to the world as they had done four years earlier, in 1985, when they had shown that their hearts could be as big as their hair by contributing to no less than three charitable projects of varying magnitude. The largest, and most famous, was the global Live Aid concert on July 13th 1985, masterminded by ex-Boomtown Rats singer Bob Geldof. This mother of all charity events had been kicked off at London’s Wembley Stadium by evergreen rockers Status Quo with their classic, and given the occasion very apt, Rockin’ All Over The World. Sharing the London stage with Quo were Dire Straits, U2 and The Who, while across the Atlantic at Philadelphia's JFK Stadium the bill included Bryan Adams, Judas Priest, Robert Plant and Black Sabbath, who had reformed especially for the event. Seven months earlier the official Band Aid single had pulled together a whole host of mainly British rock and pop musicians and singers and had captured the all-important Christmas number one spot, its success laying the foundations for Live Aid itself. Inspired by this achievement, in May 1985 some forty artists from the rock world including of Iron Maiden, Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister, Queensryche, Dokken, Judas Priest, Night Ranger, W.A.S.P., Y&T, Dio, Quiet Riot and even Spinal Tap gathered at the A&M Records studio in Los Angeles under the banner Hear ’n Aid to record a single called Stars. The track had been the brainchild of bassist Jimmy Bain and guitarist Vivian Campbell, who wrote the music while their boss at the time, the late Ronnie James Dio, provided the lyrics.

The Dio trio were ed by drummers Vinnie Appice and Frankie Banali on the music track and the remaining three score or so rock musicians and singers (and Vince Neil) on vocals. Originally intended for release immediately after being recorded, contractual issues between the various record companies prevented it appearing in shops until New Year’s Day 1986 by which time the single’s impact had been somewhat diminished. The third, and least successful, rock charity project of 1985 was put together in the wake of the Heysel Stadium disaster on May 29th when rival factions of football hooligans rioted at the European Cup Final between Liverpool FC and Juventus FC, resulting in a wall collapsing onto and killing thirty nine fans. Under the name A Sport Alive, producer Frank Eyssen and of the Scorpions and another German band called Jump wrote a song which featured of Heavy Pettin, Uriah Heap, Slade, Girlschool, Motörhead, Rock Goddess, Venom, Warlock, Rogue Male, Pallas and Lionheart, but it failed to make much of an impact and barely dented the public's consciousness. While the Moscow Peace Festival proved that even stepping up to the plate in the name of a good cause couldn't persuade the rock star ego to take a back seat, there was one place that was more than happy to let an ever expanding ego take the wheel. As the eighties marched on the bright lights of Hollywood and the lure of the silver screen would prove to be irresistible for a number of rock stars, with varying degrees of success.

Chapter 40

* Hollywood*

You’d think that being a world famous rock star, selling millions of albums and filling the enormodomes of the world while being worshipped by fans from Arizona to Zanzibar would give you an immense sense of achievement. In the eighties, however, it seemed that even this wasn't enough for some of the world’s biggest rock stars. Not only did they want to rock, they also wanted to - and I use the term loosely here - act. In the case of Gene Simmons it was perhaps understandable. You could, after all, make money from movies and, as we know, Gene’s love of the almighty dollar is second only to his love of the fairer sex (and even then it's a photo finish). Simmons, of course, was no stranger to the silver screen. Who could forget, though God knows we’ve tried, KISS Meets The Phantom Of The Park, a TV movie so bad that even Simmons allegedly gave serious consideration at one point to having someone travel the world buying up every single copy before eventually seeing the lighter side and including the European Cut of it on the third volume of the Kissology box sets. Back in 1984, though, Simmons landed the villain's role in Runaway, a science fiction movie written by ER and Jurassic Park creator Michael Crichton and starring Magnum, P.I. actor Tom Selleck and Kirstie Alley of Cheers fame. According to Simmons in his book Sex Money KISS, he was offered the part after staring at Crichton for sixty seconds without making any facial expressions, having convinced the author/director that he looked menacing enough. The plot, such as it was, had Selleck chasing down a bunch of runaway homicidal robots created by Simmons’ character Charlie Luther, who sported a sawn-off afro and was frequently out-acted by the scenery. Despite being touted as 1984’s big sci-fi movie, Runaway was completely overshadowed by James Cameron’s The Terminator and failed to even earn back its $8 Million budget. After another stint in the day job that he thankfully hadn't given up (though after hearing Crazy Nights it might not have been a bad idea), Simmons signed up for 1987's Wanted Dead Or Alive alongside Rutger Hauer, whose celluloid stock

was on the rise after his acclaimed performances in Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, and Robert Harmon’s classic 1986 horror movie The Hitcher. Playing the part of Middle Eastern terrorist Malak Al Rahim, the highlight of the movie was watching Simmons having a hand grenade stuffed in his mouth at the film's conclusion, which must have pleased at least some of his critics. After suffering through two excruciating makeup free performances by one of my rock heroes, thankfully the third time proved to be the charm. Though actually been released in 1986, a year prior to Wanted Dead Or Alive, I didn’t see the Dino De Laurentis produced Trick Or Treat until the following year, but as far as I was concerned it was well worth the wait. In a role that must have stretched Simmons' acting abilities to breaking point he played a loud mouthed, opinionated rock DJ called Norman 'The Nuke' Taurog. However, it was his co-star Ozzy Osbourne who stole the show, cast firmly against type but playing to his hitherto unknown comedic strengths which would be showcased on reality TV fifteen years later, as the Reverend Aaron Gilstrom, a bible thumping preacher dedicated to the outlawing of rock and roll. Trick Or Treat was a fun, tongue in cheek, horror movie about a young rock fan called Eddie Weinbauer who is obsessed by heavy metal superstar Sammi Curr. When Curr is killed in a fire and Weinbauer just happens to come into possession of the only copy of his idol’s unreleased final album, he plays it backwards (as you do) and to almost nobody’s surprise Curr comes back to life. Naturally, murder and mayhem ensue. The character of Sammi Curr has often been likened to Blackie Lawless, who was originally offered the role but turned it down due to his W.A.S.P. commitments. The part was then offered to Simmons’ partner in crime Paul Stanley who also turned it down, explaining that he wanted his acting debut to be in a role that was considerably different to that of his day job (he eventually starred in a stage production of The Phantom Of The Opera playing, ironically, a singer who hides behind a mask, receiving critical acclaim for his performance). Not to be outdone, Alice Cooper made his acting debut when master of horror John Carpenter, writer and director of the classic and highly influential Halloween, cast him as a priest in his 1986 movie Prince Of Darkness.

Sadly, and I speak as a fan of Mr Carpenter, Prince Of Darkness turned out to be one of a series of duds that he directed in the eighties and nineties and Mr Furnier, bereft of his trademark make up, did little except skulk around corners looking uneasy and pensive before wisely returning to starring in his own personal horror movie on stage. Cooper wasn’t finished with movies entirely, however. He contributed a couple of new tracks - He’s Back (The Man Behind The Mask) and Hard Rock Summer - to 1986's Friday the 13th Part VI : Jason Lives, and continued the Crystal Lake connection by having Jason Vorhees take a swipe at him with his machete from behind a stack of amps during the opening number on his The Nightmare Returns tour. Not content with being associated with just one of horror’s legendary icons, Cooper returned to the big screen in 1999 in another franchise’s sixth instalment when he took on role of Freddy Krueger’s foster father in Freddy’s Dead – The Final Nightmare. Essentially playing himself, Cooper did a great job of explaining why Elm Street became America’s least popular address for a few years in the eighties. After all, with Alice for an adoptive father, what hope did young Fred ever have of living a normal life? After enduring Ozzy, Gene and Alice’s ugly mugs leering at them on the big screen, female rock fans at last got the chance to see a star who was somewhat easier on the eye, albeit for a few brief seconds. Playing a cowboy, which must have been stretch, Jon Bon Jovi got his initial fifteen seconds of celluloid fame in 1990’s entertaining Young Guns II as a prison inmate who attempts to escape from a pit only to be shot back into it. Not the most auspicious of starts, granted, but it was more than compensated for by his nomination for an Academy Award in 1991 for the song Blaze Of Glory from his soundtrack album of the same name, the sole nomination for the picture. (He lost out to Stephen Sondheim’s Sooner Or Later (I Always Get My Man) from Dick Tracy.) Jon Bon Jovi wasn’t the only eighties rock musician to be produce an entire soundtrack album for a movie, though. The music for Trick Or Treat had been composed by ex-Motörhead guitarist ‘Fast’ Eddie Clark, with Flogging Molly

vocalist Dave King handling vocal duties, and AC/DC had provided the soundtrack for Stephen King’s lacklustre 1986 directorial debut Maximum Overdrive, scoring themselves a hit with the classic Who Made Who in the process (a good effort next to their phoned in soundtrack for 2010’s Iron Man 2). Other artists were content to provide one off songs for specific movies. Megadeth offered up an entertaining cover of Alice Cooper’s No More Mr Nice Guy for Wes Craven’s Shocker (starring Mitch Pileggi who became best known as FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner in the X Files, and who I shared a few beers with one night in the early 1990s but that's another story for another book), The Ramones brought their four-to-the-floor sounds to the title track for Mary Lambert’s faithful adaptation of King’s Pet Sematary, and Guns’n’Roses contributed You Could Be Mine to James Cameron’s Terminator 2, arguably their last hurrah before the G’n’R I had known and loved began to implode. W.A.S.P. demanded that we Scream Until You Like It from 1991’s ghastly Ghoulies III : Ghoulies Go To College, Night Ranger provided the radio friendly Secret Of My Success for the entertaining 1987 Michael J Fox movie of the same name, and Motörhead served up the title track from the same year’s Eat The Rich. ZZ Top asked us to Doubleback from 1990’s Back To The Future Part III (in which they also featured as part of a wild west band), Jimmy Barnes hooked up with fellow Aussies INXS for the rocking Good Time Tonight from Joel Schumacher’s 1987 classic The Lost Boys, and Queen proved that there could be only one band on the Highlander soundtrack as they provided all of the music for Russell Mulcahy’s excellent 1986 movie. Over in Italy respected horror movie director Dario Argento was utilising rock bands on the soundtracks for his flicks, most notably Mötley Crüe’s Save Our Souls and Accept’s Fast As A Shark in his 1985 horror classic Demons and Maiden’s Flash Of The Blade from their Powerslave album in the same year’s Phenomena (known as Creepers in the UK), starring Jennifer Connelly. Several of my favourite bands went beyond merely appearing on the soundtrack albums and ventured in front of the cameras, though they were usually in the background in club scenes. Guns'n'Roses had a brief cameo in 1989's The Dead Pool, Clint Eastwood's fifth

and final Dirty Harry flick, Ratt performed Body Talk from their Dancin’ Undercover album in Eddie Murphy’s 1986 comedy The Golden Child and White Sister performed April from their superb Fashion By ion album in a low budget horror movie called Killer Party. It was White Lion who had the luckiest escape in celluloid , though, when they appeared, along with a fictitious female member in 1986’s The Money Pit starring Tom Hanks. The script originally had them performing dressed as flies on a stage resembling a giant fly trap (and I'm guessing their agent forgot to mention this small fact when he pitched it to them) but thankfully for them this idea was nixed and they escaped with their credibility intact. While all these rock stars were flexing their egos on celluloid I was preparing to take mine to the stage. As the summer of 1989 turned into autumn, and the date of Alter Ego’s debut gig loomed ever nearer, we were ready to show the world, or Nottingham anyway, what we were all about.

Chapter 41

* Addicted To That Rush*

Having worked up a sweat in the rehearsal rooms at Subway just about every Sunday morning for six months Alter Ego had reached the point where we couldn’t possibly be any more ready for our debut gig ing local heroes Who Cares Anyway? at the Yorker pub on Saturday September 23rd 1989, and we were determined to make the most of it. We had ten of our own songs honed to perfection and had decided that despite our impressive repertoire of covers we would only play one so as to showcase our original material but leave the audience with something they were familiar with. Though, to quote Aerosmith, we wanted to let the music do the talking our image still ran a very close second, and while we weren’t in the same vanity league as the likes of Poison or Ratt, we were still determined to look like the rock stars that we believed we were on the brink of becoming. I had further doctored my tight, ripped stone washed jeans by sewing some strips of black PVC - cannibalised from an old pair of tros that I’d literally worn to destruction - behind the holes and completing the effect by creating a lattice down the front of my thighs using white material that had once been the arms of my favourite Mötley Crüe t-shirt. Joe had bought a brand new pair of black and tan cowboy boots that looked rather fetching with his skin tight black denim jeans, strategically ripped at the knee, Sean had splashed out on new strings for his guitar and was sporting a homemade hand painted Dawn of the Dead shirt and Bob was just inherently cool whatever he wore. We met up with the Who Cares Anyway? boys in the pub and after stopping briefly at the bar for a quick beer we hauled our gear upstairs to the Yorker’s first floor function room. Riggy, Ian, Dunc and Des (or Old, Young, Fat and Thin as they were affectionately known) were already set up and we watched, suitably impressed,

as they soundchecked a couple of numbers. The Yorker’s function room was rectangular with a high ceiling, a bar at the side and a decent sized alcove with a bay window that served as a stage, albeit a ground level one. At capacity the room held about a hundred or so people. With Who Cares Anyway? being one of Nottingham’s better and most popular bands at the time, the combination of their regular crowd and our friends who were coming to see us would draw a healthy crowd, the thought of which I found both frightening and exhilarating. As show time grew closer Joe suddenly developed a case of nerves and began murmuring about his throat hurting and not being able to some of the words. Sean and I exchanged more than a few concerned glances as Joe disappeared back to his flat for a while complaining of feeling unwell, but as zero hour approached he reappeared, seemingly rejuvenated, and we were ready, or as ready as we were ever going to be. I'd been chatting to a few of my friends as they'd arrived, including Steve, Stapes, Dave Bartram and Webster, but I was especially pleased to see Dad slip quietly in and give me a nod from the back of the room. Given that he had always encouraged (and bankrolled) my musical endeavours I felt unspeakably proud that I was at last going to be able to play in front of him in a proper band. A little after half past eight the DJ gave us the nod that we would be going on after the next couple of records. I had expected to be at least a little bit nervous before we went on but to my surprise I found that I was actually very calm as I picked up my Westone and plugged it in. Bob sat down behind his kit, picked up his sticks and gave it a quick once over, the snare and toms sounding loud and crisp in the crowded room. Sean and I checked our tuning with each other, wanting if nothing else to at least be able to play in the same key. Joe took his place behind the microphone stand, and I turned to look at each of my band mates in turn, smiling as the DJ faded out the record. This was it. Show time! Bob hit his sticks together, shouting ‘one, two, three, four,’ and we were off. Sean launched into the riff for Love ‘Em All and I came in four bars later, adrenaline coursing through my veins. The feeling of actually playing in front of

my rock peers was one of the most exhilarating experiences I have ever felt. After we finished our first number we got a huge cheer from the audience, and I got a broad smile and a thumbs up from Dad. Bob quickly counted us into our second offering, Midnight Sun, and I was momentarily fearful that I would screw up the solo bass intro, but thankfully I pulled it off and even managed to sing backing vocals and play bass at the same time for my contribution to a song called Captive that Sean and I had written a few weeks previously and which I’d been really nervous about performing for a couple of reasons. Firstly because unlike Dad, who has a great voice and could give Frank, Dean, Sammy and Elvis a run for their money any day of the week, I didn’t think that I’d been particularly blessed as a singer, and secondly because I’d always lacked confidence in my ability to sing and play my instrument at the same time. I’ve always envied anyone who can do this and when we’re talking about the Geddy Lees or Dave Mustaines of this world then it becomes out and out jealously. Talented bastards. As fate would have it Captive wasn’t going to be my only vocal contribution of the evening. As our set drew to a close I was about to have my very own multitasking baptism by fire. For our last song, and solitary cover, we’d decided to crank out The Cult’s Lil’ Devil. Bob counted us in and we were off and running towards the finish line, Sean grinning from ear to ear as he peeled out Billy Duffy’s familiar riff. The audience were grooving along with us as we motored through the opening bars of the song but just as Joe was supposed to come in with the vocals he turned to me with a look of horror on his face and mouthed ‘I’ve forgotten the words!’ If I'd had more than a moment to think about it then chances are I'd have shied away from the microphone and hoped that Bob would pick up the vocals. However, in that split second I made the decision to step up to the plate and suddenly there I was, singing Lil’ Devil and playing the bass at the same time for all I was worth, and judging from the reception and the comments afterwards doing a bloody good job of it. Granted The Cult have never been known for their taxing bass lines but even so,

the feeling of taking centre stage and being the focal point of Alter Ego for three minutes was one that I’ve never forgotten. As we left the stage to applause and cheering we felt like conquering heroes, particularly when the Who Cares Anyway? boys came over to congratulate us on a great set. For the first time I felt like a real rock star and, more importantly, able to finally consider myself a legitimate player in the local band scene. After a short break Who Cares Anyway? took to the stage and played a blistering set which including their note perfect cover of Hanoi Rocks’ Malibu Beach Nightmare. We’d been good but they were nothing short of awesome, delivering a performance that was worthy of any that I’d seen on the hallowed Rock City stage, a venue they would finally get to play the following year as part of an allnight gig headlined by The Wildhearts. The rest of the evening was something of a blur. After the Yorker turfed everyone out at closing time we ferried our gear back up to Bob’s flat and celebrated our triumphant performance long into the night. While the Yorker wasn’t exactly the Hammersmith Odeon, or even Rock City, as far as we were concerned we might as well have headlined Madison Square Garden, such was the feeling of exhilaration and accomplishment. Finally we were off and running, and would spend the next twelve months gigging regularly around Nottingham’s pub circuit while I concluded my extensive 1989 gigging season.

Chapter 42

* Product Of The Working Class*

After our well received debut gig at the Yorker, Bob, Joe, Sean and I had swiftly moved from being unsure as to whether Alter Ego was ready to hit the stage to being hungry for our next gig. Thankfully an up and coming band could easily secure themselves a gig at one of the pubs on the Nottingham rock circuit and so, fired up and raring to go, we hit the streets and soon had a couple lined up, at the Newshouse and the Old Angel. In the meantime, for my first gig after having performed on stage myself I was back at Rock City on October 17th to see the Dogs D’Amour entertain us with their booze-soaked rock and roll. The following week I was travelling north to see my other favourite new British band play a special gig on Saturday October 20th. Barlow, from whom I had bought my first bass a couple of years earlier, was now studying at Bradford University and had invited me up for a weekend of beer and a gig at the country’s newest rock venue, the Bradford Rock Palace. Little Angels were the venue's inaugural headliners, ed by a biker band called Engine who looked as though they had literally parked their silver machines outside and walked straight on to the stage, all beards and leathers. They played a short, entertaining set of power blues songs - including one particularly memorable number called The More I Drink The Better You Look (I Think I'll Drink Some More) – before vacating the stage for the main attraction. The last time I'd seen Little Angels they'd worked the Derby Rockhouse with enough energy and talent to mark them out as a band to watch in the future, but had still been a little rough around the edges. When they hit the Rock Palace stage, though, it was clear that they’d evolved into a slick ten legged rock and roll machine in the intervening nine months and they completely won over the crowd, particularly when they took the pace right down to perform a new song off the album, the almost titular Don’t Pray For Me.

Employing moody blue lights and minimal but effective dry ice that wouldn't have looked out of place at a Bon Jovi gig, guitarist Bruce John Dickinson proved that he was a talent to watch, perfectly complementing Toby Jepson’s powerful vocals and self-assured performance. Three days later, on Tuesday October 23rd my hangover had just about subsided as Steve, his sister Sue, Stapes and I found ourselves at Rock City for my second Little Angels gig of the week. After a forgettable set by Birmingham’s Marshall Law, Little Angels proved that their magnificent performance at the Rock Palace had been no fluke and then impressed me yet again when, as Steve and Sue queued to pick up their own shirts after the gig, the whole band suddenly appeared in the foyer. They stood chatting with the assembled fans - clearly enjoying the experience if the smiles plastered across their collective faces were anything to go by - and g anything that was thrust into their hands including one of their Rock And Roll Education shirts that I'd also picked up, and which I still have to this day. The Rock And Roll Education tour had been a unique and ground breaking promotional trek that Little Angels had undertaken the previous year which saw them visit a number of schools to talk to the pupils about the music business before performing live for them. Given that the vast majority of the kids were too young to legally get into the rock clubs that the Angels usually frequented this gave them a rare opportunity to see an actual rock band up close and personal and was widely praised. If only the band had been around a few years earlier then perhaps my careers adviser might not have dismissed my rock and roll aspirations quite so quickly and might even have taken them seriously. Impressed with what I'd heard live I picked up Don't Prey For Me the day it was released and it remains one of my favourite albums from the era. More importantly, though, one of the song titles provided me with the new name for my band after we discovered that a quartet of local solicitors had been gigging regularly around the Nottingham area in a covers band called Alter Ego. Not wanting to be sued, which given their day jobs didn't seem beyond the realms of possibility, we rechristened ourselves Kicking Up Dust as we all stood on a cold and rainy platform at Nottingham railway station, waiting for a train to Leicester

to go to the Sector 9 rock club. As autumn, and our next gigs approached, I found myself travelling up and down the country seeing a variety of bands. Lawnmower Deth had announced their first headlining gig at Rock City on October 30th 1989, managing to pretty much sell it out, something that many of the more, ahem, serious thrash bands at the time couldn’t manage, so we went along to our local boys. Four days later Sean, Stapes and I found ourselves heading down the A42 to the Birmingham NEC to see Mötley Crüe, with opening acts White Lion and Skid Row. Thanks to a series of traffic jams we arrived in the venue literally moments after Skid Row had left the stage, the second time in recent months that I'd missed out on seeing them. This was, however, a situation that was to rectify itself four days later. We did catch White Lion’s set, though, and while they were every bit as impressive as when I'd seen them in the summer at Darien Lakes, it was clear who the crowd were there to see. In the three years since their last visit to the UK when I'd narrowly missed out on seeing them in the more intimate confines of Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall, LA's premier bad boys had become one of the biggest bands in the world. As you'd expect from a multi-platinum rock band, Mötley’s show was slick, professional and choreographed to the point where any spontaneity had been sucked out of the proceedings, until close to the end of their main set, that is, when the Crüe proved they were still worthy of their bad boy reputation. I don’t which song it was, though I have a vague recollection it was Smokin’ In The Boys Room, but the band had just started playing when something came flying out of the crowd and hit Vince Neil in the face. From our seats up in the stands at the right hand side of the stage I had a perfect view as Neil picked up his mike stand and launched it out over the crowd like an Olympic javelin thrower. It sailed a good thirty or forty feet before gravity took over and we all winced in unison as the PA relayed the loud thud it made as it

connected with the skull of one unfortunate punter. His anger vented, Neil stormed off stage leaving Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee glancing uncertainly at each other for a few seconds before killing the song and following him into the wings. Like the rest of the audience, Sean, Stapes and I looked at each other with furrowed brows, not sure what was happening or if the band would be back. The crowd began to murmur, and then chant, stamping their feet and clapping their hands as they demanded that Mötley return to the stage. For a moment I had visions of the NEC descending into the same ugly atmosphere that I had experienced the year before at Rock City when Ozzy had cancelled at the last minute. Fortunately Mötley returned to the stage after ten minutes or so to finish the show and we all went home satisfied. Another four days later, on November 7th, Stapes and I once again set out to see Skid Row, speeding north up the M1 this time to Sheffield, some forty miles away. Thankfully it proved to be third time lucky in our quest to see Sebastian Bach and the boys with the added bonus of coming from San Franciscan quintet Vain, whose debut album No Respect I had fallen in love with. In the sea of largely generic American rock bands that had appeared in the last few years Vain were a welcome breath of fresh air, their sound sufficiently different to set them apart from the rest of the pack. This was partly down to singer Davy Vain’s raspy, somewhat tortured vocals that reminded me of Cinderella’s Tom Keifer but were distinctive enough that Vain could truly claim to have a unique voice, and partly due to the band's tendency to write songs in minor keys, giving them a slightly disconcerting but no less catchy feel. Up tempo tracks Beat The Bullet and Down For The 3rd Time had been getting plenty of play down at Rock City and new Saturday night rock club Central Park, but it was the slower tracks like 1000 Degrees and Without You that really impressed me, Vain’s use of minor keys giving them a real sense of desperation. Live they kicked serious ass, commanding the Sheffield City Hall stage like they were the headliners rather than the act. Davy Vain was particularly captivating, his devastating good looks and charisma putting him in my top ten

of favourite rock front men. Vain were so good that when I think back to the gig now it’s their set, rather than Skid Row’s, that immediately springs to mind. That's not to say Sebastian Bach’s motley crew weren't good, though, with Baz himself proving to be even more flamboyant and entertaining than when I’d first seen him strut his stuff back in August at the Milton Keynes bowl, but Vain stole the show that night. My final gig of November 1989 found me back at the Birmingham NEC with Sean and Stapes on Sunday the 19th for what was one of the rock community’s most anticipated shows of the decade. Aerosmith had last toured Europe twelve years previously before nosediving (quite literally) into narcotic oblivion. As Steven Tyler and Joe Perry had attempted to snort the entire output of the Peruvian drug cartels even many of the band's loyal fans had written them off as yesterday’s men before their triumphant phoenix-like rise from the ashes with 1987’s superb Permanent Vacation album. Two months prior to their European return they’d released Pump, another outstanding album which easily eclipsed the efforts of many of their younger rivals and further cemented their newly reclaimed status as the most influential hard rock band on the planet, providing a springboard for their global domination which continues to this day. Though we were disappointed that Aerosmith hadn't brought their funky US rooftop stage set to Europe, it was a testament to the power of the band that they didn’t need it. Watching singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry on stage, solidly backed by drummer Joey Kramer, bassist Tom Hamilton and rhythm guitarist Brad Whitfield (and augmented by a keyboard player strategically hidden just off stage) it was obvious why Aerosmith were so revered. Tyler covered every inch of the stage, performing the occasional back flip and displaying more energy than most front men half his age. Perry, meanwhile, barely moved an inch but still exuded enough cool to freeze Hell. Standing in front of a huge industrial sized fan and dragging on an endless succession of cigarettes it was like watching a slightly older version of Slash, though of course the Guns’n’Roses guitarist was, by his own ission, the pupil to Perry's master. ing Aerosmith were young British hopefuls Thunder, a ballsy bluesy

quintet who had risen from the ashes of never-quite-rans Terraplane. As we watched Thunder play a short set of finely crafted songs with a classic rock feel I remarked to Sean, somewhat cockily, that I thought Kicking Up Dust were every bit as good as they were and that we could easily have handled the Aerosmith slot. Sean, unsurprisingly, agreed with my grand delusions of youth and the flame of our ambition and desire to succeed burned brighter than the pyro in a KISS show. As December loomed ever nearer we were inspired to put a hundred and ten percent into Kicking Up Dust, determined that we could not only make the grade but take our dreams all the way to the top.

Chapter 43

* On With The Show*

Having been inspired by Thunder and encouraged by the success of our own triumphant gig with Who Cares Anyway?, Sean and I got together in early November 1989 to write some new songs. The first was a by-the-numbers power ballad called Don’t Go, but the second, an up tempo rocker called Girl Has Got Me, had a certain vibrancy to it due in no small part to the fact that it was inspired by (OK, ripped off from) a song called Seven Sisters Road, the final track on the Dan Reed Network’s second album Slam which had come out earlier in the year. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the Dan Reed Network featured a truly diverse line up. Dan Reed himself was of Native American extraction, guitarist Brion James and bassist Melvyn Brannon II were both African American, keyboard player Blake Sakamoto was of Oriental descent, and drummer Dan Pred was a native of South Dakota. Individually they were each at the top of their respective games but as a band they had an incredible synergy which flowed through their albums but was particularly astounding to witness live, as I was to find out soon. Having written and recorded these new demos on the Friday night, Sean and I took them along to Bob’s flat the following evening to present them to the rest of the band. Though I hadn’t felt particularly self-conscious singing in front of Sean, which was probably down to the half a case of beer I'd poured down my neck, in the moments before we played the demo for Bob and Joe I actually felt nervous. For the life of me I didn’t know why as both Sean and I thought the songs were great but thankfully as soon as Bob and Joe heard the songs they loved them and so we used the following morning's rehearsal to work them up into full band arrangements in preparation for our next gig at the Old Angel in a couple of weeks’ time. Before that, however, I had agreed to accompany my friend Helen to go and see

a trio of politically incorrect miscreants from Macclesfield, or as we knew it, up north. Advertising themselves as the 'rudest, crudest, lewdest, drunkest band in Christendom', and boasting a repertoire of songs with titles like Sweaty Betty, Now He’s A Poof, Julie The Schooly and Beer & Sex & Chips & Gravy, the Macc Lads were essentially a rock and roll version of a Carry On film. Bearing this in mind my expectations were fairly low when they rolled into Rock City on Tuesday December 5th and they fully lived up to them, though I have to it that I did leave the gig with a slightly guilty smile on my face. A couple of days later the newly christened Kicking Up Dust returned to the stage at the Old Angel. Unlike the roomy performance area at the Yorker, the Angel’s stage turned out to be only slightly larger than a postage stamp. Luckily Sean was left handed so we were able to position ourselves with his guitar neck pointing out to the right of the stage and mine to the left, with Joe sandwiched tightly between us as we played for about an hour, debuting our two new songs and a cover of Prince’s Let’s Go Crazy which I was particularly pleased to pull off as I was effectively playing both the bass and keyboard parts on four strings. Still buzzing from our triumphant sophomore gig I found myself once again back at Rock City on Tuesday December 12th to reacquaint myself with a band I’d first seen there a couple of years previously with Guns'n'Roses. Faster Pussycat were headlining in their own right this time rather than sharing the billing with their LA compatriots and had just released their second album, Wake Me When It’s Over, which largely thanks to the ballad House Of Pain and the infectious, innuendo laced Slip Of The Tongue had been making reasonable sized waves across the Atlantic. Pussycat were ed by Texan band Dangerous Toys, whose set we missed all but the last five minutes of, and Scottish quartet The Almighty who we were privileged to witness that night. Fronted by Ricky Warwick, whose then wife Vanessa was a high profile VJ on MTV’s Headbangers Ball, The Almighty were a relentlessly powerful and heavy band who never really got beyond the status of also-rans on the world’s rock

stage despite being, in my humble opinion anyway, at least the equal of American bands like Machine Head and Black Label Society who shared The Almighty’s musical DNA but garnered much more recognition. This was the only time I saw The Almighty live but they left an impression on me as being one of the most in-your-face bands I’d ever seen grace the stage there, their intensity comparable to the likes of Megadeth and Guns’n’Roses. Happily Ricky Warwick is still kicking ass in Black Star Riders, the band he formed in 2012 with Thin Lizzy alumnus Scott Gorham, and who I saw more than hold their own ing Whitesnake and Def Leppard in December 2015. Pussycat weren’t bad, but perhaps due to their second album, Wake Me When It’s Over, lacking the fire of the first their performance lacked the sense of excitement and spectacle that I ed from the first time around. One band that did seem to be more impressive each time I saw them were Bon Jovi. When they announced a gig at the Birmingham NEC on Saturday December 30th the prospect of seeing out the eighties with New Jersey's second favourite sons (after Bruce Springsteen, of course) was reason enough to snap up tickets, but when the Dan Reed Network were announced as the it became an essential date in the diary, finally giving me the opportunity to witness one of my favourite bands live. The Network were stunning, walking on stage to the steady, deep, thumping bass rhythm of Cruise Together, and one of the biggest cheers I’d ever heard for a act. Dan Reed commanded the stage like he’d been playing arenas for his entire career and left the audience, and particularly me, very impressed indeed and wanting more. A lesser band than Bon Jovi might have struggled to top the Network’s performance but having become veterans of the world's arenas since Slippery When Wet had catapulted them to the very top of rock’s hierarchy they pulled out all the stops, rocking us well and truly into the next decade. The highlight of the show came when I noticed a long black horizontal shadow falling across the back of the stage, and the sudden realisation that a walkway was being lowered from the ceiling enabling the band to literally walk out over the audience in the standing section where we stared up in awe as Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and bassist Alec John Such pranced above us, mere feet away.

Though this sort of thing is fairly commonplace in arena shows these days (even Paul Stanley still flies across the audience to a small stage at the back of the auditorium despite having undergone two hip replacements), back in 1989 we’d never seen anything like it. Due to the prohibitive cost of transporting their elaborate US stage sets across the pond for what usually amounted to a handful of gigs in Europe most American bands tended not to bring them over, playing instead as Aerosmith and Mötley had done with the bare minimum of stage dressing. Bon Jovi have never been a band to short change their fans, though, and their stage show impressed the hell out of us, so much so that as we travelled home in the early hours of the last day of the 1980s I found my thoughts returning to Kicking Up Dust and the fact that there would truly be nothing better in life than being able to get up on a stage somewhere like the NEC and play to thousands of adoring fans. Though I wasn't to know it at the time Kicking Up Dust had already entered the second and final year of its existence, but as 1990 dawned I was still full of hope for it and looking forward to not only playing live myself but also seeing another fine selection of bands on the country's stages.

Chapter 44

* From Out Of Nowhere*

Having been given a tantalising taste of the Dan Reed Network experience ing Bon Jovi at the NEC I was keener than ever to see them perform one of their legendary headlining club gigs. I got my wish when they announced a short UK tour in January 1990 which included a night at Rock City. The buzz about the Network had been growing steadily in Kerrang! ever since their eponymous debut album had been reviewed a couple of years earlier, its sublime and wonderful fusion of pop, rock, funk and jazz only slipping past the magazine's then strict guidelines as to what constituted rock by virtue of the fact that it contained a brief snippet of Whitesnake’s Ain’t No Love In The Heart Of The City at the end of the album’s closing track Rock You All Night Long. Once news of their electrifying live shows began to filter through, however, it quickly became apparent that they rocked as hard as, if not harder than, their contemporaries, and they more than lived up to the hype on January 17th delivering an incredibly energetic and entertaining two hour show to the enthusiastic and appreciative Rock City audience. In the first week of February Sean and I were back at Rock City to see an exciting new band from Metallica’s neck of the woods. San Franciscan quintet Faith No More had released a punky rock/rap single called We Care A Lot with their previous singer Chuck Mosley that had become something of a favourite on the Rock City dance floor, before kicking him out of the band and replacing him with a guy called Mike Patton for the recording of their second album The Real Thing, which was about to catapult them into rock’s big league. The first track released from the album was a blistering sonic assault called From Out Of Nowhere which literally came from out of nowhere in of completely redefining their sound and leaving most of their contemporaries sounding somewhat lacking. Like the Dan Reed Network, Faith No More quickly garnered a reputation for their stunning live performances. On stage singer Mike Patton was a live wire, careering around like a man possessed and somehow managing not to collide

with bassist Bill Gould, keyboard player Roddy Bottum, guitarist Big Sick Ugly Jim Martin and drummer Mike Bordin. Four days after my first encounter with Faith No More at Rock City I was back there for my second helping of Texan rockers Kings X who had impressed me when they ed Anthrax at the Royal Concert Hall the previous summer. While they had been captivating in the not quite cavernous but not exactly intimate surroundings of the Concert Hall, Kings X really came alive in the shadowy confines of Rock City, particularly bassist and frontman Doug Pinnick, whose soaring voice filled the club. ing Kings X that night were Icon, a band who I'd discovered by chance thanks to one of my occasional 'suck it and see' purchases, usually based on how much the cover grabbed me, from Rob's Record Mart, a delightful second hand record shop on Hurts Yard a couple of doors up from Way Ahead. Rob's Record Mart was, and still is, a wonderful Aladdin’s cave of vinyl that looked as though a tornado had ripped through it, scattering albums here and there with seemingly scant regard to genre, artist or any other order. Rob, however, could track down anything that you desired in a matter of seconds like some kind of vinyl bloodhound among the cardboard boxes labelled in his fair hand with a description of the particular genre that lurked within. One of these was simply labelled 'metal' and it was in here that I would often be found digging when I had a spare pound or two with which to take a chance on some new band. Thus I came to discover Icon's Night Of The Crime album, which was great, a live album by Raven - a Geordie band who pre-dated Mancunian shoegazers Oasis by a good few years in featuring a pair of Gallagher brothers – which wasn’t, and a Scottish band called Heavy Pettin', who must have really impressed me as I bought both their debut album and the follow-up for the bargain price of one pound fifty a piece. Their 1983 debut album Lettin’ Loose - co-produced by none other than Queen’s Brian May - is in my humble opinion one of British rock's finest overlooked works. Songs like In And Out Of Love and Love Times Love may not have stretched the band's lyrical thesaurus but musically they were three chord marvels to rival anything Poison or Warrant produced.

Singer Hamie, while not about to about to give Bret Michaels or Vince Neil any trouble in the Miss Kerrang! awards, had a set of (bag)pipes on him that were distinctive enough to make me sit up and take notice. Had he been born closer to Hollywood than Holyrood he might well have given Vince Neil some serious competition for the Mötley job. Heavy Pettin’s second album, 1985’s Northwinds, was almost as good as their debut and both remain fairly regular visitors to my playlists even now. Having landed slots with both KISS and Ozzy in 1984 and being touted in Kerrang! as serious contenders, Heavy Pettin’ looked set to take it to the next level. However, as is so often the case with promising young bands it wasn’t to be. In a misguided effort to expose themselves to a wider audience they managed to not so much shoot themselves in the foot as put the gun in their mouth and blow their brains out, all thanks to the great institution that is the Eurovision Song Contest. For reasons that even guitarist Punky Mendoza couldn’t in a 2004 interview with rockunited.com the band were persuaded to enter their ballad Romeo into the competition to be Great Britain's 1987 entry. Though they put in a decent performance, which I watched live on television, coming sixth out of the ten songs on offer with a respectable sixty points, the stigma of being associated with the Eurovision Song Contest destroyed any rock credibility the band had accrued and they were summarily dropped by their record label, splitting shortly thereafter. Ironically their five minutes of fame on BBC1 exposed them to a sizeable prime time audience that their peers would have done just about anything to perform in front of (except, obviously, enter the Eurovision Song Contest, though it didn't do hard rocking GWAR-alikes Lordi any harm two decades later), but sadly it means that rather than any of the great tunes on their first two albums, it is a lacklustre Bon Jovi-lite ballad that Heavy Pettin’ are best ed for. Unfortunately this wasn’t a problem that was unique to Heavy Pettin’. Many a great hard rocking eighties band delivered several kick ass tunes only to have their record company wield a doubled edged sword by releasing a ballad would project them to a wider audience, but would ultimately cement their legacy as

being the band that did that song.

Chapter 45

* Slow An’ Easy*

While the likes of Jon Bon Jovi and David Coverdale can’t take the credit for actually inventing rock music’s alter ego, the power ballad, they can certainly take a modest bow for helping it to be weaponised by record companies in a bid to break their recording artists in the mid-eighties. It could be argued that Marillion were the first of the 1980s bands to suffer what we might call the curse of the ballad when they released Kayleigh in May 1985, becoming their biggest selling single to date as even now, despite Marillion and Fish (who left the band in 1988 and was replaced by Steve Hogarth) having collectively released 27 albums since then, is still the one song that defines both entities. However, this was prior to the rock renaissance that Bon Jovi had begun to lay the foundations for in the latter months of 1986, scoring chart success with You Give Love A Bad Name and Livin’ On A Prayer. It wasn’t until Wanted Dead Or Alive was released as a single the following April, though, that my non-rock friends began to sit up and take notice of the racket that Stapes and I had been subjecting them to on the sixth form common room stereo. Wanted Dead Or Alive was, and still is, a virtually perfect example of the power ballad and struck such a chord with the general record buying public that sales of Slippery When Wet went through the roof, lighting the blue touch paper for the rocket ride that propelled Bon Jovi from the Birmingham Odeon in November 1986 to headlining the Monsters Of Rock festival just nine months later. Although Wanted Dead Or Alive only reached number thirteen in the singles charts, the effect it had had on album sales didn’t go unnoticed by the record companies. Realising the revenue potential of releasing slower songs by bands that the general public wouldn’t normally give the time of day to, the power ballad was suddenly the number one weapon in their sales arsenal. Whitesnake went some way to proving the theory when they followed up Still Of The Night, their Zeppelin-esque first single from the 1987 album, with Is This Love, a saccharine drenched power ballad. Whereas the former had stalled

at number sixteen in the singles charts, the latter broke the all-important top ten, reaching the respectable heights of number nine, helped in no small part by a very glossy video featuring the future ex-Mrs Coverdale Tawney Kitaen writhing around on the bonnet of Coverdale’s Jaguar wearing a white negligee and little else while being buffeted by a wind machine. Once again the wider record buying public went out and bought the 1987 album in their droves, but while record companies rubbed their hands in glee at their new found golden goose that turned power ballads into runaway album sales, it would prove to be something of a bronze albatross for many bands. Take Foreigner, a band who have produced many fine hard rocking songs like Hot Blooded, Dirty White Boy, Cold As Ice, Juke Box Hero and Rock City dance floor favourite Urgent to name but a few. Ask a random member of the general public to name a Foreigner track, though, and I’ll bet they offer up I Want To Know What Love Is or Waiting For A Girl Like You. Go on, try it. Now I’m guessing that Foreigner may not be too upset to be ed for these songs – they are, after all, great tunes that most classic rock outfits would kill to have written, and the royalties no doubt keep Mick Jones and Lou Gramm in champagne and caviar - and are probably happy to be ed by the often fickle general public at all, but let’s move a couple of rungs up the rock royalty ladder and consider Aerosmith. Given the band’s lengthy and impressive hard rocking history, stacked high with such classics as Train Kept A Rollin’, Sweet Emotion, Love In An Elevator, and Dude (Looks Like A Lady) to name but four, I find it frustrating that were you again to accost a member of the general public and ask them to name an Aerosmith song it would almost certainly be I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing from the 1998 movie Armageddon. Either that or Crazy, Cryin’ or Amazing, their trio of interchangeable ballads from 1993's disappointing Get A Grip album (an adjective that can, sadly, be applied to all of Aerosmith's releases since 1989's Pump). The same is true of Faith No More’s Easy, Extreme’s More Than Words, Mr Big’s To Be With You, Wind of Change by the Scorpions and KISS with God Gave Rock And Roll To You II, but the most tragic example of a band that really should be ed for their more hard rocking songs is Guns’n’Roses, who suffered the indignation of their biggest UK chart hit being an atrocious cover of

Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door rather than one of their own classics. The most notorious victim of association by power ballad, though, is Bryan Adams. Thanks to his contribution to the 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves soundtrack the rest of his body of work past, present and future has been rendered pretty much irrelevant. Holding the top spot in the UK singles chart for a record (and spirit) breaking sixteen consecutive weeks, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You became the daddy of all power ballads. It also effectively meant that while the name Bryan Adams would previously have been associated with far superior tunes like Run To You, Summer Of 69 or even the much better ballad Heaven, it now began and ended with that one tune, and further proved the theory that a power ballad could boost sales of an album by helping Waking Up The Neighbours to shift a not too shabby fifteen million copies worldwide. While we’re on the subject of artists being unfairly linked to a power ballad at the expense of their larger rock legacy it would be remiss of me not to mention the strange case of the singer of an extremely influential hard rocking Australian band and a soap opera wedding. The power ballad in question featured in the November 8th 1988 episode of Aussie soap Neighbours (which I and my friends had managed to become hooked on since it debuted in the UK two years previously) in which tomboy mechanic Charlene Mitchell, played by Kylie Minogue (who launched a music career the same year and has been lucky, lucky, lucky enough to have enjoyed a wealth of pop success ever since), married her on screen boyfriend Scott Robinson, played by her off screen boyfriend Jason Donovan (who also launched a music career the same year but who, sadly, was not so lucky, but did eventually find his calling in musical theatre). As Scott and Charlene gazed lovingly at each other in front of an Erinsborough altar, the nation dabbed handkerchiefs to its eyes to the strains of Suddenly, a simple but dramatic song that was suddenly all over the radio, having become the country’s favourite song overnight. It was sung by a guy called Angry Anderson, and this being pre-MTV all we had to go on regarding his identity was his voice, which conjured up images of an immaculately coiffured, chisel jawed balladeer like Peter Cetera, and his name,

which suggested that he was not a happy chappy. In actual fact Anderson was the singer with Rose Tattoo, an Aussie band who, though their international profile was nowhere near that of fellow countrymen AC/DC, had been one of Australia’s most successful hard rocking bands, epitomising the sex, booze and rock and roll lifestyle and providing the blueprint for bands like Mötley Crüe and Guns’n’Roses to follow. The latter were sufficiently influenced as to regularly cover their Nice Boys (Don't Play Rock And Roll) in their sets, eventually including it on their Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide EP. Inevitably the song shot into the UK top ten, entering and peaking at number three, and it was something of a shock to say the least when Anderson was duly summoned to appear on Top Of The Pops the following Thursday and the nation was confronted with a bald, tattooed short arse (Anderson clocked in at a compact five feet, one-and-a-half inches) belting out Suddenly with enough gusto to make the veins in his neck and head stand out, his eyes shut tight as if it was the last song he’d ever sing, which in of the UK singles chart it was as he too was struck down by the curse of the power ballad (which no doubt gave him something else to be irked about). Before we return to 1990 and the final act of this book, let’s jump in the DeLorean and go back to 1986 and the infamous backmasking prosecutions that almost ended the careers of Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne.

Chapter 46

* Efilnikufesin*

Back in 1969 when Charles Manson effectively accused the Beatles of being the catalyst for the infamous Tate / La Bianca murders he not only introduced the world to the concept of bands being held able for the actions of their fans, he also highlighted the practice of backmasking (backward masking – the process whereby a sound or message is recorded backwards onto a track that is meant to be played forwards) into the media spotlight. Though there was never any evidence to suggest that Manson's claims of hidden messages on the fab four's White Album had any substance, the Beatles were responsible for one of the earliest examples of backmasking on their track Rain from 1966 Revolver album when they included reversed sections of the vocal melody over the song's fade out. While their sonic experimentations were harmless enough, the full implications of backmasking came sharply into focus on the evening on October 24th 1984 when nineteen year old John McCollum put a .22-calibre handgun in his mouth while listening to Ozzy Osbourne on his headphones and pulled the trigger, killing himself. McCollum's parents subsequently filed a lawsuit against Ozzy and CBS, his record label at the time, claiming that the lyrics, tones and pounding rhythm of his music had encouraged their son's self-destructive behaviour. Their case focused on the song Suicide Solution from his debut Blizzard Of Oz album, claiming that the lyrics advocated suicide, particularly a few lines in the instrumental break that weren't included on the lyric sheet that they believed to be “Why try, why try / Get the gun and try it / Shoot, shoot, shoot”. The trial began on January 13th 1986 and though the Institute for Bio-Acoustics Research (IBAR) analysed the song and found what they described as subliminal message-like noises on the track at approximately the 2:19 mark, Ozzy denied claims that this was deliberate, an important distinction as the existence of a deliberately placed message might have given some credence to the prosecution's case, but taken on lyrical content alone, the lyrics were protected

by the First Amendment. The judge subsequently dismissed the case stating that there was no connection between the song and McCollum's suicide, and that nothing in the song could be interpreted as a literal command to perform an immediate suicidal act, quantifying his summation with the observation that “Reasonable persons understand musical lyrics and poetic conventions as the figurative expressions which they are.” Ironically, the song itself is far from being a sonnet for self-destruction, but is in fact a warning against the evils of alcohol written with the 'solution' of the title referring to the chemical term – in other words, an alcoholic beverage – rather than the answer to a problem. Ozzy later responded to the unsuccessful lawsuit in his own inimitable way by deliberately including a backmasked message on the song Bloodbath In Paradise from his 1988 No Rest For The Wicked album. Parodying an infamous line from The Exorcist, when played backwards Osbourne can be heard saying 'Your mother sells whelks in Hull.' The Prince of Darkness wasn't the only artist to have a dig at his former critics, however, as was discovered by BBC Engineer Simon Clifford in the fade out on the Beatles song Free As A Bird that was included on 1995’s The Beatles Anthology release. When it was revealed that the phrase 'Turned out nice again' had been backmasked onto the track, Paul McCartney revealed that they had included it “For a laugh, to give all those Beatles nuts something to do.” Though Ozzy's was the first case involving backmasking to be thrust into the media spotlight, the issue was to resurface four years later in 1990 when Judas Priest were handed a writ at a concert they were playing on their Ram It Down tour in Reno, Nevada informing them that they were being sued for $6.2 million in connection with the deaths of two fans - eighteen year old Raymond Belknap and twenty year old James Vance - who had allegedly shot themselves after listening to their Stained Class album. Two days before Christmas 1985 the two youths had allegedly been drinking beer and smoking marijuana in Belknaps's bedroom, and had entered into a suicide pact after listening to Stained Class. They smashed up the bedroom and went to the courtyard of the Community First Church of God where Belknap sat

on a small carousel, held a 12-gauge shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger, killing himself instantly. Vance had been looking the other way but turned in time to see the back of Belknap's head exploding. Believing that he would be blamed for his friend's death, Vance grabbed the shotgun, placed it under his own jaw and pulled the trigger but, unlike Belknap, failed to brace the weapon correctly and blew the lower half of his face off. Plastic surgeons attempted to restore what was left of his face but the damage was so severe that they were only able to restore his ability to eat and breathe. Four months after the horrific incident Vance wrote a letter to Belknap's mother, Aunetta Roberson, in which he said 'I believe that alcohol and heavy metal music, such as Judas Priest, led us or even 'mesmerised' us into believing that the answer to life was death'. Armed with such apparently damning evidence, Roberson took the letter to lawyers, a complaint was entered and a subpoena was subsequently served to Judas Priest in Reno four years later, the delay being due to the writ having to be served in the state where the allegations are made, in this case Nevada. A year before Priest were served, Reno Judge Jerry Whitehead had decided that although, as in Ozzy's case, the First Amendment protected their lyrics under the freedom of speech guarantee, this did not apply to the alleged subliminal messages being cited by the prosecution – 'non-decipherable sounds below the conscious threshold of awareness', the most famous being the words 'Do it, do it, do it,' which could only be consciously heard when the record was played backwards - and that this entitled them to bring their case, and Judas Priest, to the courtroom. Citing the backmasked 'Do it' refrain in the song Better By You, Better By Me and three other backwards messages – 'Try suicide', 'Suicide is in' and 'Fuck the Lord, fuck all of you' – the prosecution believed their case was watertight, and when Halford itted that the band had actually recorded backwards before, on the song Love Bites from 1984's Defenders Of The Faith album, the singer revealed after the trial that 'you could hear the prosecution opening the champagne when I said that.' To their dismay, however, it was revealed that the message hidden on Love Bites

was in fact merely the song's chorus played backwards, and when Halford, who the band had chosen to represent them on the stand because he'd written the lyrics and was therefore the one being most directly accused, played the Stained Class album backwards in the courtroom, suggesting to the Judge that what he was hearing on the song Exciter was 'I asked her for a peppermint. I asked her to get me one', Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton reported that 'When the Judge heard it, his eyes lit up. It was as if he realised how ridiculous the whole thing was.' To the band's relief Judge Whitehead dismissed the case, stating that the prosecution had 'failed to prove that the defendants intentionally placed subliminal messages on the album' but it had cost the band six weeks of their life and a quarter of a million dollars to clear their name. After the trial the band's manager Bill Curbishley declared that 'The only subliminal message I would put on an album would be “buy seven copies'', a sentiment echoed by Rob Halford who also added “Stained Class was made twelve years ago and has been listened to by millions of fans, so if you're talking about percentages and subliminal messages having the ability to kill, then I would think there'd be a lot of dead Judas Priest fans.” Ironically, had Tipper Gore thought to play Prince's Darling Nikki backwards, she would have discovered that the sexually charged song that gave birth to the infamous PMRC actually contained the rather positive backmasked message 'Hello, how are you? Fine, fine. 'Cause I know that the Lord is coming soon. Coming, coming soon.' Back in Nottingham and 1990, I was about to leave my teens and was looking forward to spending my twentieth birthday in the company of a sextet of cockney Faces wannabes.

Chapter 47

* Nothin’ But A Good Time*

Since our debut gig some six months previously Kicking Up Dust had picked up a small amount of favourable recognition around Nottingham, and I felt a swell of pride in my skinny chest on the infrequent occasions down at Rock City or Zhivago’s when I'd mention to someone that I was in Kicking Up Dust and they'd heard of us (or even better that they'd heard we were pretty good). On a personal level, the fact that my two bassist friends – Who Cares Anyway’s Riggy and Phill Danks, who played with local groups Ground Zero and The Dum Dums and could give Geddy Lee and Flea a good run for their money who were both miles ahead of me in style and talent, thought I was pretty good was a huge ego boost. Even Bob, who was notoriously cagey with his praise had told me several times that he rated me and put his money where his mouth was by ing me in Reach, a funk/pop band that I ed a few months after Kicking Up Dust kicked the bucket. In the spring of 1990, however, Kicking Up Dust was still very much a going concern and we continued rehearsing in the dark depths of Subway studios every Sunday morning and playing regular gigs at the Old Angel, the Newshouse, and Fagins. In the world of signed rock and roll bands I spent my 20th birthday at the Royal Concert Hall in the company of London sextet The Quireboys who had gatecrashed the scene with their single 7 O'Clock, swigging from bottles of cheap wine and declaring that it was time for a party. Given that we liked a beer or two ourselves it seemed rude not to accept their kind offer. As April gave way to May and I continued to feed my ever increasing appetite for rock and roll at Zhivago’s on a Monday and Rock City on a Friday, a third regular rock night appeared on the scene to further tempt my partners in crime and I to part with our money, and hours available for sleep, in a venue that was an old, if brief, favourite.

The last time I had descended into the bowels of the Palais I had only just embarked on my journey into the world of loud guitars, long hair and dingy rock clubs. Five years (and a quarter of my lifetime) later the Palais had reinvented itself as Central Park and in an effort to capitalise on the current popularity of Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Guns’n’Roses et al had introduced not only a Saturday night rock club but also a lunchtime session from noon until four. The pool tables were gone and the walls had been given a fresh lick of paint but the old revolving dance floor that hadn’t moved in years was still there, and as the summer began to heat up Steve, Stapes and I often found ourselves in there sinking copious amounts of Newcastle Brown, a bargain at just one pound a bottle, and hiding from the sun while further punishing our eardrums and livers. In the early days of Central Park we would all head off home for a couple of hours between the lunchtime and evening sessions to give our livers, and wallets, a brief respite but once we discovered that the Tap’n’Tumbler served the most incredible club sandwiches that was it. From then on we would spend four hours in the depths of Central Park and then head over to the Tap for a beer and a BLT before returning to Central Park until they threw us out at two in the morning (the legal closing time back then). One particularly sunny Saturday we found our trek to the Tap interrupted as we were drawn towards the Old Market Square for some reason, where the lethal combination of several Newkie Browns and the sun's relentless rays suddenly made pursuing each other around the Square before being unceremoniously dumped into the cool water of the two fountains seem like the greatest idea in the history of great ideas. It's carefree, youthful moments like these that I look back upon now with the fondest memories. I was on the cusp of embracing the responsibilities that come with leaving your teens and moving into your twenties but for the summer of 1990 I was still in that magical place that you never appreciate until you look back on it from a distance, where you feel invincible and that your youth will go on forever. In between our increasingly frequent drinking sessions, Sundays were still rehearsal days, with the four hours we spent in the hot, sweaty basement of Subway Studios doubling up as my only real form of exercise as the Zhivago’s,

Rock City, Central Park, rehearsal (second verse, same as the first) cycle continued through the summer, during which time I, amazingly, actually got quite fit. In March Sean and I travelled the 50 miles south to Birmingham to see Chicago quartet Enuff Z’Nuff on their first UK tour at the legendary Edwards Number Eight. Enuff Z’Nuff had come to my attention when I saw the video for their debut single New Thing on a late night edition of the Headbangers Ball. Though the visuals were so dayglo bright that you needed sunglasses to watch them, it was clear that guitarist and singer Donny Vie and bassist Chip Z’Nuff's mentors were not so much Perry and Tyler, or even Jagger and Richards, as they were Lennon and McCartney. Flying in the face of convention from the get go, they opened with a cover of Stevie Wonder’s Superstition and further confirmed their musical roots with a powerful cover of The Beatles' Dear Prudence later in the set. Their own songs came across superbly too, and I was mesmerised by Chip Z'Nuff's mastery of not only the four string bass, but the eight and, on a couple of songs, twelve string bass as well. Two months later I kicked off an intensive fortnight of gigs watching Little Angels deliver an awesome set at their well-deserved first headlining slot at Rock City on May 22nd before heading up the M1 to Leeds forty-eight hours later to experience a guitar legend in the flesh with my old friend Barlow. Cited as an influence by seven-string supremo Steve Vai and Metallica's Kirk Hammett, who was a pupil for a while, Barlow considered Joe Satriani to be the greatest guitarist on the face of the planet at that moment in time, which given that Barlow himself was extremely tasty on the axe I took to be high praise indeed. I couldn’t argue, but standing in the high ceilinged yet intimate confines of the Leeds Coliseum it became obvious that the fellow he had brought along to play bass for him was no slouch himself. 'Who's the guy on the bass?' I shouted in Barlow's ear as he stood there drooling over Satch.

'Stu Hamm,' he replied, before adding, somewhat unnecessarily, 'He's pretty tasty.' I wholeheartedly agreed and stood there drooling myself as he performed a solo involving lighting fast finger tapping. The next morning, after too many beers the local rock club and too little sleep on Barlow's sofa, I hauled myself into the driver's seat of my car and raced down the M1 to get to work for nine o'clock, making it just in time to pretend to assemble s all day before picking up Barlow, who had risen at his own leisurely pace and meandered down the M1 to his mum's house, his friend Bug and our mutual friend John Mann and heading once more down to Birmingham for a second helping of Metallica at the NEC. Warrior Soul were the this time and while I have a vague recollection of them being pretty good Metallica were once again awesome. Having taken their Damaged Justice tour around the world since I'd last seen them they were now a ferociously tight unit and it appeared that Jason Newsted had been well and truly accepted in to the Metallica fold when James Hetfield stood aside to let him sing a verse of Whiplash. (Of course hindsight shows just how wrong I was about this, as became apparent in 2004's Some Kind Of Monster, the warts and all documentary that showed Metallica in a fascinating but distinctly unflattering light.) Two days later Steve, his younger brother Paul, sister Sue and myself were in the sleepy market town of Peterborough, standing in the middle of the Cressett Centre, for the second of three Little Angels shows that I would end up seeing in a little under two weeks, as they were one of four bands I had tickets booked for in as many days the following week up in Yorkshire. Before then, however, I had another two shows to attend in Nottingham on consecutive nights making it a hat trick of gigs in a three day period. Tigertailz called at Rock City, playing a slick, enjoyable show to promote their recently released second album Bezerk, and twenty-four hours later I was back in the Royal Concert Hall with my friend Helen for my third live W.A.S.P. experience. I hadn't picked up their latest album, The Headless Children, having lost interest in Blackie Lawless and crew in favour of newer bands like Vain, Skid Row and the Dan Reed Network, but once W.A.S.P. hit the stage it was

immediately obvious from the stripped down set that Blackie had left behind both the glitzy trappings of the Electric Circus tour and the Grand Guignol raw meat and torture racks. Instead Lawless seemed to have eschewed sparkling codpieces and bare arse cheeks in favour of a slightly more conservative image, for him anyway. We did get the classics, though and he couldn't resist a little controversy when drummer Frankie Banali's kit rose up during the song Thunderhead to reveal a video screen on which we were treated to explicit footage of junkies shooting up. Saturday morning finally rolled around and I jumped in my car (adrenaline countering the fatigue from yet another night of Rock City excess) and sped up the M1 to Bradford to spend the best part of a week with Barlow in his student digs. After a couple of days of drinking, playing guitar, drinking and the occasional alcoholic beverage, Tuesday June 5th rolled around, bringing with it the first of my four consecutive gigs and another venue to add to my 'been there, done that' list as we ed through the door of Bradford's Queens Hall, a small, dark, sweaty establishment about half the size of Rock City. Having seen them at Rock City just the previous Monday I was expecting another enjoyable show from Tigertailz and they didn't disappoint, but the following night brought a complete change of pace. Hailing from Metallica country, Bay Area thrash quintet Death Angel were loud and brutal, and gave me the first chance in a while to indulge in some stage diving. Little Angels were lined up for the following evening, my third night with the Scarborough rockers in a forthnight, but before that Dave and I took a trip to Keighley, a small town just north of Bradford to visit a music shop that he often frequented. I hadn't intended to buy anything I couldn't eat, drink or wear while on my rock and roll holiday in the North but my eyes alighted on a state of the art wireless transmitter and I found myself drawn helplessly towards it. ing how very cool Def Leppard bassist Rick Savage had looked prowling the stage with one on their Hysteria tour, I decided to give it a road test in the shop with the help of a jet-black five string Steinberg copy. I'd never played a five string before, and had only ever seen the likes of Jason Newsted

play one on stage, so this was a very different experience. I slung the glossy black Hohner over my shoulder, plugged in the transmitter and began to wander around the shop, peeling out a few bass lines. To say I felt liberated was an understatement, and so taking a leaf out of Wayne Campbell's book I decided that, oh yes, I had to have the transmitter. At a few quid shy of two hundred notes, a lot of money back in 1990, I bit the bullet and told the shop assistant that I'd take it. That should have been it really, and was two hundred pounds more than I'd planned to spend in the first place, but the lure of the beautiful, shiny, black Hohner (and the fact that I hadn’t yet hit the limit on my credit card) made my mouth speak the words, 'I'll take the bass as well, please.' Though it was very much an impulse purchase, I got a lot of use out of the transmitter until I finally sold it to Riggy in 1994. Back in Bradford, Little Angels once again played a flawless set, and after three nights of loud music and too much beer I bid Barlow farewell the following morning, Friday June 8th, and loaded up the car with my new toys for the brief drive across the M62 to Leeds. I was going to be crashing at my friend Joanne Borrill's house and rounding off my quartet of gigs by seeing the Red Hot Chili Peppers on their Positive Mental Octopus Tour. After dropping my stuff off at Joanne's we walked up to Leeds University where the gig was to be held and ed the considerable crowd outside the venue. 'Have you got my ticket?' I asked Joanne. For a brief moment my heart stopped as her eyes widened and a look of horror crept across her face. 'I thought you were getting it,' she said, looking more than a little mortified. 'Err, no,' I replied, a feeling of dread rising as it began to dawn on me that I might not be seeing the Chilis after all. 'Oh shit,' Joanne replied, accurately and succinctly summing up the situation before her friend came to the rescue with a stunningly simple and cunning plan.

'Why don't you just get one from a tout?' she asked, pointing at a shady looking man standing a few yards away from us. As luck would have it he had several which he was only too happy to get rid of at face value and we manoeuvred our way to within about ten feet of the stage, standing behind a large man wearing a very distinctive Gorilla Biscuits shirt. Though I didn't realise it at the time, I was reliving my Niagara Falls near miss of the previous year, as after talking to Bartram a couple of weeks later we realised that not only had we been at the same gig, we had been standing mere feet away from each other as we both ed the man in the Gorilla Biscuits shirt. The Chilis played an awesome set that included exactly one track that I knew, their cover of Steve Winwood’s Higher Ground, but my lack of familiarity with their material didn't matter a jot. I was transfixed both by vocalist Anthony Kiedis's James Brown-cum-Spider-man exploits as he shimmied across the stage (and at one point up the lighting rig) creating enough kinetic energy to power a small town, and by Flea's masterful yet effortless bass playing. At the other end of the kinetic spectrum guitarist John Frusciante, who was a year younger than me, stood rooted to the spot throughout the gig, a look of serenity on his face as he teased wonderful sounds from his six strings. Bringing up the rear, powerhouse drummer Chad Smith grinned and thrashed his way through the set, looking like a not too distant relative of Animal from the Muppets. The following morning I hauled myself out of bed, loaded the car up once more, and pointed it in the direction of Nottingham and home, eager to give my new toys a workout before debuting them with Kicking Up Dust at our rehearsal the next day. We had a few gigs lined up and while I was fired up again after my recent gigging experiences, and particularly inspired by John Frusciante who was a bone fide rock star at the same age that I had formed Kicking Up Dust, I was blissfully unaware that the band was preparing to kick the bucket.

Chapter 48

* Let Me Go To The Show*

After my recent three week glut of gigs I was feeling the strain of too many late nights, too many pints and not enough sleep. It was all worth it, though, as the inferno of enthusiasm that seeing all these bands live had ignited in me meant that I couldn't wait to get back into the sweaty rehearsal rooms at Subway Studios and begin driving Kicking Up Dust once more towards global domination. However, the reality was that we had been taking more and more breaks from our regular Sunday morning sessions and though Joe, Bob, Sean and I were still as friendly with each other as we'd ever been, I was reluctantly coming to the realisation that all was not well with Kicking Up Dust. Several times over the last few months Joe had failed to turn up for rehearsals, claiming to be feeling ill despite having been well enough to paint the town red with us the previous night, and Kicking Up Dust didn't play many gigs during the summer of 1990, so instead of rehearsing or writing songs I spent a lot of time hanging out with Sean who in his new role as manager of the Nottingham Virgin Megastore introduced me to a variety of new bands. Grunge was still a year away from delivering the death blow to rock music as I had known it for the last six years but even so the landscape of rock music was beginning to change. The current crop of new bands were now one musical generation removed from those that had ridden in on the coat tails of Guns'n'Roses and Mötley Crüe and rather than sounding like carbon copies of their mentors were instead bringing something to the party that was, if not exactly new, at least imaginatively recycled. Bands like Company Of Wolves, Salty Dog, Living Colour and, most notably as far as Sean and I were concerned, Love/Hate were coming out with albums that sounded sufficiently different to the previous musical generation. Hailing from the same Los Angeles streets as Guns, Love/Hate’s debut album Blackout In The Red Room delivered a sonic slap across the face as sharp and exhilarating as Appetite For Destruction had four years earlier, and they had

earned a reputation as a fearsomely impressive live band. Thankfully they were also a band that believed heavily in the touring ethic and graced the Rock City stage several times in the space of a couple of years, the first visit occurring on August 8th 1990 when Sean and I, having both fallen hopelessly in love with Blackout In The Red Room, made our way to the Talbot Street venue along with seemingly every other rock fan in the vicinity to check them out. When the lights went down we were assaulted by a maelstrom of strobe lighting and double-bass drumming into which the solitary, lanky figure of bassist Skid Rose emerged from the wings clutching a six foot crucifix made entirely of Budweiser cans and began charging around the stage. For the next hour and change Love/Hate showed exactly why they had earned their well-deserved reputation as a kick ass live band and I went home tired, bruised and sweaty, and wanting more of the same. Exactly a week later, I was back at Rock City to see a band that I’d been looking forward to experiencing live for a long, long time. Criss-crossing America with their pyrotechnic-laden show Poison had packed the country’s arenas countless times and in doing so had become one of the more prominent and successful bands on the scene. Unsurprisingly Poison’s immense popularity didn’t go unnoticed over here in the UK and the band was invited to play the Monsters Of Rock festival as it returned to Castle Donington after the previous year's hiatus following the tragic events of 1988. However, despite the fact that I was desperate to see Poison at what was to be their debut live performance not only in the UK but in Europe as a whole, I’d already seen three fifths of the bill live recently (Aerosmith, Thunder and Quireboys - I wasn’t bothered about seeing Whitesnake at this point) and couldn't justify shelling out for a ticket just to see one band. Besides, nobody else was particularly bothered about going this year either and I wasn't about to stand in a muddy field in Leicestershire on my own all day. As the day of the festival grew ever closer I tried not to think too much about the fact that given Poison's apparent reluctance to play these shores I might be missing out on the only chance I would ever have to see them, but luck was on

my side when a week or so before the big day Kerrang! announced that Pennsylvania's finest would be playing a not so secret warm up show at Rock City on August 15th, three days before the festival. Thanks to Poison being one of the hottest rock bands on the planet at the time the gig sold out in record time for Rock City, but I managed to snag a couple of tickets and the gig itself was one of those 'I was there' occasions. for the night came from Thunder who, though they'd impressed me opening for Aerosmith in the cavernous NEC the previous year, were clearly more at home in the sweaty confines of Rock City where they completely blew the crowd away. Singer Danny Bowes was a marvel, working the crowd like the hyperactive bastard son of David Coverdale and clearly in his element, and as they left the stage I thought to myself that Poison were going to have to be pretty fucking awesome if they were hoping to top Thunder's performance. As it happened, they were, strutting onto the stage in jeans and t-shirts and with minimal make up (though guitarist CC Deville and drummer Rikki Rocket were still wearing ozone layer bothering amounts of hair lacquer between them), and for the next ninety minutes completely owning the building and everybody in it. Singer Bret Michaels worked the crowd like a true professional, and the rest of the band were as tight as the proverbial duck's derrière. Another band I’d have done pretty much anything to see at the time were the Dan Reed Network so when they announced their return to the UK, including a headlining date at Rock City on Monday August 27th it was a no brainer that I’d be there. As they had when I’d seen them at the start of the year the Network once again put on an entertaining and exhilarating show. With no need for an elaborate stage set or pyrotechnics they simply let the music do the talking and I’d be surprised if there was a single person in the audience who didn’t go away feeling ten feet tall. Four weeks later I was back at Rock City again to see another of the new breed of bands who were launching an offensive from across the pond. Slaughter had risen from the ashes of the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, and though their single Up All Night had become a dance floor favourite at Rock City and

Central Park, their sound and image weren’t a million miles away from the Bulletboys, who after producing a pretty decent debut album had been responsible for the most disappointing gig I’d ever seen almost exactly a year earlier, so I felt a slight murmur of trepidation as I walked into Rock City on the night of Tuesday September 25th. It turned out I needn’t have worried as Slaughter conclusively proved why they had become the number one draw in the US, tearing up the Rock City stage as if they were playing Madison Square Garden and firmly banished my bad memories of Marq Torien and his blank firing band mates. (To be fair, though, I saw Bulletboys twice in 2019 and they were superb both times, so maybe they were just having a bad day back in 1990.) As autumn crept in I finally got the chance to see Living Colour when they hit Rock City on Wednesday October 10th. I wasn’t the only one excited about their debut there, though, as when I arrived a little after eighty-thirty I opened the double doors at the back of the main hall to find bodies packed into the venue like sardines. The band were already on stage, having started earlier in order to accommodate their long set, and so unable to get any further forward I watched the gig from as far back as was physically possible without actually standing on the stairs. The density of the crowd didn’t prevent people from dancing, though, which they did with wild abandon despite the severe lack of personal space and breathing room. Three years later I saw Living Colour at Rock City again but having learned my lesson I turned up much earlier and watched them from deep in the pit, leaving the building with aching muscles and drenched in sweat, but very happy indeed. Two weeks later, on October 24th, I got to see another band I’d wanted to see for years but this time I was disappointed. Ever since my first few visits to Zhivago’s when I’d seen Errol in his very cool Ratt baseball shirt I’d been desperate to see the LA quintet live. I’d watched the videos of their spectacular US stage shows over the past five years and had picked up all of their albums (which I could play note perfect on my bass) but in the last year or so there had been something of a shift in the perception, and reception, of rock music, both in the US and over here. Had they come over to the UK a couple of years earlier I would have expected Ratt to be

playing somewhere like the NEC, perhaps with a couple of other LA bands ing them, but instead they were struggling to sell out Rock City. There was a part of me that didn’t mind, of course, as I’d take the intimate confines of Rock City over the cavernous impersonal space of the NEC any day, but another part of me didn’t want to see the popularity of my heroes, and my beloved rock music as a whole, wane and die. I really, really wanted to be as blown away by Ratt as I had been by Poison on the same stage a few months earlier but while there was nothing technically wrong with the gig - they had played all the songs I wanted to hear and the sound was good - for the most part the band seemed to be merely going through the motions. In retrospect, the deflated feeling I had as I left Rock City that night may have been the beginning of the cooling of my great love affair with rock music. Well, for a few years anyway. I think this impacted how I felt about Kicking Up Dust, as with a couple of dates booked in the run up to Christmas it should have been a time for fun and celebration, but instead the whole thing was slowly but surely coming apart at the seams, and though I would end the year in the company of the band that had kicked off my love of live rock bands, this particular phase of my life was drawing to a close.

Chapter 49

* Fade To Black*

Though my gig going diary had been busier than Gene Simmons' Polaroid camera, rehearsals with Kicking Up Dust had become increasingly infrequent and just as your gut knows when a relationship is beginning to go belly up, the feeling that my band was on its last legs was getting stronger by the week. The fact that we had a couple of gigs booked seemed to cut no ice with Joe, who had been turning up at Subway Studios less and less, and though there was a part of me that didn't want to give up on the band, if I was being honest with myself I knew that I was beginning to lose interest as well. On the plus side, though, I was looking forward to finally playing live with my new wireless transmitter and my five string Hohner. As we sound checked I decided that I wanted to see just how much range my new transmitter had and suggested to Steve that we take a wander as we ran through a few of our songs. With Steve handling door duties we made our way down the narrow staircase to the main bar and then along a corridor towards the small area at the back of the pub that was ambitiously described as a beer garden. It was while we were standing outside in the chilly November air listening to the rest of the band through the open windows upstairs that I noticed the fire escape. Steve followed my gaze and grinned as we gave each other one of our famous looks that signified that oh yes, we really were going to do that. Still playing the song in time with the rest of the band, who by this point must have been wondering where the hell we'd gone, I began to walk up the grey steel steps with Steve close behind me. We reached the top and walked across the flat roof towards the door that would lead us back into the function room. Through the window we could see Bob, Joe and Sean giving it some, their backs to us, and Steve went to open the door so that I could quietly slip back in and suddenly appear behind them.

He pushed the handle down and pulled on the door to gently ease it open. Nothing happened. The door was locked. At that moment Sean turned around, spotted us through the window and began laughing so hard that he had to stop playing. Wondering what Sean was cracking up at the other two turned around, their faces breaking into broad grins as they saw us standing outside in the cold. Sean let Steve and I back in, all of us now laughing so much that tears were running down our faces as, unknown to us, we shared our last great Kicking Up Dust moment. The gig itself was a bit of an anti-climax, but the combination of a large turnout and that we got to play our rocked up version of The Beatles' Paperback Writer for an encore meant that what would turn out to be our penultimate gig ended on a high note. After the gig Joe disappeared virtually straight away, such is the freedom of the singer without amps or drum kits to pack away and transport back home, so Sean, Bob and I shared what would be our penultimate drink as three quarters of Kicking Up Dust. Blissfully unaware that it would end in disappointment, we turned up at Fagins on a snowy evening in early December with a car full of gear and decided to go in for a quick beer before we unloaded. Bob went to the bar to get a round in while I sought out the manager. 'Hi,' I said, which was as good a conversation opener as any, 'We're playing here tonight. Any chance we can get upstairs and set up?' The manager looked at me as though I had just ridden in on Ozzy's crazy train. 'Kicking Up Dust?' I ventured, aware that we weren't exactly household names but given that we'd played there several times before to good sized crowds that hopefully it would at least trigger some recognition, however small. 'Got nobody booked in tonight,' he said, 'and in any case I can't find the key for the upstairs room.' Perfect, I thought, my enthusiasm draining from me as Bob walked over and

handed me a pint before retiring to the corner where the rest of the band were sitting. The manager and I stood there looking at one another for a few long moments, neither of us quite sure who should be breaking our Mexican stand-off, before he offered, 'You can set up downstairs if you like, over there.' He pointed to a corner behind me that made the Old Angel's postage stamp sized stage look like the Hammersmith Odeon and I forced a smile. It was either that or scream. Feeling even more dejected than before I walked over to the rest of the band to bring them up to speed on the beautiful fuck up that was unfolding, though from the look on their faces they had already twigged that everything was not even close to being tickety boo. 'Well, we're here, our gear is here, and we've nothing better to do,' I reasoned, wanting to salvage at least something from the evening, 'So we might as well play.' Bob, Joe and Sean all nodded slowly, pulling on our reserves of band pride one last time despite our broken spirits, knowing that this thing we had shared for the best part of two years was about to die. We gave it our all one final time and put in a decent performance which entertained the good people who had turned up to see us, but as we packed up our gear at the end of the night we all knew that it was over. Nothing was ever said to confirm that the band had indeed shrugged off its mortal coil but something compelled me to ring up and cancel our regular booking at Subway the next day, and though we continued to hang out and enjoy each other’s company the band rarely came up in conversation again. Bob and I would go on to be in other bands, both together and separately, and remain great friends to this day, but for me Kicking Up Dust had been a valuable learning experience, not only in of the band but in my own personal transition from boy to man. As 1990 drew to a close and I mourned the loss of Kicking Up Dust there was one last event on the gig calendar that would ensure that the year went out on a

high note, and it seemed fitting that the first band I would be seeing after my own band's demise would be the band that had inspired me to be in one in the first place. Thus, on December 14th my brother John, my friend Helen and I found ourselves driving down the A42 through sleet and snow towards the Birmingham NEC for the first of Maiden's two nights there. Thanks to the atrocious weather Mum had earned her matriarchal wings by insisting that we take a Thermos flask full of hot tea (bless her) which, while not exactly rock and roll, was to come in very handy on the way home, though not in the way she had intended. After reaching Birmingham safely and trudging through the inch thick snow from the car park to the arena, we hit the bar and briefly checked out the merchandise. Though what was on offer was up to the usual high Maiden standards, I had lost my craving to buy rock t-shirts for the sake of it and ed on the opportunity to part with my cash. Anthrax were ing and were as entertaining as ever, filling the arena with their infectious riffs and boundless energy, and despite playing a hefty selection of tunes from their latest album which were largely lost on me as I hadn't even heard it, Maiden proved that they were still an awesome live band as they belted out classics like Run To The Hills, The Trooper and the inevitable and evergreen Iron Maiden. It says a lot, though, that while I was borderline obsessive just four years previously about Eddie's appearances, I can’t for the life of me anything about them from this gig, and as the house lights came up and Helen, John and I ventured back into the near blizzard conditions outside it dawned on me that this gig was effectively closing one chapter of my life and opening up another, as yet unknown and unwritten. At the time I felt sad that I was effectively shedding part of my past like an snake's skin, though I would be taking with me some wonderful memories, friends and experiences of growing up in what has become my classic age of rock music, but now, three decades after that Maiden gig at the NEC, I've long since come full circle and I'm as big a fan of rock music now as I was back then, if not bigger.

The people I shared my experiences with in my younger days have all gone their various ways, but thanks to the wonders of social media I’m still in touch with pretty much all of those who appeared in this tale. In their own small way, they all made me what I am today, and I like that person, and I thank them all for that. In this age of reunions and reformations some of the bands that I knew from the heady Nottingham scene have occasionally reformed. Deuce got back together for a wonderful Bank Holiday reunion that their singer Ian arranged in 2006, at which I both DJ'd and drank far too much beer, and Who Cares Anyway? celebrated their thirtieth Anniversary gig at Bunkers Hill in 2016 which was a lot of fun, and at which I also drank too much beer. Some, sadly, are no longer with us and are very much missed for both their friendships and their inspiration. I raise a glass to you Tom, to you Jason, and to you Phil and look forward to rocking with you at some point in the future. As for me, I don't regret a single minute of the incredible experience I had growing up with the likes of KISS, W.A.S.P., Maiden, Mötley, Guns, Ratt, Posion and the many other bands who not only provided the soundtrack to the latter half of my teens but inspired me to be creative, to form a band and most importantly to never give up on my dreams. As Bon, Malcolm and Angus so eloquently and accurately put it, it's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll, and even though I didn't get anywhere near the top, not by a long shot, by Jovi I had fun rocking and rolling, and still do to this day.

Chapter 50

* Tonight's Came From...*

First and foremost, much love goes to Dave Goldsworth and Steve Wright, who for the best part of nearly four decades have been the best, most loyal friends a man could ever hope for. We've shared good times and bad (though thankfully many more of the former than the latter) and will continue to do so until we're all packed off to the great rock club in the sky. Love and thanks go to Mum, God rest her soul, and Dad who never once made me feel small for my love of big hair and loud guitars, no matter how tight my tros got. They were both always there for me way, way above the call of parental duty and for that I can't even begin to express my gratitude. I raise a glass of Uncle Jack to Phil Boxall, to Jason Huckerby, and to Tom Warren, all of whom played a large part in my life but who are sadly not here to read about just how important they were. Thanks go to Jason Stapleton, who inadvertently kicked this whole tale off and with whom I shared many a gig, to Helen Robinson who proved that platonic relationships can work, and who I saw a good few bands with, and to Bob Carr (the big brother I never had), Joe Duffy and Sean Homer, who rocked hard with me in Kicking Up Dust. A big Well Thank You to Chris Pidgeon, Jon Clarke, Donald Bryson, Ian Spencer, and Brian Goodall, who shared my first 'proper' gig experience on the stage of Arnold Hill Comprehensive. Thanks to Dave Webster for a memorable American adventure, and so many other things. You’re my brother from another mother, my friend. A table full of ten pence pints to Jason Evans for introducing me to the Nottingham rock club scene, to Martin Hopkins for being a great friend, and to both of them and Steve Wright and Dave Wright (no relation) for the fun times at the Nottingham Deaf Centre. Thank you to Dave Barlow for selling me my first bass and for being a bigger

influence on me than he ever realised. A Death Star sized thank you to Phill Danks for so many things over the years, not least inspiring me as a bassist, to Ged Mayer for just being fucking awesome, and to Tim 'Riggy' Mellors for being a friend and an influence (and an eagle eyed proof reader!). A round of drinks for Phil Middleton, Rob Winder, Ian Suttie, Dunc Lovell, Des Pearson, Simon 'Emmy' Hemstock, Phil Blankley, Ian Dilly, Simon Swain, Paul and Andy Townsend, John Kiddier, John Mann, Sue Wright, Ian ‘Mole’ Etheridge and Rob 'Ozzy Oddbin' Reid. Finally a big thank you to all of the rock stars who have entertained and influenced me over the years. Some have touched my soul briefly like kisses in the dark from strangers, while others have had a profound impact on shaping the person I am today. So here ends my tale. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed living it, and though I'm embarking on my sixth decade on this ball of rock you can rest assured that I'll be turning it up to eleven for as long as I can. To quote Jon Bon Jovi one last time, I'll live while I'm alive and sleep when I'm dead. Thank you and good night.

About the Author

Richard Cosgrove was born in Nottingham, home of Robin Hood, the original long haired, tight-troed rock star. Since then he has been obsessed with music as a fan, as a bassist and as a DJ/producer. He has been going to gigs and rock clubs since before he was legally allowed to drink in the venues, and has seen hundreds of bands over the years. He was a prominent member of the global mashup/bootleg scene of the early 2000s, and has DJ’d regularly at London’s legendary alternative/80s club Electric Dreams for the last two decades as well as founding and running his own Planet Earth night in his adopted home of Colchester. Throughout all this he has never lost sight of his true musical love – rock music – even going so far as to make it to the final of the 2010 UK Air Guitar Championships, and to this day can be found assuming the air guitar position whenever a riff rings out.