C H A P T E R  T H R E E

Its now 1986, around this time we decided to change the name of the band from Dataclan to Love Hate. We had a song called "Love and Hate" at the time and it seemed like a good name for the band. Journalists in the future would always try to read some mystical significance into the name, the yin and yang, whatever. But I am telling you it was just a name. Along with the name change came new songs, we were tired of doing the Duran Duran thing; none of us were cute enough to pull  it off anyways. Thats when the "Love" record by the Cult came out. We fucking worshipped that record, the whole underground Gothic Brit thing. I even started singing with a fake british accent. We all bought long black coats and wore big bolero hats and that's what we lived in for a year or two. We looked like Amish people. 

Skid would write a new batch of songs approximately every year. We would give them a go, and when the record companies wouldnt respond we would move on to a new batch. Sure, we were guilty of bandwagon jumping, sure, we changed our musical direction to suit the fashion, but who hasn't? Pantera used to be glam, Alice In Chains used to be glam. Good bands just don't spring up fully matured from the forehead of Zeus. It takes time to get it together and to grow. And to learn what you DONT want to be.  

I loved the whole "doom and gloom" thing. I could truly be myself, a negative depressing fellow with delusions of grandeur. Living downtown back then was always tricky. No one had any money and they were always threatening to turn off the phone, or the water or the electricity. We used to score pot at the local barrio, just dirt weed. Thats all we could afford, 10 dollar bags of dirt buds. We got high constantly, all the time. We would sit around and get stoned and talk about the band. That's all we ever talked about. It was a seemingly inexhaustible subject, the band. You would live from gig to gig. A good gig meant that for a week the talk would be upbeat. A bad gig would generate just the opposite. But I stress that I have never seen a band that was closer then we were in those early years. Not friends so much as compatriots, united to overthrow the fascist regime. Everyone but Jon that is. 

People don't understand why we built a wall around Jon. Jon had a way of pushing your buttons that would make you hate him. When I first joined the band I would witness these knock -down drag -out brawls, a bellowing free throw of "low blows" about girlfriends, mothers, the works; everything was fair game. Jon could say the most hateful things that would really surprise you, they would shock you. So what you did after the first year or so was build a emotional wall around yourself so Jon couldn't push your buttons anymore. He was excluded from most business dealings and musical decisions and over the years we sort of existed in detente with each other. He was in the band because he was a good guitar player and a good recording engineer, but no one would ever say that they were friends with him. You never knew when he would turn on you. 

Speaking of demos we always did our own home recordings. We had a four track set up in our studio and we would be recording constantly. Skid was a prolific writer so you always felt like the band was doing something constructive.

In 1986 our on again- off again manager G. xxxxx gets another partner. A guy named G. sxxxxx. This guy was a piece of work. When he brought us to his house, his walls were filled with gold records that he told us he had engineered. he told us he worked as a "second" engineer (and therefore, uncredited on the actual LP) on Aerosmith "Toys in the Attic", Led Zepplin 4 , Jimi Hendrix, etc., I must say we were impressed. Probably more impressive was the fact that he was buying us beer. I can motherfuck this guy now because he is dead, dead and gone. This guy was a hardcore alcoholic psycho weirdo, we found out later that his gold record for Led Zeppelin 4 was not for engineering but rather given to him for being Jon Bonham's coke mule. he did coke with the old keyboardist from Aerosmith and "Voila!"--free gold record. it was just a short step in his alcohol dementia to think that he actually PARTICIPATED in them...we were SO naive in those days. I guess everyone is....young band, dreams of glory, impressionable, there's always some shyster lurking in the underbrush. saying ALL THE RIGHT THINGS...we would sign anything in those days, anything...we once signed a 60/40 production deal and gave away all our publishing for $100 a week for six weeks...$600 each for years worth of work...when we realized what we had done, we tried to get out of it, the guy avoided us for months, joey actually had to sit in the lobby of his office for days, hour after hour, waiting, until he grudgingly agreed to let us go....god...we were stupid...and the weird thing was, we were real smart guys, anyone that knows us knows that me, joey , and skid are real intelligent fellows--that's why it boggles the mind. I guess when you got nothin', you got nothin' to lose... 

anyway, back to this Sxxxx character--from the time he meets us he tries to slam us into a management contract, I mean, at his house, at Denny's, at the park, wherever we were there was always this piece of paper following us around---our erst-while manager g. xxxx was also applying the thumb-screws, saying that once again all funding would cease if we didn't sign....sign...sign...sign...just one little step, just a signature...and then you can have all the shit that you want, ads, recordings, beer...so we did it. we signed a 3-year deal with this utter loser, this raging alcoholic gun-toting psycho. we did a couple of recordings, we got a few ads in the local rags, couple of beers, we were happy. for a while...  

G. and G. became Jxxxx Management, xxxx went back to selling cars and G. Sxxxx started circulating our demo tapes to the record companies... what a weird scene... having this guy manage your career was like leaving your little kid with your Wicked Uncle Ernie every day. promptly at 7:30 every morning G. Sxxxx would begin mixing Bloody Marys, one after another , he would be completely soused by 10:00, just in time to wake up the record companies to his belligerent drunken brand of "hands-on" management.  

"YOU'VE GOT TO SIGN THIS BAND!!" 
" YOU'RE ALL A BUNCH OF FUCKING IDIOTS!!" 
" I WANT AN ANSWER--YES OR NO---WILL YOU SIGN MY FUCKING BAND??" 

and on and on.... not surprisingly, the answer would be no. Fuck No. Don't call here again. and if he DID get a positive response to our demo, he would badger the A&R reps and their secretaries with 5 to 7 calls a day, demanding when we were gonna sign., what his cut would be, etc. this was a real "people-person". of course, we didn't know what was going on, calling record companies and so on is supposed to be a manager's job, it was only months later that we realized the damage. then he started to hand us bills for his "services" $1500.00 a month for "office rental" ...his guest bedroom, imaginary faxes, his entire phone bill, his wife's lunches, his kid's new drum set, we would stare disbelieving at this well thought-out and itemized sheet of bullshit facts and figures he would hand us with this drunken glazed look. he started collecting all the "pass" letters from the various record companies and he fucking put them in a photo album, like some grisly trophy, like this would make us think he was "doing something".  

he would call us over to his house for a "band meeting", make us sit down at his dining room table, and then show us a hotel voucher from Buddy Miles, circa  1969,you see, G. Sxxxx once got Buddy Miles a sandwich from the hotel coffee shop AND HERE'S THE RECEIPT TO PROVE IT....I mean....the man was mad, when you'd argue with him he'd run from the room, you didn't know if this was it, you didn't know if he was gonna pull out a 45 and just kill everyone, I tell you it was just nuts. 

after a couple of months we finally came to our senses, we broke with the weirdo. his name figures prominently in the future, however, you see we had signed a 3-year deal with this guy and those contracts have a nasty way of coming back to haunt you later.....advice? I don't know...we had made a mistake, we fucked up. most young bands do...but then again most bands don't get record deals so it really doesn't matter. every person with a little bit of money and some gold chains fancies himself a "manager", they put $$ into some little band, expecting...?  what, the big time? fame? fortune? I guess so...but no one really KNOWS what the big time is until YOU'RE THERE, you don't know what management is, you don't know what being professional is, you don't know until YOU'RE THERE.... I didn't, that's for sure. I'd like to tell you l that I got into music for the sheer love of music but I would be a liar I got into music because I thought it would GET ME LAID--- that's why ANYONE gets into music....duh...