C H A P T E R  S E V E N

rollin' rollin' rollin'---keep them doggies rollin'-  ROLLIN--'ROLLIN--'ROLLIN----- RAWHIDE!!!

this is a metaphor for the loud fun thing we call being on the road.most bands never get to experience this intregal part of being a working musician--travelling in a van or a motor home just AIN'T THE  SAME BROTHER--there is no prestige in showing up to a gig in a U-haul,there is no glory fucking some girl next to your bandmate's dirty underwear--no glory at all. and after all, that's what it's all about , isn't it? GLORY? THE HAMMER OF THE GODS?anybody that says it isn't is LYING- it's all about fulfilling the dreams and fantasies that nurtured you thru all the dark days, all the bad gigs and bad times--IT'S TIME TO COLLECT!!and collect we did, all of us--BLACKOUT came out in March of 1990 and we promptly went out on the road to promote it. we fucked every thing we met , drank, and then we fucked some more.we all had girlfriends at home but that didn't matter--I actually tried to rationalize my cheating to my girlfriend ...but she either wouldn't or couldn't understand THE HAMMER OF THE GODS, my incessant need to spear-gun all things female, my thirst for glory personified...she...didn't understand.but that didn't matter--

I was living the life of a rocker, wholly. we were drinking hard as well, the beer flowed like wine.we went from our first club tour to an opening slot on the DIO tour--DIO  was still pretty big back then , he was playing 5,000 seater arenas--for us it was our first taste of playing the big stages--more glory. DIO'S crowd HATED us, jesus I look back at some of our photos and my goofy outfits and just CRINGE...it seemed cool back then. the pants, the vest, the silly silly shit I wore...but it was a bit too avant-garde for traditional DIO people, they hated us. I can remember being on stage and just FEELING the hate, like...like in the movie"the Graduate" when Dustin Hoffman is banging on the glass to Katherine Ross, all the in-laws yelling, cursing him but YOU CAN'T HEAR WHAT THEY'RE SAYING...only the twisted hate coming through...that's what it was like....the music was so loud you couldn't actually HEAR them, but you knew...you knew all right...but DIO was cool , after all , he was one of my idols, I had sang to all his records for years and here I was , singing WITH him...very very cool.

when you live on a rock'n' roll bus for any length of time it changes you...you mature, as a musician, even with all the hedonism. it's like junior college for ROCK.and if you're like me, you learn to love it.it's a hard life, you must leave many things behind, you must be willing to SUSPEND REALITY, it sounds easy, almost comic, but a lot of people couldn't do it.a lot of people need stability, they need rootedness, foundation---WELL, YOU'RE IN  THE WRONG LINE OF WORK THEN BROTHERS--welcome to NO stability, a paycheck that's capricious and fickle at best, when you commit to being a rocker then be prepared to assume the role of a gypsy, be prepared to live out of a suitcase for months and months. personally, I LOVE IT---JUST FUCKING LOVE IT...

so, we're touring and fucking a lot...I was basically a no-nonsense kind of guy, I'd throw my line in the water and reel some willing girl in, give her the old "heave-ho" and be done with it. Skid, however, had a guilty conscience, he felt awkward treating these girlies like sluts, he'd wine and dine them, flatter them all night, then , at 5:00 A.M., when he was tired and fucked up, he'd mount.people are different, I understood  it, the GAME--I wasn't special, you see, if a girl was gonna fuck me after a few minutes of polite chat  she was gonna fuck ANYBODY---did that make her a slut? well, no more than me...

it's all about instant gratification, the excitement of a new EXPERIENCE, new perfume, new lips....you get the picture. any and all sexual situations are available to the touring rocker, the better and more sucessful you are , the better quality chick you can score---if you really want something, ANYTHING, you can basically get it...stripper shows, lesbians, multiple partners, menage a'trois or three or four---it's all there for the taking---

so we drank and we fucked and we had the time of our lives...then we scored the AC/DC  tour.....the "Dope" video was all over MTV  at the time and that was supposed to be the impetus that got us on the tour  but the reality was that SONY  records paid a lot of $$$ and they "bought " us our spot on the tour. not directly, mind you, but with $$$ in promotion and marketing and full-page ads. it could have been Lynch Mob or Kings X but it was us....that ,my brothers , was the fucking best tour I was ever on....arenas, stadiums, full plush Grade -A GLORY... it was marvelous, we got to fuck "arena " bitches and eat arena catering  and travel like visiting kings everywhere. the absolute best....

along the way we became a bit of an infatuation in the U.K.-- they really loved us and still do to this day. why? is it because of the booze lyrics? was it our weird stage show? our sarcastic take on life?  probably a combination of all these things. we ended up being quite a phenonemon over there, we had our most rabid fan response over there---people say " why there , and not HERE"? well, ..fuck, I don't know...but it was just so cool to be big SOMEWHERE, ANYWHERE, we did a bunch of press and people gave a shit about what we had to say. I hated doing a lot of interviews, it robbed me of any shred of free time I had between shows and photo shoots and record store signings...I sound like a pissy bitch but it all boiled down to ENERGY. I was drinking real hard and I needed all the recovery time I could scrounge, in order to do it all again the next night.Joey and Jon chomped at the bit, they were so incensed that THEY  weren't doing any of the press, they didnt understand that I would have GLADLY given them all the interviews...it's just that no one wanted to talk to them...

BLACKOUT  did reasonably well, we sold a couple hundred thousand records, not bad for a debut band . but of course not GOOD  ENOUGH to justify the enormous amount of $$$ Sony was spending on us....I said it before, it would have been better for the band's longevity if we had gotten a small record deal to start, we could have grown as a professional band, we could have dealt a little better with all the hype and all  the bullshit heaped upon us...oh well some things you just can't change...