C H A P T E R  T W E L V E

OK... it's Spring 1992... from here on in the band begins it's slow downward descent. we did  more gigs, had more albums, more good times, but the gravy train at Columbia was over. there would never be the days of glory that there were before. at the time  I sorta knew it was over, all the signs were there, but somehow you tried to convince yourself otherwise. we got an offer to open up for Black Sabbath and the label denied us tour support, for the first time. that's a fair indicator of their mood.

we did some make-up shows in the U.K. for when I'd lost my voice months before. there was a whole campaign planned around the song "Miss America " but again Columbia pulled the plug. our former marketing people were actually crying--"what a shame, what a shame..." yes, it was.

we came home and Skid sequestered himself away to finish his movie, him and his fellow  director, M. xxxxx--alias/ Francis Ford Crappella. Skid didn't answer his phone for weeks, editing, editing...the movie, when finished, was not AT ALL  about the Hollywood Sign , rather , it was sort of a Skid-umentary, some tour footage, some European scenery. the band had spent 1000's of dollars on it and of course the label hated it, so up it went on a shelf...until recently, that is...

Jon was a mess, a ghost. I had it in my head that he was holding us back so I urged the band to fire him. in retrospect this was a dumb move on my part but you'd have to be there to understand the situation . being dropped had never even figured in my vocabulary, I thought I'd ALWAYS  be on Sony records. my girlfriend ended her 7-year relationship with me, also coincidentally  on the heels of the Sony news. I had to move out of my condo so I ended up across the street at Joey's building. his friend was the drummer  in Faster Pussycat and he let me stay at his house for a couple of months while he was on the road. there I was , drunk, staring at the gold record that this guy had on the wall and getting madder and madder. I was still a celebrity in town , the news of our being dropped hadn't reached the general public yet, so I spent a few months beating myself up, all-nighters of indiscriminate sex and violence. Skid still wrote and the three of us still recorded. we were still a unit; none of us thought of leaving the band.

at some point we started the cattle call search for another guitar player. this was a new thing; we'd never really played with ANYONE else. anyway, geek after geek came thru our door, thinking they could smoke Jon E. Love. 3/4 of the guys were just pitiful, insulting even. here we were, a professional outfit, albeit dropped, but still expecting a certain level of musicianship. these guys would walk in and just choke, we were getting frustrated. then one day Darren walked in. he was good, he was cool, skinny, friendly---so we took him.

now what we didn't know was that Darren was a "shredder " guy, you know...WHEEDLY WHEEDLY WHEEDLY---scalloped frets on his guitar, 15 -minute solos, the works. he had kinda kept his arpeggios under wraps for a week or two, just learning the songs. then when he was fully in the band, KABOOM!!--out they came with a vengeance.

Skid and Darren never really got along. I don't think Darren respected Skid 'cause he was a drunk and Skid never thought Darren was magical as a guitar player. you see, Jon E. Love was a dick and a pain in the ass but he was a great guitar player, I think everyone agrees on that. it was kinda like replacing me with Marq Torian---it just wasn't right.

we needed another record but we had no label and no money. Skid sold his prized Corvette to finance what would be LET'S RUMBLE---that car was the last vestige of his former wealth and it must have hurt. we went to some local studio and cut the record fast, couple of days. it's OK, there's a couple good songs on it.

we did the record and the band went on a 9-week tour of the States. this was Darren's first tour and he fucked everything that walked. we , the veterans of many a battle, would sit back and watch. none of us really fucked on the road anymore; we'd had enough. you reach a point when the hassle wasn't worth it, all the small talk and petty conquest

this tour was grueling. we had no label support so we had to play 6 nights a week. we'd play anywhere just so we could keep moving. hunting lodges, Elks clubs, whatever. Skid and Darren were fighting all the time, it was not a good period---

when we came home Skid and I got an apt. together in Hollywood . 

ASIDE---it's taken me a couple of days to wanna write this shit all down...I'm having a such a positive time right now in my career that it's HARD to re-cap all the bad and dreary times, post-- COLUMBIA  RECORDS everyone thought we'd made a lot of money, everyone thought our records sold so well...here's the reality--BLACKOUT  sold  a couple 100 thousand, nowhere near gold status, WASTED sold worse, maybe 100 thousand, maybe...RUMBLE sold shit, negligible...I'M NOT HAPPY, next to nothing, and LAYLA, well, the less said about THAT  record the better. anyway, the point is that we were STRUGGLING AGAIN, back to Square One...

so...Skid and I get this apt. together, it's 1994. we got along, we were good friends. he was writing and painting and he and I and Joe were 100% into LOVE/HATE  at the time. what led to the eventual dissolution and break-up of the band isn't very complicated---I started writing my own songs. this changed the delicate chemistry of the band, no longer would I just wanna do Skid's songs, I'd wanna do my OWN. this is only natural...

now I hadn't written songs in years. I had a few co-writes back "in the day" but I felt like a guy who'd been bed-ridden. all the muscles had to be slowly worked back into motion. fuck, I couldn't even play guitar. I had to learn to do that before I could get into serious composition. I won't go into the hours that turned to weeks that turned to months that it took for me to get proficient. suffice to say that I took it to heart and got OK on guitar. my neighbors HATED me. I'd start playing at 9:00 A.M. , a hummin' and a strummin'---they'd bang on the floor, they'd fuck with my car, anything to make ME STOP---- I'd quit around noon and then SKID  would start in his room, strum strum strum---god , when I think about it must have been HELL, SHEER HELL....

around that time BMG  records picked up "Let's Rumble " and they put it out over there---we did a 3- week tour of the U.K. , it was good, not as good as the past days but still OK. I remember , one night on stage I was introducing Darren to the audience, doing my rap and I said " this is Darren's first trip to the U.K..... and probably his LAST "---OOOPS... kinda of a shitty thing to say, but nonetheless prophetic, don't you think ?