C H A P T E R  F O U R T E E N

we decided that we weren't gonna wait for a label to do the next record. we were gonna do the next record OURSELVES, on ADAT. for those of you that don't know, ADAT is a digital recording format that uses VHS tapes. what's cool about ADAT is that you don't need a professional studio or necessarily have to be a trained professional yourself. we HAD  a studio, Soul House, so we decided to do the I'M NOT HAPPY  record there, and Joey would engineer. Joey had been doing both Skid's and my demos for months and he had turned into a pretty competent sound engineer. we rented the ADAT equipment and rented guitar gear, mainly because Skid wanted to play all the rhythm guitars himself. he had yearned for years to play  his OWN guitar, not just be relegated to playing the bass. since I had only three  songs that  were being considered for the record  I was hardly at the studio at all .which was a good thing. Joey should get a Nobel Peace Prize for what he had to endure those 3 months. Skid's drinking had gotten really bad and the recording sessions were grueling. every day, 10 hours a day, 12- pack after 12-pack. 10-hour Cowbell sessions on " Ola Mola". guitar parts over and over and over. after six weeks Skid decides that Joey's drums weren't good enough. so they started the whole thing from scratch with Joey on a Click-track. hour after hour, day after day... CLICK CLICK CLICK. then we found some guitar player to sit in on some solo parts ( Jon wasn't in the band at this point ) and his guitar rig sounded so good  Skid wanted to do ALL THE GUITARS OVER AGAIN. I confess I was not there for 90% of this but I heard about it from Joe. Joey had hit the wall; after this he would never engineer again-- 3 months of working with Skid had taken it's toll.

this was the problem. Skid was really talented on one hand, and a sloppy drunk on the other; both brilliant and awful. when the music was good it was great. when it wasn't all the old animosities came out. after a couple months of hard work  the I'M NOT HAPPY  record was finished . of course when Jon E. Love re-joined the band it would be done all over again...natch.

I moved out of the apt that I shared with Skid. I decided to move back into the studio. I wasn't digging being around Skid's drinking either. I won't get into it much; let's just say that I felt more comfortable being on my own. I moved into our rehearsal studio with a mattress and a couple things. the accommodations were real primitive but I dug the luxury of having a guitar, bass, and drums at my beck and call, 24 hours a day. I wrote my own songs all day, every day. I saw neither Skid nor Jon, just Joe. every week or so Joe would come over and we would record whatever I'd written. when Skid had a new song I would go somewhere else . I guess I was antagonistic, paranoid, delusional....I just wanted to be by myself.

in December of that year Skid started talking about forming a solo project, called the "Friends". he was gonna use this band we knew called the EX-IDOLS as a back-up band , with himself on rhythm guitar. this was the first time anyone of us had ever really discussed breaking away from Love/Hate. I found out about the Friends from Joe, who incidentally was not to be included. he was pissed off because he felt he'd been sort of betrayed. all that engineering work, all those hours spent, and now he hears through the grapevine that he's been pushed aside. so I asked him " do you wanna do something with me?" I had songs that he liked , Love/Hate was neither rehearsing or gigging so we decided to do it. I found a guitar and bass player and we started playing. IT WAS FUN, lemme tell you. no fighting, no bickering, we worked on songs and jammed just like Love/Hate used to in the early days. we were called the SINEATERS. it was hard at first to play the guitar and sing at the same time but it also was a great feeling of accomplishment, it was liberating. 

our first gig was at this cheesy club called FM Station. some acquaintance of Joe , some girl in New York had hooked us up with Mayhem Records. they dug the HAPPY  record and they wanted to sign us. the weirdest irony of that first gig night was that we all signed the Mayhem contracts for I'M NOT HAPPY at a Sineaters gig. both Skid and Jon were there, Jon actually ran our sound. it went...OK.....I was nervous, first time playing all jizzo songs , on guitar nonetheless. after the show Skid wouldn't talk to me, he was freaked out because even though he had talked about going solo nothing had ever come of it. now HE  felt betrayed , he felt Joey had deserted HIM. so enter Skoe...( Skid + Joe...get it? )

after seeing my solo band Skid wanted to do his own solo band. he got Joe and some goofy bass player and he sang his own songs on rhythm guitar but it didn't sound too good . eventually he got Jon  E. back on guitar and he went back on the bass. they got this black chick singer named Moe to do the singing. she was kinda shitty at first but after a few months Skoe got pretty good. this was a real surreal time for all of us. both the Sineaters and Skoe were playing and using the same rehearsal studio and also the SAME DRUMMER., namely Joe-- this bugged the shit out of me. I had to leave whenever they rehearsed because I lived at our rehearsal studio. this wasn't anyone's fault BUT MY OWN---I had imagined enemies behind every corner...

the reason I bring this up is because NO ONE  was doing Love/Hate at the time. most of the songs on the LAYLA record are Skoe songs, songs that were never intended to be on a Love/Hate record. I told Joe at the time, " you watch, when Skoe breaks up we'll be doing all these songs" he ,of course, disagreed.

Love/Hate did a 2-week tour of Germany in December of that year. Joe got married and asked if he could  bring his wife with us because they were planning on honeymooning in Europe afterwards. so the FIVE of  us went to Europe and opened for a bunch of goofy Spinal Tap  bands. 

when we got home my bass player quit and I was stuck with no band. Skoe , on the other hand caught the eye of our manager and he got them studio time to work on their demo.. they actually had a bit of record interest.. I don't need to tell you how I felt so I won't. I just wrote songs and kept my head down. had Skoe got signed that would have the end of Love/Hate, obviously....I just sat at the shithole Downtown studio and wrote, I was Living off my girlfriend Layla at the time---now you know where THAT particular phrase came from----