C H A P T E R  F I F T E E N

1997---these are dark days, oh my brothers...days of no money, days of no self-esteem...but I promised I would tell AND SO I SHALL. where was I? writing, playing with drum machines, drinking heavily, all of the above. Skid drove for a courier company, 12 hours a day, every day, a miserable humiliating existence. he had QUIT DRINKING, believe it or not, for the love of a good woman, some might say. Joe lived near his parents in the South Bay , he was enjoying NOT  being anyone's whipping boy. 

Skid decided that a new Love/Hate record was needed, however there's a problem...no songs. he's too busy working to write anymore. so what he does is get Joe to dig up  all our old B-sides, all the songs that for some reason or another didn't make it to record status. some of these were good, and frankly some weren't. Skid took a verse here, pasted it to a chorus there, changed a couple lyrics and VOILA! new record !!  he got a friend of his to give him unlimited studio time on a tab and he went to work . now LAYLA was basically a Skid  SOLO RECORD,  I had nothing to do with it, Joe played drum tracks and never heard the finished product,  Jon wasn't on it at all save for the very end. Skid did the whole thing from beginning to end, himself. there were tales of 9-hour cello sessions, other self indulgent nonsense. Jon started to do the engineering but left in protest.

I was sitting at home one day  when Skid came over and handed me the "new record". it was  bad, really bad. he had taken songs that were originally hard-core Love/Hate cutting edge  songs and basically stripped them of all their angst. the song "when Tomorrow Comes" used to be a gut -wrencher but now it sounded like Warrant. he took a song called "Sing along with the Drunk Man" and changed the lyric to " Sing along with the Skunk Man" .....the Skunk Man ?.... I called Joe and asked him "HAVE YOU HEARD THIS???" he confessed that he hadn't heard any of it. I didn't want to sing these songs, partly because of the content but also because my solo band had just disintegrated and I felt like shit. Joe, however , was adamant--

" YOU HAVE TO SING ON IT" he said. or quit the band..

so I did. I sucked it up and I sang. I did 11 tracks, MOST of which DID NOT  make the eventual LAYLA  record. I remember the band got together for a one-off gig and Skid had the newly mixed tape in his hand and he asked if we wanted to hear it. I think we got through One and a 1/2 tracks before we shut it off.... weird, that had NEVER  happened, we had never  NOT wanted to  hear our own record before. there was some initial talk about Mayhem  Records offering money for it but it never happened. they passed on it. by that time Skoe too had  broken up, the singer  left to do another group of her own. after Skoe broke up Skid wanted me to go in and re-sing  the old Skoe songs, make the record better. I resisted, I had much negative feelings toward those tunes but I DID IT ANYWAY. I remember singing on one of the songs, "It Shines", and Skid telling me--

"can you sing it like the chick?"--  it had come to this. I think we were lost, rock as we knew it was dead, we were searching for a niche, searching....lost. 

Skid's dad was dying of cancer . he was having a bad time of it. he and Karen were supposed to be married in the summer but his dad didn't make it---sorry...

 we were offered a 2- week tour of the U.K. and we took it. Skid wanted to do the same thing Joey had done the year before, namely take his wife on tour with us and honeymoon in Europe . that was OK. however Joe also  wanted to take HIS  wife. the dynamic of the band had changed, you see. in the past bandmember's  girlfriends or wives stayed at home. NO MORE. now wives CAME ALONG.

Jon E. was livid, just livid. there was much screaming and yelling. I let it go....in my mind this was the LAST time we would EVER  go to the U.K. so I just said 'fuck it"---bring her along.. and of course I was right....

so we went to England . Joe was tour manager and drove the SIX of us on the wrong side of the road all across the country. some of the shows were good but most weren't. the climate of  rock had changed there as well. people FREAKED  OUT when they saw  what we looked like. Skid's hair was completely gone, I had bleached mine and cut it. I remember the two of us coming out of a sound-check one day and a collective GASP  coming from the crowd....we didn't look "rock "anymore, we didn't party like the old days, Skid did absolutely NO SHOW.....people were disappointed--

"where's the Bud Cross?"
"how come you don't party anymore?"

the two wives were in the foyer selling our T-shirts , we looked old and corny.

so we came home. I sang a couple more songs for the LAYLA  record but my mind was elsewhere. there was no record deal, we never rehearsed, we WEREN'T gonna tour anymore, we couldn't, you see....wives...kids...jobs...

over that summer I had begun to work with new people. I met a new drummer I liked , new guitar players, new blood, we played the songs that are now on the LET'S EAT CD, someone from a small label offered me some $$$ to do a demo and Joey found out that HE  wasn't on it. he freaked out. now it was MY  turn to be the Betrayer, the Back-Stabber---I suppose I could have handled it better, I sometimes have no tact when it comes to things of this nature....

anyway, it was the straw that broke Love/Hate's back. Joe had the lease on the building where we rehearsed and he refused to re-new. he went and sold all the band's equipment without telling Skid or Jon, all of it, the amps, the P.A., all the road cases, everything....Skid showed up to the studio one day and there was nothing there but a check for his 1/4th of the gear. Joe sold all of it. now there was no musical equipment, no rehearsal space, no record deal, no gigs, nothing---

I was having a bad time with my girlfriend. Skid had written a bunch of new songs and there was all those old  SKOE  songs and he was badgering me to sing on them but I didn't want to. I really didn't see the point. we did our last gig at the Dragonfly club in Hollywood . the guy from RIP magazine was trying to "revive" rock and he was calling it HAIR NIGHT. so we played Hair Night for about 15 people....completely utterly humiliating. I told Joe "don't book any more shows...." 

I went to my friend Johnny Dare's place in Kansas City to write and to get away. it was so fun just writing again and not worrying about all the stupid bullshit. Joe called me up and said we could do a New Years Eve show at the Coconut Teazer club for $500.00 and I refused. I said I had "other plans". everyone thought I was an asshole. maybe I was...