Tales Of A RATT (46 page)

When he broke down with Mum, I just looked at him with some sadness. "Well, brother, why don't we just look forward?” And that was the "new" that. Hopefully, Ronnie has walked away with a little enlightenment from all this. Hopefully, we all have.

The whole experience with the death of Mum caused me to quit smoking altogether. Part of it was the fact that I watched what it did to her, but another visual sticks out to me, as well.

I remember being at the hospital with my brothers. They would duck out into this alleyway to take a bit of a break, and they would light up a cigarette. I was really surprised they would do that, under the circumstances, but when I looked around, I got a shock.

There were several people out there, all of them working for the hospital, and they all had cigarettes in their mouths. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, would slip out, light up, and suck down a smoke. They would be dressed in their greens, with the mask they wear in surgery still hanging from their necks, and they were outside smoking!

I was thinking, "How stupid are these motherfuckers? They work around this shit everyday and see what it does to people. How can they do it?” But, there they were, nonetheless. They were overweight, pasty, freight trains puffing their way to their first heart attack.

Looking around at that, I thought, "I'm smarter than this.”

I quit. I've quit for almost a year, now, and I've never had a puff. The weird thing is that I'll have dreams about smoking, and in my dream, I'm thinking, "Oh, fuck! What am I doing with this?”

Even in my worst state of drunkenness, I haven't succumbed to lighting a cig. That's what I always imagined would happen, too. I'd be out on the road, and having a fight with Warren where he's torturing me in that way he does, and I'd just go, "FUCK IT!” I'd grab a bottle of Jack and a pack of ‘grits and I'd be off on a binge. Lighting up and going, "Fuck the world!”

Still hasn't happened, though. Mum's watching out for me.

While in Houston, I worked up a side project. It actually began as a jam band when I still lived in California.

Jani Lane had a band called "Jani Lane's Underdogs", and I was doing some gigs with them back in 2000. When Lane was off doing stuff with Warrant, I still wanted something to do, so me, John Corabi, Robbie Crane and Keri Kelli formed Angel City Outlaws, with John doing the vocals.

Angel City Outlaws was our jam band when we weren't on the road. We would go out and play covers of ZZ Top, Aerosmith, Zeppelin, Beatles, Stones, Queen, Bowie, et al. Basically, everything we grew up on and loved so much.

We were really doing a lot of gigs, and wound up being a great supplemental income for all of us. I was doing the bookings on it, and for the first three years, 2001 to 2003, we probably made an additional $15,000 each, just going out, drinking beers and having a good time.

I get a call on the 2005 tour from this guy named Sebastian Knowlton. He's a great guy. He's a young guy, 26, and his family is in oil, so he's got a lot of money to invest. He came to a RATT show, and is a huge fan of metal music.

Sebastian wanted to produce a Judas Priest tribute album. He hired a friend of his named Brian Clem, and a guy named Drew. They got Motorhead, Great White, Warrant, Jani Lane, and Vince Neil, all to do these Priest covers.

He came to a RATT show in Elko, Nevada. Right in the corner of Nevada and Utah. That's where I met him.

Sebastian used his dad's leer jet and flew in. He and Brian. They were totally funny, completely fun to hang out with. I liked them immediately. Then, a few months later, they called me out on tour and said they wanted RATT to do a song on the album. They were going to give us $10,000 to do it.

Of course, Warren, there he goes again. "I just don't like those things.”

I'm like, "Listen, we'll go in, and do the thing in half a day. We'll go to Keri's studio, cut a cool Priest song, and drink some beers. It'll be fun. We'll make 3 grand each.”

He didn't want to do it. So, not to pass on another easy gig, I brought it to the Angel City Outlaws.

I got to talking to Sebastian about it, and the conversation turns into, "Well, why don't Angel City Outlaws do a record?”

Just like that.

We had always talked about doing it. It just hadn't manifested yet. I'm like, "Is that something you're interested in?”

He's goes, "Hell, yeah!”

So we signed a production deal with Sebastian. We changed the name of the band to "Saints of the Underground", and we made a record. It took several months to get everything together.

John Corabi didn't want to make the record. He just had too much shit going on, and couldn't commit to it, which left us in a really tough spot. We didn't know whom we would use in his place.

We thought about Jani Lane, but didn't know if we could rely on him. We talked to him, and he was into it, but we started hearing a lot of horror stories about Lane.

Lane did an acoustic tour with Stephen Pearcy, Don Dokken, Kip Winger, and Firehouse. He was out of his mind on that entire tour. It was the clichéd "rockstar fall from grace" stories that were getting back to us, so we didn't know what to believe.

However, Lane is a fantastic vocalist with a signature style. It was worth the shot.

Keri Kelli and I were co-producing the record, and we were recording it at my studio in Houston in March of 2006.

Saints of the Underground is Jani Lane from Warrant, me, Robbie Crane on bass and Keri Kelli on guitar. Jani Lane was a crapshoot, a real unknown, and we were anxious to find out whom we were getting in bed with on this project.

Jani came to my house in Houston to do vocals, and it was a disaster. Booze was slowly consuming this man, and it was hard to watch.

Gregg Gill and I had built Diamond Recording Studios, and had her running like a machine, with Keri on guitar, and Chuck Wright of Quiet Riot playing bass, since Robbie couldn't be available.

By the way, this brings me to another reason I can't stand the guys in Quiet Riot.

Chuck played on the record, and Kevin and Frankie told him that he could not take a picture for this album because I was involved. They hated RATT that much, and it just pissed me off. I understand that Chuck had to protect his main gig. But, we paid him five grand to do that album, use his likeness, and be available for photo shoots, the whole enchilada. Then we were going to tour and split everything from there.

Chuck didn't get an even split on the deal, because I put the whole thing together, and me, Keri and Jani were the core of the band. There were a number of options available to us on this record, up to and including either Keri or I doing the bass work, or we could have hired someone else in for a lot less than five G's. We didn't. We jobbed it out to Chuck.

When Chuck told us he wasn't going to be involved, I was pissed. It was like, "Bro, you need to kick some of that money back this way, then.”

I'm not going to say I lost a friend over it. He and I have been friends for a very long time, and we'll be friends again when I see him. But, we haven't been talking because of it. I was very much, "Tell those fucking guys in Quiet Riot to rot in hell!”

Of course, here I am regretting words like that since Kevin's passing. Not to say that Kevin DuBrow is in hell, but when he died, I immediately remembered saying that to Chuck. I was pretty distraught and pissed, but words like that are tough. I read somewhere that anger is a weapon that you have to hold by the blade.

That's the fucking truth, bro.

Robbie Crane became available, and is going to play bass when we tour, which is what I wanted anyway. So, prizes for me, right?

Jani shows up in Houston, and I pick him up at the airport for the sessions. Keri and Chuck had already come in June of 2006 and laid their tracks, so Jani was the last recording we needed to do before we started mixing the record. He was so fucked up, that he couldn't sing. It was as bad a situation as it could be.

Everyone who knows Jani knows that he's a lovable guy. He's a truly great person, but he's a person with some monster demons that just dominate him. They dominate him in ways that a man has a hard time overcoming. Lane had started doing crazy shit like leaving tours, and not being able to sing, or get on stage. He even pulled some stuff at my house, where I was like, "Dude, you gotta split.”

Misty2 and I had taken a flight earlier that year, and one of the flight attendants was a huge RATT fan. The guy gave me a trash bag full of those little airline bottles of booze. You know the ones I'm talking about? The little single shots of hooch that they sell you for a ridiculous price. There had to have been a hundred bottles. So, when we moved to Texas and were unpacking, Misty2, dumped the bag of bottles into a cabinet drawer, thinking, "We'll be having parties and such, and when someone wants a drink, they can just pick their shot out of the drawer.” There were so many cupboards in that house, just drawers for days with nothing in them.

Little did I know that Jani was filling his pockets with these things before we went to record.

He kept asking me to stop for tequila on the way to the studio. I'm like, "Jani, we are not stopping. We are working. That's what we're here for, is to work.”

He kept trying to convince me that the tequila would warm up his vocal cords and help him sing better, but, brother, this ain't my first rodeo.

We spent five days in the studio, and, it was a fucking disaster. It just didn't work, and I wasn't sure where we were going to go to find a quality frontman.

Lane went away and did some soul-searching. He checked into rehab for a while.

The end of the story is that Jani got clean ... for a while. When he came out, he re-recorded the vocals out at Keri's house, which came out amazing! I'm like, "Alright. Disaster averted. That's a major difference.” Jani has got an incredible voice. He's a great writer, great with melodies, and really good at stacking harmonies. He always has been.

As a producer, I was trying to tap into that, but it wasn't possible when he was sauced. Straight, he was everything we hoped he would be. His vocal work with Keri was fantastic, and Saints got a deal with Warrior Records through Universal Music Group. The record came out April 2008.

The plan was to get as many dates in as we could before RATT, Alice Cooper and Warrant start up their respective tours. Keri plays for Alice, and Jani was back with Warrant.

RATT in Japan, fall 2007.

RATT and Manager at dinner with support band Winger in Japan, 2007.

My last few months in Texas were tough. My Mum was fading very quickly, semi-comatose in a Pittsburgh hospice center; my life with Misty2 was shot to shit, and things were taking a down turn at the recording studio.

It was time to go back home to California.

When I was moving back from Houston to California, we were about 25 miles west of El Paso, not far from Las Cruces, New Mexico. My friend John is following me in my Mercedes, and I'm driving my truck, towing the boat. I was talking to my son Marcus on the phone, and I kept hearing this noise.

"What the hell is that noise?” I turned the radio down, and go, "Marc, hold on". Is it the road, or what?

Then I see John go wide from the trailer. And, almost simultaneously, I see the tire from the trailer ease out into the lane, and begin to pass me! We were doing 70 miles an hour at the time! Then it veered off to the left, bounced through the ravine, and jumped into the eastbound lane of traffic on fucking Interstate 10!

If there had been a car there, it would have been catastrophic. That tire launched clear out into the brush on the other side of the freeway. The lugs had failed on the trailer, and shot the tire completely off the hub.

I have towing, including trailers, on my AAA policy. The only state that doesn't recognize that is, you guessed it, TEXAS! Yep. When I moved, I called them and told them "Hey, I'm in Texas now. Here's my address.” Boom, it was changed. It became a Texas umbrella policy.

Had I kept my policy in California, instead of changing it to Texas when I moved, I would have just called them, and they would have sent someone to take us back to El Paso and get us fixed up.