The Dirt (71 page)

Cut off from the telephone, I began to learn for the first time to be selfreliant—for love, for help, and for music. I also began to communicate with the other inmates and see that my problems were not so bad in comparison. The trustees who swept the hall began slipping me notes from guys in other cells. Sometimes a dude would be asking for an autograph, others would just want to have a pen pal. Most of them were in for much more serious shit than me. There was a sixteen-year-old Mexican mafia dude who had fucking murdered six people; a really remorseful twenty-one-year-old who had panicked and shot an old lady when he was robbing Norm’s 24-hour restaurant for drug money; and a police officer who had gotten busted pocketing drugs during narcotics busts. He was so worried that the rest of the population would find out he was a cop, because they would kill him in a second if they knew.

As I tapped into this internal mail system, I learned that there was a whole secret world in jail. And there were more fucking drugs in the system than on the street: people were offering fucking heroin, blow, speed, weed, everything in exchange for food, candy, money, and cigarettes. But the penalty if you were caught was a minimum of one year added to your sentence, so I wasn’t fucking with that. Other guys made a type of alcohol in their cells they called pruno, which was like a wine made from orange juice, sugar, and, for yeast, a loaf of bread. It took two weeks to make a batch, and when one was done, you’d hear everybody getting drunk as fuck and partying. It practically turned into a nightclub in there.

One dude taught me how to take my trash bag, fill it with water, and tie a knot in the center to make ten-pound dumbbells to work out with. So I started doing curls with fucking water bags, which were illegal, so I had to hide them under my bed. Other dudes would make dice by filing down the balls from their roll-on deodorant on the cement of their floors until they were square. Or they’d make knives by rolling up a newspaper tighter and tighter for hours until the paper basically reverted to its original form—wood—and could be used to stab someone like a stake.

One old dude taught me how to light a cigarette: take a pencil and chew the wood off until you get to the lead, which carries electricity. Then take a disposable razor, break it open with your shoe, and remove the blade. Afterward, bend the razor until it snaps in two. Take both pieces and stick them in the power outlet, then slip the razor blades alongside them in the outlet together, which heats them. Wrap the piece of pencil lead in toilet paper, touch the two razor blades in the outlet together, and, presto, an electrical zap will ignite the toilet paper and make a fire. It was like total
MacGyver
shit that people had spent years in there perfecting. My own innovation was to make drumsticks out of pencils and razors, and drum heads out of food trays and plumbing. As I sat there, banging with pencils on my bowl, I realized that I had come full circle and was sitting here at age thirty-six doing exactly what I had done at age three when I made my own drum set in my parents’ kitchen.

One day, I was sitting in my cell and I heard a commotion outside. I jumped up to my little square window and smashed my face against the glass, trying to figure out what was going on. Walking down the corridor were two guards carrying a guy who was dead as fuck: his whole body was stiff and his lips were a purplish blue. I banged on my cell door, asking everyone in sight what had happened, but no one said a word. Later, I asked a sheriff who passed my cell, and he just kept walking.

A few days later, one of the orderlies gave me a newspaper, a rare gift. Inside, there was an article about the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail I was in downtown: a black inmate had died because the white guards beating him didn’t stop in time. The article said that advocacy groups were fighting for the county to install a surveillance system in the prison because conditions were so bad. As I read that stuff and thought of the dead guy and all the beatings I had heard in the last two and a half months, I began to freak out. Where was I? I used to be a fucking rock star!

In jail, I wasn’t shit. I was just a maggot on lockdown. I couldn’t fucking whine to my manager every time I didn’t get my way; there was no audience to laugh at my goofing off; and no one wanted to hear my bullshit. I couldn’t be a whiny little baby anymore; I had to be a man. Or at least a big maggot, because I was being stepped on all the time—both in jail and in the real world. Pamela had started writing me some awesome letters and leaving me sweet voice-mail messages. But just as my hopes began to lift, I found out from fucking Nikki and some other bros that she was dating her old boyfriend, Kelly Slater. I couldn’t fucking believe it. I spent hours on the phone with my therapist crying. I couldn’t understand how this shit could be happening to me. If I was home, at least I could be with friends or drive over to her place to talk about it. But here I was completely fucking powerless. I just sat in my cell on fire. Then I learned my next important lesson: how to let go of things very quickly. I realized there wasn’t shit I could do about it. Suck it up and leave it be.

On Saturdays, I was allowed to have visitors. Nikki came down a bunch of times, and Mick stopped by once but said he was never coming back because the guards were mean to him and made him tuck in his shirt and remove his baseball cap. Vince never visited—and I wasn’t surprised. The best visit of all, however, came from my lawyer, when he informed me that, if nothing went wrong, he’d have me out in just under four months instead of six—and that meant I only had a month left to go.

I began to meditate on what it would take to make Tommy happy again. I had been spending a lot of time thinking about being a good father, husband, and human being, but I hadn’t really been taking care of my creative problems. And the musical part of me is like fucking 80 to 90 percent. I needed to do something new and, the way I saw it, that frustration had spilled over into my personal life. So I made a fucking decision.

When Nikki visited the next Saturday, I looked at him through the bulletproof glass and squirmed in my seat. He was my best fucking bro, but I had to tell him: “Bro, I can’t do it anymore.” It was the hardest thing I ever had to say to anyone.

His eyes widened, his mouth dropped open, and he just said, “Whoa.” He looked like a guy who thought he was in the perfect marriage suddenly discovering that his wife has been cheating on him. Of course, I
had
been cheating on him. Earlier in jail, I asked a friend to leave a message on my answering machine saying that it accepted all collect calls. That way, whenever I had an idea for a melody or lyrics, I could just record it on my machine to listen to when I got out. And these weren’t melodies or lyrics for Mötley Crüe. I was ready to move on to some new shit.

I continued to compile music from my cell on my answering machine until September 5, the day I was scheduled to leave. I lay in my bunk, waiting for the loudspeaker to crackle, “Lee, roll it up,” which meant roll up your bed, blankets, and shit because you’re out of here.

I was told I’d be out at noon. But noon rolled by and nothing happened. Slowly, the clock crept to two o’clock. Every minute was agony. Then it was three, four, five o’clock. Next thing I knew, it was dinnertime. I kept telling everyone, “Dude, I’m supposed to be out.” But no one would listen to me. Midnight struck and they still hadn’t called me. The old Tommy Lee would have bashed his head against the bars until someone paid attention to him. But the new Tommy Lee knew that there was nothing he could do but suck it up and accept it.

I stretched out in my bunk, pulled the threadbare blanket up to my neck, and went to sleep. At 1:15 in the morning, I was woken up by a voice on the loudspeaker: “Lee, roll it up!”

S
o what do you want to respond to first? Their allegations that you are only interested in promoting R&B on the label and not rock and roll?

SYLVIA RHONE: Elektra’s track record speaks for itself when it comes to promoting and supporting rock artists on our roster: Metallica, AC/DC, Mötley Crüe. Mötley Crüe were the major priority for Elektra in 1997. We did a tremendous amount of promotion on the record’s front end. But the market for rock music, especially with veteran bands, is in major transition right now. The album didn’t perform to expectations, and their unhappiness is understandable. But it’s not for lack of effort on the company’s part.

What kind of efforts were made?

In January, the label spent a substantial amount of money to have the band perform at the American Music Awards, after which we mounted a snipe campaign. We did a lot of promotion on the Internet. We supported and underwrote the cost of a live performance at a rock station in Tampa in March. I could go on and on about the different promotional efforts that we’ve made.

What do you think about the incident with the security guard in South Carolina and the fact that they called you a cunt from stage?

Those kind of remarks don’t deserve any comment. But they are very ill advised.

Will they affect how you deal with the band in the future?

It doesn’t affect my attitude toward the band. I’m a very professional person.

Their contract with Elektra expires in two albums. Will you renew it?

At this point, that’s very hard for me to say.