Life on Planet Rock Read online

  “Lonn lives where the reckless heart of rock still thunders in your chest. No one else can throw a literary dinner party where Henry Miller sits side by side with Kurt Cobain and Jon Bon Jovi. That’s Lonn’s planet, and that’s his vivid personality. Soulful and rowdy and always hilarious, Life on Planet Rock reminds you why you ever turned it up, all the way up.”

  —Cameron Crowe

  “Dark, brutally honest, and hilarious at the same time, Lonn’s tales of rock-and-roll debauchery, excess, and bad business are a love letter to the rock gods.”

  —Scott Ian Rosenfeld, founder/guitarist, Anthrax

  “Lonn Friend. If anybody is entitled to write about rock in L.A. in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it’s him. This is a good book. Steal it!”

  —Lemmy Kilmister, lead singer, Motörhead

  “Its humor, insight, and behind-the-scenes honesty have captured me and whisked me away to a very special mind space. I am content. All is well on Planet Rock … I ought to know, I’ve lived here all my life.”

  —Kevin Cronin, lead singer, REO Speedwagon

  “In all of my years of being Alice Cooper, I have rarely met anyone who has more of a love affair with rock ‘n’ roll than Lonn. I don’t know if he’s on the top or the bottom … but I’m sure there’s mutual satisfaction. Lonn lives, eats, and breathes the music and the scene, and then he vomits it up and turns around to write about it in a unique style. Lonn Friend … Longtime Friend.”

  —Alice Cooper

  “Lonn Friend’s passion for rock ‘n’ roll music is clearly at the heart and soul of his writing. Never falling victim to what most self-anointed critics mistakenly see as their role, Lonn is not condescending nor does he pontificate to his readers and listeners. While numerous journalists feel a need to convey a sense that they are more knowledgeable than you, Lonn breathes and articulates the spirit of rock with the purity of youth and the wisdom of age.”

  —Paul Stanley, KISS

  “Lonn is exactly as his name describes. A friend to all. He is one of the only people I can think of who is genuinely loved and respected by rock stars and music-industry moguls alike.”

  —Jason Flom, chairman and CEO, Virgin Records

  “From AM to FM to TV to MTV to VH-1 to the Box to the Internet to the Tube, I’ve rocked a few miles. Lonn and I have rocked many together. If I were asked to put my own story to book, it would be Lonn who I’d beg to write it!”

  —Les Garland, cofounder, MTV

  “Lonn Friend knows rock ‘n’ roll like few others. In fact, come to think of it, he is rock ‘n’ roll. He’s written about rock, been a friend to many a rock star, and even guided their careers at a record company. He knows the business inside out, knows the key players, and understands that rock is at its best when it addresses not only the material but also the spiritual side of life.”

  —Mark Joseph, author, Faith, God & Rock ‘n’ Roll

  “Writer and observationalist Lonn Friend has been at the center of hash music and metallic chaos and also a witness of quieter melodic soul journeys. His words and literary-flow documentation on specific musical eras and life in Los Angeles and his recent desert reality chronicle a path that combines his own relationships to both sound and spirituality. Lonn is always in front of the music, not behind the music.”

  —Harvey Kubernik, author, This Is Rebel Music: The Harvey Kubernik InnerViews

  “I don’t know anyone like Lonn. Over the course of his lifelong love affair with music, the universe has managed to place him in the most extraordinary places at precisely the right time. Lonn Friend is indeed the ubiquitous Zelig of Rock.”

  —Miguel Ferrer, actor, Crossing Jordan, NBC

  For Megan Rose, star pupil in the school of rock

  and eternally first in my heart

  “From the earliest times man seems to have been endowed with a conscience. When we penetrate the wisdom of the truth-sayers we discover that conscience was not meant to be a burden; that it was to be used instinctively and intuitively. It is only in periods of decadence that truth becomes complicated and conscience a heavy sack of guilt.”

  —Henry Miller

  Contents

  FOREWORD BY LARS ULRICH

  INTRODUCTION

  Welcome to My Jungle

  Full Metal Jacket

  Wonder in Alice Land

  Chicken Soup for the Rubber Soul

  The Amazing Journey

  That ‘70s Chapter

  Dr. Stanley and Mr. Simmons

  Nirvana at High Noon

  Band of Golden Words

  Live and Let Clive

  Easy Riders on the Storm

  The Screamin’ Prophet

  Ballad of Jon and Richie

  Rock Your Children Well

  AFTERWORD: LIKE A ROLLING STONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Foreword

  My older son’s favorite band is Skid Row. He’s infatuated with Sebastian Bach.

  Every morning on the way to school we get there a little faster courtesy of “Slave to the Grind.” It’s really fuckin’ TRIPPY driving around in the quirky semi-suburbs north of San Francisco sharing Skid Row (with the odd AC/DC, Megadeth, or Ramones song thrown in) with my six-year-old offspring.

  Now let’s stay with the word trippy for a second …

  When I say trippy, I mean it in the most positive sense of the word (it’s all good in the hood, real fuckin’ cool, all that shit, etc.), BUT it is a trip. A real fuckin’ trip. A mindfuck-and-a-half Because the trip part of trippy takes me on a journey back a good fifteen years to the turn of a new decade, where the excesses of the ‘80s not so quietly rolled over into the further excesses of the ‘90s.

  When I think of that state of mind called 1990, Sebastian Bach in some way becomes the gateway, the gatekeeper to a real motherfucker-of-a-time period in rock music, a real crossroads, a time of blink-and-you’ll-miss-it excitement, fireballs, meteor showers, and likewise outpourings and effusions of feelings, thoughts, and vibes called Rock ‘n’ Roll.

  And lurking in the shadows with pen and paper was the man who built the Gatehouse … that moment’s Lester Bangs, that moment’s Cameron Crowe, that moment’s Geoff Barton, one Lonn Michael Friend (aka: Dude).

  “Do you smell that? The smell of rock ‘n’ roll” as the object of my five-minute hunt in the attic has been retrieved. Out of an old, cobwebbed Evian box marked, with a black Sharpie, WHITE AXL JACKET, comes, well, my … uh … white leather jacket (!!) Primed on by my friend Steve and sportin’ white leather, black gloves, and mirrored shades, I am now fully inspired to write the definitive story of Lonn M. Friend. Oh wait! The definitive story of Lonn M. Friend is actually what comes on the following hundreds of pages, because who the fuck else is gonna write the definitive story of Lonn other than the man himself? I’m merely here to remind you (and actually me and him, too) that his memories, stories, and experiences are obviously not only the definitive story of Lonn M. Friend (duh!) but probably THE definitive look into this bygone era of excessive rock ‘n’ roll that ran parallel to Lonn’s tenure at RIP magazine, the Gatehouse, from 1987 to its demise in 1994.

  Use 1990 as your springboard …

  If it was going on three years either side of 1990, if it was goin’ on in harder rock ‘n’ roll, and if it was going on in America, it was in RIP. And if it was in RIP, it was Lonn. Because Lonn was RIP and RIP was Lonn. The two words are really one and the same. Like Rolling Stone decades earlier, like Creem, New Musical Express, Sounds, and even Kerrang!, RIP magazine became synonymous with a movement, an era. It was (and remains) a time capsule … IT became the hard-rock scene in the late ‘80s.

  A gateway… the way in for the fans, the kids, the followers …

  A mirror … for
the musicians, the band members, the hangers-on …

  RIP was as vital to that scene—to that moment—as any of the above-mentioned mags were to their classic times.

  It was the only time in my career that there was a magazine in America that actually meant something. Sure we all read X, Y & Z on airplanes, buses, etc. We all got hard-ons when we saw ourselves in X, Y & Z and sure, some of us have fond memories of the moments and spreads in X, Y & Z over the years, but RIP was different. I cared about RIP. I wanted to be in RIP. I wanted to be on the cover of RIP. I wanted RIP to care about me. I wanted RIP to care about my band. The funny thing was that for a good six to seven years, I know that every other fuckin’ band member in any of the bands on the hard-rock scene in America felt the same way. We all wanted to be in. We all wanted to be on the cover … and most of all, we all wanted Lonn’s attention.

  Ahhh … Lonn’s attention.

  How good that made me feel.

  How important that made me feel.

  Elsewhere in this book, you’ll probably get to places where Lonn talks about “the scene,” stories, and so on, and he’ll most likely use the phrase “fly on the wall” to describe his place in that scenario. I appreciate that phrase and I appreciate his humility, but when Lonn was around, he was no fuckin’ fly on the fuckin’ wall. When Lonn was there, we gave him attention. We were right there … around him, clamoring for his recognition. Each one of us tried to one-up the other with the funny quote, the printable sound bite, the outrageous story, the best one-liner about the previous evening’s excessiveness to get his attention, to be quoted, to be included.

  Actually, come to think of it, Lonn was the least “fly on the wall” guy/journalist who ever hung around, because of what he represented, what he stood for. The sheer force and magnetism of his personality, perfectly balanced with the right dose of humility and enough innocence left in his eyes, made it impossible for him to be invisible, made it impossible for him to be just another face. Doesn’t matter where we were: on the road, where Lonn would fly out to get some “road dirt;” down in the studio, he’d report on the progress of the recording of the “Black Album,” showing up with boxes full of everything from Barely Legal to Women Over 50 hot off Larry Flynt’s presses; or he’d hang around at my house to get a little staged insight into the private life of… I/we/whoever he was around would always clamor around him, because it made us feel important, vying for his attention, ready to devour and chomp on whatever he was the bringer of, whether it was news and tall tales of our friends and peers, dirt and gossip on our enemies, or another box of fresh porn to lend its inspiration to yet another dreadful day in the studio.

  Fly on the wall? Nahhh. More like fly in your face! Fly in his face! Flies on shit! Flies on the SAME shit! Pigs in shit! A bunch of content, aloof, self-obsessed pigs rolling around, having the time of their lives, living it up gloriously IN THE SHIT OF ROCK ‘N’ ROLL … (and I do mean that in the most positive way).

  The swelling of Metallica … Munich, August 1991 …

  The “Black Album” has just entered the charts at number one in 209 countries, more or less, and one diminutive Danish drummer was feeling pretty fuckin’ good about it. On tour in Europe with AC/DC, Motley Krellmonster, etc., the boys were out livin’ it up, throwin’ it down, high on their own supply, and feeling pretty good about the state of the world.

  At midnight, one Lonn M. Friend walks into the Munchen Rock Star Hangout (??!!) nightclub, finds the debauched gathering of assorted hard-rock characters, who are busy celebrating another day of possibilities, spots the Danish drummer, plops himself down right next to him with a huge shit-eating grin on his face, and says, “Congratulations on the number ones!” A pause follows as the drummer travels to the far reaches of his alcohol-soaked brain and number-one bruised ego, contemplates the presence of a mere mortal, and utters something along the lines of, “Oh, it’s Mr. RIP, the journalist who likes to hang out with rock stars. Why don’t you go sit with somebody else— I’m too fuckin’ busy!!!”

  That moment of severe swelling ended up being immortalized by a VERY LIMITED EDITION run of Lonn M. Friend-produced T-shirts—most of which, thankfully, are safely stored upstairs in my attic next to that Evian box with that white leather—depicting your humble intro deliverer with a small body and an enormous, grossly oversized head!

  But much more important, that moment was the beginning of the unswelling of the Metallica Ego, because by bringing the moment to its much needed sarcastic extreme, Lonn M. Friend stopped being “journalist,” stopped being “fly on the wall,” stopped being RIP magazine, and started becoming a FRIEND (no pun intended), the Friend, the Brother, the Confidant, the Kindred Spirit… Dude … the Muse that he’s truly been to me ever since that moment passed and thankfully faded to black.

  Tear down the rat racial slime / Can’t be king of the world if you’re slave to the grind.

  It’s 8:22 A.M. and the next generation are singing along, blissfully unaware, as we run late for school as usual. The Mindfuck. The Trip. The journey my mind has just been on—the flashbacks, the excesses, the debauchery, the time capsule I’ve just visited—thankfully stays up front in the driver’s seat.

  But hey, man, guess what? You can visit too. It’s all here, in the next coupla hundred-whatever pages, courtesy of the Gatehouse-builder, the Fly-on-the wall, in-the-face, in-the-shit… the Muse … Dude.

  There’s still hope for the next generation as long as the kids in the backseat are lucky enough to find another Lonn M. Friend … just as I did. Enjoy.

  Lars (M.) Ulrich

  San Francisco

  Introduction

  CAN YOU SEE THE REAL ME,

  CAN YA? CAN YA?

  —Pete Townshend

  I was standing alone in front of Blue Man Group’s theater in the bowels of the bustling glass pyramid that is the Luxor Resort and Casino. It was a balmy spring night in 2004 and I was on assignment for Las Vegas Life magazine, doing research for a feature about the much heralded and wildly successful avant-garde performance phenomenon. This was not a road story. The previous October, I had left my hometown of Los Angeles and relocated to the desert with the goal of searching my soul and, perhaps, writing a book.

  As I prepared to enter the venue, a thirty-something brunette approached me. She appeared tentative, even a little giddy. “Excuse me,” she said with a smile. “But you look a lot like Lonn M. Friend.” It had been a while since anyone had recognized me in public, much less mentioned the middle initial with which I used to identify myself at the top of the masthead. “Do you know who I’m talking about?” she asked. “He ran RIP magazine. Man, he had the dream job.”

  This is where the look on my older, wiser, and less metallic face must have given me away. “Wait a minute!” she cried. “You’re Lonn! Oh my God!” My close-cropped ‘do and Amish goatee could no longer hide my identity I was fully exposed.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “This is so cool,” she gushed. “It’s Hope. Lonn M. Friend! No way!”

  “So you were a rocker, huh?” I mused rhetorically.

  “Are you kidding!” she said. “I’m from Baltimore. Those were the days, GN’R, Metallica, Def Leppard, the Crüe, Scorpions, Bon Jovi, Judas Priest, Whitesnake. That was the best time ever. I used to listen to you on WIYY on Saturday nights, too.”

  I thought about the life, family, house, and career I’d left behind, flashed on the fifty cents a word I was being paid as the exiled freelance music journalist and the nine-hundred-dollars-a-month apartment I was living alone in, and felt about as far from a hero as you could possibly imagine. I dropped the M. in my byline years ago. Contrary to popular belief, it never stood for metal. “You’re making me blush,” I said. “Please stop. That’s ancient history.”

  In the past, I often felt like a cartoon character, an animated idiot with long hair and a beard, walking around the backstage areas of clubs, theaters, arenas, or stadiums with a laminate hanging around my ne
ck. My badge of courage, sword of power, ticket to ride any amusement I cared to in the rock-’n’-roll circus. And there were some pretty crazy attractions. The Guns N’ Roses Jack n’ Coke Jungle Cruise was alone worth the price of admission.

  One minute I was commanding the big bucks in a notorious Beverly Hills-based publishing company with a nice expense account, getting paid to rock the planet and report what I saw. The next, I was unemployed, emotionally, professionally, and spiritually decomposing, taking trips to see rock concerts in foreign lands on frequent flier miles so I wouldn’t lose touch with the Source.

  Music, in its myriad manifestations, whether heavy metal, slightly mental, soft and supple, crass and crippled, jazzy, sassy, mainstream, upstream, off stream, dynamic, dependent or independent—wherever it comes from and whomever it is passing through at its moment of creation, that is the essence of who I am. I can’t play a lick or keep a beat, but I can feel every note whether it’s a soul-bending solo off Jimmy Page’s Les Paul or the velvet growl of an Eddie Vedder “yeahhhh!”

  This book is a collection of moments where I was the fly on the wall, the buzzin’ insect with the microscopic notepad. If I hit the mark, you were there with me. It’s also a memoir and, in places, deeply personal. I made mistakes, stepped in shit, enjoyed rockin’ success and exasperating failure. When I cut myself open to find the truth, I discovered that I was both a friend and a chameleon who shape-shifted his way through life to make the right connections for the sake of the experience and the story.

  To be perfectly honest, I was never rich or famous, but I came about as close to being almost famous as anyone. Cameron Crowe had Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers in the ‘70s; I had GN’R and Metallica in the ‘80s and ‘90s. But even though I wore the headbanging media hat with passion and conviction during metal’s heyday, RIP and hard rock represented but one dimension of my own musical persona. Everyone was “dude,” everything “rocked,” and when I gazed at my hairy mug in the mirror, I wasn’t sure whether I was seeing the real me or a media manifested facsimile thereof. Back then, it didn’t matter either way. I was too caught up in the hoopla to care.