Chapter 22: Why I'm Pissed I'm Not a Rock Star

It was at this time, when I was in community college, that I’d answered an ad for a band seeking a bassist, a handwritten band ad I found hanging on a wall in one of the college’s bathrooms.

The band ad mentioned similar tastes as I had, 80s rock, metal, that type of sound, so I decided to throw my hat in the ring, see if I could join their cause.

When I got to the audition, the singer/guitarist, Cyrus, had a tight-looking setup going.

Cyrus lived with his folks, and their house was pretty spacious, not a mansion, but big, with plenty of room for the band to rehearse. In his basement, he had a spiffy little makeshift home studio equipped with an 8-track recording module and a wide assortment of pedals, amps, drum kit, and tech gadgets.

Cyrus’s dad, who looked sort of like a leprechaun, short, Irish, with flaming red hair and flush red cheeks, had a successful home renovation business, and bred horses. They lived well outside Miami, past West Palm Beach, and had a tiny farm, stable, riding track, next to their house, with a few horses they rode, bred, and sold.

Cyrus introduced his dad as the group’s manager.

Manager? I was impressed. It sounded so professional! So serious! So adult! I’d never been in a band with a manager. I’d only played in shitty garage bands, mostly with rich pothead kids in high school.

The whole having a manager thing was a new world to me. Plus, his band was playing shows. Lots of shows, they’d said. At local bars, restaurants.

The band played mostly originals too, that Cyrus wrote. They were catchy tunes, got stuck in your head, his riffs and hooks. Very 80s rock, hair metal, mid-tempo vibe. Cyrus was an excellent guitarist, could rip fantastic solos, and really did have premium gear, Ibanez axes, pro-quality EQs, amps, speakers.

His singing was a tad freaky, though. I was never a big fan of it. Sounded like a constipated Dave Mustaine crossed with Neil Young on a bad acid trip.

But his tunes, guitar-playing were enough, for me, to look past it. He’d had singers before but had wanted to handle the vocal duties himself because singers often left the group, completely changing the sound, ala Van Halen, Black Sabbath, to name a few, so he wanted to maintain the group’s style, dynamic.

(It wouldn’t be until later that I discovered why so many left his group... )

The drummer of the band, Chris, was slightly older than us, and was a stocky, hairy Italian American guy, with dark features, who, in his late 20s, lived at home with his parents. He drove a white corvette, I remember, and was the manager of a grocery store.

Chris and I never connected. Usually bassists and drummers should be tight, forming the rhythm section, the backbone, the spine of the band, but it wasn’t so with him. From the beginning, he didn’t like anything about me, the way I moved, played, dressed, nothing.

(Can’t say I’d like him much, either. I found him sort of a douche bag. He’d speak openly about having a bathroom fetish with women. Not that I care much what people do in their private lives, but that’s one I’m not sure should be shared with people you barely know. Like, maybe, pass me a questionnaire first, dude... )

During my bass solos he’d purposely hit his drums louder in an attempt to drown me out. He also complained to Cyrus about me.

But Cyrus, and I, weren’t entirely happy with him either. He’d be off tempo, at times, and was flaky, missing practices, and then got involved with this girl who he seemed more into than the band.

Cyrus and I had become close friends, hanging outside the band, drinking, smoking, talking on the phone. We’d talk for hours about rock. He was into all the same bands and was a hair metal historian like me. He’d been a bro, too, and introduced me to his girlfriend’s little sister, who I started to casually date. And she was one smoking hot little Cuban number!

Tiring of Chris, we began auditioning other drummers, one of them being a police officer, at least ten years older than us. But we decided against him since he could bust us for weed and once threaten that he’d have to bust anyone he saw doing drugs at a concert. That was going way too far. That wasn’t rock and roll.

We also experimented with using a drum machine, but it wasn’t the same as having a live drummer.

Ultimately, we stuck with Chris, and I saw why he didn’t want to leave. While bowling, with our girlfriends, Chris brought up something about us getting a record deal.

I asked Cyrus about this, and he told me that his dad “knew people” in the music business and that they were interested in signing us to a major label record deal.

Here I was, joining this band, and so far, we played only a couple shows at tiny bars, but it looked like we had the chance to get a “deal” and maybe make it big. Of course, being young, I didn’t understand the music business, so any talk of a record deal, to me, equated instant fame.

We started playing more shows at local bars. Some were packed and went off well. We’d have the place erupting in cheers and headbanging, playing covers of 80s metal songs and Cyrus’s originals. We’d bring down the house, on certain nights. There were other nights, too, when we played to five people. Sure, it was better to play a raucous, packed bar, but as long as we played, and played loud, we had fun. We just loved to play. We loved rock and roll...

Here and there we’d play restaurants, which was always a hit or miss. There’d be families there eating, and upon hearing Judas Priest covers, they’d up and leave rather quickly. (But once a family’s five-year-old son was dancing around and rocking to us, which made my night!)

There was another band we connected with, befriended, at an open mic night, and we started playing shows with them; they had a small local following and played mostly alternative covers of the day, Green Day, “Sex and Candy,” Third Eye Blind. But, strangely, their friends, fans, liked us too.

Out of the several shows we did with them, most came off well, until later, when the guitarist of that band and the singer started to argue a lot, getting into a fistfight on stage one night. Which, to be honest, was the highlight of the show.

Shortly we were joined by an electric violinist, a tall, lanky Haitian fellow, who absolutely rocked. He and Cyrus played dueling solos to GNR cover songs. It was dazzling.

But things unraveled, and fast.

There was to be a big rock festival up in Polk County, with L.A. Guns (or at least an iteration of L.A. Guns) and we were to open for them. Holy shit! We would be opening for a band, well, at least three members of the original band, but still, a band I grew up loving and to this day love. “Rip and Tear,” “Electric Gypsy,” their first two records, through and through 80s metal classics!

It somehow fell through, with Cyrus saying we’d have to be on a side stage, near a pile of pig shit. Which, I must say, was okay with me. I’d have stood IN pig shit if it meant playing on the same bill as L.A. Guns. Hell, even if it was only ONE original member of L.A. Guns- preferably Traci Guns- but who-the-fuck-ever!

Anyways, Cyrus didn’t want to do it, which puzzled me. Why give up any opportunity to rock with a band that legendary?

Cyrus said there was to be a bigger gig later. But before that, at a bar gig we played, Cyrus got bitched out by the bar owner because Cyrus had stood up on a speaker and jumped from it, doing a flying air kick, during a guitar solo.

Apparently, the bar owner had warned him not to jump off anything, wary of lawsuits, I guess. But Cyrus did it anyway.

Afterwards, we got into a heated argument with the bar owner. The angry bald New York guy cursing us out, his every other word being “fuck” or “fucking” and he fucking banned us from the fucking bar. Then after we were ejected from the premises, we had another flare-up. This one with a creepy little cock-eyed security guard, a guy with a probable Napoleon complex. Napoleon didn’t like us standing outside the bar, smoking and talking. Cyrus’s dad, not a large man himself, and Napoleon nearly got into a physical altercation, which we had to break apart.

Collecting our things, we left in a hurry.

The next night, we drove out to Vero Beach, a somewhat long haul up the coast, to play an 80s rock bar, where we’d been promised a gig. Entering the place, it was like a time warp. Dudes with big hair, tight leather pants.

But, and I don’t know why, there was no gig. Driving back home, we stopped for a late-night dinner, at a redneck diner. Over pancakes, Cyrus bragged about an upcoming show, where there’d be a record label executive or two to see us play.

Cyrus said the label had been waiting for hard rock “to come back” before they could sign us and were hoping for the right time to release our debut album.

Cyrus continued going on about the record label, the deal we’d sign, the things he’d request in the record contract, like unlimited supplies of Marlboro cigs and cases of ice-cold coca colas available at any time.

His dad shushed him, said “Cyrus!” in a castigating way, as if he knew something.

We didn’t have any other gigs for a couple weeks, and during this time, this run-up to the “big” gig where the record executive would be present, the gig got talked up more and more by Cyrus, and his dad also. His dad telling us after practice that there’d be “very important” people there, although, when he said this, his eyes were fixed to the floor and he’d spoken in a wavering voice, like he didn’t believe it, which struck me as odd...

Cyrus said the place would be the biggest venue we’d ever played. That there’d be around five hundred people. Cyrus and I plastered fliers for the gig, too, around town, local schools, hang out spots.