- My Forums
- Tiger Rant
- LSU Recruiting
- SEC Rant
- Saints Talk
- Pelicans Talk
- More Sports Board
- Fantasy Sports
- Golf Board
- Soccer Board
- O-T Lounge
- Tech Board
- Home/Garden Board
- Outdoor Board
- Health/Fitness Board
- Movie/TV Board
- Book Board
- Music Board
- Political Talk
- Money Talk
- Fark Board
- Gaming Board
- Travel Board
- Food/Drink Board
- Ticket Exchange
- TD Help Board
Customize My Forums- View All Forums
- Show Left Links
- Topic Sort Options
- Trending Topics
- Recent Topics
- Active Topics
Started By
Message
Your favorite passage from a book on rock 'n roll
Posted on 5/26/15 at 10:29 pm
Posted on 5/26/15 at 10:29 pm
Mine comes from the tome "I Want My MTV" that came out in 2011. To anybody that grew up in the 80s, all the milestones it touches on will be very familiar. I really enjoyed it as a whole.
I had to set the book down for a good five minutes to catch my breath from laughing so hard when I read this the first time.
It is written in the oral history style.
Robert Lombard, producer
At first, Van Halen were very anti-MTV. They were getting pressure from the network to produce clips, but they didn't want to. They felt they were better than that. Van Halen's record label commissioned Bruce Gowers to shoot a concert, but the band wouldn't cooperate, so there was no augmented lighting onstage. I had my own independent production company, and they dumped the footage on me. It was hard to cut things together, but I worked with an editor to make a video for "Unchained," and the band loved it.
Their next single was the Roy Orbison tune "Pretty Woman," and they asked me to oversee the video. "And you'd better not steal money from us"--they were always saying that. The band chose characters they were going to play: David Lee Roth played Napoleon, Eddie Van Halen played a cowboy, Alex Van Halen played Tarzan, Michael Anthony played a samurai warrior. We had two midgets in the video and a transvestite. At the audition, we put eighty trannies on tape. The band wanted to see some pussy, and I'd have to bring in models so they could look at girls in bikinis. The casting session was midgets, models, and trannies. And we'd drink Jack Daniel's all day--Drambuie for Eddie--and have a little toot here and there. There are line items in a video for catering and craft services--that's where you hid the money you used to buy drugs. I would always be able to bury at least a quarter ounce of cocaine in there and then dummy up a catering receipt.
Samuel Bayer, director
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and I loved MTV. In "Pretty Woman," David Lee Roth dressed up as Napoleon and Eddie Van Halen was a cowboy. It looked like they'd shot it in two hours, in someone's backyard in Pasadena. It was brilliant.
Robert Lombard
The location was near Valencia, a long drive from L.A., so to make sure they were on time, we had a limo pick each one of them up. They had a big trailer, like for a major film star, where we hung out and got high. The shoot took twenty-four hours and everybody was laughing their asses off, especially when the midgets tied the tranny to a stake.
At the end of the video, the girl whips off her wig and she's a man. And the midgets are running their hands up her legs and under her dress. You've got midgets violating a tranny. I thought it was hysterical, but MTV didn't The video was banned and it thought, My music-video career is totally over.
Pete Angelus, director
Some bizarre things happened during that video. Two cameramen quit. Why? maybe because it seemed like we were disorganized. But they might have quit because they were severely hallucinating from the mushrooms that the little brought to the set and handed out.
Michael Anthony, Van Halen
MTV played "Pretty Woman" once or twice and that was it, because of the ending with the transvestite and the midgets and the hunchback. We were going, Let's be as outrageous as we can. I was wearing about 120 pounds or armor, and walking around in that was not fun. But you know, a couple of beers and everything was okay.
The two midgets--or little people--one is named Jimmy Briscoe. He used to come to Arizona and stay with me and my wife. He went on the road with the band as "head of security," and he's been in quite a few movies. As it got later in the day and into the evening, everybody'd had a few beers, and the other little guy was copping a bit of a buzz and hitting on the female star. When he found out it was a guy, he didn't care; he was still hitting on him.
Pete Angelus
I stood on the set, going, "Seriously, can anybody find the little people? Where are they?" After twenty minutes of searching for them, I thought, I'll walk around and see if I can turn up anything. I got to the transvestite's dressing and I opened the door. This is what is saw; I don't want to be held accountable, it's just what I saw. The little guy was wearing a black cape. He was holding the transvestite's penis, which seemed kind of erect, and he was pretending it was a microphone. And he was singing "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones while doing a Mick Jagger impersonation. I thought, This is not going well. Then I closed the door and let him finish whatever the hell they were doing.
Kevin Godley
From the beginning, the lunatics were running the asylum. It was a new industry; there were no boundaries. It was like the Wild, Wild West.
I had to set the book down for a good five minutes to catch my breath from laughing so hard when I read this the first time.
It is written in the oral history style.
Robert Lombard, producer
At first, Van Halen were very anti-MTV. They were getting pressure from the network to produce clips, but they didn't want to. They felt they were better than that. Van Halen's record label commissioned Bruce Gowers to shoot a concert, but the band wouldn't cooperate, so there was no augmented lighting onstage. I had my own independent production company, and they dumped the footage on me. It was hard to cut things together, but I worked with an editor to make a video for "Unchained," and the band loved it.
Their next single was the Roy Orbison tune "Pretty Woman," and they asked me to oversee the video. "And you'd better not steal money from us"--they were always saying that. The band chose characters they were going to play: David Lee Roth played Napoleon, Eddie Van Halen played a cowboy, Alex Van Halen played Tarzan, Michael Anthony played a samurai warrior. We had two midgets in the video and a transvestite. At the audition, we put eighty trannies on tape. The band wanted to see some pussy, and I'd have to bring in models so they could look at girls in bikinis. The casting session was midgets, models, and trannies. And we'd drink Jack Daniel's all day--Drambuie for Eddie--and have a little toot here and there. There are line items in a video for catering and craft services--that's where you hid the money you used to buy drugs. I would always be able to bury at least a quarter ounce of cocaine in there and then dummy up a catering receipt.
Samuel Bayer, director
I grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and I loved MTV. In "Pretty Woman," David Lee Roth dressed up as Napoleon and Eddie Van Halen was a cowboy. It looked like they'd shot it in two hours, in someone's backyard in Pasadena. It was brilliant.
Robert Lombard
The location was near Valencia, a long drive from L.A., so to make sure they were on time, we had a limo pick each one of them up. They had a big trailer, like for a major film star, where we hung out and got high. The shoot took twenty-four hours and everybody was laughing their asses off, especially when the midgets tied the tranny to a stake.
At the end of the video, the girl whips off her wig and she's a man. And the midgets are running their hands up her legs and under her dress. You've got midgets violating a tranny. I thought it was hysterical, but MTV didn't The video was banned and it thought, My music-video career is totally over.
Pete Angelus, director
Some bizarre things happened during that video. Two cameramen quit. Why? maybe because it seemed like we were disorganized. But they might have quit because they were severely hallucinating from the mushrooms that the little brought to the set and handed out.
Michael Anthony, Van Halen
MTV played "Pretty Woman" once or twice and that was it, because of the ending with the transvestite and the midgets and the hunchback. We were going, Let's be as outrageous as we can. I was wearing about 120 pounds or armor, and walking around in that was not fun. But you know, a couple of beers and everything was okay.
The two midgets--or little people--one is named Jimmy Briscoe. He used to come to Arizona and stay with me and my wife. He went on the road with the band as "head of security," and he's been in quite a few movies. As it got later in the day and into the evening, everybody'd had a few beers, and the other little guy was copping a bit of a buzz and hitting on the female star. When he found out it was a guy, he didn't care; he was still hitting on him.
Pete Angelus
I stood on the set, going, "Seriously, can anybody find the little people? Where are they?" After twenty minutes of searching for them, I thought, I'll walk around and see if I can turn up anything. I got to the transvestite's dressing and I opened the door. This is what is saw; I don't want to be held accountable, it's just what I saw. The little guy was wearing a black cape. He was holding the transvestite's penis, which seemed kind of erect, and he was pretending it was a microphone. And he was singing "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones while doing a Mick Jagger impersonation. I thought, This is not going well. Then I closed the door and let him finish whatever the hell they were doing.
Kevin Godley
From the beginning, the lunatics were running the asylum. It was a new industry; there were no boundaries. It was like the Wild, Wild West.
This post was edited on 5/26/15 at 10:33 pm
2
Posted on 5/26/15 at 10:39 pm to Sayre
Our Band Could Be Your Life's chapter on the Butthole Surfers:
quote:
The night of the [Butthole Surfers] appearance at the huge Pandora's Box festival in the Netherlands, [bassist Mark] Kramer went to fetch [singer Gibby] Haynes for a sound check. "It is firstly most important to state that, on this night, Gibby had eaten an entire handful of four-way acid tabs and drank an entire bottle of Jim Beam before the sound check had even begun," Kramer notes.
[Guitarist Paul] Leary was furious at Haynes for getting wasted for such an important show. "frick that stupid-arse motherfricker," he snarled to Kramer. "I hate this fricking band. I swear to fricking Christ on a stick, I hate this fricking band more than I hate myself. And that's a lot. I don't even care if we ever play again. If you can't find him, frick it. frick IT!!!!" With that, he began smashing a couple of guitars with his bare fists.
The festival featured several stages, and Kramer eventually found Haynes at a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds show. As Kramer tells it, Haynes was completely naked, repeatedly fighting his way onto the stage and charging at Cave as hulking security guards punched and kicked him off the ten-foot-high stage and back into the audience, where he would remain for a few seconds before trying to claw his way back onstage again. Finally, guitarist Blixa Bargeld came forward and kicked Haynes in the groin with a pointed German boot. This time Haynes did not get up.
Kramer pushed his way through the crowd to come to the aid of his bandmate, only to find him lying unconscious. "I bend over to see if he is still alive, but he seems not to be breathing," Kramer says. "I poke him in the shoulder. Suddenly, like a volcano, he bursts to life and swirls his fists in every direction, clipping me but good, along with a few innocent girls, and drawing the ire of their boyfriends and the enraged security guards, who are now motivated to leave Mr. Cave to his own devices, decend the stage, and join the boyfriends in administring a thorough and none-too-subtle beating upon Gibby's face, head and shoulders, until he is once again unconscious on the floor."
Or so it seemed. Actually, Haynes was only pretending he'd been knocked out, and as the hired thugs walked away, he rose to his feet and began screaming at them, "DUTCH ****S!!! GODDAMN frickING DUTCH ****S!!!! A WHOLE frickING COUNTRY FILLED WITH NOTHING BUT frickING TURD BURGLING ****S!!!! I frick YOUR arse IN HEAVEN AND HELL!!!! FUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOU!!"
"The ensuing chase and capture was the stuff dreams are made of," Kramer says. "Stark naked like the day he was born, beaten, bruised, bloody, and tripping, this icon of modern music ran like Jesse Owens through the entire complex, down the halls, up the stairs, grabbing beer bottles from people's hands as he went and throwing them down on the concertgoers below. A hail of beer cans, bottles, and miscellaneous garbage rained down upon the Dutch persons as I finally caught up with Gibby just as a throng of the biggest security guards I had ever seen caught up with him, too.
"At this time there were perhaps twenty hands upon him, holding him down, and although Gibby is completely crazy, he is not stupid. 'I'M SORRY!!!! I'M frickING SORRY!!!! PLEASE DON'T BEAT ME ANYMORE! I HAVE A BRAIN TUMOR!!! I CAN'T HELP THE WAY I AM!!!! PLEASE DON'T HIT ME AGAIN!!! IT'S AGAINST MY RELIGION!!!!'"
Haynes then made a successful run for the dressing room and slammed the door behind him. Kramer could hear Leary and Haynes screaming at each other inside, and when he finally worked up the courage to open the door, he found the two of them smashing guitars, bottle and chairs in what Kramer calls "the most potent example of bad behavior I have ever seen. To this day, more than fifteen years later, I have no more vivid memory of the effect a life in music can have on a human being."
Moments later a man entered the dressing room and asked if he could borrow a guitar. "BORROW A GUITAR??!!! WELL, WHO THE frick ARE YOU???!!! Haynes screamed, eyes flashing in delerious anticpation of forthcoming violence. But the man was totally unfazed.
"I'm Alex Chilton," the man answered calmly.
Haynes was flabbergasted. After a long pause, he methodically opened the remaining guitar cases one by one and guestured at them as if to say, "Take anything you want."
Just before they went onstage, Haynes chugged an entire bottle of red wine; moments into the set he dived straight into the horrified crowd, which parted like the Red Sea. Haynes knocked himself unconscious on the floor, to warm applause from the theater's secuity team. "I look down at Gibby," recalls Kramer. "He tires to move, but the collapses as vomit begins pouring from his mouth."
After the gig Haynes was irate about having been unconscious for most of the show and insisted on getting paid within five minutes or he'd be "taking it out on your Dutch testicles!" Haynes snatched up the fistfull of guilders and stuffed them in a pair of pants in his guitar case, but almost immediately forgot that he had been paid and went on yet another rampage, streaking naked through the fesival complex and screaming that he'd been ripped off.
"frickING DUTCH ****S!!! A WHOLE frickING COUNTRY OF COCK-SUCKING QUEENS!!!! YOU frickING BEAT ME UP AND THEN YOU RIP US OFF!!! WHICH ONE OF YOU ****S STOLE OUR MONEY??!!!! frickING DUTCH ****S!!!!"
Yet another chase scene ensued, and yet another pack of Dutch goons wrestled Haynes to the ground, and yet again he profusely apologized. "After which he is released once again," Kramer says, "and once again dashes through the halls screaming obscenities while grabbing beer bottles from people's hands as he runs and hurling them against the brick wall."
"Those frickin' Dutch," Leary explains, "they kind of get your pissed off after a while, man."
"We thought we had just ruined our careers by botching this show," [drummer Jeffrey 'King' Coffey says. "Of course, the Dutch loved it -- 'The mayhem it is beautiful, it is wonderful, every song erupted into chaos!'" The next day the local paper ran an article about how the Butthole Surfers were the sensation of the festival. "So of course, every time when we came back after that and just played music, people would be horribly disappointed," says Coffey. "'[In Dutch accent] How come you do not beat up people?"
Posted on 5/26/15 at 10:52 pm to Baloo
That's what I'm talking about I've got that book too. fricking awesome. I haven't read it in a while...I'm dying here..... 
I was reading a story on the Butthole Surfers in the Rolling Stone archives last weekend, and it talked about how Gibby was a high school quarterback, a pretty big guy, and how he had one hell of an arm. I bet he was humming the almighty hell out of those beer bottles.
I bet I have the only Camry in the south with a Butthole Surfers sticker on it. 'cept for around Austin, maybe. They have the best stories of that book, by far.
I was reading a story on the Butthole Surfers in the Rolling Stone archives last weekend, and it talked about how Gibby was a high school quarterback, a pretty big guy, and how he had one hell of an arm. I bet he was humming the almighty hell out of those beer bottles.
I bet I have the only Camry in the south with a Butthole Surfers sticker on it. 'cept for around Austin, maybe. They have the best stories of that book, by far.
This post was edited on 5/26/15 at 11:05 pm
Posted on 5/26/15 at 11:05 pm to Sayre
LINK
I hate MTV, and Van Halen
I can't find any of my favorites online: R. Meltzer's Creem review of Sticky Fingers; pretty much anything by Nick Tosches, but especially his book Country, The Biggest Music In America; or the liner notes by "A. Seltzer" for the garage-punk compilation Pebbles V. 2, though I did find these, er, nuggets:
These guys were the losers in a scene where Question Mark & the Mysterians were the winners; they were such bad news that even the likes of the Trashmen looked down on 'em.
My pick for the Grammy this year is "Green Fuz" by Randy Alvey & Green Fuz, which has to be the rottenest recording ever made but has more honest-to-Howard Cosell energy than anything the wimpy Sex Pistols ever dreamed of puking up.
"Green Fuz"
I hate MTV, and Van Halen
I can't find any of my favorites online: R. Meltzer's Creem review of Sticky Fingers; pretty much anything by Nick Tosches, but especially his book Country, The Biggest Music In America; or the liner notes by "A. Seltzer" for the garage-punk compilation Pebbles V. 2, though I did find these, er, nuggets:
These guys were the losers in a scene where Question Mark & the Mysterians were the winners; they were such bad news that even the likes of the Trashmen looked down on 'em.
My pick for the Grammy this year is "Green Fuz" by Randy Alvey & Green Fuz, which has to be the rottenest recording ever made but has more honest-to-Howard Cosell energy than anything the wimpy Sex Pistols ever dreamed of puking up.
"Green Fuz"
Posted on 5/26/15 at 11:09 pm to Kafka
quote:
I hate MTV, and Van Halen
The list of shite I hate is a lot smaller than the list of stuff I like. I haven't watched it in decades, but I have MTV a lot to thank for some things. It was on 120 Minutes that I first saw so many great bands, like the Butthole Surfers. We didn't get access to any of that kind of music where I grew up in Clinton or Zachary any other way, and I was very thankful for being exposed to so much exotic stuff.
But thanks for sharing anyway, and for the TD link. I missed that when it came around.
This post was edited on 5/26/15 at 11:15 pm
Posted on 5/26/15 at 11:18 pm to Sayre
quote:Hitler breaks ground on the Autobahn
I haven't watched it in decades, but I have MTV a lot to thank for some things. It was on 120 Minutes that I first saw so many great bands, like the Butthole Surfers. We didn't get any of that kind of music in Clinton or Zachary, and I was very thankful for being exposed to so much exotic stuff.
quote:The first page got phishraped but there's still some interesting stuff to be found there
thanks for sharing anyway, and for the TD link. I missed that when it came around
feel free to bump it
Page 1 of 1
Back to top
Follow TigerDroppings for LSU Football News