Life on Planet Rock: From Guns N' Roses To Nirvana, A Backstage Journey Through Rock's Most Debauched Decade - Softcover

Friend, Lonn

 
9780767922081: Life on Planet Rock: From Guns N' Roses To Nirvana, A Backstage Journey Through Rock's Most Debauched Decade
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0767922085 ISBN 13: 9780767922081
Verlag: Three Rivers Pr, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

For the generation coming of age in the years from 1987 to 1994, RIP magazine was every bit as crucial as Rolling Stone. Life on Planet Rock describes how Lonn Friend, the editor of RIP, became the Zelig-like chronicler of the biggest musical moments of that time—from introducing Guns N’ Roses (in nothing but a top hat, underwear, and cowboy boots) to sitting in during the making of Metallica’s Black Album. Life on Planet Rock provides revealing portraits of artists as varied as Kurt Cobain, Gene Simmons, Alice Cooper, Axl Rose, James Hetfield, Steven Tyler, and many more. Part oral history, part candid and humorous memoir, it is a wormhole back to a fast-moving time in music that saw tastes flash from new wave to hair metal to grunge, told as only someone who was there through it all could tell it.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

LONN FRIEND was born in 1956, the year Elvis brought rock ’n’ roll to the mainstream. He has been around music—as a DJ, writer, reviewer, developer of talent, and editor—ever since. He has had a regular spot on MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, and he lives in Los Angeles.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1

Welcome to My Jungle

"THERE IS NOTHING STABLE IN THE WORLD;
UPROAR'S YOUR ONLY MUSIC."

--John Keats


I've never had trouble making friends. Probably has something to do with the name I was born with. The moniker has been both a curse and blessing. When I was growing up, kids would tease me. "What's up, Lonn Enemy?" Preschool sticks and stones, but I was born sensitive so it hurt nonetheless. When my professional train started rollin', however, that's when my name started to take on deeper significance.

Running a rock magazine, I was everybody's friend. Friend to artist. Friend to executive. Friend to whoever shook my hand or dialed my number in need of connection, acceptance, favors, ink, respect, or whatever goods and services I could provide. But the simple fact is, I like people and my intention when meeting someone new has always been to extend my hand and make a connection. Bricklayer to rock star, everyone seeks contact. If authentic, that union can take you to the craziest places. It sure as hell took me.

I was in the Guns N' Roses dressing room while opening act Skid Row heated up the L.A. Forum. The only thing flowing harder and faster than the love was the Jack Daniel's. It was July 29, 1991, my thirty-fifth birthday. Band manager Doug Goldstein handed me a brand-new Yonex 200 driver (this golf club was the shit back in the early '90s). The media was out in force: there was no other show in town but this one, and pity another band trying to get attention.

"Hey, Lonn, you wanna bring us onstage tonight?" asked Slash, the group's mop-top lead guitarist.

"What, dude? Bring you onstage?" I replied, thinking I may have heard the wily rocker wrong. It took a nanosecond for me to grasp the magnitude of the situation.

"Let's rock!" I cried.

Slash smiled that perfect, disarming, drunken smile, sipped his Jack 'n' Coke and fired back, "Yeah, man! But listen, there's one catch. You have to do it in your underwear! And wear my hat and boots!"

Duff McKagan and Izzy Stradlin were on the sofa smoking cigarettes. "Do it, dude," they encouraged.

Stage manager Tom Mayhue grabbed me by the collar and planted me on a spot in the dark area off the stairs that led to the stage from the arena floor. All I heard besides the thumping in my chest was the roar of twenty thousand maniacal GN'R fans howling like hungry hyenas. Next thing I knew, the lights were still up and there I was, standing in front of the mike at the foot of the stage, staring down a sea of hair, boobs, tattoos, mascara, blood, sweat, and beers.

I think the audience was too shocked or too stoned to fully realize that a long-haired, bearded, overgrown child was standing in front of them in boxer shorts, black leather boots, and Slash's top hat. "I'm Lonn Friend from RIP magazine," I roared, the veins in my neck commencing to protrude, "and I'd do anything for this fucking band! Tonight, they're going to do everything for you. Coming out in a minute, the heaviest fucking band in the world, Gun N' Roses!"

As I cut through the curtain, lead singer Axl Rose flashed me a grin and said softly, "That was cool." The strawberry blond thunder from Lafayette, Indiana, proceeded to lay absolute waste to Angel City by conducting his band through a monstrous three-hour-plus set that delivered just about every track from the GN'R catalog and then some. This was rock's new jungle, and if you were a friend, you were welcomed in.

How did I get on an arena stage in my boxers introducing the most successful and disreputable rock group of the day? Professionally speaking, it started with a guy in a gold-plated wheelchair and his notorious wife. My introduction to the publishing kingdom of Larry and Althea Flynt resulted from the efforts of a college pal named Nancy Gottesman, who was an editor with the UCLA Daily Bruin, my alma mater's paper.

In the spring of 1982, I paid the rent by working as a publisher's assistant at Gambling Times magazine. Nancy called me up and said that her boyfriend, Ed Dwyer, executive editor of Gentlemen's Companion, had an opening for an associate editor. "Gentlemen's Companion? Never heard of it," I said.

"It's a Flynt publication," she replied. "You know, Hustler! Well, do you want an interview?"

I thought about it for ten seconds and said, "Yeah! Set me up!" I had no clue what a magazine editor did, but I was twenty-five years old, single, a pathological flirt, and not offended by pornography.

On April 19, 1982, I exited the elevator on the thirty-eighth floor of 2029 Century Park East (the towers featured on the cover of Yes's Going for the One LP). As fate would have it, the associate editor of Hustler had just been fired, so when Dwyer and I had concluded our interview, he sent me over to the other side of the building to meet the "big boys," Hustler managing editor Kelly Garrett, executive editor Don Evans, and Flynt editorial director Bruce David.

Garrett was superintelligent and loved music. We connected instantly. Evans was a laid-back, old-school vet of the publishing wars who lived for happy hour. We hit it off, too. David was the toughest. Loud and confident, he intimidated me, but I cracked a couple jokes and acted like I knew what the fuck I was talking about. Whatever I said or did worked because after two hours, both magazines wanted to hire me. I accepted the Hustler offer, of course. Why fly coach when there's an open seat in first class?

My debut year in the company, I never saw Larry. He rarely made an appearance in the building. Instead, his wife, Althea, would pop in, usually unannounced, and make David's life as miserable as possible by ordering him to push the content envelope as far as the law would allow. Althea wanted the photo spreads to be more anatomically revealing than Penthouse (Hustler's motto was "Think Pink") and insisted on unexpurgated feature stories with psychopaths, murderers, political activists, and four-letter stand-up comics--in other words, fascinating people.

I was given the "Mail Order Feedback" column to edit, where it was my job to assess the quality of X-rated 8-mm films (known as "loops") and other sexually oriented products available for purchase through advertisements in the back of the magazine. Larry refused to take ad dollars from tobacco and alcohol companies, opting instead to turn the last thirty pages of each issue into an erotic catalog. Fly-by-night companies that sold everything from dildos to penis enlargers were now under my scrutiny. If one of our readers got ripped off, I'd get the product, evaluate it (never mind), and expose the sleazy outfit in print.

I was also tasked to do brief but penetrating (sorry) Q&A's for Hustler's sister publication Chic as editor of the "Close Up" section. I interviewed two convicted killers, a child molester (thankfully, these were done by mail), the first phone-sex proprietor in America, the infamous Atlanta madam Dolores French, and a fledgling filthy stand-up comic named Robert Schimmel, whose jokes tore my colon apart. I was making about $400 a week and having a great time. Life on planet cock was not half bad.

Then one summer afternoon in '83 the mysterious Mrs. Flynt emerged from her red-velvet executive enclave to pay a visit to the grunts in the editorial department. I just happened to have Mötley Crüe's new record, Shout at the Devil, blaring from my boom box, not for my own listening pleasure but because it was being reviewed for a new monthly column I was writing for Chic called "Music...

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Verlag
Three Rivers Pr
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0767922085
ISBN 13 
9780767922081
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
290
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Three Rivers Press
https://www.adolfodominguez.com/en-us/legal-notice.html

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