Sing Backwards and Weep Page 15

  The crowd screamed their hearty, grateful approval. The security guys in the venue dragged the staggering, bloody-faced former bad guy off the floor and out of the venue.

  The next day, however, the Oslo police department showed up at our hotel and took Layne down to the station to arrest him, confiscate his passport, and charge him with assault. Kevan Wilkins, Alice’s quietly unassuming but badass British tour manager, went down to the station to try to sort it out.

  Wilkins had come up in a rough neighborhood in Birmingham. We’d been told by somebody close to him that as a young man he’d been an amateur boxer, a good one, and it was easy to believe. He had begun his career in the music business as a bodyguard for Marc Almond. During the height of Soft Cell’s popularity, Kevan had supposedly accompanied Almond into a myriad of dark, dangerous underground kink-filled scenes, private BDSM clubs. Wilkins’s job had been to stay close and keep Almond safe while he leveraged his massive fame for all the heavy sex situations he could get into. We could never get Wilkins to reveal the details, but he stoically implied that it was pretty shadowy, down and dirty.

  Wilkins had the aura of a man who’d seen all there was to see of this world and was the last person you’d want to fuck with. After Layne had been grilled for hours, Kevan was finally able to secure his release and his passport. The tour moved on. We wrapped after a couple more shows and I finally got on a plane for home, strung out and utterly exhausted.

  13

  ENJOYING THE IDIOT

  Back home in Seattle, my addiction became the be-all and end-all of my day. I became an animal led around and around the cage by heroin as the prize, like cheese to a rat. I found myself living the same day over and over: copping, using, finding ways to get dough to get more. I was broke all the time, pouring every cent I had on hand into the bag. I also continued to try and maintain the sad, pathetic charade of sobriety for my girlfriend, but she had been long wise to my bullshit. As I sought escape in the needle, she sought escape from me.

  In the spring of ’93, we went out on our own headline tour of the States. It was probably just the third we had played since our disastrous first tour for Epic. In the meantime, we’d played quite a few opening runs and one memorable short tour with Dean Wareham’s band Luna opening for us. Dean had been the singer of Galaxie 500, the band that had directly inspired me to begin my alternate gig playing quiet music. Drunk or high most of the time, I made myself a daily nuisance by asking him at their soundchecks to play a Jonathan Richman song he’d covered on the first Galaxie 500 record, a version I loved. He grew tired of that very quickly and it never elicited a smile from him. I enjoyed their music very much and would be surprised when he deigned to interact with me, but then it would only be for him to make some droll, witty remark that always felt as if it were meant to go over my head. He’d directly influenced the direction I went in as a solo artist, something he never knew. While at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, I had introduced him to an employee there who I’d had an intermittent sexual relationship with for a few years. Sparks flew between the two of them and I was glad he got laid and felt good I’d had a hand in it, but he remained just as icy to me afterward as before. Not that he’d needed it, but so much for helping a dude out. From the very beginning straight through to the end, he carried himself with the self-respect of a serious person, and viewed me, as usual, as a buffoonish cartoon character. I couldn’t help but think that he was an artist who felt it slightly beneath him, a tiresome chore probably, to open the show and be forced to play before us shameless hillbillies. Honestly, I could hardly blame him. It would have embarrassed me, too, had I myself not been the source of the embarrassment.

  My favorite memories from that tour both happened on the same night. The first was when two incredibly gorgeous young Asian strippers made it their instantly obtained goal to fuck me together to celebrate one of their birthdays at the infamous Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco. When the sun came up that morning I realized I was actually on the balcony outside my room fully naked with the two nude young women. Even though I’d been drinking less than usual that night, I had no idea how we’d ended up outside, but I had always had a slight exhibitionist streak in certain situations so it was not a surprise I might end up publicly fucking. I became aware of the ridiculous nature of the spectacle when our soundman, coming back after a night of drinking, said, “Hey, bud, you might wanna move your party back inside” as he walked by. The second great memory of that tour came earlier that night at the show somewhere in the East Bay, Oakland, I think. I had been swinging the mic around onstage by the end of the cord a la Roger Daltrey of the Who when it came off its tether and flew across the entire length of stage where Stanley Demeski, Luna’s slightly older, seemingly unathletic drummer, formerly of the much-loved New Jersey band the Feelies, standing sidestage, snatched it nonchalantly one-handed straight out of the air. A magical grab worthy of Willie Mays. A beautiful hall-of-fame catch. He was a lovable character and, like their entire band, a world-class musician. Once I had a functioning microphone in hand again, I took a moment to acknowledge his achievement to the audience, which many had witnessed, and the applause was deafening.

  Now we were out again. Our openers this time were the Portland, Oregon, trio Pond and a band from Illinois called the Poster Children.

  From the get-go, it was obvious the Poster Children were unhappy to be on this tour, the two brothers in the band standoffish and the female bass player in tears every other day for some reason. Only the drummer, John Herndon, a friendly, young, ultra-talented kid—someone I always heard Van Conner refer to as “Spider”—would ever hang out with us. The rest of the band were a drag to be around. We were not their cup of tea, neither as musicians nor people, and the feeling was mutual.

  Only the second day of the run, I overheard their bass player, Rose, talking shit about me: “That idiot thinks he’s Jim Morrison!”

  That was one comparison I had grown to hate. While a more mature person would not have given it two seconds’ consideration, it rankled me. Idiot, I could live with, even agree with. Morrison, I could not. True, one of the very first songs we had played as a band at our earliest practices had been a sped-up, punkish version of the Doors classic “The End,” patterned after the Dickies’ version of “Nights in White Satin.” And on Clairvoyance, the Trees’ terrible first full-length record, I’d been fucking around in the vocal booth and ad-libbed an over-the-top bit of obviously fake Morrison spoken-word jackoffery to amuse Steve Fisk, who’d recorded it. But Jim Morrison was far from the vocalist I sought to emulate. It was Jeffrey Lee Pierce, John Cale, the Leaving Trains’ Falling James, Chris Newman of Portland’s Napalm Beach, and Ian Curtis of Joy Division who I worshipped and wished to sing like, not Morrison. As our visibility increased and the Morrison comparison became the norm, I grew to regret the bad joke I’d allowed to be released. Nearly every article about us in any magazine would dig up his grave to compare us, not just claiming I sounded like him but also that I looked, acted, and drank like him as well. I was bummed out every time I came across the weak, lazy, lame “tribute.” After I heard Rose utter that comment, I made it a point each day to be extra kind and thoughtful around her.

  “How are you, Rose? So nice to see you today. What a treat it was to hear you play last night. Hope you have a great show tonight!”

  Knowing she dissed me only made me more attentive, as thoughtful as I could be, forcing her to interact with the fakest, nicest version of myself possible, as all the while I was thinking, Uh-oh! Look who’s here! Get ready to enjoy the idiot, lady, ’cause he’s comin’ to see ya! I made it my personal mission not to let a day go by that she could escape talking to me, my own mild version of Chinese water torture.

  Pond, on the other hand, were the kind of guys who were fun to be around: unpretentious, good old Northwest boys. Their music was catchy and energetic with lots of good songs and a couple really spectacular ones. We established a comradery of sorts, both of us underdogs in the sh
adow of the great Northwestern invasion of popular bands, but for different reasons. Pond were one of Sub Pop’s newer bands, the Trees nine-year veterans of the same smallish rooms we played nightly. Though it was a newer experience for the Pond guys, both bands were frustrated to be saddled with the unfortunate distinction of being “another band from Washington/Oregon.”

  It was easier procuring heroin in the States, but as my habit grew, it got trickier staying well. My drug buddy John Hicks’s official title was drum tech, but his paramount responsibility was scoring on the street when I couldn’t get away to do it myself. I also had a connection in Seattle, a dealer named Tommy Hansen who had played guitar for one of Seattle’s ’80s hard rock/metal bands, Crisis Party. Tommy would FedEx heroin to me a couple times a week. It was such a grind for us to keep up our habits via street scoring in an ever-changing landscape or the cold-sweat-inducing bitch of waiting for FedEx. You’d sit there, dopesick but forcing yourself not to ask at the front desk if they had something for you, instead waiting for them to alert you so you could at least weakly protest that you were not expecting a package and had no idea where it came from if this was the unlucky time the cops were waiting when you went to the hotel lobby to retrieve your clandestine relief.

  Dave, the drummer for Pond, was himself a fledgling addict, just beginning to dabble with heroin. He had hit both Hicks and me up for dope many times but there was no way we were sharing or selling any of our shit to this amateur. Hicks in particular found it hard to take this harmless but slightly pretentious wannabe.

  “If that pussy asks me for dope one more time,” he had said one day, “I’m gonna punch him out.”

  That was a comical statement as John was a slight and skinny Southern white boy, all of five foot six and a hundred and thirty pounds soaking wet. Yet Hicks had balls of steel. On those occasions when I was unable to hit the streets with him in order to score the medicine that kept us well, he’d walked alone into what at that time were some of the most notorious, dangerous dope spots throughout the US and Europe and would not only survive, but return with our coveted, much-needed heroin. Places like Cabrini-Green in north Chicago, Dupont Circle in DC at three a.m., San Francisco’s Tenderloin long after midnight. The huge housing projects of East Coast cities—Albany, New Haven. The combat zone in Boston. West Baltimore. Every city down the coast, Maine to Miami. He was also my only source of comic relief, doing endless routines, hilarious impressions behind the backs of all the guys in the band and crew. Such was his obsession with the character of Barney Fife from The Andy Griffith Show that once while we had a gig in Knoxville, Tennessee, only a hundred miles from Hicks’s hometown of Johnson City, he’d waited for hours outside the backstage door of a local theater with the express mission of meeting Don Knotts, who had acted the role of Barney on TV and was now performing there in a play. Hicks had stood in the sun all afternoon just to meet him face-to-face. The greeting was accomplished guerilla-style with John ambushing and introducing himself to the startled actor completely in character as Barney Fife himself. Don Knotts had laughed nervously and posed with Hicks for a Polaroid.

  Barney Fife, Gomer Pyle, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon were favorites, but Hicks could uncannily imitate almost anyone, including people we had just met, and all for my personal entertainment. He was a one-of-a-kind character, an undersized, fearless badass. A long-and-greasy-haired, heavily tattooed loner who looked like the kid from the wrong side of the tracks all the straight kids in junior high school had feared. I loved and relied on him greatly. He was my one indispensable luxury.

  One weekend during our tour with the Poster Children and Pond, Trees had an obligation for a one-off show somewhere. After a couple days, we joined back up with the other two bands at the Trocadero in Philadelphia, the same place we’d played with Alice in Chains the night I’d given myself a life-threatening blood infection with a dirty needle.

  At the gig, in the upstairs backstage area, Pond’s drummer Dave went on and on about the great powdered dope he’d scored in New York City that weekend, bragging about how powerful it was. After a while, he asked us if we needed anything.

  “No thanks, man,” I said. “We’re covered.”

  “What do you got?”

  “It’s cool, bro. Like I said, we’re good.”

  He wouldn’t give up.

  “Yeah, but what do you have? East Coast dope? West Coast tar?”

  Hicks, in his heavy Tennessean accent, finally spoke up.

  “Dude, we have our dope, you have yours, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up and do it.”

  “Wow, man. Sorry. I just wanted to see if you wanted to trade some with me.”

  “Why would you want to give up your killer East Coast dope for some shitty tar?” I asked.

  “Oh, just to change it up, you know.”

  “Let me see it,” I said.

  Dave pulled out a fairly large bag of what looked to be decent dope. I traded him a tiny piece of tar for a large portion of his bag.

  Our new big-time managers, Peter Mensch and Cliff Burnstein of the powerhouse management company Q Prime, had come down from New York City for the show and we were to have a short business meeting afterward. They had at one time managed the country/folk/rock artist Steve Earle during a period of his heavy addiction, and because of that, it had been an unhappy, unproductive, and troubled association. When we’d left Danny Heaps, our short-lived previous manager who had also managed Steve Earle for a time, and then signed with Q Prime, he’d called Peter Mensch on the phone.

  “Congratulations on signing the Trees,” he had said. “If you enjoyed working with Steve Earle, you’re going to love Lanegan.”

  Peter had told this story in front of the rest of the band during our first meeting, for which they’d flown to Norway in wintertime to make things official and meet us in person, the deal already done. They had signed us despite the warning, albeit with a decent idea of what they were dealing with in me. Until now it had not really been an issue, and I was trying to be on my best behavior. Q Prime were a legitimate heavyweight in the rock management game and I knew what an incredibly lucky break it was for them to take us on.

  Onstage that night, we played a particularly powerful show. I felt like we had the crowd in our hands as they were especially responsive and enthusiastic. After two encores, I ran up to my dressing room, covered head to foot with and clothes totally soaked in hot sweat, hoping to do a quick shot before my managers got there. When I came through the door, the first thing I saw was Pond’s drummer Dave halfway on the floor, head hanging off the edge of a chair, skin totally gray, his lights completely fucking out, obviously OD’d and probably dead. I almost lost my mind.

  My first impulse was one of total anger that he had done it in my private backstage area. I habitually spun around and scanned the room for Hicks, seeking his help, and quickly realized he was downstairs packing up the drums. My dope addict’s instincts kicked in and I immediately began to try and bring Dave back. I threw an empty beer tray of ice water on him. No response, not even a twitch. I slapped his face as hard as I could. Still nothing. I stuffed ice down the front of his pants while screaming his name, shaking him, and finally lifting up his not small, lifeless body and walking him around the room. I was so jacked on adrenaline, walking straight offstage to this twisted death scene—which, as it was happening in my personal dressing room, implicated me—I thought I might have a stroke.

  Charlie, the slightly nerdish, nice-guy guitar player from Pond, walked into the room and began to freak out. This had reached what felt like a critical point.

  “Call a fucking ambulance!” I yelled at him.

  I continued to walk Dave’s lifeless body around, carrying all his dead weight, screaming at him to come back. I knew Cliff and Peter would walk through the door at any minute and that would be the end of our brush with power management as we’d already had the one discussion regarding my heroin habit. I heard the sound of sirens in the distance through the open wind
ow. This was it, the end of my career, and the end of this dumb rookie’s life.

  Then I saw Dave’s eye twitch. I dumped another tray of ice water over his head and as I heard Mensch knock on the door and say, “Mark? Everything okay in there?” Dave finally half opened his eyes. I told his bandmates Charlie and Chris, the levelheaded bass player, to get him the fuck out of the room through the side door. They got him out of the building just as the ambulance showed up. Everyone denied calling them, saying it must have been a prank call.

  That wasn’t the first or last time I brought someone back, but it was one of the most memorable and harrowing. It was, however, the last time I traded some shitty tar for someone’s “killer” dope.

  14

  NOT BAD, YOUNG FELLA

  In the middle of our spring ’93 American tour, we were booked to perform on The Tonight Show. For twenty years, The Tonight Show had been broadcast from one of the dozens of studios in Burbank, the longest-running talk show and for years the only late-night program of its kind with its wildly popular host, Johnny Carson, the undisputed king of the genre. But Carson had retired in ’92 and been replaced by the pelican-jawed former stand-up comic Jay Leno. Leno was a drag as far as I was concerned. Letterman blew Leno out of the water in every category: humor, intelligence, and quality of engagement with his guests.

  To make matters worse, when we’d done the Letterman show, we’d only been required to arrive in the afternoon, run through the tune once or twice, hang out a couple more hours, then shoot the show and get the fuck out. Leno required our attendance from early morning till well into the evening, a tedious all-day affair. The night before the show, they put us up at some fancy hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood. A town car was scheduled to arrive at eight a.m. to take us over the hill to Burbank to ensure that the shoot came off without a hitch.