Bassist Nikki Sixx has bit back at Stryper singer Michael Sweet’s claims that Motley Crue’s biography is full of tall tales.
Crue bass player Sixx responded to Sweet’s swipe by posting a message on Facebook, claiming that the Stryper frontman had no right to comment on his experiences and his battle with drug addiction.
His post reads: “Non addicts talking shit about people who have fought for their lives to beat their addiction…..#MichaelSweet #OhHeHasABookForSale? #GodBlessTheChildrenOfTheBeast #SobrietyRocks #Sad.”
In a previous interview with Music Enthusiast, Sweet claimed Motley Cure’s official biography The Dirt – Confessions Of The World’s Most Notorious Rock Band and Sixx’s own memoir The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star were “stretched.”
In the interview, to plug his own book Honestly: My Life And Stryper Revealed, Sweet says: “Is it as controversial as Motley Crue? No, but I think half of what we hear about Motley Crue is BS anyway, like when you hear stories about Nikki Sixx dying three times and whatnot. It’s, like, how stretched is that?
Half of the stuff I read in these autobiographies I just kind of roll my eyes at, because I just think that a lot of these guys just did so many drugs and drank so much booze that their minds aren’t too clear in terms of remembering the past exactly as it went down.”
Sweet is not the first to question the credibility of Sixx’s book. Former member John Corabi previously said he found it hard to believe someone on heroin would be capable of keeping a diary.
Joe Satriani will return to the east coast for three special appearances this June to celebrate the release of both, his career-spanning box set, Joe Satriani: The Complete Studio Recordings and his first-ever autobiographical memoir, Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir.
The first of these three shows finds Satriani returning to his hometown, playing The Space at Westbury in Long Island on June 7th. This will be Satriani’s first appearance on Long Island in a number of years and the anticipation level is high. The following Monday, in honor of Les Paul’s 99th birthday, Joe and his band will perform a 2-hour concert at the Iridium in NYC, the home of Les Paul’s legendary, weekly performances for many years. This event will be recorded for a fall 2014 PBS TV Special called Front & Center. Lastly, Joe and the band will wrap their brief east coast run with a stop in Ridgefield, CT for a show at The Ridgefield Playhouse. Following these special engagements, Joe and his band (Marco Minnemann – drums, Bryan Beller – bass and Mike Keneally – keys & guitar) will head to Europe for a number of Festival appearances and other shows ending in late July.
Joe Satriani: The Complete Studio Recordings is the ideal audio accompaniment to Strange Beautiful Music: A Musical Memoir, Satriani’s autobiography coming out May 6th.
Special Engagements with Joe Satriani:
June 7th The Space at Westbury Westbury, NY
June 9th The Iridium New York, NY *
June 10th The Ridgefield Playhouse Ridgefield, CT
Judas Priest members guitarist Glenn Tipton, guitarist Richie Faulkner, and the one and only Metal God, himself, Rob Halford were guests on Eddie’s Sirius/XM show, Trunk Nation, on April 5th. Listen to interview below.
Judas Priest recently announced that they will be releasing a new album, Redeemer of Souls in the States on July 15th (click here for dates elsewhere).
Redeemer of Souls track listing:
Dragonaur Redeemer Of Souls (listen here)
Halls Of Valhalla
Sword Of Damocles
March Of The Damned
Down In Flames
Hell & Back
Cold Blooded
Metalizer
Crossfire
Secrets Of The Dead
Battle Cry
Beginning Of The End
Bonus tracks:
Snakebite
Tears Of Blood
Creatures
Bring It On
Never Forget
Multi-platinum selling rock act Tesla have debuted an all new single titled So Divine… today exclusively Ultimate Classic Rock.
Tesla will release an all new LP titled Simplicity,
Simplicity track listing:
M P 3
Ricochet
Rise and Fall
So Divine…
Cross My Heart
Honestly
Flip Side!
Other than Me
Break of Dawn
Burnout to Fade
Life is a River
Sympathy
Time Bomb
‘Til that Day
Burnout to Fade (writing demo version)*
*Bonus track
Doro Pesch, the reigning queen of metal just celebrated her 30th Anniversary in Dusseldorf, Germany. The show was broadcast live via stream to give fans a taste of both nights. Friday night Doro performed with an orchestra and special guests.Saturday night Doro was joined by Sabina Classen from Holy Moses, Udo Dirkschneider, Tom Angelripper “Sodom” Chris Caffery “Savatage & TSO” and “Lordi” to name a few. Setlists from both nights are listed below.
After announcing the steam, the already sold-out anniversary show on March 3rd on stageit.com, Metal Queen Doro offered a full live online stream of both shows, that took place on March 2nd and 3rd with a crowd of 2, 500 per night at Dusseldorf CCD-Stadthalle.
Stageit.com gave all fans a chance to watch the concerts celebrating Doro’s 30 years stage Anniversary via online stream at home. Sixteen
cameras will deliver the events live from the venue to their home computer.
Today is the big Doro celebration day. Starting with the release of the Raise Your Fist –30 Years Anniversary-Edition, which contains the re-release of the successful Raise Your Fist record, as well as a real bonus CD highlight entitled Powerful Passionate Favorites. There you find new and unreleased tracks, but also Doro cover versions of her favorite artists, such as Led Zeppelin, Tina Turner, Metallica, KISS and Dio.
During a break in Guns N’ Roses’ years-long Use Your Illusion tour, singer Axl Rose was at his Malibu home with his two assistants when a moth got into the house. The assistants tried shooing it out, but it refused to leave, hovering instead by Rose’s dining-room chandelier.
Fed up, Rose told his first assistant, Craig Duswalt — Rose’s life was busy enough that his assistant required his own assistant — to “keep a close eye on it.” Rose ran upstairs and returned with “a long gun … a rifle maybe, or even a shotgun.”
Rose instructed Duswalt to bring him a chair and “positioned himself under the chair, lying on his back.” He then told Duswalt to “make [the moth] go into the corner” so that Rose didn’t shoot out the light.
Duswalt stood on a chair and batted the moth. He mentioned that he could probably reach it with a flyswatter, but Rose just laughed, saying, “Not going to happen.”
Blam!
The new memoir Welcome To My Jungle features many of Duswalt’s road stories from 1991-1993, when Guns N’ Roses were the biggest band on the planet and Axl Rose was the world’s most worshiped rock star.
One of Duswalt’s main responsibilities was making sure that Rose got to the band’s shows. This was never easy, as Rose was infamous for being hours late to his own concerts, and sometimes for bailing altogether at the last minute if even the slightest thing upset him.
Just before a show in Buenos Aires for 80,000 people, Rose was already late — the rest of the band was at the venue — when he asked Duswalt to order dinner for him from room service.
Specifically, he asked for chili and cheese.
Duswalt quietly freaked out. Rose needed to leave within minutes, and chili and cheese was not a room-service menu item. Duswalt was aware that if Rose failed to get his exact order, he could bail on the show.
Duswalt called room service and, despite the language barrier, spent several minutes trying to describe “chili and cheese” to the man on the phone. The order took over an hour to arrive, with the road manager frantically paging Duswalt wondering where Rose was.
Finally, the meal arrived. The waiter brought it inside, ceremoniously lifted the lid, and presented to Duswalt “a block of cheddar cheese surrounded by six whole red-hot peppers.”
Terrified of the ramifications, Duswalt grabbed plates and glasses — including the incorrect order — and hurled them against the wall, “smashing them into a thousand pieces.”
Rose ran out of his room and asked, “What the hell is that?” Duswalt explained that the waiter had screwed up the order and said that he had become so enraged by the mistake that he “threw the plates at him in disgust.”
The singer, distracted from the screw-up with an explanation he could relate to, forgot about his dinner and left for the show.
Guns N’ Roses was one of the biggest rock bands of all time, and Rose quickly became used to the money and privilege that entailed.
While in France for a show, Rose bought then-girlfriend, supermodel Stephanie Seymour, who was then in New York, a stuffed elephant for her birthday. Rose had a crew member book the stuffed elephant its own seat on the Concorde — at an estimated cost of $10,000.
Such was Rose’s power that he didn’t even need to speak to get his way.
For a time, he became enamored with photography, carrying a camera everywhere. Following one show, his limo pulled out of the backstage area — thousands of fans clamoring for a peek inside — when Rose spotted one especially attractive fan and invited her back to his hotel.
The girl jumped in the limo and, “after an awkward moment of silence,” Rose began silently taking the girl’s picture.
She smiled for the camera, innocently at first, then progressively sexier and removed her clothes until she was naked. Rose never said a word. He just kept clicking the shutter, despite the fact that cameras back then held no more than 36 exposures. Duswalt estimates that Rose clicked the shutter around 300 times.
While on the road, crew members were required to keep their walkie-talkies on 24/7, in case a band member needed something. One night in Venezuela, Duswalt had his girlfriend with him — they’d been having problems due to her fears about his crazy rock ’n’ roll road life — when the walkie-talkie squawked at around 2 o’clock in the morning.
“I thought to myself it was probably [bassist] Duff [McKagan] wanting someone to get him a drink because he ran out of vodka,” he writes. But instead, and to his and his girlfriend’s dismay, they heard a man’s voice saying, “Gentleman, the ladies are here. Let the games begin.”
He jumped to shut off the walkie-talkie, but his now pissed-off girlfriend told him to leave it on.
The next sound they heard from the walkie-talkie was giggling; then, from the hallway, what sounded like a stampede.
Duswalt opened the door and saw “about 50 naked women right outside my door, walking down the hall.” The next day, he learned that “the promotor … thought it would be really cool and impressive to empty a whorehouse out and bring them all to the hotel via bus … naked.”
Nudity seems to be a theme of Guns N’ Roses lifestyle.
In Buenos Aires, Rose offered a few hundred dollars to any crew member who would “run naked in the streets in front of our hotel” — where hundreds of the band’s fans were camped out, hoping for a glimpse of their idols — and then “shake the hand of an Argentinian police officer.”
Tour photographer Gene Kirkland negotiated the fee up to $1,000, then accepted the offer.
After returning to his room to prepare, Kirkland emerged in the lobby wearing nothing but “a white bath towel and a tie.” Rose gave him the money, then pointed to a police officer stationed across the street — “the meanest-looking one,” writes Duswalt — as the one Kirkland should approach.
With the band, crew and hundreds of fans watching, Kirkland “pulled off his towel and ran naked across the hotel parking lot to the pre-chosen police officer. He approached the officer, smiling the entire time, reached his hand out and waited for a handshake . . . amazingly, [the officer] reached out and shook hands with Gene.”
Seconds later, though, two officers grabbed Kirkland’s arms, put him against the wall and began to frisk him — which was strange, since he was naked. After a few seconds, the officers could no longer contain their laughter. It had all been a set-up, and Rose was in on it — someone in the crew had paid the officers to go along with the charade.
Guns N’ Roses imploded in 1993, and so too did Duswalt’s job. He went into advertising and is now a motivational speaker. He looks back fondly on his days with the band and even hopes to one day get them to reunite for charity.
“My dream is to have the original lineup of Guns N’ Roses put their differences aside and get back together, even if only for one day, and play a set,” he writes. “I believe, with all my heart, that they will get back together again. I just have to ask nicely.”
