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from RIP magazine, September 1991
[I think this is my favorite feature ever, for a lot of different reasons. Number one, I think it's one of my most well written pieces. It reads more like a short story than an article about a rock band. It even has a mise-en-scène (you ex-film school students will see that right away). It's also the longest non-cover story I ever wrote for RIP, and I'm forever thankful to my boss, Lonn and features editor, Richard Lange for allowing it to stay at nearly 2400 words when a typical RIP feature, especially for a new, unheard-of band generally ran about 1500 words. But this story is more than just a nice bit of creativity for me — it's also a very personal, very intimate look at a friendship I forged with a band who wound up being like brothers to me for the better part of 1991.
To read the short version of my friendship with the Throbs — if you want to go beyond this feature — you can find out more in this blog entry.]
The first morning I woke up in New York, it was snowing — a rare sight for a Los Angeles native like me. The white flakes floated seductively by my window, and I hoped they'd still be falling by the time I went out, even though I knew I'd have to face the bitter cold. I shivered in anticipation.
The weather wasn't the only thing giving me goose bumps. I was in New York to meet the Throbs, a band that both frightened and fascinated me. The very first time I heard their debut album, The Language of Thieves and Vagabonds, its dark invitation sent chills up my spine. Songs like "Underground," "Come Down Sister" and "Ocean of Love" offered both hedonism and anger, while the despair of "Only Way Out" and the sadness of "Honey Child" reached out for me in an aching stranglehold. I was compelled to brave an East Coast January to meet this quartet and discover why they echoed the deeper parts of my psyche.
At the Geffen/ DGC offices I met the four of them — singer Sweetheart, guitarist Roger Ericson, bassist Danny Nordahl and drummer Ronnie Magri. There was an edginess underneath the gracious introductions. They apparently weren't too fond of journalists, and I had heard they were so tough and unreasonable that, at one point, their status at the label was in question. It seemed an unlikely situation in which to unlock any of their hidden mysteries.
Sweetheart and Danny took off to do a radio interview, and a publicist sat me down in a room with Roger and Ronnie, shutting the door behind her. We immediately lit up cigarettes in the "smoke-free" office and eyed each other warily. It was up to me to take the first shot.
"Do you really think that life in the world is as dark as it's depicted on the record?" I asked Roger, point blank.
The guitarist was taken aback by the directness of my query. "Is it that grim, man, really?" he responded. "I think a lot of the songs aren't really about what people think they are, but the way that we express ourselves to write those songs...." He mulled it over for a minute, then shrugged. "Oh, okay, I guess we're just a dark bunch of motherfuckers!"
We laughed, and I felt the atmosphere begin to thaw. I commented that there was a raw quality to the Dick Wagner/ Bob Ezrin-produced LP that underscored its emotions.
"Everything was all done live," Roger explained. "It wasn't like a lot of overdubs. Plus, Bob was really cool. But they pushed some stuff on us, like, 'Do this and do that,' and at points we were throwing shit around the studio and saying, 'No way, we're walking.' You know, we always got what we wanted." The cockiness in his eyes subsided for a second. "We actually walked in there kinda scared," he admitted, "because Bob had this reputation for punching people out in the good old days, when they didn't like what he was doing. But he let us get away with a lot, man. Trashing microphones and stuff."
"Yeah, he's getting kinda old," Ronnie interjected.
"Trashing microphones?" I asked.
"When we were doing 'Honey Child,'" Roger related, "I was getting really annoyed 'cause I couldn't get it straight. I mean, the song was written right before we went in, so we never rehearsed it. And it was funny, these old microphones — I just went, 'Ahhh!' and they went across the floor. I thought they were gonna kill me there, but it didn't happen."
Most of the songs were written as a group, but Roger wrote "Honey Child" on his own. I knew the story behind the ballad. I also knew that Roger usually refused to talk about it. But there was a question that had plagued me from the first time I heard the song, so I took a chance.
"On 'Honey Child' there's this sense of utter hopelessness," I began. "It's about how emotions can't last through fast living."
"No, they can't," Roger affirmed, "which is very sad, but it seems to be the case."
Surprisingly, something in the tone of his voice gave me permission to continue; so very quietly I asked, "Then why live fast, if you have something that's meaningful to you?"
He hunched over, twisting the matchbook he was holding. "See, that's something I've been asking myself for the last year. I can just speak for myself, coming to New York for one reason — that was to get a band together, which is what we've got now. And maybe you meet somebody, and you hang out with somebody for a long, long time, and nothing is really happening with the career. Then, all of a sudden, this thing that you've been dreaming about since you were this big and listening to Alice Cooper takes off. You just get into a situation, like, you forget about everything else. You forget to do and say those things you should, maybe, to someone else, and the next week becomes a month, a year, two years, and before you know it, you've lost everything else you had around you. You've just got a bunch of bad habits and this band and that's all." He sighed. "And to tell the truth, it's not a lot of fun, you know. I mean, it's great to be in a great band and everything, It would be great if you can combine both things, but me, personally, I couldn't."
"That's the nature of this business," I nodded empathetically.
"You get so angry, man!" he empathized. "You just forget about the rest of the world." He shook his head as we contemplated the music industry and the Throbs' alleged fits of temperament. "There's nobody that's gonna tell us, 'This is what you guys should do. This is what you guys really should have,'" Roger insisted, "because nobody's been there when we were sitting around, no place to live, writing these songs. Nobody was around when we were collecting cans in the street to be able to buy a pack of cigarettes. So fuck 'em, you know. If nobody likes our attitudes, I guess that's just gonna hurt us; but it's so hard to pretend you like somebody you don't."
I took a drag off my cigarette and smiled slyly. "Actually, the bottom line is, if the record does well, it doesn't matter what you're like."
"Which is kind of scary though," Roger mused, "because we might get an attitude problem!"
The three of us burst into wicked laughter, and I felt myself being drawn deeper into something I still didn't understand.
Back in sunny L.A., the Throbs continued to haunt me. Although I knew we were kindred spirits, I still couldn't identify the connecting link. I had no choice but to visit the band one more time. So once they hit the road, I flew to Phoenix to meet with them and finally see them perform.
Both the band and I arrived at the Phoenix Holiday Inn the night before the gig, and about 30 seconds after I dumped my bags in my room, Roger rang me up, asking if I'd like to go out with some of the guys. The next thing I knew, I was whisked off to the club they were playing the next night, along with Roger, Sweetheart, Danny and Billy, the guitar tech. We had a few drinks there, then Roger, Sweetheart and I dashed off to a strip bar and had a few more drinks. Then we went back to the hotel lounge and had some more to drink, after which I got pushed into the pool, completely ruining my outfit. I stumbled back to my room at the end of the night, thinking, "Man, these guys know how to have a tour!"
I woke up the next morning, both drunk and hungover. It would be hours before the Throbs were up and about, which was a good thing, because that's how long it took me to pull myself together. Around noon I met with Sweetheart.
"Do you frequently have nights like that?" I asked him.
"Ummm...." he hesitated. "No offense or anything, but it was rather a boring night. We were all on the bus for a good 16 to 20 hours. You have all this adrenaline, and then you get out, and you think, 'What the fuck am I doing here?'" He laughed. "I think for everyone, except Roger, it's their first tour. But it's what I expected it to be, I suppose... and then some!"
I'd seen their itinerary, and mentioned that it looked pretty brutal. "Yeah," the singer agreed. "Like someone said last night, someone just threw darts at a map." He shrugged. "Whether there's a record out or not, I just really want to be onstage. That's where it lies for me. I'm a shy person until I get onstage." I laughed at that. After all, that's not exactly what I'd heard. In fact, it seemed like everyone in New York had something to say about the guys in the Throbs — most of it negative.
"This band has just gone through so much shit, and that's why you've heard so many horror stories about the band," Sweetheart insisted. "It's because we wanted to go in and make our record, and we didn't want to be molded into this tight little package and say, 'Here, instant success.' We sliced our guts open to make this record, poured our guts on tape. I mean, Roger wrote 'Honey Child,' and I could relate to the lyrics so well that it brought a tear to my eye when I was in there singing it... over and over and over!" We both laughed, then he continued. "To me, singing a song is an emotional thing, and if I don't believe in it, no one else is gonna believe it."
I'd heard similar words from other artists, but I'd never heard them said with quite the same intensity. This man with the unlikely moniker somehow managed to sound both naive and worldly-wise. I felt a certain admiration for him and his bandmates — screw what anyone else had to say.
A few moments later, when I was walking to the pool to transcribe the interview, I heard the Black Crowes' record blaring out of Roger's room. Chris Robinson's voice was wailing, "Sister luck is a-screaming out somebody else's name! Perhaps it was an omen, because when I met Roger and Sweetheart prior to soundcheck, they were both depressed. Something business-wise had happened that was definitely not in their favor. I never found out what it was, but I'd been working in music long enough to know that these things usually pass. I tried to explain this to Roger, who had been through the record-company mill once before with another band. "You know about all the shit that goes on. How come it still matters so much?"
"That other band doesn't count," he sneered. "This is the only band I've ever cared about." Then he and Sweetheart continued to discuss the possibilities of jumping off the roof of the Holiday Inn.
Things didn't improve during soundcheck. Everything was running late, nothing was going right, and the tension could be cut with a knife. Finally the shitty monitors, the feedback and everything else in the world got to Sweetheart. He violently threw mic stand down and dashed out of the club, vanishing into thin air. "He said he's going home," I heard someone say. The band assumed that meant he was on his way back to New York. I watched, wide-eyed, as the remaining three huddled together in the bus, trying to figure out who was going to sing which song. I couldn't believe that the man who earlier had talked so passionately about performing had decided to jump ship before a gig. Everything was in a shambles — the band, the tour, my feature. This was a disaster I hadn't expected to see.
Later that night, I ran into Roger in the lobby, and we shared a cab to the gig. He'd taken this new turn of events in stride earlier, but now his mood was black. He scrunched down in his seat, bent in half like a paper clip, moaning, "I knew this was going to happen, even before we went on tour. I don't know what we're going to do now. I guess we'll just go straight to L.A. after tonight. Maybe we'll just go back to New York. Everything is falling apart." I felt so awful for him, but I said nothing. Really, there was nothing I could say.
The cab dropped us off, and we walked onto the bus... and there was Sweetheart, relaxing, smiling, surrounded by a few fans. "I went to a salon and got my hair dyed and my hands massaged," he announced. "I feel like a new man now."
I didn't dare look back at Roger, but I felt my knees go weak. That's when it dawned on me, the truth of what drives the Throbs. It's the rush, the relief, the dynamics of the situation that sucks you in and twists your mind. After a while it becomes a roller-coaster way of life, and you can't separate your identity from the high. The Throbs need to constantly bring themselves to face an emotional abyss. That's what impressed me about them in the first place. That's why I found the record so addicting — once you see that abyss, there's no escape. I knew the show was going to be great.
And it was. Sweetheart wickedly commanded the stage, driving the menace of his vocals down the throats of the eager clubgoers, while his bandmates played with a fiery, over-the-edge fervor. I had a few drinks in an attempt to erase the horror of the afternoon, at the same time knowing that those memories were going to continue knocking at my back door. After the gig the bus was overrun with Phoenix B-girls in black hats, and adventures were available for those so inclined. All was well with the Throbs. At least for an hour or so. But I could feel a chill in the Arizona night.
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