When Paulie and I returned from LA in '83, we both went back to live with our girls at the time, regroup, and get Assault, one of the first all-original Metal bands in Nashville, off the ground.
Once we got our little brother Jamie in the band and called it Simmonz, we felt we needed a laser focus.
The women were distracting us from being 100% committed to Metal.
So... we bailed on them.
We were good at bailing on shit back then.
If shit was fucked, Paulie and I had an ESP-type look we could give each other; we knew when it was time. Most of the time, we didn't even have to say anything; we would just start packing our shit, whether it was gear, clothes, or just packing our asses outta there.
It worked on anything; relationships, bands, shows, jobs, parties, conversations, whatever the case.
It would take a lot for us to bail on a show, though.
We had the van, the Green Manalishi, we had some shitty jobs, we had our leather, and we had our gear. The situation was alright; we worked at Harrison Systems, soldering resistors into pc boards for mixing consoles. Half the metalheads in Nashville worked there at one point in the early eighties. Easlo got us on there.
We found a cheap apartment near work and our rehearsal space in the storage room. It had to be cheap enough to pay rent, our share of a rehearsal space, and buy beer. We would figure out food and all that other shit later.
We had a one-bedroom apartment at Pine Hollow in Antioch, Tennessee. Antioch was just a short distance from Edge-O-Lake, where we grew up and knew it well. It was well within the range of work and rehearsal, so we would not spend a fortune on gas with the Manalishi.
By the way, I didn't have a car, which was a consequence of bailing.
(Oh yeah, did I forget to mention that bailing had consequences?)
It was part of my sacrifice to rock.
For some reason, Paulie got the bedroom. I think it's because he had a bed. I only had a sleeping bag. (Consequences.)
I got the living room floor and the hall closet in case I needed... privacy.
We loved it!
Simmonz had just graduated from Thursday nights to weekends at Cantrell's, the only local club that would have us. With the help of our new manager, Robert (Bobby) Eva, we were starting to generate a buzz around town for our kick-ass Metal shows.
We did our first show with Jamie, as Simmonz, on a Thursday night at Cantrell's.
It was packed and rocking! That was rare for a local band on a Thursday, much less a Metal band. Terry Cantrell was eager to have us back on a weekend.
That first weekend was funny; we did the Cantrell's show, then two backyard parties back to back on Friday and Saturday.
The last party was closed down by the cops; it was so crowded and crazy we only played five songs, but it was awesome.
We kicked off with a bang! We were a fucking band! By the end of that weekend, I had blown up my Marshall and had three new girlfriends.
(Luckily, the Marshall was salvaged. I dropped my hot cable on an un-grounded lighting truss at the party, fucking fried the ground off the PC board in the JCM800. Terry fixed it with green wire.)
We had a rocking Metal band of brothers (make no mistake, Easlo was a brother.) We had gigs on the horizon and were feeling good about life.
It was time to celebrate.
One For The Sun was a concert series on the floating stage at Hermitage Landing, a water park located on Percy Priest Lake. The show was going to feature some damn good Metal that year.
We decided that it would be a fun hang.
Ratt was headlining on the heels of their hit debut album, Out Of The Cellar.
1984 was a banner year for Metal, by the way.
Ratt was cool, but not really our thing (DiMartini was badass, though,) but guess who one of the opening bands were?
Alcatrazz.
Oh yes, the Yngwie version of Alcatrazz.
We loved Yngwie!
Yngwie Malmsteen had come on the Metal scene a year earlier and blown the world of shred guitar out of the water.
Now, we were gonna see him on the water!
We didn't have any money for tickets, of course.
That never seemed to stop us back in the day. We had our ways.
I don't think we paid for one concert in 1984 but wound up backstage at all of them, usually drinking the opening band's beers. Just ask Bon Jovi, who opened for Scorpions at Municipal that summer.
We decided to start that weekend off right, too...
Party, then, concert.
We knew Bubba had just gotten in a new batch of killer acid, so we decided to have an acid party with all of our bros at the new apartment and then hit One For The Sun the next day.
What could go wrong?
(To Be Continued.)
Checking the neck on the Kramer at the apartment, summer, '84.
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