Vodka was my drug of choice at the time. I don't even remember how I got on the vodka kick, or should I say screwdrivers.
I just know Stoli and orange juice had become my thing.
I think it was because I could get pretty toasted, but I could still play without having to introduce blow or speed into the equation. Not that I minded adding the blow and speed, but I was broke, man! We never had any money in those days. We would get kicked out of Mr. Gattis on the reg for squatting at their pizza buffet, slamming pizza for hours because you may not get to eat for another day or two.
Also, the guys had put me on a "No Jager" rule for shows, after I fell backward into my Marshall stacks on a Jager blitzed night in Knoxville, performing my own version of Pink Floyd's crumbling wall routine.
So yeah, it seems I could keep my shit together with the Stoli... or so I thought.
Anyway, I woke up that day already hungover from the night before. We had "rehearsed" the set until we had it down to the second. When I say "rehearsed," I mean, we got wasted, celebrated, and had a blast well into the evening while we ran the set for our opening slot at the Damn Yankees and Bad Company concert at Starwood Amphitheater that night.
We really did not need to rehearse. We were a well-oiled machine back then, jamming three or four times a week, playing lots of gigs, and writing all the time.
I smiled, lit a cigarette, and laid in bed, playing the events of the last two weeks over in my mind as I contemplated whether it was too early to make a screwdriver.
We pulled it off, man.
About a month earlier, we had entered a Battle Of The Bands to be played out at the Cannery Ballroom in Nashville for two or three nights… I can't remember the details of how all that went. It may have been a radio promotion in conjunction with those bands.
First place was an opening slot for Damn Yankees and Bad Company at the local outdoor shed, Starwood Amphitheater. (Long since torn down, which I still can't believe, fuck.) Starwood was the happening concert venue at the time, all the big shows played there. I can't even list all the concerts I saw there, there are so many, mixed with so many beers, and joints and…. you get the picture.
This would be so fucking cool if we won! It would also be significant bragging rights for the rest of our lives! It was one thing to play the small side stage at the top of the hill while fans milled about after entering a show, but it was another thing altogether to play the big stage with the big boys.
Our manager was absolutely against us, entering this thing. We were in the chase for another BTRD, (Big Time Record Deal,) and he thought the downside of losing this would be horrible. He was right.
But, we didn't plan on losing.
I totally get where he was coming from. This was the second incarnation of Simmonz; myself on guitar, Cash Easlo on vocals, and my brothers Jamie and Paulie on bass and drums, respectively. We were among the first metal bands around that decided, "Fuck cover tunes, we are going to do all original, and that's it!" We had been at this metal thing for a long time. We slogged it out in the clubs of Nashville and the surrounding area for what seemed like forever. The first version was spawned in 1984 as you may have already read, (I'm writing this shit out of order, so who knows,) and we had been on a convoluted, up and down, round and round search for the perfect combination to crack that elusive nut, the BTRD.
He said hell no, I don't want you entering this battle of the bands, if you lose it just makes my job that much harder, you lose credibility... and we said sorry, you have been outvoted.
Simmonz was one of the number one rock bands in Nashville back then, and most definitely the number one metal band, if I do say so myself, and I do...LOL.
We were able to break away and play shows at venues like the Exit In, 328 Performance Hall, and others that usually would not host metal bands. Nashville's metal bands in the '80s and '90s were treated like stepchildren for the most part, with the Country Rock, Americana, and Alternative bands seeming to get more respect. Whatever, we probably didn't do much to help our cause with our foul-mouthed, politically incorrect, spandex encrusted, dumb ass antics around the local scene. Thank God there were no camera phones and Facebook back then!
It may have looked to some people like entering a Battle Of The Bands at this stage was beneath us or something, but we didn't give a fuck.
We had been through a few years of experimentation musically in the late '80s, and now we were back to doing what we loved: Straight Up Metal.
We had a forty-minute set of songs that we had just written out of the excitement of having Easlo back in the band. We took you by the throat with the first song, Bangin' With The Boys, and did not let you go until the last power chord of Open Season, the closer.
I don't know about the other guys, but I had no doubt we would win. It was weird, I just knew it.
What I didn't know was how close it was going to be.
I got up... Show day! Holy shit, this was going to be awesome!
Maybe I shouldn't start drinking this early, it was only 9am.
Let's flip on the news and see what the weather is going to be like.
"Heavy rain and severe thunderstorms this afternoon and evening, 100% chance."
Are you fucking shitting me?
I spied the bottle of Stoli on top of the fridge.
Where was that damn orange juice...
To be continued.
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