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It was cool back then to have a $750 Porsche watch. I went through nine of them. I'd keep it by the side of the bed, and when I got pissed off, I'd wing it across the room. I was so far out on the edge that I felt I had to trash something quickly. There was a running joke about rolling over and dialing room service. I lived that way for ten years. It became so ingrained in me that even after I got home I would wake up in the morning and dial O. That was the lunacy I was basing my life on. I was consumed with drugs, and how much toothpaste to get for the tour, and what room Joe Perry was in. Joe was a guy I could sit down and make patty cakes with, like a kid you went to the park with and played in the same sandbox. Your mom brings you over, and within minutes you're playing and you're compatible. That's the way it was between Joe and me.
But I was just so selfish and one-sided. I would crawl into a little hole with whatever drug I was doing, and that's how I lived. It was OK to be drinking away my life. The manager would come backstage and say, "Fine. Drink all you want. Just go onstage." That was great for an alcoholic to hear. It was the perfect place to be. Liquor flowed backstage. Someone would say, "Give him what he wants from the bar." I don't blame them, and I don't blame myself. Four rehabilitation centers for drug abuse later, I've been able to take a long, hard look at my behavior.
They wanted us for the weekend. They're all in Century City. Rick Derringer's band is playing at the convention, other bands are playing, and the record company just wanted us to say thank you, and have others say thank you to us, and we said, "We stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or we don't come."
We get to L.A., everybody is staying in Century City but us. We're at the Beverly Hills Hotel with a liquor tab of $5,000 because all the bands are coming over from Century City and partying all night with us. The waiters were in a bucket brigade. We were on the phone with room service every twelve minutes. It was great. All we had to do was say what we wanted, and that was it. I never thought this would be a career. I never thought I would make it past thirty. I look at some of those early Beatles interviews. Ringo wanted a hairdressing salon, if he could make enough money with the Beatles. That's really the attitude that prevailed. A lot of us were high-school dropouts.
So we drank to keep the vibe we felt. It was like, if we feel good, maybe the audience will feel good. If we're getting off on the music we're playing, maybe they'll get off on it. Of course, if you listen to our records down through the years, it definitely gets diluted. We started to lose sight of it, we started to see how screwed up we could get before we walked onstage, just to see if we could get away with it. There were times when we were on our knees, literally, trying to find blow. There were times when we would drink just to see how much we could consume. Really ridiculous stuff. It did suffer in the end, that little picture, that little window to what we thought we were all about.
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can remember the height of my oblivion, when I was doing things just because I could. I would think nothing of tipping over a table with a whole long spread on it just because there was turkey roll on the table and I had explicitly said, "No turkey roll." No mystery meat, please, just some real turkey, and I would come in after coming off stage, and I'd have twelve ounces of Jack Daniel's in me, a gram of coke, I was sweating profusely, and I'd see a tray with turkey roll on it. I'd just turn the whole thing right over. It felt good.
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