Neil Vince - Tattoos & tequila: to hell and back with one of rocks most notorious frontmen

Copyright 2010 by Vince Neil

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Grand Central Publishing

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First eBook Edition: September 2010

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ISBN: 978-0-446-57469-3

E2-20190710-PDJ-PC-DPU

To my friends, my family, and especially, to my fans.

Much of the information gathered for this book comes from unreliable sources who may have been abusing substances or undergoing other duress at the time of many of the events discussed. Like they say about the eighties: If you remember them clearly, you werent really there.

Mike Sager: Is that a true story?

Vince Neil: Absolutely. It was when wed just had sex with girls in the studio and we didnt want to go home smelling like them. There was a restaurant, called Naugles, it was open twenty-four hours. And we would order egg burritos and wipe our dicks with them. Then if you went home smelling like an egg burrito, you just told your girlfriend, Oh, I dropped my egg burrito in my lap.

Mike: So did you actually open the burrito and insert? Or did you just, like, use it as a washcloth?

Vince: Used it kind of like a washcloth.

Mike: All right, good. Thanks. I just had to ask. You know, Marlon Brando once fucked a duck in Paris. I wrote about him, too.

A black-on-black Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder purrs into the parking lot of Feelgoods Rock Bar & Grill, well off the Strip in Las Vegas. The traffic on Sahara Avenue whooshes past with the usual lunchtime urgency; five miles to the southeast, the towers of Sin City can be seen, rising dreamlike from the sprawl. If what they say is true, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, then this is most likely where it staysa nondescript series of suburbs in the western sector of the city where strip malls, housing developments, and schools share a casual proximity with massage parlors, smoke shops, and gambling clubs. Completing the picture is a Crayola blue sky; snow dusts the mountain peaks, which stand aloof and craggy in the distance, glowing in the bright, thin light of the desert winter.

It is December and chilly. Christmas looms. Here and there people have taken the trouble to wrap their palm trees with burlap. We are already one day behind schedule. The previous day, which was supposed to be our first, was marred by three broken appointments. It was a true rock n roll beginningan absent star, a frantic dance of enablers, the expense meter spinning, the already-foreshortened deadline ticking away. The subtext: Were all trying to make this amazing thing happen. Weve talked it to death. All we need is our star.

Now somebody has pushed the reset button.

It is Tuesday.

Take two.

The star is fifteen minutes early for our noon appointment.

Hes notoriously early, Id been advised the previous day by one of his people at 10th Street Entertainment. (Even as he was pushing back the time of our first meeting.) You oughtta be early, too. He hates it when people are late.

Hes notoriously early

when hes decided hes coming.

I guess thats how the sentence should read.

Writing down a mans life will take many such edits, I learn over the coming months. (Not that I expected differently.) We all have our roles. It is best to know which is yours.

The sleek Italian two-seater512 horsepower; vanity license plate: TATUUD; with yellow stitching on the black leather seats to match the yellow brake calipers, and the single cup holder requested by his fourth wife (Youd think for a quarter million bucks you could get one cup holder, is how shed put it)comes to a stop at a rakish angle in a pin-striped lane marked: Motorcycles Only.

After an interval, the drivers door opens. Out thrusts one battered calfskin UGG boot, followed by a fashionably ripped denim leg. A well-muscled thigh strains the fabric where the tearing is most prominentin his day, nobody could fill a pair of spandex leopard-skin tights the way he could. A left hand reaches up for purchasethe car is quite low to the ground. Occupying the wrist is a 40-karat diamond and platinum Dunamis watch with a skull design floating inside the overlarge see-through face. A $300,000 bauble, one of five in the world, he will later say. It is a difficult factoid to verify.

With some effort he limbos into an upright position and I see him in person for the first time, unmistakable after thirty years in the limelight:

Vince Neil Whartonhe of the towering platinum Aqua Net hairdo and ultrasonic banshee voice, the ultimate face boy of 1980s glam cock rock, frontman for Mtley Cre.

Today Vince Neil is forty-eight, a man in his third act; a little thicker than imagined, and smaller, toofive foot nine, 170. He has a stubbly goatee, sparse and gray in spots, and an easy smile, which he displays most often when people are paying attention to him. There is a diamond embedded in his right upper incisor, part of a set of pearly caps, uppers and lowers; at night in a club it sparkles.

Remembered for his epic drug-and-alcohol-fueled debaucheryand for the high heels, full makeup, and glittered tube tops that made him an androgynous sex symbol during the early years of the gender-bending eightiesVince Neil is now a comfortable, middle-aged man. He spends part of his year in Las Vegas, part in Northern California, from where his wife hails. He has money but not fuck you money, he likes to say. He is quick to point out that group acts make a lot less than solo. (And that 30 percent goes to agent, lawyer, manager, and accountant off the top.) Besides being a rock n roll headliner, Vince is a businessman, with thriving interests on several fronts. There is Tres Rios Tequila, a line of premium tequilas made at his operation in Guadalajara, Mexico. Vince Neil Aviation charters rocked-out jetsthink leopard-skin and purple velvet appointments. Vince Neil Ink, a high-end tattoo parlor and apparel shop, has two locations on the Strip in Las Vegas. His tastes run to exotic cars and watches; he has a garage full of old posters and costumes, some of which he has sold to the Hard Rock restaurant chain and a shitload of guitars that companies keep sending him, even though he only plays guitar on two songs in his entire repertoire, including both Mtley Cre and Vince Neil solo. He still collects the lions share of his income from his one-quarter share in Mtley Cre, which has sold 80 million albums over three decades. (Mtley continues to sell, even though they havent written any new songs since 2008s Saints of Los Angeles, a sort of aural autobiography of the band members history, their bestand only originalwork in years.)

Instead of spandex he sports a T-shirt from Vince Neil Ink; the neck band is ripped; in our time together I will see him wearing it four times in two different cities, so I assume thats the way its supposed to look. A fur-lined hooded sweatshirt rides up over a slight paunch as he stretches to work out the kinks. His onceteased and towering hair is regularly seen to at a favorite salon on the Strip. Colored a boy-next-door shade of dirty blond, highlighted with honey streaks, straightened and flatironed with the latest technologies into a silken consistency, it is truly a rock starworthy head of hair. The hint of time is reflected only in his slightly receded hairline. Gold-framed Chanel goggles hide his hazel eyes.