Eddie Trunk - Eddie Trunks Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal

Everybody wants a backstage pass.

All metalheads and rock and rollers want to know what goes on in dressing rooms, tour buses, and hotels. We are intrigued, fascinated, and eager to hear the real stories.

In these pages you will find stories about some of the most memorable moments in rock from the illustrious Eddie Trunkmetals living, breathing backstage pass. In chronicling such events and exposing such environments, as well as documenting rock-and-roll history, attention to detail is everythingand Eddie is the master. His passion for hard rock and metal has not only secured him fans around the globe but has also blessed him with a superhuman memory. Whenever our paths cross, be it on his TV or radio shows, Eddie will talk, on and off air, with amazing accuracy about this band or that musician and what they have going on. His knowledge of hard rock is unmatched.

There is a strong difference between gossip and reality, and while Eddie may indulge in the former, he only deals with the latter. His honest and loyal reputation precedes him, and Eddie will not let anyone diminish its value. So Eddies recollections are genuine and, I believe, important. We get to hear the real facts and the real tales from a source who commands a style all his own, which sets this book apart.

Its time more people had the chance to get into Eddies crazy worldinto his adventures with famous and infamous peopleto learn about his essential music, and to see it all through the eyes that revel, record, and then recount. Its time to go backstage.

Rob Halford, 2010

Rob Halford and Eddie at the Q104 studio, New York City, May 7, 2010

K. K. Downing and Rob Halford at Convention Hall, Asbury Park, New Jersey, June 25, 1981

About Me...

My first job in music was writing for my high school newspaper in Madison, New Jersey. It was 1981, and my music column was called Sharps & Flats. What was I writing about back then? The greatness of bands like UFO! (As you can see, truly very little has changed.) I started writing not because I thought I was a great wordsmith, but for the same reason I went into radio a few years later: to share the music I loved with others and to spread the word about all those underappreciated bands out there. Its that same principle thats driven me in everything Ive done professionally, from radio to record label A&R to television.

Ace Frehley and Eddie at the Q104 Studio, New York City, 2009

Ive lived my entire life in New Jersey and spent almost all of my years in love with rock music. When I was a kid, it was pretty much all I cared about (which was unfortunately reflected in my grades at school). I didnt even go to college, other than a year at the local community school, because I landed a job in a record store, which was, at that point, my dream gig. Working in a record store for years was great. In order to sell music, you need to know about all styles, so I was forced to educate myself about pop, R&B, country, and more. People are always surprised when I throw out some knowledge about other genres, but even though rock and metal are my passion, if you want to work in music, you need to learn as much as you can about it.

When I got the record store gig, I found out my boss had an illegal radio station in his basement in Staten Island. He was into Top 40 and all the big-echo voice announcer stuff that I wasnt. (For me, radio was never about how you sounded on the mic, but what you had to say and playa platform to share and debate.) He could fire up the transmitter only at certain times of the day to avoid getting busted as a pirate broadcaster. The request line was the local phone booth down the street. But his station allowed me to make a demo tape that would land me my first radio job right out of high school at WDHA in Dover, New Jersey.

Id grown up listening to WDHA, and I will never forget cracking the mic there for the first time. I was so nervous that my hands shook at the controls. I turned on the guest mic across the console by accident, and nobody heard my first-ever station break. Sixty seconds of dead air is how my career in radio started! Thankfully, they gave me another shot, and my show was born. Many believe the Metal Mania radio show in 1983 was the very first specialty metal show. I was able to convince the station bosses to let me play heavy metal only because I told them how many metal records I was selling in the shop across the street. I worked at WDHA on the weekends while working full-time at the record store for nine years. Since it wasnt a major-market station, I couldnt support myself on my DJ salary alone. (For a stint I was also vice president of Megaforce Records, the label that discovered Metallica, but more on that in the other chapters of this book.)

Dave Mustaine, Eddie, and Don Jamieson on the set of That Metal Show, 2009

Jake E. Lee, Ron Akiyama (photographer of this book), and Eddie, 1984

I had always dreamed of cracking New York City radio, the number-one market in the country. I loved WDHA, and it will always be a part of me, but when a classical radio station changed formats in 1992 and became Q104.3, New Yorks Pure Rock, I dropped a tape in, hit Record, and sent in an air check (your resume in the radio world). I was shocked to get a call offering me the seven-to-midnight slot on Sunday. It was an honor to get the job and have the opportunity to broadcast into the tristate areaNew York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Suddenly, by making the short drive to Manhattan from New Jersey, I went from a local 3,000-watt station to 50,000 watts! While I never did my own programming at Q104, I was thrilled just to be a part of the station in the big city that played hard rock. The Pure Rock format was canned one year later, but I managed to stay at Q104 until 1998 as a classic rock DJ.

Then I got a call from the legendary New York City station WNEW. The management was making changes and hired me. I begged them to let me do a metal show, and my dream came true: I was on NYC radio, the biggest market in the country, saying and playing what I wanted. Suddenly, I had an audience and was known for something other than a nice voice between records. I stayed at WNEW until it folded in 2003, and thats when Q104 saved me. The people at my old station had seen what Id created in the four years Id been gone, so they let me bring my specialty metal show to Q104 on Friday nights at eleven PM where it still sits today. At the same time, I got a call from an old friend from MTV and VH1, Rick Krim, who told me about a new VH1 channel called VH1 Classic and said I should audition to be a television host. Amazingly, I got the gig and became one of VH1 Classics first-ever hosts, playing metal, alternative, soul, and rock videos and interviewing artists from Carly Simon to Robert Plant on a show called