Tommy Lee - The Dirt: Confessions of the Worlds Most Notorious Rock Band

The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book readers search tools.

Don Adkins: pages 3, 50

Nelson Chenault: pages 113, 164, 268, 281, 283

Coffman and Coffman Productions: pages 59, 153, 232

Bob Gruen/Starfile: photograph insert page 15 (top)

Ross Halfin/Idols: pages iii, 279, 399; photograph insert page 1

William Hames: pages 158, 159, 196, 208, 214, 217, 338; photograph insert page 6

Barry Levine: pages 7, 23, 42, 128, 156, 398, 403, 409, 411

Dean Messina: photograph insert page 11

Courtesy of Mtley Cre: pages 8, 9, 11 (top and bottom), 14, 24, 26, 31, 35, 43, 49, 52, 58, 65 (top and bottom), 67, 70, 71, 75 (top and bottom), 93, 95, 96, 97, 103, 109, 116, 122, 126, 133, 139, 155, 167, 171, 172, 179, 189, 193, 197, 213, 219, 224, 228, 235, 246, 251, 246, 262, 277, 284 (top, middle, and bottom right), 285, 294, 301, 332, 355, 361, 362, 367, 371, 377, 416, 421, 424; photograph insert pages 3 (left), 4 (bottom), 9, 12, 16 (top and bottom)

Paul Natkin: photograph insert page 7

Anastasia Pantsios: 81, 90, 144, 148, 322

Jim Prue: page 121

Chuck Pulin/Starfile: page 356; photograph insert page 15 (bottom)

Mick Rock: page 427; photograph insert page 5

Terry Sesvold: page 92; photograph insert page 8

Cindy Sommerfield: pages 184, 220, 231, 232, 257, 267, 324; photograph insert pages 10, 13

Mark Weiss: pages 136, 145, 192; photograph insert page 9

Neil Zlozower: 135; photograph insert pages 2, 3 (right), 4 (top), 14

Vinnie Zuffante/Starfile: pages 163, 342

Zombie dust: Mix of Halcion, a nervous-system sedative, and cocaine, a nervous-system stimulant. Crushed and stored in vial. When consumed, keeps body awake but shuts brain off.

If Heather was visiting, which was rare because of her busy schedule, the hotel ritual was slightly different. In that case, the scenario went exactly like this: Meet Heather in lobby. Fuck. Cuddle. Talk. Ignore knocking on door. Listen to Nikki yell, Tommy, Ive got an eightball through door. Ignore him. Listen to Nikki yell, Just because shes here doesnt mean we cant hang out. Continue to ignore him. After ten more minutes of knocking and yelling, exasperatedly open door. Listen to Heather complain, Im only out here for one day. Why do we have to spend it with him? Get in fight. Get pissed at Heather. Get pissed at Nikki. Get pissed at self.

fig. 1

H er name was Bullwinkle. We called her that because she had a face like a moose. But Tommy, even though he could get any girl he wanted on the Sunset Strip, would not break up with her. He loved her and wanted to marry her, he kept telling us, because she could spray her cum across the room.

Unfortunately, it wasnt just cum she sent flying around the house. It was dishes, clothes, chairs, fistsbasically anything within reach of her temper. Up until then, and Id lived in Compton, Id never seen anyone get that violent. One wrong word or look would cause her to explode in a jealous rage. One night, Tommy tried to keep her away by jamming the door to the house shutthe lock was long since broken from being repeatedly kicked in by the policeand she grabbed a fire extinguisher and threw it through the plate-glass window to get inside. The police returned later that night and drew their guns on Tommy while Nikki and I hid in the bathroom. Im not sure which we were more scared of: Bullwinkle or the cops.

We never repaired the window. That would have been too much work. People would pour into the house, located near the Whisky A Go-Go, for after-hours parties, either through the broken window or the warped, rotting brown front door, which would only stay closed if we folded a piece of cardboard and wedged it underneath. I shared a room with Tommy while Nikki, that fucker, got the big room to himself. When we moved in, we agreed to rotate and every month a different person would get the solo room. But it never happened. It was too much work.

It was 1981, and we were broke, with one thousand seven-inch singles that our manager had pressed for us and a few decimated possessions to our name. In the front room sat one leather couch and a stereo that Tommys parents had given him for Christmas. The ceiling was covered with small round dents because every time the neighbors complained about the noise, wed retaliate by pounding on the ceiling with broom handles and guitar necks. The carpet was filthy with alcohol, blood, and cigarette burns, and the walls were scorched black.

The place was crawling with vermin. If we ever wanted to use the oven, we had to leave it on high for a good ten minutes to kill the regiments of roaches crawling around inside. We couldnt afford pesticides, so to exterminate the roaches on the walls we would take hair spray, hold a lighter to the nozzle, and torch the bastards. Of course, we could afford (or afford to steal) important things like hair spray, because you had to have your hair jacked up if you wanted to make the rounds at the clubs.

The kitchen was smaller than a bathroom, and just as putrid. In the fridge thered usually be some old tuna fish, beer, Oscar Mayer bologna, expired mayonnaise, and maybe hot dogs if it was the beginning of the week and wed either stolen them from the liquor store downstairs or bought them with spare money. Usually, though, Big Bill, a 450-pound biker and bouncer from the Troubadour (who died a year later from a cocaine overdose), would come over and eat all the hot dogs. Wed be too scared to tell him it was all we had.

There was a couple who lived down the street and felt sorry for us, so every now and then theyd bring over a big bowl of spaghetti. When we were really hard up, Nikki and I would date girls who worked in grocery stores just for the free food. But we always bought our own booze. It was a matter of pride.

In the kitchen sink festered the only dishes we owned: two drinking glasses and one plate, which wed rinse off now and then. Sometimes there was enough crud caked on the plate to scrape a full meal from, and Tommy wasnt above doing that. Whenever the trash piled up, wed open the small sliding door in the kitchen and throw it onto the patio. In theory, the patio would have been a nice place, the size of a barbecue and a chair, but instead there were bags of beer cans and booze bottles piled up so high that wed have to hold back the trash to keep it from spilling into the house every time we opened the door. The neighbors complained about the smell and the rats that had started swarming all over our patio, but there was no way we were touching it, even after the Los Angeles Department of Health Services showed up at our door with legal papers requiring us to clean the environmental disaster we had created.