1989.10.13 - Park Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, USA

METAL SLUDGE: Speaking of Guns N’ Roses, tell us the story about the RIP party at the Park Plaza Hotel, the last club gig ever performed by the original GNR.

Friend; It was sometime after midnight and we were way over capacity. So the fire department unilaterally cleared 1,000 guests from the building’s downstairs area.

METAL SLUDGE: I know, I was heading in the bathroom until they left.

FRIEND: I believe that. Anyway, I soon came to to discover that Alice Cooper and Steve Vai were among the guests herded out. Meanwhile, I’m upstairs in the performance room where the other 1,000 fans are anxiously awaiting GN’R to hit the stage. It’s now well after 1 in the morning, and I am way fucking nervous. This is a bad situation if the band doesn’t play and it’s my fault because it’s my party.

I’ll never forget sitting down on the stairs leading to the stage, cowering like a monk with my head in hands, a dozen men in yellow jackets and yellow hats hovering about me. When all of a sudden, a finger taps me on shoulder. I look up, and it’s Axl. “Relax, man,” he says. “ We’re going on.” It was like he magically appeared from the rafters like the phantom of the opera. Moments later, GN’R tore the place apart -- Mike Monroe doing “Heartbreak Hotel” and stage diving with Axl and Duff. Their set ended around 3:15 or something. And a couple days later, GN’R opened four epic dates for the Rolling Stones at the Coliseum.

METAL SLUDGE: The buzz was so huge for Guns …

Friend: To put it mildly. Think about this, the greatest band in rock history, the Rolling Stones, being upstaged by an opening act. But that’s how unreal it was. GN’R was handed the rulebook and they, forgive the expression, ripped it to shreds.

The following year, we moved the party to a bigger venue, the Hollywood Palladium, and I helped put together the jam of the decade. It was really the guys who did it. It’s always the community of musicians that make the real magic happen. GN’R, Metallica and Sebastian – the GAAK jam, as it was known. Now this came after Ozzy did “War Pigs” with Faith No More, and James Hetfield joining Jim Martin on guitars. Motorhead was on the bill, and out of nowhere, Megadeth shows up at the back door with their manager, Ron Laffitte. “We just got off stage at the Santa Monica Civic, heard you were throwing a party,” says Mustaine. “Mind if we do three or four songs?” I grabbed stage manager, Kevin Lyman (the creator of the Warped Tour years later) and said, “Well, Kev?” and he shoots back, “Let’s do it!” Gaak did Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog,” with Axl and Bas sharing vocals. Lars was on the kit. Duff on bass, Slash on guitar. Hetfield and Hammett get on stage and they performed “Whiplash” for the second time because when Bas sang it first time around, as James put it in his classic intro, “We’re gonna do it now ‘cause that other guy fucked it up.”

Yeah we had some parties. The very next year was the Seattle blowout, where Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chairs and the only full Temple of the Dog jam ever took place. There’s footage of it in Cameron Crowe’s documentary, Pearl Jam 20, respectfully captioned RIP Anniversary Oct. 5 1991. I didn’t even know they were filming. But I almost cried when I saw the footage on the Arc Light screen, bigger than life. Bigger than life, that was RIP and our parties. And the amazing rockers, writers, photographers and staffers and fans that helped create this singular, special, sonic moment in time and space.

Guns N' Roses Lets 'er Rip in Stones Warmup
October 16, 1989|JONATHAN GOLD

The Rip magazine/Cathouse third-anniversary party at the Park Plaza on Friday night--a ferocious bacchanal that culminated with a near-two-hour set by Guns N' Roses--was strictly 21-and-over. The men and women who labor long hours merchandising the hard-rock life style to the rest of America came together to live a little bit of it themselves.

It was the kind of party where the fellow behind you wearing a Junkyard jacket was actually a member of the band, where the beer ran out by midnight and where there were so many scantily clad females on the prowl that a woman who pointed out her minuscule bustier to a guy couldn't even get his interest.

No copy of Rip on your coffee table? Never stopped by the Cathouse?

The Los Angeles-based Larry Flynt publication is what Rolling Stone could be if the latter featured hard rock and were edited by your little brother--complete with skateboard tips, long investigative pieces that focus on things like the breakup of Dokken, and pictorials comparing the cleavage of metal teen-dreams Doro Pesch and Lita Ford.

Hollywood's Cathouse has always been a 14-year-old's fantasy of what a rock 'n' roll club might be like, a place that features ferocious loud metal, half-clad leather girls in go-go cages, and real-life rock stars who not only hang out, but even jam. It's owned by Taime Down, lead singer of Faster Pussycat, and Riki Rachtman, sometimes host of Headbanger's Ball on MTV.

The anniversary show's big news--Guns N' Roses' appearance, a full dress rehearsal for their Coliseum gigs with the Stones later this week--was supposed to have been a secret. But it wasn't: Few in the local hard-rock community talked about much else all week.

The outside of the Westlake-area venue swarmed with news crews, fans and ticket scalpers. Several hundred people on the guest list stood patiently in line, shivering in their sleeveless T-shirts and tattoos.

Wolfsbane lead singer Blaze Bayley resembles the popular conception of what an ax murderer looks like, short and unshaven with long, greasy hair. When he talks to the audience, he sounds as though he is reading from cue cards; when he sings, he bellows. After each song, he goes, "Woooo!" Wolfsbane is a bad heavy-metal band that you might kind of like in spite of yourself.

Faster Pussycat actually sounded better in the cavernous acoustics of the Park Plaza than they did clean at the Palace a few weeks ago.

And Guns N' Roses . . . well, woooo! This second of two "surprise" shows last week in preparation for its date with the Rolling Stones at the Coliseum (the first show was at the 400-capacity Cathouse on Tuesday night) preached to the converted in fine style.

Axl Rose writhes like a stripper, slithers across the stage, modulates his voice from Joe Cocker snarl to Steve Tyler shriek--as ferally in control of the stage as any singer since early Bowie, convincing even in an extremely bathetic version of Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," which he dedicated to an OD'd friend. The Cathouse show was more a club show, five guys playing the songs they know for a bunch of friends; this was a full-fledged stadium show, million-dollar lighting apparatus, bombast, half-stepping and all. This band's ready.

THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO SKIN A CAT . . . HOUSE: The rock & roll club Cathouse and a locally based music magazine celebrated their third anniversaries last Friday night with a special show at the Park Plaza Hotel with Love/Hate, Princess Pang, Johnny Crash, The Mimes, Faster Pussycat, Wolfsbane and headliners Guns N’ Roses, who’d played an even smaller show at Cathouse earlier in the week. It’s a long story, but though we’re great friends with the Cathouse posse, who had invited us, we’re persona non grata with the magazine, and they’d instructed their security staff to make sure we didn’t get one foot in the door.

Under a wig, sunglasses and several coats of Man-Tan, we felt like Michael Jackson and looked like Tommy Lee. Thanks to the magazine, we had twice the fun dressing up in this wacky disguise and getting in under an assumed name, and were that much less bummed out when we, along with lots of other VIPs, ended up in the group the fire marshal herded out just before Guns N’ Roses began to play. For company, we brought our pal Joni (the Wolf Girl), undercover as a blonde. We thought she looked a little like Faster Pussycat’s Taime Downe.

Certain pals didn’t even spot us, including filmmaker Penelope Spheeris and DJ Henry Peck (even when right under his nose), so we didn’t have to do much talking. As a victim of severe name-and-face dyslexia, for once we didn’t offend people right and left by not recognizing them for the umpteenth time. Actually, it was quite relaxing.

The party was crowded and hot, and without the excitement of waiting to be thrown out, we surely would have left early. In the meantime, we wandered endlessly between the lobby and the band room, and hung out with celebs and magazine staffers in the VIP room, where Meredith and DK of Scarlet Letter, Alice Cooper and Blaze of Wolfsbane recognized us right off.

One magazine staffer in particular had vowed that we’d attend the party over his dead body; all we can say is, R.I.P.