YOUR WILD YOUTH IS LEGENDARY. WHAT’S THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING YOU DID BEFORE YOU STRAIGHTENED UP?
“Well, I was on drugs for a little bit back there! I was dealing weed at high school and I’d buy sheets of LSD and I’d sell hits of acid. I’d smoke weed and drink constantly. I’d do cocaine when I was on acid. Stevie, our guitar player, we’d get loaded together. At one point we were working at a vintage clothing store and we hated our boss, so we decided to quit and take our last paycheque and buy a sheet of acid and become the acid dealers of Los Angeles. That was our best idea! We took acid consecutively every day and at one point I didn’t know if I was on it or not. I couldn’t tell anymore. It was crazy. Anyway, our plan failed miserably. We ended up eating the whole sheet over time.”
DID YOU HAVE ANY MEMORABLE HALLUCINATIONS WHILE ON ACID?
“One time I was at Disneyland on acid and I was about to go into the Haunted House and it started kicking in real hard. You’re in this little room with a bunch of people and all the paintings on the wall start to stretch… it was insane. I almost started having a seriously bad trip. It was too confined! But walking around and looking at all the different people at Disneyland on acid is the best. You can do it for hours.”/o:p
WHICH DRUG IS YOUR LEAST FAVOURITE?
“Looking back, crystal meth really took me to a dark place. It really fucked me up and it made me really ill. But I’m a horrible alcoholic. At the end of my drinking I was passing out twice a day. I’d wake up and start drinking and pass out by 3pm and then come to and start drinking again. I’ve been clean and sober for 20 years, so to think back to that time, and that I was that guy, it’s fucking crazy to me.”
DID THE SUCCESS OF YOUR COCAINE ANTHEM, LIT UP, MAKE PEOPLE THINK YOU WERE STILL INTO DRUGS?
“Not really. Occasionally that would happen. Lit Up is about the first time I did cocaine. A kid I knew had this apartment right next to my high school and he started dealing blow. He’d have these crazy parties every Friday. My whole high school was fucked up. The jocks, the popular kids, the metalheads, the punk rockers, the surfers, we were all doing blow. We’d be doing lines at snacktime in the morning. It was so much fun!”
NOW THAT YOU’RE CLEAN AND DRUG-FREE, HOW DO YOU PARTY THESE DAYS?
“I like to get people really fucked up. If you like to smoke weed, I’ll roll you a fat-ass joint, but my only stipulation is that you have to smoke the entire thing. So people will start smoking the joint and put it down halfway through, and I’ll be like, ‘No! You’ve got to finish it!’ Ha ha! Usually I get my crew guys all fucked up and I play drinking games with them, and I’m fine with it.”
CRAZY BITCH WAS ANOTHER MASSIVE SONG FOR YOU. WAS IT AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL?
“There was a period when I was a young man when I couldn’t seem to attract a sane girl. They’d always be super crazy in bed but a horrible girlfriend, y’know? When I came up with that melody I was driving around in LA, listening to the news on the radio. This was when the Paris Hilton sex tapes came out. I thought, ‘How crazy is this, that a woman can launch her entertainment career with homemade porn?’ So I came up with the melody and thought of all the crazy chicks I’ve known.”
YOUR LATEST EP IS CALLED FUCK. HAS YOUR FOUL MOUTH GOTTEN YOU INTO TROUBLE?
“Several times! Even in Buckcherry. I can’t even tell you how many times major labels have tried to stop us saying the things we want to say. I come from a punk rock background; I grew up in Orange County, and all my first records were independent records by bands that did and said whatever they wanted. That’s what I love. With the Fuck EP, we aimed to make the Scarface of rock ’n’ roll records, with the most ‘fuck’s ever.”
HAVE YOU EVER HAD ANY MAJOR ONSTAGE DISASTERS?
“One time I sprained my ankle onstage. I couldn’t even stand on it. I powered through but my ankle was like a softball when I got off stage. That was brutal. Another time, Keith went down on his back to do an Angus-style guitar solo and his guitar slipped out of his hand and landed on the bridge of his nose and broke it. His nose was bleeding and he stopped playing, so I went over and asked what happened and he said, ‘My guitar hit my nose!’ I said, ‘Whatever! It looks cool!’ So he went out and played the rest of the set and then went to hospital to have his nose reset. I felt really shitty about that! I didn’t realise how severe it was.”
WHAT’S THE WEIRDEST RUMOUR YOU’VE EVER HEARD ABOUT YOURSELF?
“That I went up to the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles and killed myself. It was online somewhere. It’s not true, by the way.”
THE FUCK EP IS OUT NOW VIA F-BOMB/o:p
