I
was spitting blood into the sink next to Pennywise dressing
room, and looking into the mirror when I considered the possibility
that my interview with Fletcher, (Pennywise guitarist) had taken
a decidedly foul turn for the worse.
We were backstage at an ice-hockey rink where Pennywise was
supposed to play and I had just gone a full round with the wookie
from Hermosa Beach in an impromptu grudge match (a la Ultimate
Fighting Challenge), where we’d wrestled until I tapped-out,
or perhaps better described, until Doug from 98Mute loosened
Fletcher’s butterfly hold on my neck long enough for me
to not to pass out from lack of blood to the brain.
Why I got mired into physical bloodsport with a 297 pound 6
foot, 5 inch punk guitarist, whom I was supposed to be “covering”,
is unclear. All I can admit is that at the time it seemed like
a logical step in the evolution of our assignment.
And that in the three day ordeal we endured in Jackson Hole,
Wyoming covering Pennywise, I’d been subject to a barrage
of threats from Fletcher denouncing both my physical prowess
and my professional conduct. So when it turned out that Jim,
(Pennywise’ vocalist), got hung up in the Denver airport
en-route to the gig, meaning that Pennywise wouldn’t be
playing, my photographer and I took it upon ourselves to run
amok backstage for the sole reason that we could. Running amok
in this case meant getting wasted on Bacardi and cokes provided
by someone in the Pennywise camp and repeatedly “biting
the hands that fed us” in the following forms; by taunting
Fletcher until he was forced to put the beat down, alienating
Fletcher’s girlfriend, and having the guys from 98Mute
separately expose embarrassing things about the other members
for the benefit of our mini-cassette recorder and thus, for
the sake of the permanent record.`Of course at this point it
would seem prudent to insert a healthy dose of direct quotes,
some succinct transcription of what was said and heard, these
things are, after all, the backbone of the interview story.
Unfortunately this is where I went awry of the rules of good
journalism, for in my zeal to take a bite out of Fletcher’s
sorry ass I left my tape recorder on a chair nearby where (I
assume) some opportunistic punk found it and emptied it of a
tape, a very important one that contained the only thing even
closely resembling an interview with Fletcher. So, back in the
bathroom looking in the mirror, as I examined the golf ball
sized knot in my forehead I began to wish I’d heeded the
words of our man Sun Tzu and wondered if the situation could
get much uglier. Then, of course, it did. Enter Fletcher: “Hey
Civ,” (He called me that because, supposedly, I bear some
resemblance to Civ’s lead singer, formerly of Gorilla Biscuits.)
“It’s time for Round Two, this time I’ll tie
both hands behind my back but it’ll be ‘no-holds-barred’…everything
goes.”
I laughed. “Look punk, aren’t you happy?!” I
pointed to his huge, gorilla-like hands; “You already have
my blood on your hands.”
He looked down at his hands; grinned in his evil sort of way
and said “This is not your blood.”
“Right.” I said, and then somewhere in the back of
my drink-addled brain I hatched a plan. I held up the empty
tape recorder and told him, “This is what we should do,
we need to find the guy who stole this tape and rip his fuckin’
lungs out!” I thought, hey, if it had come to violence,
we might as well vent it toward some useful end, right? Unfortunately
he had another idea, which in it’s simple poetic way ridded
us of the problem entirely.
Before I could react, he grabbed the tape machine out of my
hand and started smashing it on his forehead, shouting in a
wookie-like rage,
“AARRRGH!! I HATE TAPE RECORDER!!!” And after a couple
good whacks he threw it at the bathroom’s cement wall where
it shattered pitifully, into many pieces. All I could do was
shrug when he was done.
“It was Lo-Fi anyway” I said to him, glad mostly that
it was the recorder he was mad at, and not me for egging him
on to do stupid things. “We’ll bill the magazine for
a new one.”
It was also about this time that Fletcher’s girlfriend
was heard nearby relating to my photographer that: “You
guys shouldn’t hang out with him anymore. You’re bad
influences.” Which was saying quite a lot if you consider
that Fletcher is already famous for his exploits in unsavory
behavior that include throwing up on Dr. Drew of Love Line while
on-the-air because he felt the guy “deserved it”.
(A clip of which can be found at HYPERLINK)
Although I’d admit with some demented pride that she was
probably right. Only a day earlier we had been at a local cowboy
bar and my photographer and I had lightened Fletcher of about
$350.00 in a spectacle of bad proposition bets at billiards
and ill-reasoned games of “guess which number I’m
thinking of.” I could imagine her displeasure. It was one
thing to watch your significant other get worked for a large
sum of money by some fool passing himself off as the Press…it
was quite another to see him reduced to the level of a dumb
brute by the same person a day later for everyone’s backstage
amusement. It would’ve been a heavy scene for her to cope
with and so, rather than exact retribution on Fletcher for the
pain he’d caused us that night, we did the next best thing.
Outside the venue in the frozen parking lot we had our cab driver
pull up next to Fletcher and his entourage so I could shout
from the safety of the car some idle threat along the lines
that “we knew where he lived” and that “he should
sleep light, lest we throw a bomb into the place”, or the
like.
Fletcher’s response came in the most Charles Bronson-like
voice I’ve ever had the displeasure of hearing in person.
It was said with such gravity in a sort of demonic growl, that
it seemed to put a fine stamp on the evening. All he said was,
“You’re both dead.”
And as we were sped off to our motel, foul logic and strong
drink caught up with us.
“You think Ed Bradley ever had this kind of trouble?”
I asked my photographer, Steve.
“I doubt it,” he said “I bet Fidel Castro was
a better gentleman than this ogre.”
“Fuck Castro.” I grumbled, looking out onto the black
mass of the Grand Tetons weighing ominously in the distance,
“You think he understands the nuance of a finely executed
pick-scrape over a 200 beats-per-minute drum cadence?”
“Nope,” he agreed, “few people do, few people
do.”
98Mute’s comments were deemed libelous and omitted at the
insistence of the editor.
I
was spitting blood into the sink next to Pennywise dressing
room, and looking into the mirror when I considered the possibility
that my interview with Fletcher, (Pennywise guitarist) had taken
a decidedly foul turn for the worse.
“Hey
Civ,” (He called me that because, supposedly, I bear some
resemblance to Civ’s lead singer, formerly of Gorilla Biscuits.)
“It’s time for Round Two, this time I’ll tie
both hands behind my back but it’ll be ‘no-holds-barred’…everything
goes.”
“You
guys shouldn’t hang out with him anymore. You’re bad
influences.” Which was saying quite a lot if you consider
that Fletcher is already famous for his exploits in unsavory
behavior that include throwing up on Dr. Drew of Love Line while
on-the-air because he felt the guy “deserved it”.
(A clip of which can be found at