"Look at that fat Sam Kinison looking motherfucker up there!" So said the Local Cool Guy about Vince Neil, and that pretty much sums up the entire Vince Neil experience. "Does it really?" you may be asking. No, not really. Because the word drunk isn't in the sentence. Neither is the word bloated. Let me tell you a little story about Vince Neil.
Vince Neil has been touring as a solo artist for years, backing his terrible solo records. But he has finally realized that no one wants to hear anything from his bad albums, and these days he only performs Mötley Crüe songs. I personally didn't care one way or another what he played, I was lured to the show by all of the reports I have been reading on Metal Sludge for the past year or more. It's where I got the information that Vince is always drunk. I'm pretty sure that's where I got the information that Vince looks like a gopher. So I had to go.
Plus, the Pirate had seen Vince Neil at an outdoor festival type thing a few weeks prior to the club date that I attended. The Pirate decreed that it was the worst show he had ever seen, yet it still managed to be one of the best times he had ever had at a show. He also said it was as if the best Mötley Crüe cover band in the world somehow got Vince Neil to be their vocalist, and that they really would have sounded much better without him.
Even after hearing that incredibly mixed review, I still wound up at my very own Vince Neil show a few weeks later. The opening act was Skid Row, which LCG and I skipped, because we saw them last summer at a place that features a bowling alley, a supper club, and a room for washed up rock and roll acts. There is no topping that Skid Row show as far as ambience goes, so we avoided them this time around. (We went to T.G.I. Friday's instead. It's tough times for Skid Row when we would rather go to a place where we have to repeatedly tell our waiter, "No, we don't want shots of tequila," instead of going to their show.)
But we got there in time for Vince Neil! We got there in time to mingle! The Vince Neil show was not that different from my Motörhead experience. I knew even more people at the Vince Neil show. And we got there at twenty past eleven, because Vince's set time was 11:30. Ten minutes to mingle! (Sing that line to the tune of Two Minutes To Midnight. Do it!) The mingling time turned into thirty minutes, because Vince went on late.
It must have never occurred to Vince that not only did I have to work the following day, I was already tired from seeing Judas Priest the previous night, plus I had worked all day, then gone to class for three hours (three hours because we got cut an hour early, do you hear me Vince, you drunk lazy bastard?), and then I had managed to still come down to see his crappy sounding bloated ass.
Maybe it occurred to him, but, you know, booze. It's what keeps Vince running. And at this point, I don't think he is very worried about what the fans or I think. Which is probably just as well, because he is a drunk Sam Kinison looking motherfucker. At a little before midnight, they finally went on. They started with the Mötley Crüe hit Kickstart My Heart, and it was really, really bad. Vince was already out of breath before he started singing!
I kind of expected that, because several years ago me and heldon's favorite TV show ever was the Hard Rock Live episode with Mötley Crüe. Nikki Sixx covered most of the vocal parts while Vince ran around trying to get the crowd to sing, and he himself only sang about every other word. The day after the show, heldon asked if Vince did his patented every-other-word trick. I was like, well, no, Vince is up to every-other-sentence.
Ask me what Vince was wearing! You know I am dying to tell you. Vince was wearing a headband. A light blue headband. A light blue headband that looked like it had been attacked by the Bedazzler. It was sparkly! I thought he maybe needed to cover his forehead because of a receding hairline. I was later told that the headband works in conjunction with the hair extensions he has been using since the Girls, Girls, Girls era. He also had on a blue vest that covered his drunken gopher gut, and tight jeans.
Man. Man, oh man. Man, oh man, oh man. So when he came out after the band had started Kickstart My Heart, not only was he out of breath immediately, he was wobbling. He was already drunk, and it was really obvious. Approximately one minute into the song, LCG made his, "drunk Sam Kinison looking motherfucker" observation and we laughed at how delightfully funny he was. "I expect him to break out into Wild Thing any minute," he added. Then he warned me that I was going to have to hear that about thirty more times, because it was A material and he wanted to re-use it. Did I get tired of the Sam Kinison joke? No! I laughed the remaining thirty times I heard it, because Vince just got more and more pathetic.
I think he only did one encore, but I don't remember. I was disillusioned and tired. It made me sad that the Metal Sludge reports had not been exaggerated. Vince was truly pitiful. And after the show, things stayed weird. I was standing outside the venue, waiting for the LCG, and some crabby guy in a leather vest tried to give me backstage passes.
He: (Brandishing a couple of laminates.) "Do you want backstage passes?"
Me: (Very politely) "No, thank you."
He: "They're just going to go to waste."
Me: "I don't really need them."
He: "Take them. I have no fucking use for them."
Me: "I won't use them."
Memo to backstage pass wielding crabby guys: If I don't want them in the first place, I am certainly not going to be coaxed into taking them if you start swearing about it. Particularly when you swear at me multiple times.
Memo to myself, circa July 1987: Yes, you missed the Mötley Crüe show on their Girls, Girls, Girls tour this month. Guess what? You'll get over it. You grew up and actually turned down the chance to meet Vince Neil. He's a drunken gopher now and people can't give backstage passes to you. Your taste improved. Oh, and by the way, you aren't going to get any taller, so you can just stop hoping.