Well, since we have digressed from sessions to just good rock stories ... I have a couple.
My business partner was Jerry Garcia's 'assistant' for a short period. He could tell a thousand of these, but one of my favorites of his stories involves the rehearsal facility we own. Limp Bizkit was rehearsing, and for whatever reason, Fred Durst decided to smash this control room window type thing in room A. I believe that he kinda trashed the room, too. My partner discovers this the next day and calls their management to ask them for some money. They start telling him that he'll need to get a PO from the label, yadda, yadda, yadda... After expressing to them that this was not an option and that we needed the money right then, they still insisted that they couldn't just cut us a check. He walks into their room w/ the cordless and asks them to listen to something. The next sound they hear is him smashing a bass guitar. He then informs them that for every hour that we don't have a check, he will break another instrument. They had a cashier's check there in 45 mins.
Speaking of people who act like jack asses, on another occasion, Kiss was rehearsing there. Some young band is in the lobby shooting pool, and Gene Simmons walks into the lobby. The singer for the band goes up to Gene to start gushing over him. He starts telling him how Kiss is the whole reason that he started playing music and wanted to be in a band, etc. Gene responds: "Is that your band across the hall from us? You know, you sound a lot like Love and Rockets. Maybe you should consider becoming a Love and Rockets cover band, or just getting out of music all together."
D'oh!
Mandy (don't know last name), from the band World War 3, is rehearsing with somebody and has this dog, that is some kind of mastiff that he says is illegal in the US, that he 'won in a bare knuckle fight.' Apparently, he was a bare knuckle fighter in Germany and according to him he had to leave the country after he killed some guy in one of the fights (allegedly). Anyway, this dog, which was originally bred by the Romans, is easily two hundred pounds and he is on a chain that Mandy is holding. I'm holding a soft drink from a fast food restaurant in my hand, talking about the dog with him. Suddenly, the dog lunges for me, and although he comes up short due to the chain, I instinctively squeeze my cup and the drink explodes everywhere in my hand.
Anyway, while Mandy is rehearsing he decides to put the dog in room A. Setting a precedent to be followed by Green Day and then the above mentioned Fred Durst, the dog trashes the room. He starts eating the insulation out of the walls, etc. I tell Mandy that he has to leave the dog outside, so he chains the dog up out front. Somebody parks across the street from the studio and starts crossing the street to enter the studio. The dog breaks the chain that is holding him and starts running after this guy, who turns around, runs and climbs up the fence across the street. The dog is now running around loose and everybody is terrified. I close the front door and I'm trying to get over to the loading door to close it. I have a .45 in my hand, and if I see the dog anywhere near me, I'm going to kill it. People are running into their studio rooms and closing the doors. We got the loading doors closed, I made Mandy deal with the damn dog and nobody got eaten, thank god. Who knew rehearsal could be so dangerous?
Hmmmm ... speaking of dangerous sessions, I'll have to tell you guys later about when I had to throw the rap group Bloods & Crips out of the place. But for now, I need to get some sleep. Ooooh, but there was the time that the singer of a certain group, whose name rhymes with Stone Temple Pilots, showed up in a dress, dissheveled after disappearing for two days on a crack run downtown. (Obviously, I have no qualms using people's real names!)
BTW, does anybody know the story behind the Leon Russell song "Shootout At the Plantation"?