Running With Monsters: A Memoir (10 page)

What I was really trying to put across to him was that he wasn’t like the rest of us. I may have been with a strung-out crew, but I felt like musicians were used to that life. Actors were more delicate. River had just had three months of healthy, drug-free living. Just walking in the door of John’s place and taking a deep breath might lead to an OD. I felt a little responsible. He didn’t seem to get it, so I spelled it out. “Look, man,” I said. “You haven’t done any drugs for months. You shouldn’t go up there. If you want to see him and say hello, he’ll be down at the Viper Room later. Trust me, it’s past the point of fun up there these days.”

Of course, you can never tell anybody what to do if they don’t want to listen, and River, being River, went straight from the party to John’s house. Forget the plush room he had at St. James’s Club. He stayed with John for the next few days and probably didn’t get a minute of sleep. The drug routine stayed pretty consistent for all of us. First, smoke crack or shoot coke directly into a vein for that ninety-second, electric brain-bell jangle. Then shoot heroin to get a grip and come down enough to be able to carry on a conversation for a few minutes before you start the cycle again. Just like the instructions on a shampoo bottle: lather, rinse, repeat. Always repeat. These sessions could last for days and would only end when someone fell out or other obligations intruded. And we’d write and record songs (and lose them), which is what River and Frusciante said they were doing, but one look at their hollow eyes told me they’d also been deep into a major-league drug binge.

When I walked into the Viper Room at about seven on the evening of October 30, the long fall shadows had turned to night, but it seemed like any other evening there. Sal was excited. “Frusciante and River are going to play tonight!” he said. River considered himself a musician. He had busked on the street as a kid and had continued to play guitar through his teens. He was proficient and he liked to jam. A few years earlier, when he had starred with Keanu Reeves—another aspiring musician—in Gus Van Sant’s
My Own Private Idaho,
the grim tale of two hustling male prostitutes, River had carved out time for music despite the tight shooting schedule. Flea, who had a cameo role in the movie, stayed with River and Keanu in the rental house they shared on location in Portland, Oregon. A couple of times a week, they’d hold late-night jam sessions, which provided River with his rock and roll fix. Back home in Los Angeles, he had formed a band called Aleka’s Attic that got attention mainly because he was River Phoenix, which must have frustrated him. Playing with Frusciante, I’m sure, validated him. He was more than just a Hollywood actor who dabbled in alternative rock. Sal was giddy about it. I wasn’t so sure. I knew what those two had been up to over the last few days and could just imagine what kind of disaster they’d whip up onstage.

“Dude, you can’t let them get up there,” I said, now taking on Sal’s part from the time I had booked Beck.

“No, no. They recorded a song. They played it for me. It’s going to be great. They’re just opening for P, anyway,” he explained.

P was a band that had come together from everybody hanging out. Gibby, Johnny, and Sal formed the core, and a revolving lineup fleshed them out. That night, Al Jourgensen and Flea were joining in. It was fun to watch some of the biggest rock and movie stars of the time getting together to play original material and lots of covers. They even had a song that mentioned River. It was called “Michael Stipe,” a name-check for R.E.M.’s front man. There was a line that went,
“I’m glad I met old Michael Stipe, I didn’t get to see his car. Him and River Phoenix were leaving on the road tomorrow.”
It promised to be an interesting night, so I left for my apartment on La Brea to arrange a few drug deals and keep myself supplied in the process. Once business was completed, I went back to the Viper Room at about nine. I walked in the door just as River and John finished their set. It was about what I expected. Maybe a little worse. I went back into the office where we usually hung out and needled Sal. “Hey, man, they’re so fucked up they can’t even get through a song. You can’t let ’em get back up there.”

River and John stumbled in. There was a crowd coming in and out. River’s brother Joaquin—who went by the name Leaf back then—and his sister Rain were both there. They seemed like kids. Joaquin was nineteen, not even old enough to drink, and his sister was twenty-one. Somebody broke out the coke and passed it around. River was obviously wasted and was as unsteady as a boxer who had taken one too many head shots during a fifteen-round bout. His complete lack of motor skills made me suspect he was drunk. Heroin will make users lean when they stand still, but you almost never see them stumble and fall. Coke fiends may have hands that tremble, but the kind of stuporous shuffle River had made me think he was drunk. Sloppy drunk. He wobbled whenever he was on his feet. Frusciante was completely out of his mind. I had seen him like this before, and even though he was a friend, when he was in that kind of state, he could be very unpleasant. It was as if he didn’t operate in this dimension at that point. I sat at the desk and wondered if maybe we all shouldn’t go into the secret “party” room that Johnny and Sal had built when the club was under construction.

John and River stood up, unsteady, and went out to watch P do their set. I went out with them. They sat on the stage near the front door and watched from there. I hung back and enjoyed the show. They were always a fun band to watch, and tonight, they played well. It was great fun until I felt a hand tap my shoulder and turned to see River. He was a whiter shade of pale. “Bob, I don’t feel so good. I think I’m OD’ing.”

“What? Are you sure?” That’s something no one had ever said to me. Usually you just OD and that’s it. “River, you can’t just come up to me and say you’re OD’ing.” He stood there and rocked tentatively off the balls of his feet in a vain attempt to counter gravity. This club was no place for him at the moment.

“C’mon, man. Let’s get you home, then,” I said, and tried to guide him toward the door.

“I don’t know, Bob. I think I’m all right now.” Color returned to his face.

I tried to reassure him. “I don’t think it’s an OD. You can stand and you can talk.” He nodded and turned. I still have guilt that I dismissed his worries so casually.

I watched him zigzag back to the stage, where Frusciante still sat. I was dumbstruck.
What the fuck just happened?
I thought. It was a horrible moment. What was I supposed to do? From where I was, I could see him, so I kept an eye on him for any signs of imminent collapse, but he seemed okay. I wasn’t a stranger to overdoses. It was something that happened given the dope-fiend lifestyle. A few weeks earlier, at my place, one of the bodyguards for Ministry’s Al Jourgensen had collapsed after a night of heavy partying. I called 911 and an ambulance took him to the hospital. Later, after he had been revived and a Filipino orderly wheeled him through the emergency room lobby, where a few of us had waited for him, he said from his wheelchair, “If you guys stole my dope, I’m gonna kill you—and I’m looking at you, Bob Forrest.” He knew me too well.

Not long after I spoke to River, there was a sudden commotion in the club. Someone was shouting to call an ambulance. A current of panic shot through the Viper Room. I could feel it. There was a jam-up at the door, so I pushed my way through to the sidewalk. Samantha Mathis, River’s actress girlfriend, was screaming. River was seizing on the sidewalk. Flea was on the ground next to him and tried to do what he could to help. When I saw the scene, I stopped in my tracks. “What the fuck is going on?” I thought. It was only about thirty minutes after River had played onstage. Now here he was crumpled on the sidewalk. He was alive, because his arms and legs shook like he was having an epileptic fit. An ambulance wailed to a stop and the EMTs bundled him onto a gurney and quickly got him inside. Flea jumped in and rode with him to the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, not too far west in the Fairfax District.

I didn’t know the full extent of River’s condition, but I knew that whichever way things went, it would be trouble. And it would be the kind of trouble that made front-page news in a celebrity-obsessed town like Los Angeles. I could picture one of the tabloid TV shows like
A Current Affair
blasting out a teaser: “River Phoenix overdoses at Johnny Depp’s Viper Room. … Is Young Hollywood out of control?” This would be bad, it would be terrible, and we were all right in the middle of it. It never even crossed my mind that he could die. My emotions were tangled by all this. I felt awful that River had collapsed. I may have been a junkie, but I was human, and I had empathy and concern for my friend. But I was also fearful that the rest of us could be hauled in for questioning.

It took a while for everyone to get it together, and we each handled it differently. Al Jourgensen and his girlfriend Sean Yseult, the bass player for White Zombie and the daughter of an Ernest Hemingway scholar, went back to their hotel room and laid low. Gibby and I decided to go to Cedars and check on River’s condition. It was three o’clock on Halloween morning. Hospitals are spooky places to begin with, but the day and the stillness of the hour only compounded the unease. We parked the car close to the entrance so we could make a quick escape if one was needed, and we walked into the sickly, greenish light of the ER. The admitting nurse must have guessed by our clothes and hair that we were somehow connected to River because she asked, “Are you family or friends?”

I said, “Of River’s? We’re family.”

She looked stern and solemn and waved us past. I saw Samantha standing alone. She was crying. I knew just by looking at her that River was dead.

I went numb. It was so unbelievable. Gibby and I were in shock. River partied, for sure, but nothing at the level of the rest of us.
How could he be dead?
I wondered. I wanted to give my condolences to Samantha but realized there was nothing Gibby and I could do here. Our presence might only make things worse. To her we probably represented evil. The press didn’t know yet that one of Hollywood’s most promising young actors had just overdosed on drugs and died. Gibby and I went back to the car and sat there for a while as we tried to wrap our minds around the situation. The reality of this tragedy hit me like a sudden punch to the gut and I sobbed, “Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

“This is going to be bad, man,” Gibby said.

“What do we do?”

“Where’s Frusciante?!?” we both asked.

It hit us like a bomb that John might be running loose. He was the weak link of our group. He was likely to say anything to anyone, even reporters—“We all
love
drugs! They’re great!” Gibby and I found a pay phone—those were still easy to locate in ’93—and called Depp.

“Have you seen John?” I asked.

“He’s at home. How’s your friend?” he said. Johnny didn’t know it was River who had been taken away in the ambulance.

“Dude, River’s dead!” I told him. There was a long silence, followed by a quiet “Oh, my God …” And then the phone went dead.

Well, it was a bit of a relief to know John was back at his house, but of all us, he was the one who could do some real damage. He was the kind of person who would argue—and be serious—that heroin was good for you … with a cop. There was no telling what he could say or do. Gibby and I realized just how vulnerable we were. We went back to my apartment and talked all night. The conversation went something like this: “Holy fuck!” We suspected the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department couldn’t wait to start arresting musicians and actors in connection with River’s death.

As a jaundiced dawn started to break, Gibby wearily said, “I’m going back home to Texas. I’m booking a flight.” He picked up the phone, made a couple calls, and was gone.

Al Jourgensen was on tour and had to leave anyway, and I found out he and his girlfriend had bolted too. I was on my own. By midmorning, the paranoia of sitting alone in my place had started to wear on me, so I went to the Viper Room. It was madness. There was media everywhere. Cameras, reporters, support teams. River’s fans had set up makeshift memorials. Red roses, white lilies, and multihued candles colored the dirty sidewalk where not many hours before River had collapsed. I stifled another sob. I loved River, and now he was gone and there wasn’t anything I could do.

Junkie self-preservation kicked in. I walked on and found a phone. I called Sal to find out if he had any news. He wasn’t happy to hear from me. “Fuck you and fuck your fucking friends, man!” was what he told me. Sal was sober and had a clear picture of what was going on. He knew that the Viper Room was over.

“Where’s Johnny?” I asked.

“Johnny’s gone, man, and, if I were you, I’d be gone too.” Click.

I started to panic. If anyone went down for this, it might be me. I was there. I’d scored drugs the night before. Sal was sober. I wasn’t. And now that everyone else had split, I was the only one left here in town. Depressed about River and freaked out for myself, I drove back to my place on La Brea and right in front of my building was a double-parked police prowler. That was not a good sign. I just kept driving.

I hooked a right on Third Street and headed east to the tree-studded hills of Echo Park on the edge of downtown. I didn’t know what to do. I went to my old friend Chris Hansen’s house and knocked.

He answered the door and I blurted out, “River’s dead.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s been all over the news. It’s so sad.”

“No, dude, you don’t understand. I have to get out of town. I need to get to my mom’s house in Oklahoma.”

I made a few phone calls, booked a flight, and borrowed some money from Chris, and he drove me across town to LAX, where I caught a plane and went to visit my mom, who had, a few years earlier, decided to leave California for the slower pace of the Sooner State. Very few people outside my immediate family knew that, and I thought Oklahoma could provide a safe haven until things calmed down. I was an emotional mess after River’s death. I laughed when I should have cried and I wept when I should have laughed. I’d find myself staring at a television set that hadn’t been turned on and then realize hours had passed while I sat there as blank as the screen. The Viper Room was done. It wasn’t a clubhouse anymore. It was just a place that would forever haunt me with guilt, sadness, and regret—things with which I had become increasingly burdened.