Scar Tissue (56 page)

All those ideas were in the air when John started playing this guitar riff, and I immediately knew what the song was about. It was a playful, happy-to-be-alive, phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes vibe. I ran outside with my handheld tape recorder and, with that music playing in the background, started singing the entire chorus to the song. I’ll never forget looking up at the sky above that garage, out toward Griffith Park with the birds flying overhead, and getting a dose of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I really did have the point of view of those birds, feeling like an eternal outsider.

From “Scar Tissue”

Scar tissue that I wish you saw

Sarcastic Mr. Know-it-all

Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you ’cause

With the birds I’ll share this lonely view

With the birds I’ll share this lonely view

Push me up against the wall

Young Kentucky girl in a push-up bra

Fallin’ all over myself

To lick your heart and taste your health ’cause

With the birds I’ll share this lonely view

Blood loss in a bathroom stall

Southern girl with a scarlet drawl

Wave goodbye to Ma and Pa ’cause

With the birds I’ll share this lonely view

We finished another song called “Emit Remmus,” which had been inspired in part by my friendship with Melanie Chisholm of the Spice Girls. Around that time, the Spice Girls were a raging phenomenon, especially among young girls, like Flea’s daughter, Clara. Even when I’d go to New Zealand, all the little girls there would know the Spice Girls’ lyrics and their dance moves. The tunes were pretty good pop songs, especially when you had five different-colored crayons out there performing them.

That spring I got a call from Nancy Berry, who ran Virgin Records. She told me that the Spice Girls were coming to L.A., and both the Melanies wanted to go out and have some fun and get some tattoos. Being the resident fun- and tattoomeister, I was enlisted to show them the Hollywood ropes. I arranged to have my friend keep his tattoo parlor open after hours to accommodate them. I became friendly with Mel C (Sporty), and we stayed in touch for months and months. It was nice, because I got to take Clara to the show and bring her backstage so she could meet these incredible characters she’d been worshipping for the last year.

Fast-forward to September and Clara’s tenth birthday. Flea had been arguing for months and months with Clara when it came to the background music in their house, because Flea wanted to hear Coltrane, and Clara had the Spice Girls on a nonstop loop. So Flea decided we were going to pull a stunt at her birthday party. He dropped the hint to Clara that the Spice Girls themselves might show up at her party. And, of course, we would be the Spice Girls.

The likenesses were obvious. Flea would be Baby Spice. John was Sporty Spice. Chris Warren, our drum technician, was enlisted to play Scary Spice, and I would be Posh Spice. Thank God Ginger Spice was already out of the band and we didn’t have to fill her shoes. With the help of Flea’s assistant, Sherry Westridge, we got the right clothes and the right wigs and wore the right makeup. We each studied the personality and the body language of our Spice Girl, and learned the dance moves. We even had some rehearsals.

Come the day of the party, Clara had her whole clan of ten-year-old friends over, all of whom lived and died for the Spice Girls. Everybody was whispering about the possibility that the Spice Girls were coming because Clara had actually met them at their show. So it came time for the surprise, and we were all up in Flea’s bedroom, putting the final touches on our outfits, while the girls were in the living room one floor below. The music started, and the little girls all freaked out, screaming “Oh my God” as we walked down the giant staircase and they caught a glimpse of these fabulous costumes. Then something slowly started to filter into their little minds.

“Wait a second, these are not the Spice Girls. In fact, these are not even girls, these are men dressed like the Spice Girls. EEEEWWWWWWWW!”

We sauntered down and never broke character and put on an immaculate performance. Scary Spice was phenomenal, Baby Spice was terrifying with her gap Flea tooth, and John absolutely nailed Sporty, working on it morning, noon, and night until his character was there. Posh was easy; she was just an aloof, uptight, narcissistic shopping girl. We took our little vocal solos and did our dances. I had on a really short skirt, because Posh wears her dresses too short, but I forgot to take into consideration that I was a man in front of kids. I don’t think any of them have ever recovered, because we didn’t shave our legs.

Now that it was clear our foursome was a viable configuration once again, it was time to get management. Two months earlier, we hadn’t cared if we had a manager, because nothing was going on, but we were more passionate than ever about the music we were generating. A few years before, Rick Rubin had been extolling the virtues of Q-Prime Management. Q-Prime was run by a duo, Peter Mensch and Cliff Bernstein, and in Rick’s mind, they were the brightest managers in the rock business, bar none.

These two guys flew in from New York to meet with us in Flea’s living room. Cliff looked a lot older than he was, because his hair and his long Merlin-the-magician beard were all white. He was small and delicate and purposeful and mystical-looking. He wore glasses and looked super-intelligent. He was like a walking think tank, an organic computer man with a competitive nature that belied his appearance. Peter, on the other hand, was a gruff, loud, obnoxious bundle of muscles who alienated and was brash. He was also very smart and, in a bizarre way, very loving.

These guys were very New York. They’d been in the music business forever, having managed acts as diverse as Metallica—whom they raised from inception—AC/DC, Madonna, Courtney Love, the Smashing Pumpkins, Def Leppard, and Shania Twain. Cliff and Peter operated at a different level of professionalism than we’d ever dealt with. We were not exactly coming off a year of greatness, but we did feel that with John back in the band, we held a pretty good hand. Flea had a laundry list of concerns like “Are you going to get us on the radio?” Peter was countering that by barking, “And don’t think we’re the kind of managers who are going to take care of your little candy asses. If you’re on tour and you’re up in Alaska and you forgot your winter coat, don’t call us to FedEx you a winter coat, because you’re going to end up freezing to death.”

I was like “Okay, make a mental note to bring my coat when we tour Alaska.”

At the same time, I was sure they were wiping Madonna’s ass if she was asking them to; maybe that was why he said that. But there was some chemistry in the room, and we were attracted to each other, so we signed with them.

With all this newness in place, we thought that maybe it was time to get a new producer. Every time you make a record, it doesn’t matter how good it was working with a producer, and even if you know you’re going to end up making a record with that same person again, there’s always a day when someone says, “Do we want to get a new producer?” That was how we felt then about Rick Rubin. We considered our options. We had asked Brian Eno to produce us three times already, and he always said no, so we asked him again, even though that “no” was inevitable. We didn’t know it, but he was doing us a favor by turning us down.

We even considered David Bowie, who wanted to work with us but finally sent a gracious note explaining that he had too many other commitments to take on another project. Another reason why we were reluctant to go back with Rick Rubin was that he was always working on six things at once, plus being CEO of his own record label, and we thought we should find someone who would work only on our project. While this process was going on, we contacted Daniel Lanois, who had converted an old movie theater in Oxnard, California, just up the coast, into a wonderful old-school recording studio. Lanois couldn’t commit to producing us because he was on hold with U2, but he did graciously offer us the use of his studio to do a demo of the eleven songs we had finished. We went in and set up and recorded all of the songs in a row, all in one day. It was a soulful, smoking demo, not unlike the first demo we ever made.

A couple of weeks went by, and we talked to Rick. He cleared some space in his schedule, so we decided to work with him again. It was as if we had come to our senses and realized, “Why are we dicking around with all these other guys?” The next day I got a call from Daniel Lanois.

“I heard the demo tape you made at the studio,” he said. “I’ve reconsidered, and I’m interested in working with you guys. Those songs really caught my attention. I haven’t heard anything like them in a long time.”

I genuinely appreciated his kind words, though I told him we’d moved on. However, it was nice to have our own feelings validated by someone like him.

Before we started working with Rick, the guys at Q-Prime decided to send us on an under-the-radar mini-tour of out-of-the-way places in California, just to get the road rust off. We played on a makeshift stage behind some guy’s house in Chino, in the old town hall in Fresno, and at some rodeo bar in Reno. We didn’t even sell out the venues till we reached Santa Barbara. I remember thinking, “Sometimes you’re riding high in April and shot down in June, but at least we have each other.” We were full of enthusiasm and color, and you could sense that something was brewing that could be amazing, but we weren’t quite there yet.

That summer I was still living under Guy Oseary’s roof, commuting every day to Flea’s garage. Sometime that August, out of the blue, I decided to go and get loaded again. I hadn’t slipped since Hawaii, so I’d been clean for six months, but one day I just got on my motorcycle, headed downtown, and did the whole thing. It made no sense, and I didn’t enjoy it, but I’d reawakened the eight-hundred-pound gorilla. I found myself in a hotel room, and when I woke up, I knew I couldn’t mention this to anyone. It was a weekend, and I got my shit back together and went to rehearsal all the next week.

I went out again that weekend, only this time I couldn’t turn it off so easily. I ended up in a hotel in San Diego, of all places, depressed again. I didn’t know what to do—I didn’t even have the strength to leave—when I heard a knock on the door. Who the fuck could that be? I went to the peephole and looked out, and there were John and Flea and Chad.

I opened the door, and they walked in.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Flea said. “You fucked up. Let’s just go home and get back to work.” He was so matter-of-fact and nonjudgmental about it.

“Oh, man, I’m so sorry you had to experience that,” John said. “It must have sucked. But you can’t do this anymore.”

We piled into Flea’s multicolored Mercedes clown car, which exacerbated the absurdity of my surroundings, and drove north to L.A. They were telling me that we had a record to make, but they were really easygoing about it, so that took a lot of weight off my shoulders. We stopped to eat some Mexican food, and by then we were laughing and throwing food around and having a good time. When we got back to L.A., Flea offered to let me stay at his house, in this big octagonal-shaped downstairs bedroom suite with leopard-print carpeting. I moved in, and it was a really peaceful and productive two-month stay. All I did was read and write and go to band practice and hang out with Clara and Flea and the dogs. I got rid of all the extraneous complications of nightlife and girls and partying, and just stayed in the compound and got a lot of work done.

One day while I was at Flea’s, on a whim, I decided to cut off all my hair. I’d had my tailbone-length hair for thirteen years, but I didn’t think twice about going to my friend and getting that shit shorn. I did save the hair and send it off to my dad in Michigan. He and I had had a hair-solidarity thing since the early ’70s. The night of my haircut, I got home late, and Flea was already asleep. The next morning I strolled into the kitchen in my PJs. Flea did the all-time eyes-bugged-out double take, then started laughing hysterically. “Oh my God, I’m back at Fairfax High again, and we’re sixteen years old. Look at you!”

By this point, we’d made the transition from Flea’s garage to a rehearsal studio named the Swing House, on Cahuenga. Rick Rubin started coming by and lying on the couch and listening to us play, taking a few notes here and there. We started amassing a rather enormous quantity of raw material in terms of pieces and parts and songs and half-songs and bridges and choruses and verses and intros and outros and breakdowns. Again we set up a chalkboard of these ideas.

Things were going so well with the album that in the middle of October, Guy O and I decided to take a trip to New York. We went to lunch at Balthazar in SoHo with two other friends, and as we were being seated, I noticed that this girl who worked there shot me a glance. I was very single then, and very open to the universe introducing me to a friend, and this girl zapped me with one look. We were sitting at the table, and the other guys were looking at every skirt that walked by, but I was still fixated on the blonde. The next thing I knew, this girl, who wasn’t our waitress, came strutting by our table with a real Miss Sassy Pants attitude.

“That’s the one I’m talking about,” I told the others, but they couldn’t have cared less. The food arrived, but I had to go talk to this girl. I sauntered over to the hostess podium, stepped in front of her, and said, “Hello, my name’s Anthony.” I was five seconds into the conversation when a guy from the next table, whom I’d met once in a rehab when he came to visit his brother, took the opportunity to hug me and tell me everything that he’d been up to in the last few years. Meanwhile, my gal was getting away.