To Live Or Die In L.A.

“YOU’VE GOT this guy waving a huge great big fucking chainsaw around his head. Then he decides to cut through a stool and slices straight into his knee. There’s blood spurting everywhere and he’s just standing there grinning at the audience. It was brilliant.”
Nope, that isn’t Barry Norman extolling the virtues of Genocidal Rock Zombie III but My Little Funhouse’s Brendan Morrissey recounting one of the more printable anecdotes from their tour with Jackyl, a band so bereft of brain cells they’d be hard pressed to outsmart your average amoeba.
And before you accuse me of being unduly harsh on the Southern boogie merchants, bear in mind please that their biggest hit to date is ‘She Loves My Cock’ and that lead singer Jesse James Dupree’s party piece is lying on top of a piano and masturbating as he sings.
“It seems pretty moronic when you sit down and talk about it now,” Morrissey reflects, “but when you’re touring non-stop for 10 weeks, that’s the stuff that keeps you sane. We thought Jesse chainsawing himself in West Virginia was some sort of Alice Cooper-style stunt but you only had to look at his knee afterwards to realise it was real blood. Whatever else, he’s an incredible frontman. Rather than screaming his head off to be taken to casualty, he got one of the roadies to strap his leg up and went back on for the rest of the show.”
I feel it’s my duty as a humanitarian to inform you that Jackyl will be hitting these thoroughly unprepared shores later in the year. In the meantime, if you’d care for a sneak preview of Mr. Dupree’s attributes, may I point you in the direction of the current Playgirl where he can be found getting it out and waving it around for the lasses.
“Heavy metal’s supposed to have become politically correct,” he continues, “but for every Pearl Jam, there are still bands like Jackyl who don’t give a shit about saying and doing the right thing. Personally, I think that’s a far more honest attitude than going, ‘oh no, we don’t shag groupies’, and then fucking yourself senseless every night with a different woman. Some people find their behaviour offensive, I know, but when I look at Jesse Dupree or David Lee Roth or any of those other ‘old school’ rockers, all I can do is laugh because it’s obvious they’re sending themselves up. That element of self-parody tends to get overlooked.”
Talking of self-parody, have My Little Funhouse experienced any of their own Spinal Tap moments yet?
“Yeah, definitely. We were getting ready to do our ‘Hello Cleveland!’ routine in a big sports arena and couldn’t find the fucking stage. We were running up stairs, down fire escapes and generally making complete idiots of ourselves. The best one, though, was in Connecticut after we’d supported The Ramones. We were having a quiet beer in the dressing-room when this girl burst in, jumped on the table and started taking her clothes off. She was getting all excited moaning, ‘where’s Joey, where’s Joey?’, and none of us could tell her she’d got the wrong group because we were too gobsmacked.”
In between perfecting their Derek Smalls and Michael St. Hubbins impersonations, Kilkenny’s finest (although I wouldn’t say that to Kerbdog, Stuart – Ed) have also been attending to the rather more serious business of recording their second album which, bar the odd remix, is now completed and awaiting early New Year release. Morrissey is adamant that they’re under no undue pressure to deliver but with $1 million already invested in the band, surely Geffen will be looking to recoup some of their money?
“When Geffen first expressed an interest in us, it’s fair to say we were completely overawed because they were the label that had Guns N’ Roses, the biggest rock band on the planet. Then a degree of realism crept in and we started thinking about what we actually wanted from a deal. You know, there was no point signing our lives away and getting dropped after one album. The clincher was meeting David Geffen and being taken to his house to talk everything through. He made it clear that he wasn’t expecting us to go top 10 overnight and that if we were prepared to go out and tour our bollocks off, they’d provide the support.”
It’s worth remembering that when My Little Funhouse were enjoying tea and biccies chéz Geffen, they were precisely 12 gigs old and probably knew more about the inner workings of a thermo-nuclear reactor than they did a recording studio. Since then they’ve toured the world, taken on the same heavyweight management as Guns N’ Roses and fine-tuned the line-up to the point where Morrissey reckons they’re ready to become world-beaters.
“I’m really glad the first album didn’t break,” he insists. “When ‘Raintown’ came out as a single in the States and got on to 50 or 60 of the big stations, one half of me was delighted and the other scared stiff because I wasn’t sure we were ready to cope with the kind of madness that destroyed Nirvana and is doing its best to fuck-up Pearl Jam. In fact, thinking about it now, if Standunder had sold a million, I’m certain that we’d have self-destructed in a very spectacular and very permanent fashion.
“Our original bassist and drummer were competent enough musicians but they weren’t able to cope with the pressures of touring, so when they left, it was actually a relief because it enabled us to replace the two weakest links in the chain. It was the same with our manager – he was okay on some levels but when it came to the big stuff, he was out of his depth.”
Although Geffen were willing to bankroll the recruitment of ‘name’ players, Brendan and the remaining members of the band decided to steer clear of the poodle-perm brigade and brought in two Kilkenny lads – 18-year-old bassist Joe Doyle and 17-year-old drummer Graham Hopkins – who they’ve known since school.
“What makes My Little Funhouse special,” Morrissey resumes, “is that we’re Irish and we didn’t want some flash big-haired L.A. type arriving on the scene and diluting that. Graham was an obvious choice because he’d already been with us as a drum tech and we remembered Joe from gigging around at home. He didn’t know what the fuck was happening – we ‘phoned him on the Friday, flew him out on the Sunday and on the Monday he was in the studio with Matt Sorum who helped us on the new album. He was only 16 then, so we took him to a strip club to celebrate and got him drunk properly for the first time. Perhaps you’d better not print that or we might get done for corrupting a minor!”
Rest assured, we shall exercise the usual Hot Press discretion in the matter. Sorum isn’t the only member of Guns N’ Roses who can be heard moonlighting on Balance, the faster-than-the-speed-of-Andrei Kanchelskis solo which punctuates ‘Big Titted Anorexic Bitch’ (a song which was presumably written by a dim-witted idiotic twit – Literary Ed) being supplied by none other than Slash. As well as displaying a remarkable tolerance for dodgy song titles, it also appears that our fave corkscrew-haired guitarist donated his services for free.
“Everyone assumes because we’re on Geffen and share the same management as Guns ‘N’ Roses that Slash was brought in as a marketing ploy. I’m sure his involvement will encourage a load more people to check out the album but the only reason he’s on it is that he wanted to be.
“Believe me,” Brendan adds with a wry smile, “there’s no fear of us splitting our royalties any more ways than is absolutely necessary!”
Point taken but with the additional presence of Appetite For Destruction/Use Your Illusion man Mike Clink behind the mixing-desk, isn’t there a case for suggesting that someone, somewhere is setting up a nice little insurance policy for themselves in case the Gunners’ current trial separation turns into a permanent divorce?
“I understand that it’s an interesting angle for the press,” Morrissey sighs wearily, “but I’m sick to fucking death of talking about Guns N’ Roses. We share the same management, the same record company, the same A&R man, the same agent, the same producer but – and this is a big but – in musical terms, we’re completely different. If you listen to Balance, the only influence you may be able to pick out is Thin Lizzy, which is intentional because they had one of the best guitar sounds ever.”
To assist with the case for the defence, let’s bring in John Rees who together with management partners Doug Goldstein and Chris Jones is responsible for steering My Little Funhouse towards megastardom. What qualities does he feel his charges have that a thousand-and-one other leather-jacketed hopefuls don’t?
“The difference is that these guys are not trend followers. Whereas everyone else in America is trying to be Nirvana, My Little Funhouse are sticking to their guns and playing melodic rock’n’roll. It may take a month or it may take a year but eventually people are going to get fed up with hardcore punk and there’s going to be a demand for bands who actually know how to write songs. Maybe it’s already started – you’ve got Collective Soul in the top 10 at the moment and their whole appeal’s based around harmonies and choruses you don’t forget 30 seconds after you’ve heard them.
As someone who’s also involved in the management of Guns N’ Roses, Blind Melon, Pride & Glory and Danzig, would Rees agree that the music business is as ruthless an industry now as it’s ever been?
“Absolutely. Record companies don’t give a fuck about bands, their bottom line is profit and where they’re going to find their next dollar. My job is to ensure that somewhere along the line there’s room for a little artistic vision. A&R people have a role to play, sure, but they’ve got to remember they’re not the songwriters.
“What I like about Geffen,” he enthuses, “is that when they sign someone, it’s because they genuinely believe in what they’re doing. Had My Little Funhouse been with another company, they’d probably have been dropped by now or told to go grunge. As it is, we’ve got a long-term commitment that I expect to be good for at least three albums and with that base to work from, I’m confident these guys will sell records.”
This is a bit sneaky but I’d be guilty of gross journalistic dereliction of duty if I failed to ask John what the fuck’s happened to the new Guns N’ Roses album?
“Everything’s fine,” he replies diplomatically. “They’re in rehearsals right now writing a record and although I wouldn’t want to speculate as to when it’ll be ready, I can tell you that the snatches I’ve heard are very impressive. They don’t give a fuck what the pundits or the critics think, they’ll make the record they want to make in their own sweet time and let the fans be the judge of how good it is.”
I can also exclusively and, it has to be said, rather smugly reveal that Slash is currently putting the finishing touches to his debut solo album with Alice In Chain’s Mike Innez his main partner-in-rhythm guitar.
“They definitely have their more outrageous moments,” resumes Brendan Morrissey, “but from my experience of Slash and Matt, Guns N’ Roses are nothing like they’re made out to be by the press. Seeing first hand the sort of pressure they’re under and how they do and don’t cope with it, has been a brilliant education.”
As I beaver away here in my lonely writer’s garet, Brendan is on working holiday in New York where himself and Nirvana engineer Andy Wallace are giving Balance a final tweak. Irish fans will get an advance taster of the album in October with the release of an as-yet-unspecified single and then come January it’s back in the Ford Transit for the Mother of all World Tours.
“The only way we’re not going to make it,” he says earnestly, “is if we die in the process of trying.”
Hanging around with certifiable wicker-basket weavers like Jackyl, that may not be quite as far-fetched as it sounds!