Sign Here

Little does the general pubic know, there's a little more leniency to paperwork than one might think. I'm talking about music industry papers, the ones that say who owns what, what money goes to whom, and when it ends. It can mean a variety of things; cash flow, tours, marriages, ground rules for heroin use on the bus, all of that. Like all productive citizens of American society, these musicians tend to keep their records with whomever owns them. It's a simple and straight forward system, but you always have a paranoid few to complicate things.

In truth, the record labels are like banks, there's a lot of people out there that would rather stuff their mattresses or walls with bills, for musicians its ownership papers, even more so their masters. This isn't so much of a problem today as we have reliable computers, which I will get to later. Unlike those redneck hoodlums stuffing crumpled money stacks into their drywall, the paranoid rich musician has a more classy approach, a spacious closet or two for a strongbox or locked filing cabinet. If he or she has some extra capital to spend, they may add a fireproof wall or two, a CIA esque keypad for the final touch.

For outsiders this may seem a reasonable approach. In many ways it is, but in many others it isn't. Context is important in these matters, so is that fateful September the 5th 2002, the bloody Sunday for the aging hair metal act. I'm not talking about a warehouse fire that destroyed hundreds of master recordings, this is a different tale of woe, but similar in many ways.

I'll never forget those words. I was watching house hunters when these tough guy bastards decided it was better to give me a false sense of security. The doorbell rang and I answered the door.

"Hey ya there Bush!"

I was down on the floor in an instant, an instant upper cut to the face, no challenge for a fight, nothing. I could've gotten through a few of them if I thought twice about it. My next door neighbor never lost her cat in the evenings, there was little to no chance it was her. I was paying for my judgement lapse with a broken nose pressed to the tile, one guy holding my frail hair, another my neck, both pulling me outside and smashing my face down on the front step.

No one said anything to me until I was chained up to a light post by my pool. By the time I opened my eyes again, several guys had made their way into my house. I could hear those gremlins clunking their boots up the stairs to the master bedroom, the master master bedroom. It would only be a matter of time that they reached the second bedroom. I didn't see the scene unfold, but I can imagine it well enough in my head, several guys that look like they're straight out of Afghanistan busting in there, looking around, and seeing this random kid cowering in his crib.

"Aw crap!"

Stevie V came out second. They spared him a beating. He yelled and complained about the whole thing anyways. He was thrown to the ground and chained behind me on the pole. They at least had the decency to not give his kid the restraints. This didn't make it better for Stevie though. The guys watched over him in the living room until the whole thing was over. I thought my friend was going to have a heart attack.

They could've been punting him across the kitchen like a small dog for all he knew, but that was unlikely. In reality, his anxious fatherly instincts were creating a scene from a grimdark comedy. Three year old Greg was eating a half emptied bowl of cheetos on the island. He watched the last half of a house renovation in New Jersey. The backdoors of the new place were rebuilt using Romanian hardwood. "A feature to extinguish the auburn tones of the fairy garden". I heard all of it fizzle out from the open windows.

The man who'd given the misleading greeting came up to me. His name was Larry del Davis. What he really is is a dollar store Barry Manilow, and that's saying something. To call him that might even be a disrespect to Barry Manilow now when I think about it. Larry was to the soft rock scene as James Corden is to Hollywood. He was everywhere, despite no one wanting him. Larry sucked up to every business head in music. I could argue he was one himself at this point. Rumor has it he's known for starting law suits with local musicians in Florida. The Crime? Having a chord too similar to something else bringing in more money. A forgettable snitch: that's all you need to know about him.

I used to wipe my ass on a banner with his name on it at my concerts. The guy just seemed too boring and docile to do anything about it, but I was dead wrong. They carted out every filing cabinet I had to the poolside. I knew they had no reason to wreak most of it, but they'd do it anyways. What got them riled up had little to do with me. I'd just done a favor for a friend and forgot about it. He was the front man for a popular hair band called Lionheart. They were ahead of their time in late nineties, the firsts to sign a contract they they'd retire from touring by year 2000. It was a popular, but futile feat to be repeated by acts such as the legendary Motley Crue.

Futile is a dismal term to describe a legal contract, but it's the one that fits. A musician signing a paper that they'll never tour again is like a meth head signing a paper to renounce his addiction. In the long run, it doesn't mean much of anything. A band as big as the Crue doesn't fade from the limelight in a graceful manner, they crawl along well past their sell by date. To call it a crawl is an understatement. Coming out of retirement is a curse wrought upon anyone who fails to die young, something Larry cast on all of us.

The infamous Lionheart contract had its original stored at their label. A secretary plucked it out five months later and gave it a go through the shredder. While this was a conundrum, Lionheart was thinking ahead. They wanted to make a statement with this thing. Both the drummer and front man had suffered decades of severe alcoholism on the road and wanted a real official end to it all. A copy was sent out to every guitarist, producer, drummer, aunt, second cousin, dog, and label exec that helped them through rehab. There were a dozen of them in total, one at my place.

As could be predicted, Lionheart's message didn't go over well with many fans and higher ups. A classic eighties act didn't simply disappear from the face of the earth, neither did their demand. I’ve always believed the whole set up was about intimidation. It didn't matter if a lost copy still existed somewhere.

I don't remember the paper in question being burned, but I'm sure its ashes joined the others as they blew into my pool. Everyone had invited themselves to the midday cookout. Piles of documents melted into the outdoor fire pit. It soon became more of a raging blaze. There was enough smoke to set off the alarm in the house and burn a hole through the screen surrounding my porch. I better remember Larry's excited lips flapping about. The guys he brought did all the work, but he had his fun. He'd found a little league bat in the front closet and went to town with it.

"You hear that Bush? We're all screwed! Every last one of us!"

The small stick of wood came pounding down on a broken filing cabinet. It put a good dent in its side. It would've been more impressive if he opened the thing, but the job was done already. Each lock was drilled through and torn from its frame. I'd never seen him smile as much as he did until he said those words. Those feeble arms shaking as he swung. The bat kept swinging hard against the metal, it twanged long and shrill. By the fourth blow it snapped along the middle grain. It's new twin rattled onto the pool deck. Larry held the other half. He stabbed it in the air a few times before chucking it into the pool.

After the first shedder was fired, it was all over. At least six other raids occurred that day. Three were easy break ins as most celebrities have several houses they don't live in. The other half didn't go down without a fight. At 12:31 pm in Houston Texas, the lead singer of Lionheart was having a verbal dispute with his wife. It had something to do with him using the wrong laundry detergent from what I was told. What's important is that they ignored the knocks on the door for a while. When the couple realized these people weren't going to leave, it all escalated. The wife, who'd just snorted five lines of coke, scaled three floors, dumping industrial bleach on the front entrance. Further confusion arose when the men wouldn't move. Soon the scene became a game of what headless chicken could run in the right direction. The drugged out couple jumped right on them the moment they got through the door. A guy got bit five times in the leg before he got to the papers. In the end, the deed was done, despite burning eyes and crazy dead weight being thrown and hog tied in the living room. The front man had no clue what they'd taken until a week later, assuming the event to be a swatting.

Two hours later, another posse entered the residence of Lionhearts drummer. The door was wide open. He wasn't the type to think much of those things. It's important to consider that he lived in Hawaii. The theives had gotten to his papers by the time he'd sat up in bed. Years of hearing damage gave him the illusion the curious noises were coming from outside. The vision of a large tree monitor came to mind. He locked all the doors from a remote on his nightstand to keep the bastard out. Six men were locked inside the house with no working keys. They called the island bonfire off and burnt the second to last contract with a lighter. The drummer was dead meat when they discovered him upstairs. They woke him up from his continued nap and made him let them go.

The last victim was a friend of mine. He was the only one who knew what was going down before it happened. When the dreaded knock came to the door, he was in the back of my studio. With two hands he ripped out an old macintosh computer and made a beeline for the back door. He made it to the ravine before the others started after him. The plan was to crawl into the woods and hide it in a tree. This scheme ended when his foot snagged on a rock. His entire body and computer went in a painful tumble down the ridge. By the time anyone caught up with him, he'd bounced over several tree stumps before landing in the stream bed. What was left of the macintosh lay strewn about several feet away. The battle was over, and some label exec in New York was having a good day.

By 2006, the boys were back on the road again. The tragedy of all this is that they'd still be doing it without the raids. I think people just want to kick someone else into the dirt. The charade lasted at my place for five hours before anyone left. My hands were numb by the time they uncuffed me. By the early evening, Travel Channel had played through a full season of Ghost Adventures. I begged the kid to change it to something else, but I have no skill in the area of telepathy. My backyard devolved into a charred warzone in the matter of an afternoon.

I have little memory of the exchange that caused all of this. It was a mere unremembered favor for a few musicians I'd toured with a decade ago. I don't even know their real names, most of their fans don't either. Larry sat beside me as the others let us go. He lit a cigarette and gave another to me, which I took. My fingers couldn't feel the thing as he passed a lighter under it.

"Jeeze, you really took that like a champ didn't you?" he chirped.

"If you don't get off my property, I'm gonna break your nose into splinters."

"No need for hard feelings. I'm doing what I'm paid to do, just like you. I can't believe I got to do this, standing right in front of you, wow, todays been such a rush."

Larry got up and observed the light pole I'd been tied to seconds earlier.

"Is that stained glass?" he asked.

I nodded.

"I've been trying to find something like that. They're beautiful aren't they? I saw one selling for a thousand at an auction last Thursday, it was in the design of Starry Night and supposedly hung in an office at the empire state building at one point."

I blew a few drags before pressing the but onto the pavement.

"I'm going in for a beer," I muttered.

"Holy shit, is that Stevie V? You cut your hair. I've been standing here forever and didn't even recognize you."

"Where's my son?!" gasped Stevie.

With that I left and never spoke to the man again. Sometimes I still think about him when the pool is illuminated at night. I changed the lamp shade long ago, but its color against the while tiles remains similar. I wonder what an innocent menace like him is doing nowadays. After that thought, I remember he once implied to have AIDs in order to collect sympathy donations from other rich rock bands I thin conclude he's not worth my headspace. I shut off the lights for the night and move on.

These years just get more tiring. People like to say it got bad after the eighties, but it was always like that. Everyone goes down the shitter eventually, no matter how many times they say they like you. To make things worse, I can't help but have a beer with these fiends. No matter how many times they trash my house, I'm their breed. It's my passion to play games with them until I lose, not like there's anything much better to do these days.