part 3

Detonator, is so un-Ratt to me. I had been in rehab for thirty days and really had nothing to do with it, so maybe I have animosity. They had gotten together through our new manager, Alan Kovac at Left Bank management. He was going to save our careers and make us millions, but he ended up absolutely just fucking us.

So, Kovac brings in Desmond Child 'cause "look at what he did with Bon Jovi and Aerosmith!" Well, you talk to Bon Jovi or Aerosmith after it was all said and done and they go, "Oh, God! What a nightmare! Not only does he throw in a word here and there. He then demands thirty percent of the publishing." Which is what he did with us. I did play on it, but I was promised that when I got out of the hospital that my stuff would be heard, but by that time it was "Well, we've got the songs pretty much figured out." I got "Can't Wait On Love" on there and that was pretty much it. That hurt my feelings pretty badly. It also really hurt my feelings that when I was in rehab that nobody came to visit me. Not one and it was right in between all of their houses.

So, that album and tour was just pfff! I wasn't into the music. Desmond and I never clicked. I didn't even practice the damn songs for the tour. It just wasn't our music, it didn't sound like us and it just wasn't us. I mean Diane Warren and Desmond Child on every song with all these goofy lyrics. It just really bummed me out. It was just so un-hard rock. It was a very pop album. New bands like Soundgargen and Pearl Jam were sounding harder and Metallica was getting bigger and bigger and I was always into heavier rock than we ever really did. I was like, "You guys. I just wanna shit-can the whole Desmond thing and go harder style. The real Ratt sound like the EP." That's the real Ratt to me, kicking ass and playing live. The EP was a fucking live record and that was the band. All the records after that just got more posh, more expensive�c in my opinion, if you wanna hear Ratt go buy the EP and listen to the six songs.

So, Detonator... we did Europe. We had a bad scene in Japan. The band was bickering and fighting and I was drinking real hard 'cause I was trying to get clean from the drugs. Nobody had any feeling. It was just go out and go through the motions. It was terrible. After that tour it was over. They started playing gigs that we had lined-up, with some kid that had a guitar with peace/love flowers painted all over it. Like this kid is going to take my place. Then Michael Schenker did some gigs with them. That was when that band Kovac put together (Contraband) opened up for Ratt. Schenker filled in for where I would have been. This was in '91. They never said anything about it in public, so I never said anything, but Juan says it was all a lie now and that everything was my fault and that they kicked me out.

When '81-91' came out, Kovac had encouraged me to leave and that he was going to make me more money than I ever was going to with Ratt. He was going to make me a huge producer and get me all these bands. So, I felt pretty secure in leaving. We had a terrible time on the last Japanese tour and I was just like, "Fuck it! This sucks!" I cannot live like this anymore. So, I started to record this band that I thought, actually still think, had they been done right would have been right in there with Soundgarden and all that. They were called Mail Order Brides. They were real and they were edgy. Our manager told me to go ahead and start recording them and we'll give you $6,000 to do the demos. I did the pre-demo demos with my money and they never paid me a nickel. That was the beginning of the whole real animosity shit with both management and Ratt. They were backing him up and I'm saying he's a fucking thief. I was friends with him and his wife. My wife and I would go out to dinner with them all the time. It was like that with me and Marshall Berle (ex-manager), and all our tour managers. I made friends with all these people to avoid being put into the fucking hellhole of sitting around and bitching with those (Ratt) guys. For that, I was always the bad guy. I was the traitor, but all I wanted to do was get a little piece of mind. It was all for the best of the band. I love that band with all my heart. It was everything I ever wanted to do and more and I made it. All I ever wanted out of rock n' roll was to see the world. I never expected to make money, so to do both was something else.

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