Dave's Addiction (Trip to the Heart of LA)

Just prior to heading off on the World Violation Tour Dave Gahan was holed up for a day in a luxurious suite at the Kensington Hilton International, to face a long line of European Journalists.

"I'm a family man now," Gahan told Melody Maker's Jon Wilde. "I like to go back home and be with my wife and little boy, going about everyday thinkgs like everyoine else. That may seem pretty boring, but a lot of people have this idea that pop stars lead this life of Riley where they're out on the razz every night - that just ain't the fucking case!"

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Fame evidently had its bonuses, but for the 29-year-old Gahan, a married father, it was weighthing heavily on his shoulders. By the time the tour ended, he had changed from the home-loving individual (as he'd described himself) to one who had walked away from his wife and child in search of a different life, effectively mirroring his own father's destructive behaviour, some 25 painful years later.

"Moving away opens your mind," he told Melody Maker's Jennifer Nine. "I needed to get out. I felt trapped by everything that was around me. The last tour was great, we had a lot of success and Violator was huge around the world - and I should have been on top of the world, and I wasn't. I had everything I could possibly want, but I was really lost. I didn't even feel like I knew myself anymore. And I felt like shit, 'cos I constantly cheated on my wife, and went back home and lied, and my soul needed cleansing. I had to figure out why."

It wasn't only his soul that needed cleansing. "After the tour ended, I spent a few months in London and that's where my habit got completely out of hand," Gahan told Q's Phil Sutcliffe in 1999.

"I just packed my bag and split; went off and rented a place in Los Angeles," he confessed to Nine. "During the Violator tour I split with my wife. My next year was really spent doing a lot of soul-searching and trying to find out what had gone wrong with my life, and thinking, to be quite honest, about whether I wanted to come back and do the whole thing - records, tours, fame, Depeche Mode - again. Just tearing myself away from everything that I had really grown up with and known, including my wife at the time, and my young son, Jack, as well... all that stuff was quite painful to me."

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Having positioned himself over 5,000 miles away from his five-year-old son and heir, Dave cemented the move by taking up with the vivacious Teresa Conroy who, according to the Internet Movie Database, had appered in several hardcore pornographic films under the name of 'Terri' before accompanying the band across America as Press Liasison officer on the 1988 nd 1990 treks. 

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Way out west, Dave Gahan got swept in the 'American dream': a large house in the Hollywood hills; the quintessential 'dream machine' - a powerful Harley-Davidson motorcycle... the whole enchilada. "It definitely was more comfortable for me in Los Angeles," he stated. "I fell quikly into that lifestyle, and, for a while, it was great fun."

Free to lead what he later termed as a "very selfish lifestyle", Gahan partied harder than ever; partly thanks to new partner Teresa Conroy's music biz connections, he was welcomed with open arms into LA's established rock fraternity, a select group for whom drug taking, if not necessarily heroin addiction, was almost de rigueur - a dangerous place for a wealthy individual in a highly strung emortional state to inhabit.

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In April 1992, following what was reported by the British tabloid press as being a "messy, year-long divorce", Gahan finally tied the knot with Teresa Conroy. Like Gahan, Conroy was also a heroin user, someone he later termed as being "... a partner I could play with, in all sorts of ways, without being judged, because she was joining in. In fact, she didn't make me take heroin; she gave me the opportunity to try it again. We made a pact early on that I'd never use intravenously; but, of course, being a junkie and a liar, it didn't take long."

The nuptials took place in the somewhat tawdry surroundings of the Graceland Chapel at 619 Las Vegas Boulevard, South Las Vegas, with an obligatory Elvis Presley impersonator acting as guest of honour.

"Of course, everything was plastic - false," Dave confirmed to Jennifer Nine. "They wouldn't even light the candles in the chapel, 'cos they were just there for the show."

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"My wife works in the music business," Gahan told Melody Maker's Jennifer Nine. "At the beginning of Depeche Mode's year off, she was out working for the Lollapalooza tour, the first one with Jane's Addiction. I went out on the tour kind of as a fan, just hanging out. It was different just walking around in the crowd, really not being bothered by the fans at all. I noticed the audience was the same as the one we have, or The Cure - or a lot of other bands, for that matter. Americans really see it all as just new, alternative music. And Jane's Addiction were just the most incredible thing I'd seen in a long while. Sometimes they were really shit, and sometimes they were just so mountainous and fantastic."

In fact, so mountainous and fantastic that Gahan "...spent the year trying to find the sort of music I wanted to be involved with. There was so much really good music coming out of the States at the time, much more so than where it usually copmes from - Europe or London. It felt that what was happening back home - all that Techno stuff - was really boring."

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Martin Gore had barely heard from or seen his errant bandmate since the conclusion of the World Violation Tour.

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"And then when he came back he was Jesus! He was tattooed from head to toe; he was skinny - all the puppy fat had gone; he was incredibly intense."

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When Gahan's bandmates finally laid eyes on their long-haired, goateed, tattoo-covered singer - looking (and sounding) every bit like the American grunge star he so desperately wanted to be, the shock finally sank in.

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"He looked like he'd been living in LA for a year," Alan Wilder pithily summed up.

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I

It's so funny for me right now to imagine Dave Gahan falling in love with Jane's Addiction I can't even put it down in words.

I saw Jane's Addiction playing at Rock In Rio in 2010 (on TV, not in the flesh), and they really sucked LOL Perry Farrell looked like a crazy old lady, gripping onto a bottle of wine, with his arms wrapped tightly around what looked like a pair of wasted middle-aged strippers. His vocals were beyond unacceptable, and the whole band sounded like a real mess. I was quite surprised to discover that this band had had some sort of 'cult status' back in the day LOL

But, of course, I've never seen them perform in their glory days, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Given my current emotional state, I can totally imagine Dave Gahan feeling as mindblown by Jane's Addiction as I am by Alice In Chains, and, despite the fact that both bands are light years away in terms of musicianship, I can't help feeling some sort of 'grunge solidarity' with him.

I'm very focussed on that specific period of music history right now, and, as much as it might surprise you, this has actually nothing to do with my newly-discovered love for Alice. In fact, I've been having a thing for grunge music for the last two years, despite the fact that there was no particular grunge band I was really a fan of. It all probably started because Nirvana and their depressing vibes really connected with the way I was feeling back in 2011. Before I knew it, I was only writing doom metal and dark acoustic stuff... very much (extremely much LOL) in the spirit of AIC - only back then I had no idea the band existed e___e'

The reason I have such a fascination for the whole grunge movement, however, is because it happened to be the last step in the evolution of rock music, right before it got dismembered and caged by the consolidated industry. The big explosion of grunge (especially Nirvana) was probably the first ever major industry-driven movement (you just have to take a look at all the hype surrounding Nevermind... and at the fact that all the legendary grunge/alternative bands happen to have an album titled 'MTV Unplugged'), but its origins were genuine, and so was the music. It was probably the last ever music current to originate from a real local cultural scene.

Dave's words can give you a very accurate idea of just how different things were back then...

Nowadays, local scenes are a memory from the past. The organic ladder to success has been destroyed, just like the concept of success itself. Bands performers can no longer play their way to the top, like KISS, AC/DC or Motörhead did back in the day; they literaly go from being nobody to becoming A-list celebrities - often without even having one single album out (see Iggy Azalea) -, and when their hype-driven popularity wears off (it never takes more than 18 months), they are left suspended in the strange limbo of the precoucious has-beens. They feed them with hormones like they do with chicken, artificially inflating them into the top, and, by doing so, they turn the top - their top - into a place real musicians don't want (or shouldn't want) to be in. But don't worry - even if they wanted to, they still wouldn't be allowed.

Cultural trends are no longer born in the underground... or at all. In a scenario of cultural monopoly consolidation like the one we're facing, just a tiny handful of creatives has to provide contents for ALL the cultural industries (and, believe me - they don't have the biggest brains LOL). You just have to see the Billboard Hot 100 or the (identical) awful shit most fashion brands are putting out to understand how it works. For the first time since the end of WW2, there is absolutely no youth culture. No identity for the kids of this generation (and the previous one), aside from fucking smartphones and the uni-reality of the social networks.

How fucked up is that?

II

Dave's story comes to me in a moment when my relationship with the US has experienced yet another twist in its long and complicated history.

For the last couple of years, I've grown used to see LA (and the whole United States by extension) as a gigantic shithole where people are sent to die, stripped off their basic human dignity, prostituted and abused in every possible way. Just reading the name of that city makes me shiver with horror and disgust, and you can't blame me for it. After my two-year experience of living in LA through the Kaulitz twins, I had way too many things to be horrified and disgusted about. I was so angry at the city (and everyone in it) for everything it had done to them; I was so angry at America for allowing it to happen - for causing it to happen with its goddamn cultural hegemony politics; I was so angry at the world... for everything. And man, I swear to God I still am.

I used to fantasize with that horrifying place being swept from the face of Earth; engulfed in a gigantic fireball; sunken in lava. And I did it with no regrets whatsoever.

Now, however, life has just added a few layers of complexity to my scheme of things.

And yes, this time I am indeed talking about Alice In Chains.

They are not the first people I respect who happen to live in the nightmare city (you could find about 100 people worth saving living over there, if you tried really hard), but, for some reason, their music is making it harder for me to just hate it the way I used to (don't worry, I won't stop hating LA any time soon - I don't even think that's physically possible for me). It's not making me love it either (God forbid!); it just reminds me that good and evil are never as neatly parted as religion tries to sell us.

How should you judge, when it's (almost?) impossible to do it all completely right, and yet there are almost infinite ways of doing it all completely wrong?

Right and wrong are always a percentage. And it keeps on recalculating every day.

For Dave, LA was a place of reinvention and self-discovery; a refuge where he could feel free from all the things that were repressing him in his home country. It was also the backdrop to his personal degradation; the witness (and accomplice) to some of the worst and more shameful moments of his life. Was it good or bad? And was the city to blame? Or was he just running away from himself all the time, wherever he was?

And did the Kaulitz twins ever experience any relief for being away from a home country that still seems to hate them more than (almost) anyone on this Earth deserves? Did they ever feel liberated, if only for a second, for being able to walk completely unrecognized among the regular people of Los Angeles, like Dave said? Or did it horrify them because, unlike him, they knew their hiatus was going to be permanent; because, unlike Gahan, they never chose to take a break in the first place, but rather were shot off the rails before they'd had time to reach a tiny part of their potential and transferred to that Hell of a city to be dismanteled in the cruel slaughter machine of the celebrity business? Or perhaps they weren't even allowed to walk outside without the supervision of their creepy handlers? And how do they feel about it all now, from the depth of their German bunker?

Imprisoned and enslaved at home; imprisoned or enslaved abroad. Is there that much difference?

About Jerry Cantrell... I don't know him well enough to weight on his twelve year LA experience. I will just assume that nothing of what might have happened to him down there could be worse than the personal Hell he left in Seattle. Perhaps LA doesn't hurt you so bad when you're American. Perhaps it just depends on the person.

And yet it feels so strange for me to realize that a work of absolute perfection like Dinosaurs was entirely recorded in one of the many rooms where TH were mercilessly raped by a gang of unscrupulous producers. It feels so strange to imagine that, for two years, they shared the same city; they walked the same streets, drove down the same roads, ate at the same restaurants, looked at the same sunsets, shielded their eyes from the same light... Perhaps they crossed paths at some point, without knowing who the other was; roaming the steets aimlessly, taking pictures for a stupid phone app, while their counterparts were writing and recording one of the most awesome albums in recent rock history.

Was it good or bad?

And would I hate the city so much if I hadn't experienced what it feels like to be caught under its wheels? I probably would... or perhaps not so much. Or perhaps I'd be caught underneath them myself if those German kids hadn't showed me each and every one of the evils of this industry with their sad and terrifying history.

Was it good or bad?

...

Don't answer. This is a fucking koan.

III

It's sort of puzzling for me to learn that Dave's legendary Jesus Christ look (which happens to be my favourite Dave Gahan look of all time) was a product of LA. It's so obvious now I know it that I have a hard time understanding how had I never realized before.

Facial hair grows faster and thicker in LA; the spirit grows weary as days go by; the skin dries and wrinkles under the merciless sun; the body shifts shape in unexpected ways; ink flows endlessly through the needles, piercing the flesh over and over, in a vain attempt to regain control.

People come back from LA looking like they've been in outer space, because the human body ages faster there due to the extreme conditions.

Life in LA doesn't differ so much from life in prison.

Or, at least, it didn't for us.

What percentage does that make?

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He came back from LA looking like Jesus Christ...

...because he too died to save us all.