QUIET RIOT: VERY SERIOUS ABOUT NOT BEING SERIOUS!

QUIET RIOT: VERY SERIOUS ABOUT NOT BEING SERIOUS!

David Keeps

For your average cub-reportin’ type rock hack, the Road Trip stands as a hallowed institution, a chance to meet rock ’n’ roll’s Olympians “up close and personal,” to confirm the veracity of backstage horror stories and, most importantly, to drink their beer for free. And, just like everyone remembers their first, er, kiss, I’ll never forget my first road trip with Quiet Riot. It was way back when the monstrous Metal Health was rounding the corner on double platinum and the band had taken a night off to play their own headline gig in scenic Albany, New York. After nearly nine months the road mania was getting a bit intense and so were the fans—they had to leave their tour bus parked at^another hotel as a decoy. Dame Fortune had truly arrived and stood ready to fling her underpants in their grinning faces, but they were still playing roomies and holing up in dumps.

These days, with the imminent domination of Condition Critical, Kevin DuBrow is booked into Manhattan’s Parker Meridien (the luxury class minstrel hostelry for the likes of Yes and Van Halen) espousing his usual wit, charm and goodwill toward other bands. For a nice Jewish boy, Kevin DuBrow has swallowed the Puritan work ethic without even chewing. Work and play are interchangeable entities in his nonstop merry-go-round of self-promotion. But success, guitarist Carlos Cavazo swears, “hasn’t gone to his head. Kevin’s just always been that way, only now he’s an asshole nationwide.”

“How can I take myself so seriously?” the man they call The Mouth inquires. “Money, man.” Ah, the root of all evil. “No, the root of all freedom. If you have money you can do what you want. The first time I heard Metal Health on the radio, I couldn’t do what I wanted—because I was on my way to pay a three month old phone bill and I didn’t even have enough money left over to buy a Quarter Pounder. Everything I do—-the controversy, the things I say, the funny faces—is to push Quiet Riot further and further to the top,” he explains without blinking, and that’s just the beginning...

HOW I SPEND

MY SUMMER VACATION

“Going to Palm Springs for a couple of weeks to recover from food poisoning I got in Mexico. We were down there for a weekend doing television shows because the government doesn’t allow concerts. And I was being so careful. I didn’t drink the water, I didn’t even drink anything with ice, but somehow I got it all: food poisoning, Montezuma’s Revenge, and some kind of parasite that made me lose 11 pounds.”

FALL FASHION FORECAST “Stripes, stripes and more stripes. I’ve always liked stripes. Maybe I wanted to go to jail.. The animal prints I wear come from when I was a kid and I had a combination birthday and Halloween party. My mom made me a little leopard outfit with feet and the trap door in the back for poo-poo. Ever since then, I’ve loved animal prints. This time it’ll be unmatching stripes in different directions, and stars and stripes too. I’ve got a jacket that’s red with white and silver sequined stars, and I’ve got striped chaps. I use a make-up foundation to make me look darker and a liner so you can see my dumblooking eyes further back.”

THE BOYS IN THE BAND

“Frankie—Rocco, the fighter. He’s also Scruffy the Wonder Dog, Boom-Boom and Bonelli. He’s the funniest guy I ever met. We’re partners in crime, Kamikaze kids. The thing I dislike about him is he’s always fuckin’ right.

“Rudy—What can I say? He’s a great bass player. He’s Rudy. Rudy is married and I can’t relate to marriage, so therefore, there are things about his lifestyle I can’t relate to. “Carlos is a ‘hey, bud’ type guy, really mellow. He’s so laidback, half the time I think he’s in a coma. Sometimes he plays dumb and tries to get away with murder by acting like he doesn’t know what’s going on, but he’s really smart. The way Carlos plays, it’s like, boy, he must have been an ugly kid, ’cause only ugly kids would stay in a room long enough to get that good.

“If they ever made a movie about Quiet Riot, we’d call it Foolish Behavior— and Malcolm McDowell or James Woods would play me, Desi Arnaz for Rudy, and Sly Stallone or Marlon Brando for Frankie. Carlos would be played by Rod Stewart in his acting debut.”

THE REAL KEVIN DUBROW

“The real Kevin Du Brow... bo-ring! The real Kevin is a big time partier and womanizer who probably parties too much for his own good. I’m very serious about not being serious. Seriously. Some people grow up and some people grow old. I’ll grow old. Why? Because people who grow up get very boring and feel that they have to live this image of what an adult is, which is very dull and unspontaneous.”

ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT

“I’m an escapist. It’s my responsibility to deliver a great show. My gig is entertainment, not morality. If anything, I lack morality, so it would be completely hypocritical to do or say anything about that. I don’t advocate anything except fun. I don’t talk about the devil, drinking or drugs. I stopped cussing even, because the easiest way to get a crowd to go nuts is to say ‘hey motherfucker, how y’all doinl’ It’s the cheapest way to get a reaction.”

GETTING A REACTION

“I have a nasty habit of being overly honest, and that hurts me sometimes. People saw in me an innocence—that you could get an opinion out of me easily last year—and they took advantage of it. It happened all over the country, and after we were off the road for six months the press kept coming in and I’d say ‘did I really say this?’ Now I’ve learned to voice my opinion without being so goddam specific about who I’m talking about. I know three groups off the top of my head who intensely dislike me. That’s because they can’t take a joke. If I say they’re a load of crap, the power of the press is for them to answer back. That’s show business. But they don’t answer back, they get very offended and cop a pompous musician type attitude. And (chuckles) some of them I haven’t even heard.”

“CRAZEE” BOYS

‘‘Mama’s Boys. Who are they? Did Goliath know David’s name? All the bit about radio stations running taste tests between us and them just made them the underdog. It just turned into an irritating distraction that caused so much unnecessary worrying at the record company. But hey, I hope they make it. I’m not in competition with them. I’m only in competition with what Quiet Riot did last year.”

THE GREAT ICED TEA CONTROVERSY

‘‘Let’s put it this way: If it suits David Roth to consider what I drink onstage to be iced tea instead of Jack Daniels, let me just say it was some of the most interesting-tasting iced tea I ever had. It was so good I could’ve had it with soda on the rocks. I think Dave is a great entertainer, and if he wants to mention it I think that’s great. I love being publicized. Do I oare? Sometimes I drink Jack Daniels, sometimes Stoly, sometimes iced tea, and sometimes coffee.”

NEVER PET AN EATING DOG

‘‘I’ll do anything for our fans because, after all, they made us. There’s only one unreasonable expectation—and that’s to sign an autograph when we’re eating. We’re just like a bunch of dogs. I have a real thing about eating, when I get huqgry, I get carnivorous. That’s the one thhg in my day when I don’t want to be bothered. That’s an invasion. And it’s weird; If you say to them, ‘could you just wait ’till I’m finished eating, please?’ Then suddenly they think you’re an asshole. But come on, I even say ‘please.’ ”