THE KING KOBRA KRITERIA

THE KING KOBRA KRITERIA

FEATURES

Dave DiMartino

“Los delfines no son peces. sino mamiferos adaptos a la vida acuatica y ademas son de una gran inteligencia.”

That’s what the brochure said, anyway. What’s it mean? It means DOLPHINS ARE NOT FISH. THEY ARE MAMMALS ADAPTED TO AN AQUATIC ENVIRONMENT WITH GREAT INTELLIGENCE. Everybody knows that, don’t they?

This is a King Kobra story.

• • •

“When KING KOBRA was invited to spend two weeks in Mexico City and Acapulco, all expenses paid, to play before some 20,000 thirsty rock ’n’ roll fans at the ‘Friendship Festival,’ the band gave an ecstatic ‘Ole!’”

That’s what the press release said, and it’s no bull.

Let’s talk implausible ventures that work out for the best. Like King Kobra playing in Acapulco before 20,000 thirsty rock V roll fans. Like a week at the Acapulco Princess Hotel, where the sun and sand merge with the drinks and the food, where coconuts are filled with many different liquors and are called cocolocos, where King Kobra and thirsty journalists meet and merge with the sun and the sand and the drinks and the food. Let’s bring up my mom’s fave cliche— “Isn't that just heaven in a pair of wooden shoes?’’—and agree that yes, it would be. And it was.

Throw in some police riding on horses and hitting people over the head with sticks. Thirsty journalists parasailing with Quiet Riot’s Kevin DuBrow. A meeting with the mayor of Acapulco, who looks like Broderick Crawford and holds press conferences welcoming bands like King Kobra and, as a special gift, presents that same band with several colorful serving trays that no one in their right mind would have any idea what to do with.

Are you grasping this?

Then go to Cici’s, “the only water park in Latin America,” and watch famed rock stars feed fish to dolphins. Go to BabyO’s, a snazzy, internationally famous disco, and smile as you, many journalists, and the fine, fine, superfine guys in King Kobra, are seated right up front, where waiters bring each table a big bottle of rum, lots of glasses of ice cubes, and many bottles of Coca-Cola. Drink.

King Kobra. Who the heck are they? What are they doing in Acapulco? What are you doing in Acapulco?

As we say in Scotland: Aye, laddie, now there’s the story.

• • •

King Kobra: Mark Free, David MichaelPhilips, Johnny Rod, Mick Sweda and Carmine Appice.

They were a sensation in Acapulco.

They’ve just released their second album, Thrill Of A Lifetime, and it is truly ripe with great big ol’ hits. You’ve already heard “Iron Eagle (Never Say Die),” and maybe you’ve even seen the movie. Or the video. You should be hearing “Second Time Around,” “Feel The Heat,” “Thrill Of A Lifetime,” and “Overnight Sensation” on your radio soon, as well. They are all well-played, well-performed, and exceptionally well sung. They are highly commercial, too. Which is good.

The members of King Kobra all have blond hair. Except Carmine Appice. They are all very young. Except for Carmine Appice. They are all good-looking. Except for...just jokin', Mr. Appice! No, really— Carmine Appice is one great guy, as you’ll soon find out, and certainly one of the most distinguished drummers in the history o’ rock. He has played with the Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, Beck, Bogert & Appice, Rod Stewart, Rick Derringer, Ozzy Osbourne, Ted Nugent and so many other people I won’t even bring up the time I saw him onstage jamming with Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter, members of Spirit and the other guys in the Fudge at the West Palm Beach Pop Festival in 1969, ’cause then I’d sound old enough to be the actual father of the other guys in King Kobra, and wouldn’t / be in a pickle?

Let’s go talk to Carmine.

• • •

“I met Mark in 1983 or so. Actually, he was gonna sing with me and Derringer. DNA was gonna do another album, go and do another tour and everything, and we decided to get a singer. Because, you know, me and Rick both sang OK, but if we had areal singer, it might be real cool.

“So a friend of mine said, ‘Look, I know this guy named Mark Free. You might like him.’”

He did. He wanted to use Mark Free for his next solo album. But things changed.

“After I left Ozzy, I came home and said, ‘Look, instead of this just being a solo thing, let’s put a band together.’ I had this whole concept of a look for this band, to get attention at the beginning, you know? So Mark said, ‘Great, let’s go for it.’ And he worked at this photo lab at the time. We didn’t start grooming anyone yet, because we had no band. We had no name, we had nothing. So me and Mark went after it.

“We went to Studio B at Pasha and we went through about 30 or 40 guitar players. We finally found one guy we thought played good, had blond hair, had the look, and Alan [Miller, Carmine’s manager] would come in and say, ‘OK, now make believe you’re playing in front of 50,000 people. What would you do?” And we had this guy and his bass player—they’d go into the studio and put the earphones on, and I had these old demos, so I said, ‘OK, play to this.’ So they were out there doing their thing together, and meanwhile we’re going, ‘Well, I dunno, the bass player’s OK, the guitarist looks good. So let’s try him.’ So we took him into the band. His name was Mike Wolfe.”

ACAPULCO

First night: Andre McDougall, King Kobra’s tour manager, comes to the Acapulco airport to pick me up. He’s limping. Why? On his way to get me, he slipped and broke his foot.

Next morning: walking on the beach.

Big sign: WARNING! SWIMMING IN THE OCEAN CAN BE DANGEROUS. THE BEACH IS FEDERAL PROPERTY AND THE HOTEL IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY ACT OCCURING IN THIS AREA. USE BEACH AND WATER AT YOUR OWN RISK. DO NOT VISIT THE BEACH AT NIGHT. DO NOT GO FAR FROM THE HOTEL FRONT AT ANY TIME.

“Meester, you want to ride the horses?” No. “You want buy nice hat? Just one peso.’’ One peso equals one450th of a dollar. No. “You want go parasailing? Meester? Maybe later. “Remember me, my name Paco.” Sure, kid. ‘‘Senor, you want to ride the horses?”

I want to drink heavily.

• • •

“So in the meantime, David MichaelPhilips was playing with Keel. He came in from Phoenix. He’d been in for about three or four weeks, he’d been playing and rehearsing in Keel, and they got him livin’ in this disgusting place. Real bad, real horrible. So we’re writing and rehearsing and everything, and then we started hitting a brick wall with Mike. We couldn’t get any more songs. We did about four songs, and we ran into this brick wall already. And then we got this thing from David Michael-Philips.

“What Alan Miller would do—he’d get cassettes, a photo and resume from these guys. If the guy didn’t look right, then we wouldn’t even listen to the cassette. Because we knew exactly what we wanted, right? I wanted a greatlooking band that the girls would go mad over—and that could play their asses off, so the guys would go, ‘These guys kick ass.’ That's what we wanted.

“So Alan calls and says he's got this photograph and tape. This kid looks real good. He plays with this group, Keel.’ So he brings it over—he didn’t even listen to it—and I listen to it and say, ‘This guy’s greatV

“So I went to see him gig with Keel— their very first gig—and Dave looked real good. So I said, ‘OK, we want you, if you’re into it.’ And he says, ‘You got it.’

“So he’s into it. So the next day I went to where he was living, moved him out of there and into my house.”

The line up so far: Carmine Appice, Mark Free, Mike Wolfe and David Michael-Philips. “We couldn’t find a bass player for nothin’,” remembers Carmine. Finally, though, they found three. The two that didn’t make the final cut were friends of friends. The third was Johnny Rod.

‘Look, instead of this just being a solo thing, let’s put a band together’... ” —Carmine Appice

“We get this mad call from St. Louis. This guy talks to Alan. I remember the call from Alan, he goes, ‘Look, I got a call from this guy in St. Louis called Johnny Rod. And this guy has got so much energy on the phone that I couldn’t believe it.’”

Carmine gave him a call. “He almost died. Alan had already worked it out that he was sending not only a photo and a tape, he was sending a videotape of himself. ‘I’ll see how you look,’ I told him. ‘When we get the tape, I’ll call you back.’

“So we get the tape and the picture, and Alan calls. He goes, ‘This is too good to be true. This guy looks greatl He’s built really well, he’s good looking...’ “So we told him to come into town. And he came in and he’s just like he is now. His energy level was so high that we couldn’t believe it.”

• • •

Johnny Rod is the member of King Kobra who talks the loudest. And the most. He’s the one that screams out “TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES” to the people in the street as he and his band and the journalists drive by in a bus, preparing to meet Mayor Broderick Crawford of Acapulco. He simulates sex with his bass guitar onstage. He is very charismatic, and, as was noted, a “looker.” Yep. Oh—he’s a nice guy, too.

Policemen in Acapulco guard the mayor’s office. Most of them look like they’re about 16. They carry rifles that are loaded with bullets. The bullets can be easily taken out of their rifles, and given to the visiting American rock stars—who look so very different with their long blond hair, except for that older one with the dark hair who plays drums—in exchange for autographs. So that’s what happens.

Buses that are supposed to take the band and the journalists around Acapulco are always getting stolen, or else the driver decides to go home and get some sleep or something instead of waiting outside like he should, so that also happens. The band and journalists wait outside the Acapulco mayor’s office and look at the bullets and the 16-year-old policemen, some of whom speak English, some of whom don’t.

Later we will all attend a wonderful outdoor dolphin and trained seal show at Cici’s, which was mentioned earlier, and eat a marvelous buffet dinner. What’s especially heartwarming here, though, is that absolutely nobody in the entire party knows what is going on, or why. This doesn’t prevent King Kobra from carrying on like the troupers they are. Thus, when charismatic bassist Johnny Rod is towed by dolphin while he sits in a cute little boat and looks out at an audience that very probably does not speak his language, listen to any sort of rock ’n’ roll records at all, nor get MTV, one can only admire him all the more.

If none of this makes sense, you’re reading it correctly.

• • •

“So then we said, ‘OK, we’re now a band.’ We had never been in a studio or a rehearsal hall or anything, so we said, ‘Let’s go in the studio.’ And in the meantime, Mark had been taking a bunch of classes in karate and gymnastics and stuff. You know, we wanted the band to really have a great stage show and sexuality—a real sexy band.

“So we go in this little rehearsal hall—it had mirrors, you know? And what we realized out of that first session was that Mike Wolfe wasn’t gonna make it. Because everyone else looked great in the mirrors. Johnny Rod’s energy was so positive for the band, and he was such a sexy guy—and on the other hand, Mike Wolfe was too much contrast, he didn’t work. He wasn’t good for the band—he was sloppy onstage, he was clumsy, he didn’t have any sexy...

“And then, on top of that, he started...coppin’ an attitude. You know? I’d say, ‘Mike, let’s try this chord change over here.’ That’s what I do in this band, I use my experience to mold and help do the songs, help mold the band. And he’s over here givin’ me an attitude, ‘No way, it’s not like that!’

“And we had talks to him and everything, and then, finally, we had to let him go. And we all felt bad about it, you know?”

• • •

The Friendship Festival was certainly weird. King Kobra went down a storm; 20,000 Mexicans shaping their arms into the Kobra “S” salute and regularly chanting “KO-BRA, KO-BRA” is not the sort of thing you’ll want to miss if you’re ever down there.

Onstage, Kobra are an entirely convincing proposition. Singer Mark Free’s got a soulfullness to his voice that’s surprising. He's quite good and so is the rest of the band. They move around, they play loud, they play skillfully. They—as it’s said—“work the crowd,” and they do it well. Their material is much more melodic than you might expect. Future success is a certainty. Very large-scale success, perhaps, since they’ve got both ends covered: in this age of radio shying away from metal, they play excellent hard rock; in concert, they can outmetal the best of ’em.

That they’re a good-looking band is no fluke. That they’re ambitious, hard working and warmhearted might be.

“So then we said, ‘OK, we’re now a band’... ” —Carmine Appice

I wish them all the luck in the world.

• • •

“Alan said, ‘Yeah, I ran into his guy who plays guitar at Tower Records, this great looking guy. His name is Mick.’ So I said, ‘OK, so let’s go see ’em.’

“So I hop in the car and go with Alan to Tower Records. And I’m walking around looking and I go, ‘Who’s Mick? Which one of you guys is Mick?’ And I see this guy come from the back, and he

goes, ‘I’m Mick.’

“I said, ‘I’m Carmine.’ He says, ‘I know who you are. I saw you in here last week.’ I said, ‘Why didn’t you come over and talk to me?’ He says, ‘I was embarassed. I was too shy.’ I said, ‘Oh, you fuckin’ idiot.’ So I’m talking to him, asking what kind of guitar he plays, what style. ‘This is what we’re doing—but you have to dye your hair. Is that cool?’

“He said, ‘Hey, fuck—I’ll cut off my left ball. I don’t give a shit.’

“And I said, ‘This is my kinda attitude."'

• • •

“Diviertase en grande en su alberca de olas artificiales y disfrute del vaiven de las olas como si estuviera en el mar.”

Translation: HAVE FUN IN A LARGE POOL WITH ARTIFICIAL WAVES. ENJOY THE WAVE SENSATION AS IF YOU WERE IN THE OCEAN.