Sex, Drums, Rock 'n' Roll! by Kenny Aronoff

Author:Kenny Aronoff
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: autobiography, music
Publisher: Backbeat Books
Published: 2016-10-21T00:00:00+00:00

24

Whenever We Wanted

The Whenever We Wanted tour started in January 1992, and we played arenas across America and Canada for three months.

The show opened up with me playing a powerful, funky rock beat I came up with for the song “Love and Happiness”—not to be confused with the Al Green song. The idea was to get the audience up on their feet and dancing before John and the band came out onstage.

Man, what an exhilarating feeling to walk onstage with 20,000 to 30,000 people just chomping at the bit to see us perform. People were ready to dance, sing, and party all night long with us. We delivered such a kick-ass high-energy show—three hours of nonstop hits. When I walked onstage, the audience would roar with excitement, screaming because they knew, and we knew, and the universe knew, it was going to be one loud, pumping, kick-ass show, and I got to start the whole thing off with an aggressively loud, slamming fuck-you funky beat. Oh man, what a rush.

Once I got everyone going, the guitar players came out from either side of the stage and ran to the front playing a smoky unison riff. Enter bass, background singers—dancing and singing—and eventually John came out playing maracas—and smoking a cigarette, of course.

After we played our show in Frankfurt, we flew to Hamburg and played a great show there. After the show, the promoter took us all to the famous Reeperbahn red light district, and we checked out some of the live sex shows. One of the promoters offered to set me up with one of the girls backstage for a private meeting, and I said, “Uh, no.” It wasn’t like every day I was being offered German hookers, but it was a good thing I took a pass because after a few drinks I started to feel a sharp pain in my lower back.

It was around 3 a.m., so I just went back to the hotel. When I got to my room, a switch clicked in my head as I realized I might be in trouble because this back pain reminded me of a kidney stone I had while I was making the Scarecrow record. There is no pain like the kidney stone pain, and there is no mistaking it.

I carried some painkillers that my doctor had given me just for this situation. I took one with a glass of water, but it all came up immediately, and I mean immediately. I wasn’t sick, the pill and the water just came up and out. I tried it again and the same thing happened again. After another hour of intense pain, I realized I was seriously fucked, and I called our tour manager at 6 a.m., who then called our German promoter who was traveling with us, and fortunately for me he was staying in our hotel.

We climbed into the promoter’s Mercedes and headed to the closest hospital, which happened to be back in the Reeperbahn, so you can imagine what

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.