Bob Forrest's book

Detailed version of that night at the viper room from Bob Forrest’ book “Running With Monsters”

It was junkie bravado. I figured everything was still okay. The money I had seen in '89 was gone, but I had the keys to the Viper Room. The house in Mount Washington was gone, and I couldn't pay the rent at the apartment I kept over on La Brea that I used as a place to arrange drug deals for my friends to ensure the survival of my own ever-increasing habit, but I still went on the road and played concerts. "Everything is okay," I told myself. I couldn't sense it, or maybe I just ignored it, but things weren't as okay as I thought. They were on a steady, inevitable approach to critical mass. I had always loved the records of the old Delta blues singers ever since I first heard them as a kid. Trouble and hard luck were a bluesman's best friends, but I wasn't from Mississippi, and Hollywood in October of 1993 was a long way from the Delta. I had been catapulted into this strange place once Thelonious Monster's first album hit it big with the critics. It was a place where all things were possible and most things were permissible, an intersection where the worlds of music and film collided and partnerships and friendships were formed. A young actress, known to prime- time America for her work on a popular sitcom, approached me in a club. "You're Bob Forrest, aren't you?" she asked in a breathy voice. "That's me," I said. I recognized her right off, but I didn't want to seem starstruck. "I love your band! The last record was great. I dance to it all the time." I snuffled back my postnasal drip, the result of the coke I had just snorted in the bathroom. "Can I buy you a drink?" I asked. "I'm leaving. There's a party up in the hills. Do you want to come?'' Of course I wanted to. She was beautiful. "Here's the address. I'll see you up there." She smiled. I went and mingled, just like I did in my early days on the rock club scene, and if you're anyplace long enough and often enough, people get to know you. Most of the young actors at that time were deeply into music, and they accepted me. It didn't hurt that they liked my band. It wasn't a superficial thing. They loved music the same way I did. It was passionate and deep. They understood the language. Actors these days might associate with the music scene because they think it's a hip thing to do, but in the nineties, they embraced the cultural revolution the music represented. Johnny Depp, in particular, had an innate understanding of and love for the Los Angeles music scene. He also had really good taste. I think the only other person who had as much feel for music was Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante, who lived, breathed, and slept it. Frusciante was what we all considered a true artist. The son of a Florida judge, his passions were his guitar, his music, and his drugs. I think he loved narcotics even more than I did, and he actively promoted them to anyone who'd listen. I think Depp fit in with us because he had originally been a musician. He was an accomplished guitarist, and I hit it off with him right away. We already had mutual friends, and we formed a tight little group. Johnny and River Phoenix made up the actors' wing, while John Frusciante, the Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes, Ministry's Al Jorgensen, and I held down the musician end. Most of us were seriously committed to our poisons of choice and no lectures, warnings, or treatments were going to dissuade us from our off-hours pursuits, which, those days, involved a lot of coke. We spent a lot of time at John Frusciante's house up in the hills above Hollywood, where Johnny would busy himself filming footage for a planned rock documentary. "Hey, John," I'd ask Frusciante as we cooked cocaine and baking soda on the stovetop and turned the mix into crack, "do you think it's a good idea to have this stuff filmed?" "I got nothing to hide," said Frusciante, his unwashed hair falling across his face as he kept an eye on our kitchen chemistry experiment. «When did you get so uptight?" "I'm not uptight. It just seems that this might be a bad idea." Frusciante shrugged. "Drugs are never a bad idea," he said as he carefully dripped cold water into the jelly jar that held the cocaine mixture and started swirling it. The goop inside became a hard, white biscuit almost immediately. "Dinnertime!" he called out. We broke off a chunk and shoved it in a pipe. He was right, I reasoned; among this crew, who cared if anyone knew about our habits? Besides, the crack was calling. River and Johnny, whose looks were their living, had to know when to say no. River-who loved to party-would clean up whenever he had to do a movie. I admired his fortitude. He had the enviable ability to just stop. Johnny mostly kept to the booze and didn't use drugs. But when he was around us, they were always there. I think he was fascinated by it. I don't ever remember Johnny joining in but he liked being there in the middle of it all. Johnny, flush with money from the FoX network's teeny-bopper cop drama 21 Jump Street and his rapidly growing film career, along with actor Sal Jenco, had the idea to build a nightclub that would double as their own personal clubhouse. It made sense since Johnny and Sal always thought of themselves as a little self- contained club anyway. That's how they approached the idea. I stopped by one night on my way back from the Whisky. From outside I could hear the knock of a hammer and the high-pitched whine of a tile saw. I knocked on the door and Johnny opened it, wearing a tool belt and knee pads and dressed like a workman. "Hey, Bob! Come in! You really have to see what we're doing here!" He ushered me in and all I could smell was sawdust. He beamed like a kid on Christmas. He was so proud of this space. Over in the corner, Sal pounded nails. Johnny laid the tile. They would call this spot the Viper Room. Johnny kept up the rundown: "It's going to be great, man! We're going to have bands in here!" Their idea was to create a great nightclub in Los Angeles for their friends. It didn't hurt that Johnny was high profile. When the club opened in 1993, the first band to hit the stage was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. The next night, the Pogues played. At that time, neither was what could be called a club band. They played big venues. The Heartbreakers had just done a gig at the Forum in Inglewood. But it seemed that every band wanted to play the Viper Room. It was a prestige gig, and the list of bands that played there was impressive: Oasis. Counting Crows. Joe Strummer. And the place only held about one hundred people. I even booked some acts there. There was a young folksinger who was getting some buzz. He called himself Beck. Blond and blank eyed, he wasn't much more than a kid. I had heard a demo of a song of his that had the funny title "MTV Makes Me Want to Smoke Crack." I had been given a copy of it when I had been on tour, and loved it. I couldn't stop playing it. When I got back into town, I saw Johnny. "You gotta have this kid Beck play here. He's great." Johnny, wired into the music scene like always, was aware of him, so we booked him. It was Beck's first important gig in his hometown. He had a prime slot, ten o'clock on a weekend night. L.A.'s music scene at the time was not all that receptive to a solo neo-folk singer, and Beck knew he had to sell himself as something unique. He was also something of a performance artist. He had a crazy gimmick. In addition to his acoustic guitar, he would wear a gas-powered leaf blower on his back, just like the ones every landscaper and maintenance guy from the Hollywood Hills to the Malibu canyons strapped on as they did their magic on the homes and estates of the rich and pampered for whom they sweated and slaved. While a DAT machine played prerecorded music, Beck would dump a trash bag full of dried leaves, twigs, and yard clippings all over the stage; crank up his blower; and scatter-shoot the audience with vegetable debris. It was weird and it was goofy, but it was just the kind of thing that could help a fledgling folkie get some attention in '93. The night Beck took the stage at the Viper Room, Johnny was out of town. Beck did his act. complete with the leaf blower. Sal was going nuts, and not in a good way. I was watching the show and Sal was practically pop-eyed. "What the fuck is this kid doing, Bob?"' "Sal, he's the guy that sings that song about MTV and crack. He's great, isn't he?" Get him the fuck off my stage!" Poor Beck. The audience was hostile. They booed him. It was a train wreck. Here's this twenty-three-year-old guy onstage who looks like he's about fourteen but sings in the voice of a seventy-year-old black man from Arkansas .. .. all while he blows trash and leaves into the audience. Some people tossed the trash back at him. Others yelled. ' "You suck!" Sal was livid. I said “l have to wait until he sings the song about MTV!' Sal told the sound guy to shut down the PA. "Sal, you're a dick," I said. "I'm telling you, this kid is great. Sal responded, "That kid ain't fucking shit. And you're not booking things here anymore, Bob. I went outside after and found a dazed and confused Beck on the sidewalk. "Don't worry about it," I said. "I thought it was a great show ... but maybe the leaf-blower thing is too much. Just play your songs." Beck Was concerned. "Am I still going to get paid?" he asked. He was disappointed, but within the year, he was a local hero. He made the Mellow Gold album and you couldn't turn on the radio without hearing him. Now that he had made it, every hipster in town claimed to have been at that show and they all testified how weird, chaotic, and mind-blowing it was. The truth is, there were only thirty-eight people there that night, and they all booed because they didn't understand Beck at all.

Despite that misstep, I remained part of the club's inner circle. Because everyone had such high profiles in those days, we knew we were being watched and we tried to be careful. The paparazzi were constantly skulking around and the supermarket tabloids paid big bucks for embarrassing photos of young TV and film stars. They didn't seem to care about rock musicians as much. There was constant back-and-forth between Frusciante's place and the Viper Room. His home wasn't more than two minutes away from the club, and we'd all make these mad dashes over there. "Hey, we're going to Frusciante's," I'd say. "Aw, man, there's some creep with a camera out front," Johnny might answer. "Look, just lie down in the backseat. I'll drive. They won't follow me. I'd grab the keys and pile everyone in the back Then I'd blast out of park and jet down Sunset. "Turn right at the next light, Bob!' I'd spin the wheel. "Christ, Forrest, I'm getting seasick back here! Take it easy." "I think someone's following us," I'd say. "Can you tell what kind of car? "I don't know. Maybe a Benz." "Aw, fuck, Bob. Those photographers all drive crappy cars. Ease up." It was real cloak-and-dagger stuff, and kind of fun. We all lived close to one another. Johnny only lived a couple minutes' drive from Frusciante's house and the apartment I kept nearby. The Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes, when he was in town, mostly stayed with Johnny. Sometimes I'd stay there or at Frusciante's. I was hard to pin down. River usually stayed at St. James's Club on the Strip, a flashy, high-end art

deco luxury hotel, also known variously as the Argyle or the Sunset Tower. The Viper Room was our headquarters, but Frusciante's place saw almost as much use, although things had started to take on a dark and forbidding atmosphere there. It still didn't stop anybody from dropping by. If any of us were working or out on tour, Frusciante's house was the first stop as soon as we arrived back in town. Frusciante's place offered something the Viper Room had in short supply: privacy. But that also made it a liability. What had started out as a party place had devolved and spiraled into some dank drug den. Walls were covered with graffiti. Furniture was damaged. Walls and doors had huge, gaping holes. There was a current there- bad vibes and degeneracy. It was out of control and the kind of place that could make the hardest of hard-core junkies blanch and run in the opposite direction. A few days before Halloween, Abby Rude, the wife of actor and writer Dick Rude, was set to celebrate her birthday. Dick had established himself as a punk rock screenwriter and actor through his association with British director Alex Cox and had worked closely with him on movies like Repo Man and the spaghetti-Western homage Straight to Hell. Abby was also involved in the film industry and worked as River's personal assistant; her duties sometimes required her to prepare his vegetarian meals when on location. Her birthday celebration was held at the Hollywood Athletic Club on Sunset, an old, sprawling Spanish-style complex that had started out in the twenties as a health club but had been used since its construction for everything from housing the University of Judaism to being a very popular billiard parlor. In the mideighties, the

property had been acquired by Michael Jackson's family and housed offices, a nightclub with a two- thousand-square-foot dance floor, and one of the best sound systems in town, along with a restaurant and bar. It was a popular place for the Hollywood crowd to have private parties. When I got there, River was already at the table. I hadn't seen him in at least three months, since he had been in Utah shooting a movie called Dark Blood, in which he played a young, doll- making recluse awaiting the apocalypse on a nuclear test site in the desert. He asked me about his friend right away: "How's John doing?' "Dude, he's getting worse all the time. Constant drugs," I told him. "It's madness up there at his place." Frusciante's house was even getting hard for me to visit. When I wasn't at my apartment, I tended to stay with Johnny Depp. His place had a much more stable feel to it. River seemed confused by what I'd just told him. He also may have been a little intrigued. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I stop by nearly every day," I said, "but it's really fucking nuts there. The place is filthy. It's a mess. John and everybody write all over the walls. Do yourself a favor and just stay away." What I was really trying to put across to him was that he wasn't like the rest of us. I may have been with a strung-out crew, but I felt like musicians were used to that life. Actors were more delicate. River had just had three months of healthy, drug-free living. Just walking in the door of John's place and taking a deep breath might lead to an OD. I felt a little responsible. He didn't seem to get it, so I spelled it out. "Look, man," I said. "You haven't done any drugs for months. You shouldn't go up there. If you want to see him and say hello, he'll be down at the Viper Room later. Trust me, it's past the point of fun up there these days. Of course, you can never tell anybody what to do if they don't want to listen, and River, being River, went straight from the party to John's house. Forget the plush room he had at St. James's Club. He stayed with John for the next few days and probably didn't get a minute of sleep. The drug routine stayed pretty consistent for all of us. First, smoke crack or shoot coke directly into a vein for that ninety-second, electric brain-bell jangle. Then shoot heroin to get a grip and come down enough to be able to carry on a conversation for a few minutes before you start the cycle again. Just like the instructions on a shampoo bottle: lather, rinse, repeat. Always repeat. These sessions could last for days and would only end when someone fell out or other obligations intruded. And we'd write and record songs (and lose them), which is what River and Frusciante said they were doing, but one look at their hollow eyes told me they'd also been deep into a major-league drug binge. When I walked into the Viper Room at about seven on the evening of October 30, the long fall shadows had turned to night, but it seemed like any other evening there. Sal was excited. "Frusciante and River are going to play tonight!' he said. River considered himself a musician. He had busked on the street as a kid and had continued to play guitar through his teens. He was proficient and he liked to jam. A few years earlier, when he had starred with Keanu Reeves-another aspiring musician--in Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho, the grim tale of two hustling male prostitutes, River had carved out time for music despite the tight shooting schedule. Flea, who had a cameo role in the movie, stayed with River and Keanu in the rental house they shared on location in Portland, Oregon. A couple of times a week, they'd hold late-night jam sessions, which provided River with his rock-and-roll fix. Back home in Los Angeles, he had formed a band called Aleka's Attic that got attention mainly because he was River Phoenix, which must have frustrated him. Playing with Frusciante, I'm sure, validated him. He was more than just Hollywood actor who dabbled in alternative rock. Sal was giddy about it. I wasn't so sure. I knew what those two had been up to over the last few days and could just imagine what kind of disaster they'd whip up onstage. "Dude, you can't let them get up there," I said, now taking on Sal's part from the time I had booked Beck. "No, no. They recorded a song. They played it for me. It's going to be great. They're just opening for P, anyway, "' he explained. P was a band that had come together from everybody hanging out. Gibby, Johnny, and Sal formed the core, and a revolving lineup fleshed them out. That night, Al Jourgensen and Flea were joining in. It was fun to watch some of the biggest rock and movie stars of the time getting together to play original material and lots of covers. They even had a song that mentioned River. It was called "Michael Stipe," a name- check for R.E.M.'s front man. There was a line that went, "I'm glad I met old Michael Stipe, didn't get to see his car: Him and River Phoenix were leaving on the road tomorrow. " It promised Be to be an interesting night, so I left for my apartment on La Brea to arrange a few drug deals and keep myself supplied in the process. Once business was completed, I went back to the Viper Room at about nine. I walked in the door just as River. He was a whiter shade of pale. "Bob, I don't feel so good. I think I'm OD'ing." "What? Are you sure?" That's something no one had ever said to me. Usually you just OD and that's it. "River, you can't just come up to me and say you're OD'ing." He stood there and rocked tentatively off the balls of his feet in a vain attempt to counter gravity. This club was no place for him at the moment. "C'mon, man. Let's get you home, then," said, and tried to guide him toward the door. "I don't know, Bob. I think I'm all right now." Color returned to his face. I tried to reassure him. "I don't think it's an OD. You can stand and you can talk." He nodded and turned. I still have guilt that I dismissed his worries so casually. I watched him zigzag back to the stage, where Frusciante still sat. I was dumbstruck. What the fuck just happened? I thought. It was a horrible moment. What was I supposed to do? From where I was, I could see him, so I kept an eye on him for any signs of imminent collapse, but he seemed okay. I wasn't a stranger to overdoses. It was something that happened given the dope-fiend lifestyle. A few weeks earlier, at my place, one of the bodyguards for Ministry's Al Jourgensen had collapsed after a night of heavy partying. I called 911 and an ambulance took him to the hospital. Later, after he had been revived and a Filipino orderly wheeled him through the emergency room lobby, where a few of us had waited for him, he said from his wheelchair, "If you guys stole my dope, I'm gonna kill you- and I'm looking at you, Bob Forrest." He knew me too well. Not long after I spoke to River, there was a sudden commotion in the club. Someone was shouting to call an ambulance. A current of panic shot through the Viper Room. I could feel it. There was a jam-up at the door, so I pushed my way through to the sidewalk. Samantha Mathis, River's actress girlfriend, was screaming. River was seizing on the sidewalk. Flea was on the ground next to him and tried to do what he could to help. When I saw the scene, I stopped in my tracks. "What the fuck is going on?" I thought. It was only about thirty minutes after River had played onstage. Now here he was crumpled on the sidewalk. He was alive, because his arms and legs shook like he was having an epileptic fit. An ambulance wailed to a stop and the EMTs bundled him onto a gurney and quickly got him inside. Flea jumped in and rode with him to the nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, not too far west in the Fairfax District. I didn't know the full extent of River's condition, but I knew that whichever way things went, it would be trouble. And it would be the kind of trouble that made front-page news in a celebrity-obsessed town like Los Angeles. I could picture one of the tabloid TV shows like A Current Affair blasting out a teaser: "River Phoenix overdoses at Johnny Depp's Viper Room... Is Young Hollywood out of control?" This would be bad, it would be terrible, and we were all right in the middle of it. It never even crossed my mind that he could die. My emotions were tangled by all this. I felt awful that River had collapsed. I may have been a junkie, but I was human, and I had empathy and concern for my friend. But I was also fearful that the rest of us could be hauled in for questioning. It took a while for everyone to get it together, and we each handled it differently. Al Jourgensen and his girlfriend Sean Yseult, the bass player for White Zombie and the daughter of an Ernest Hemingway scholar, went back to their hotel room and laid low. Gibby and I decided to go to Cedars and check on River's condition. It was three o'clock on Halloween morning. Hospitals are spooky places to begin with, but the day and the stillness of the hour only compounded the unease. We parked the car close to the entrance so we could make a quick escape if one was needed, and we walked into the sickly, greenish light of the ER. The admitting nurse must have guessed by our clothes and hair that we were somehow connected to River because she asked, "Are you family or friends?" I said, "Of River's? We're family." She looked stern and solemn and waved us past. I saw Samantha standing alone. She was crying. I knew just by looking at her that River was dead. I went numb. It was so unbelievable. Gibby and I were in shock. River partied, for sure, but nothing at the level of the rest of us. How could he be dead? I wondered. I wanted to give my condolences to Samantha but realized there was nothing Gibby and I could do here. Our presence might only make things worse. To her we probably represented evil. The press didn't know yet that one of Hollywood's most promising young actors had just overdosed on drugs and died. Gibby and I went back to the car and sat there for a while as we tried to wrap our minds around the situation. The reality of this tragedy hit me like a sudden punch to the gut and I sobbed, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!' "This is going to be bad, man," Gibby said "What do we do?' Where's Frusciante?!?" we both asked. It hit us like a bomb that John might be running loose. He was the weak link of our group. He was likely to say anything to anyone, even reporters "We all love drugs! They're great!" Gibby and found a pay phone those were still easy to locate in '93- -and called Depp. "Have you seen John?" I asked. "He's at home. How's your friend?" he said. Johnny didn't know it was River who had been taken away in the ambulance. "Dude, River's dead! I told him. There was a long silence, followed by a quiet "Oh, my God. " And then the phone went dead. Well, it was a bit of a relief to know John was back at his house, but of all us, he was the one who could do some real damage. He was the kind of person who would argue- -and be serious- -that heroin was good for you ... with a cop. There was no telling what he could say or do. Gibby and I realized just how vulnerable we were. We went back to my apartment and talked all night. The conversation went something like this: "Holy fuck!" We suspected the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department couldn't wait to start arresting musicians and actors in connection with River's death. As a jaundiced dawn started to break, Gibby wearily said, "I'm going back home to Texas. I'm booking a flight." He picked up the phone, made a couple calls, and was gone. Al Jorgensen was on tour and had to leave anyway, and I found out he and his girlfriend had bolted too. I was on my own. By midmorning, the paranoia of sitting alone in my place had started to wear on me, so I went to the Viper Room. It was madness. There was media everywhere. Cameras, reporters, support teams. River's fans had set up makeshift memorials. Red roses, white lilies, and multihued candles colored the dirty sidewalk where not many hours before River had collapsed. I stifled another sob. I loved River, and now he was gone and there wasn't anything T could do. Junkie self-preservation kicked in. I walked on and found a phone. I called Sal to find out if he had any news. He wasn't happy to hear from me. "Fuck you and fuck your fucking friends, man!' was what he told me. Sal was sober and had a clear picture of what was going on. He knew that the Viper Room was over. "Where's Johnny?" I asked. "Johnny's gone, man, and, if I were you, I'd be gone too. " Click. I started to panic. If anyone went down for this, it might be me. I was there. I'd scored drugs the night before. Sal was sober. I wasn't. And now that everyone else had split, I was the only one left here in town. Depressed about River and freaked out for myself, I drove back to my place on La Brea and right in front of my building was a double-parked police prowler. That was not a good sign. I just kept driving. I hooked a right on Third Street and headed east to the tree-studded hills of Echo Park on the edge of downtown. I didn't know what to do. I went to my old friend Chris Hansen's house and knocked. He answered the door and I blurted out. "River's dead." "I know," he said. "It's been all over the news. It's so sad. "No, dude, you don't understand. I have to get out of town. I need to get to my mom's house in Oklahoma." I made a few phone calls, booked a flight, and borrowed some money from Chris, and he drove me across town to LAX, where I caught a plane and went to visit my mom, who had, a few years earlier, decided to leave California for the slower pace of the Sooner State. Very few people outside my immediate family knew that, and I thought Oklahoma could provide a safe haven until things calmed down. I was an emotional mess after River's death. I laughed when I should have cried and I wept when I should have laughed. I'd find myself staring at a television set that hadn't been turned on and then realize hours had passed while I sat there as blank as the screen. The Viper Room was done. It wasn't a clubhouse anymore. It was just a place that would forever haunt me with guilt, sadness, and regret-things with which I had become increasingly burdened Guilt is a terrible emotion and I'd done a lot of things over the previous decade of which I was ashamed. One thing drugs and alcohol supply is a sort of emotional blankness that allows a person to do the most irresponsible, awful things and hardly give them a thought, but true forgetfulness is an impossibility. Sooner or later, a junkie has to confront himself and the things he's done. On that flight to Oklahoma, I began to catalog all my many fuckups- -the failed attempts at sobriety, ego-driven callousness to the people around me, the dope-fiend's innate selfishness. As the miles dragged on, the weight of that list threatened to crush me. I was heartbroken over a lot of things, but one in particular haunted me above all the others.