EITM interviews Gunnar Nelson

EITM interviews Gunnar Nelson

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And how are you. I am doing well, sir, How
are you?

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm doing great now. It sounds like you've had nine
cups of coffee and I like it.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're a little low, but I appreciate the compliment. I think. Anyway,
how are you doing, dude?

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Where do you?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Little?

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Life is great? Man?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Seriously, I caught a lick with the James gunn peacemaker
placement in that HBO show with John Cena with Nelson.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
That was great. That happened a couple months ago.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
And now we just woke up to a best selling
book on Amazon, so it feels pretty good.

Speaker 4 (00:31):
Hey, So okay, so obviously we'll get into the book.
What happened to your hair is the name of the book.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Why? Well, let's let's back up to the beginning. Why why? Why? Now? Why? Now?

Speaker 2 (00:43):
You know, honestly, it just kind of was one of
those things where over the years we had so many
people coming up with really important questions to us as
our father's son.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
That's that was really the impetus.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
It started out wanting to set the record straight with
what happened with our father's plane crash back in the
day that we weren't allowed to talk about back in
the day, and we just kind of hoped that time
was going to address that, and it.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Just seemed to not so.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
After one too many people came up in an autograph
line and said, hey, you know, we heard all these
rumors about your dad's a plane crash.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
What was the real deal?

Speaker 2 (01:13):
We just decided to start writing the book just based
on that, and it turned into something much greater than that.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
It was our opportunity in our own words.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
There are no ghostwriters or anything like that, right, Matthew
and I got to tell our stories the first time
that we're telling our story rather than other people trying
to tell it for us.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
You know what, you know what I don't understand though,
is like Ricky Nelson was very very famous, your dad
was a very very very famous person. And the plane
crash happens, and as it turns out, like we're.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Saying what it is, right, it's in the book, Like
I'm not hiding anything.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
No, no, no, what we're saying what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
It turned out to be a leaking fuel line that
fed the heater in the back of the plane, that
filled the belly of the plane up with aviation fuel.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Right, and that faithful New Year's Eve.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
It was coming in for a landing in decalb, Texas,
and the fuel sloshed forward and a spark in the
cockpit wiring actually set it on fire.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
They actually landed the plane by the way.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
They were able to land the plane, but the smoke
had taken everybody by the time that they were able
to see the pilot's escape through the escape patch in
the front, and they were the only two that survived.
They were really, really injured. But it was one of
those things where it was bad enough that we had
to deal with that. Our dad was our best friend.
Matt and I were just eighteen. We were all living
together and hanging out, and Matthew and I were actually

(02:27):
supposed to be on that plane.

Speaker 4 (02:29):
Our father crazy is that? And your dad was like,
I got a bad something's not right here.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Just meet me there.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well, look, as a dad myself, it's kind of one
of those things. All these years, I've wondered why it was.
But Matthew, Okay, first off, it was going into New
Year's Eve. It was the first semester after all of
our friends from high school had gone away to college
and they had come back and we were all going
to have New Year's Eve parties together and stuff. But
our dad was doing a New Year's Eve concert in Dallas,

(02:56):
and our plan was since we'd never flown on this
legendary plane. It was bought by I bought from Jerry
Lee Lewis. It was a World War Two era DC
three big plane that we were going to fly on
the plane with our father from his gig before New
Year's Eve in Alabama. We're going to fly with the
band and our dad to that New Year's Eve show
on the plane for the first time and catch New
Year's together, catch a show, And that was the whole

(03:17):
point of it. And for some reason our dad called
us the night before we were supposed to split. Matt
and I had our bags packed ready to go to
the airport and fly down there commercially. The next morning
he called out of the blue, and he was uncharacteristically
stern about it. He said, look, boys, just been thinking
about this. Love to spend New Year's with you, but
if we're going to do it, you gotta fly commercial
Dallas and meet me there. And you know, we were

(03:39):
kind of crabby about the whole thing, saying, you know,
the whole point was to fly on the plane and
he said, you know, look, I've made up my mind.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
This is not a negotiation. It's not going to happen.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
So we said, okay, well, we'll just wait here, hang
out with our friends for New Year's we'll see you
when you get back. And of course he never did right.
And then the press handled that so horribly. They started
this weird rumor about drug abuse on the plane having
any thing to do with it, and it was a whirlwind.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
It was in the press cycle and so on top
of losing our dad.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
As kids just eighteen, we had to navigate a really
toxic and violent press about how they were trashing our
dad's reputation.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
But Matt and I at the time couldn't talk about it.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Because the deal was made that if the families of
the band that went down with the plane as well
were to get subsities, get paid, and be able to
pay for their kids, we weren't allowed to talk about it.
We had to wait until the NTSP report came out
a year later, which it did. Of course, it exonerated
our father. However, the damage had already been done. So

(04:37):
I still get people coming up at autograph lines like
I said, and asking and this book really does address
all of it.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
But the part that I still don't get, and maybe
I'm just dumb, but the part that I don't get
is isn't it a big enough story? I feel horrible
saying this talk about your dad, but isn't it a
big enough story that Ricky Nelson and his band died
in a plane crash on New y Year's Eve? That
whether you don't have to go the extra step to

(05:05):
try to create like this false narrative about drug abuse.
How about just the fact that this guy who's his
parents are famous, he's got two young kids, he's got
a band there with families everybody.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Isn't that enough?

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Well, sometimes we suck, Elliott, Like I said, you know, I,
you know, It's just kind of one of those things.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Man, It's just you would think.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
But apparently there was a reporter from the Washington Post
walking around the wreckage afterwards and just launching questions, random
questions to the NTSB investigator who was there, and just
based on he said, oh, are you going to check
for drug abuse on the plane? And the investigator said, well,
we check for everything. Just on that, this guy decides
to write this totally fabricated story, which unfortunately caught wind

(05:51):
on the wire and spread everywhere.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
But it was total bs.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
The whole thing was right, and you know, I guess
that reporter just kind of wanted to be at the
forefront of all that. It's you know, it was tragic
and stuff, but it's really important to note. Look, honestly,
we lose a lot of us going to and from gigs.
I always say, just Matthew and I've been doing this
for forty years now, and they don't really pay us
for the shows.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
They pay us for the travel, right, that's what we
get paid for.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
And it's scary, you know sometimes in Matthew and I've
had a lot of close calls that are also in
the book as well. But it's just kind of that
part of the lifestyle where you have to get you
got to bring the rock to the people, and you
got to get there somehow. And this was just kind
of one of those times when a series of events
had to conspire absolutely perfectly in order for that particular

(06:39):
disaster to have happened. You take one of those events
out and it wouldn't have happened quite that way. And
so when that happens, you just kind of got to go. Well,
maybe maybe God just wanted them home. Maybe it was
just his time. Because coincidences are one thing, but so
many coincidences lining up is really hard to kind of
look around.

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Hey, So the way that you and Matthew do this book,
it's pretty interesting. It's it's all broken up by chapters,
and and I do want to say that, while you
know there's there there is obviously a ton that is
paid to the family, it also gets into the nitty
gritty and the good and I guess a little bit
of the not so good of Nelson, but the But

(07:18):
it's written chapter by chapter, where you write a chapter
and Matthew writes a chapter, or you'll write about something
and then Matthew will do it. How did you guys
decide to break it up that way?

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Well, that's that's a great question. Well, first off, there
are no ghostwriters involved in this at all. This is
all me and Matthew. We've got a very specific voice.
And when we're putting together the so to speak, the
big rocks, like what are the chapters we're going to
have to conquer here, we actually kind of divvy them
up based on who was most passionate or had the
best memory of certain things that went down.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
That's initially how we did it.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
There was only one chapter where we each wrote our
take on a particular event, and that was the event.

Speaker 1 (08:00):
We just talked about the crash.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
But for everything else it really flowed very very well.
I mean, it's not a short book. It's over five
hundred pages, over fifty chapters, and to be honest with you,
we could have written another book equally as long if
you really wanted to do like the old adults only
version that's coming next.

Speaker 3 (08:19):
This one.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
We just had to kind of take the big swipes
at things and it's been an amazing ride. Man.

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Our childhood was not Ozzie and Harriet.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Our career, man, it just had more ups and downs
than Magic Mountain. But the whole point was we always
had each other, and we've always had this attitude that
a lot of people in our industry have attacked. We
are eternal optimists. We're grateful for everything. We are the
opposite of the Kardashians. We are grateful for not entitled

(08:50):
at all, and that's really helped us sometimes. It's all
we've been able to have. Like I've got a producer
friend named Jack Ponti, who worked with bon Jovi back
in the day, who once said to us, I've never
seen any two.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Guys able to make more out of nothing than you guys.

Speaker 2 (09:04):
And I went thank you, and he's like, I didn't
mean it as a compliment, and it's like, but we
naturally did take it as a compliment.

Speaker 3 (09:11):
And that's what's really helped us. Man.

Speaker 4 (09:13):
So I jumped immediately to page one eighty four, Rocking
the Radio, and it just so happened to be written
by you. And it starts picking up where you guys
are talking about how Geffen Records, who you're signed to,
has you guys out on the road. And the plan was,
how are you guys going to break through? Millie Vanilli's
scandal has just broken. Here's two guys who obviously look alike,

(09:36):
and they're going to be out on the road.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
So the whole thing was.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
Before anything is out, let's get them out on the road.
And you guys are visiting two, three, four radio stations
in a day, sometimes in four or five different cities
cities in a day, And the whole thing was just
get out there and get known, and get out there
and get known, and oh quick side note, did you
really play a radio station manager's daughter's sweet sixteen party?

Speaker 3 (10:02):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Many of them, Absolutely, many of them. I also did
a lot of those free radio shows. I'm using air
quotes here. Radio shows. Sure, you show up with the
band and you play for free, and then you find
out that the company that owns the radio station is
selling tickets and making a ton of money, and you're
you're doing it for free just on the chance they're

(10:24):
going to spin your record on the stations.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
We did a lot of those two.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
So you're I'm sorry, go ahead, go ahead, No, no,
I mean what you were mentioning.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yes, we did have to go to all the radio
stations because you talk about timing. As you mentioned, Milli
Vanilli comes out like eight months before us. The whole
scandal happens, actually eight months before we release. People see
the two of us in spandex and assless chaps and
they think we're like Milli Vanilla, you know, And honestly, dude,
we were a lot.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
I mean, we really were.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
The image was insane, but our model was love us
or hate us, You're going to know who we are.
But the problem with that is being sons of having
the image we had we had basically treated as guilty
until proven innocent. Right going to all of those radio
stations was not just to get known. It was to
get in there, raw and unfiltered, two acoustic guitars, two voices.

(11:13):
Of course, I don't know why you guys want us
to sing it for in the morning and sound like
we're in fine form, but that's kind of like the
nature of it. You go out and you do these
morning shows and you spread the word and it's it
can't be doctored.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
You know, it's not auto tune. It's right there.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
So people could hear the Matthew and I actually know
how to how to speak our mind, and we actually
can sing, and we can actually play talker. I don't
know why people wouldn't assume that we could, But that's
what that whole thing was about, was just to get
people talking at radio that like, hey, you know, I
wanted to write off those Nelson boys, but man, they're pretty.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
Darn good, you know. So that's what we had to
start doing. So you guys are on your way to
the Bobby Poe Convention. We'll get into that in a second, and.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
That takes place.

Speaker 4 (11:53):
The Poe Convention is actually in Tyson's corner here in DC.
But here's the part that I didn't realize. And now, Gunner,
you won't you and I you will not remember me.
That's okay, but you talk about You guys are in
d C. And Pirate Radio plays your song out in
Los Angeles and people start calling you, going, holy crap,

(12:15):
Pirate Radio's playing your song. It's not out yet, like
it hasn't been put out yet. You guys are just
going and all of a sudden, Pirate starts playing it.
Now the part, Gunner, that you won't remember is at
Pirate Radio, I was Russell the Love Muscle.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Oh okay, now I know who I'm talking to you.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (12:35):
And so I remember playing.

Speaker 4 (12:36):
I remember you guys coming in and doing Christmas carols
at Pirate. I feel like Pirate and Nelson did so
much crap together we all may.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
As well have been joined at the hip.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Ain't that the case?

Speaker 4 (12:49):
Man?

Speaker 3 (12:49):
Pirate Radio.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
Wow, that was just a different day in radio. It
was so cool.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
I always tell people I love the fact that our
first record came out before cell phones because we still
had culpable deny, you know, no photographic proof in the pocket.
You couldn't be tracked everywhere you went, and radio was fantastic.
Pirate Radio was a station in LA that basically auspiciously
played what they wanted to play, right, And this was
at a time when all the big companies, the big

(13:15):
corporations that ran radio were formatting everything. And this is
before Jack FM eliminated a lot of the DJs, and
it was really great. It's kind of like the Wild
West for radio. And we got into trouble all the
time with those guys. But the problem was we were
out on those radio tours, like we just mentioned, going
from city to city to city, and I was starting
to get phone calls from my friends going, hey, man,
your song sounds great on the radio and we'd never

(13:37):
heard it before, and it was very frustrating. So this
convention you mentioned, the Bobby Coat Boat Convention, legendary radio
convention that they don't do anymore because.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Ye strippers and cocaine.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Oh yeah, no, no, I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
What are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (13:53):
And it was one of those things too, because we
were always, you know, making the most out of what
we had.

Speaker 3 (13:56):
That particular convention.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Our record label, Geffen rec was too cheap to get
a sweet upstairs where people were normally the radio guys
were normally corded, And so Matthew and I opened up
our guitar cases at the foot of the one elevator
that people would have to go up and down all day,
and we opened up our guitar cases and started busking
right there and playing our instruments and singing our songs.

(14:18):
And that's how we kind of introduced ourselves to a
lot of different radio people. And on the ride home
from the convention, one of our friends at radio said, Hey,
this is for the Nelson Boys, who were complaining about
the fact that they've never heard their song on the radio.
This is for you boys, And they played Love and
Affection and we had one of those that thing you
do moments. We've literally pulled over the car freaking out.

(14:40):
And I love radio compression. It was the first time
we ever heard our song on the radio.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Was awesome, and YouTube.

Speaker 4 (14:45):
Were jumping around like you just won the super Bowl
on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Well, that's pretty freaking cool, man, that's awesome. No, I
think it's great. I love that. That's in the.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Book, dude, We're just a couple of kids from Burbank
who just wanted to make music. We happened to have
a famous father that you know, was you know, sold
half or half a billion singles during his career. No pressure,
mind you, But to us, we just had music around
the house all the time, and we wanted to do
our own thing like the other generations of Nelson's had done.
Our grandpa had a big band and he had a

(15:16):
number one in nineteen thirty five, and our dad has
had his and you know, we had our success when
spandex was still a privilege and not a rite, and
it was great, man, it was a big, big fun
But they were songs that we wrote ourselves, that we
produced ourselves.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
And now here we are, man, all.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
These years later, talking about a book that we wrote ourselves.
It's pretty cool, hey, is it true?

Speaker 4 (15:37):
Like like when Ricky Nelson would your dad was huge,
People would break into the house to like like climb
up the lattice work and break into the house. And
then his mom, your grandmother, would go meet him there
and like take them downstairs and serve them breakfast.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Pretty much.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
Yeah, I mean she was actually really used to the
ty Bopper's kind of breaking. Everybody knew where the Nelson's lived,
by the way, if I mean a lot of your
listeners are too young to remember, but there was a
family television show called The Adventures of Ozzy and Harriet.
They ran for fourteen years and four hundred and thirty
five episodes, and there was an establishing shot at the
beginning of each episode of a big white house that

(16:17):
the family walked out of the front door and waved
to the camera that was their real house at eighteen
twenty two Caminal palm Merrow in Hollywood. Everyone knew where
that Nelson's lived, and it was a different time. You
didn't have you didn't have.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
A big walls or security details.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
And Grandma Harriet would tell us that she was very
used to when our dad caught a lick with his music.
It was only like sixteen or seventeen, but it was
a phenomenon. Her going up to put away our dad's
laundry and she's here like giggling, and she'd look over
and she'd see saddle shoes poking out from behind the
curtains by the window. I mean, girls would sneak in
all the time, and she would just you know, be

(16:52):
friendly to them and stuff and tell them that they
couldn't do that and take them downstairs and ask them
if they were hungry or whatever.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
She was Harriet, she was awesome, but different times totally, Gunnard,
let me ask you this.

Speaker 4 (17:03):
So there's there's a point in the book where you're
talking about how Nelson. So, so the song, the song
is out, the song is starting to get played, MTV
is starting to play it. You're back in Los Angeles
and before you went out on the road and before
the song started getting played. There there's a mall in
Sherman Oaks called the Galleria, and it was where you

(17:26):
and you and Matthew would go, just like any teenager
living in Sherman Oaks or living in that area would go.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
You just went to the mall as kids. Nobody knew
who you were, nobody cared who you were. You were
just two kids walking around the mall.

Speaker 4 (17:37):
And then all of a sudden, love and affection breaks
and you guys are going to go do an in
store appearance at the mall, and it is you guys
show up at the mall, and it's been two weeks
since the last time you two were at the mall
just shopping at that was at was the moment that
you guys got off the elevator and it is thousands

(17:59):
of people in the mall waiting to see you guys.
Is that the moment where it finally clicked of oh crap,
we did it.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
That well, it was a different kind of realization. It
was like, oh crap, this is dangerous.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
I mean it was.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
First off, it was freaking awesome. I'm not gonna lie
about that. It was amazing. But the difference that being
on television makes, that was the only difference we shopped
for our trip to New York. We sat in for
Daisy Fuentes, who was on vacation, and did a show
called dial MTV where Matthew and I were front announcing
and back announcing videos but playing in and out of
the commercial breaks with our acoustic guitars and singing, and

(18:38):
we were kind of like a little bubble there when
we were doing that week of hosting. And then we
come back to Los Angeles to our stomping grounds and
the mall you're talking about, this is the same mall
that they filmed Fast Times at Ridgemont High End and
the in store that we were doing was at the
Licorice Pizza record store that was in that movie, and
so we get off the freight elevator and the sound

(19:00):
hit us like a jet engine. It was absolutely phenomenal
and a little scary, to be honest. We tried to
keep everybody very calm. And you know, matt and I
are still the same guys. We haven't changed it all.
The only difference was doing that work on MTV for
the week. It's incredible what that can do. Yeah, hey, look,
get on TV and it turns you from a solid

(19:21):
five into at least a strong eight.

Speaker 3 (19:23):
It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
And you know, it was a different time too, because
now we are assaulted by input from our cell phones
and TikTok and all that stuff, and we've got short
attention span theater. But back then MTV was the eight
hundred pound Gorilla. It was on twenty four hours a day.
All the kids watched it all the time, and that
was really great, and Matthew and I really seemed to
connect very very well with the MTV culture and did

(19:48):
a lot of it, went on to do a lot
of hosting for them, and we had four number one
videos with that first record After the Rain and you know,
bottom line was, back then you could have that kind
of video play driven success. And everything's changed now, of course,
but just like every Nelson before, you take advantage of
the technology you've got at the time and do the
best you can. Unfortunately for us, man, it really it

(20:09):
caught a lick with a vengeance.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
It was. It was pretty intense.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Now, let me ask you this.

Speaker 4 (20:13):
That night, you guys go to the Rainbow Room on
the Sunset Strip just to kind of celebrate, like, holy crap,
that was amazing. At the end, when you guys are
leaving the Penthouse, pet of the Year grabs Matthew's hand
and wants to take him back to the hotel room,
and she says, I'm gonna f your brains out, and
Matthew says, pauses for a moment, and then says, Nope,

(20:36):
I'm not going, and that gives us whole reason about
why he's not going, And then the band gives him crap.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
If she would have grabbed Gunner's hand, would you have gone.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Well, she would have been walking. Funny, let's just say
we're very, very different people. We give Matthew crap about
that moment all the time, because you know, of course
this was the beginning of the success back then, and
you know, he had his morals and his standards, and
he was like, oh, well, you know a week ago,
you wouldn't have cared. And mon said, there going, that's

(21:06):
a freakinghouse peut.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Of the year.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
What are you doing?

Speaker 2 (21:09):
And Matthew has, I think regretted that that moral stand
that he took with the Penthouse pet of the Year.

Speaker 3 (21:17):
I think he's an idiot.

Speaker 2 (21:18):
But I'm happy to say that Matthew thinks he's an
idiot now too.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Do you know the other part that I didn't realize.

Speaker 4 (21:23):
You talk about going to a kiss show and seeing
them play. I believe it's with Winger and Slaughter and
you're talking, You're talking to Gene Simmons, and there's six
thousand people at the show, and Jean's miserable. He's like,
oh my god, this is all disappearing in front of
our eyes, like it's all falling apart.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
You're like, oh my god, there's six thousand people here.
This is awesome. You and Matthew go out to the soundboard.

Speaker 4 (21:46):
Anyway, the whole thing, But I never heard, I guess
why would I have ever heard? But the story about
you telling Gene, honestly, put your makeup on.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
Nobody cares about you.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Guys.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
You're ugly or you're That's not what they're here to say.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
They want to see the circus, they want to see
everything around it.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Weirdly, Nelson saves Kiss.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Well, first off, I mean, Gene, we had a great
relationship back in the day. We were all managed by
the same manager. So Kiss was managed by the same
guy we were, and so we got a chance to
spend a little time there. And that was at the
Long Beach Arena. When that all went down. We were
backstage and Gene was looking out over the It was
kind of like one of those those skyboxes that the
dressing room was in, and he was looking out over

(22:29):
the crowd and he was bemoaning the fact that the
place held twelve thousand people and six thousand people were there,
and he was like, Oh, I think it's over, and
I can't believe this. It's like, Gene a kidding down there.
Six thousand people here, it's awesome, give him a great show.
So I just don't know what to do. It's getting tougher.
It's like, Jeane, you know, I'll give you my insight.
Here's my opinion. No one wants to see you guys

(22:51):
without your makeup on. You know, they're coming for the circus.
That's what they want, right, I'm telling you, If you
gave them what they wanted, if you put the makeup
back on and called it your farewell tour, you could
sell tickets for a thousand bucks apiece. Now, by the way,
back then, no one had done anything that autlandish. A
thousand bucks a ticket now it's normal. Back then it
was insane. People were selling tickets for twelve bucks a ticket.

(23:12):
And he just, you know, in Geene fashion, he kind
of looked at me and he throwed as brown Euan,
you really think so it's a Geene. I don't know
anybody seriously. If you put that makeup back on and
you had the fire and the blood and the whole thing,
and you called it your farewell tour, who wouldn't spend
a thousand dollars a ticket. Now, I'm not saying that
that conversation was what caused it, but I definitely think

(23:33):
it fanned some flames. I think he was thinking about
that anyways, right, But I think just sitting here with
a guy who looked like Faara faucet and talking about.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
That whole thing.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
You know, the one thing that Nelson and Kiss both
knew how to do was market you know, we had
an image, you had a brand, and it was outlandish
and outrageous and it wasn't normal and it got people talking.
We understood each other on that level. And you know,
the guy's a marketing genius. I can't take that away
from him. You know, he knows what he's doing and
he was smart enough to do exactly that. Put that

(24:03):
makeup back on and you know, get out there and
do that. Gene Simmons kind of walked thing that he does, and.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
Man, it was awesome.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
And you know, after that, people enjoyed the Kiss Farewell
tour for a full thirty years. Hey, we're chapters forty
four and forty five deliberately one after the other and
then written the way that they were, or not written
the way that they were.

Speaker 1 (24:26):
Was that very intentional.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
I'm trying to think, I don't have a book in
front of me.

Speaker 4 (24:31):
Chapter forty four talks about it walks through how you
guys sold millions and millions of records. You don't make
any money, the debt, but it talks about number one,
would you do it all over again? And the answer
is yes, And you talk specifically about the kid watching
the After the Rain video and what that meant to

(24:54):
him and how that means more than selling records, And
then it goes into forty five. Is you and Matthew
talking about what you want to say to your ex wives?

Speaker 3 (25:07):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Well, I mean, the most writing I've done in this
book was was that particular that last chapter you mentioned.
When people get the book, they'll understand what I'm saying, right,
But no, there wasn't intense. The placement was not intentional.
But you know what is really important is when I
talk to young artists nowadays, are people trying to make
their mark in the wild West, That is the music business,

(25:30):
or what's left of it right now. The most important
thing you can do is really try to figure out
what it is you're about. What is it you have
to say that is so special and so unique and
so important that your fan out there that hasn't heard
you yet or hasn't seen you yet has to go
to you to get that exact thing.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
And you mentioned a letter.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
There's a stack of letters, actually, but that particular letter
that you mentioned is in my safe right now, and
it was from a kid who, at thirteen years of age,
as a way back in the day would have been
nineteen ninety, I had spent all day at school giving
away their possessions to their friends, and they were depressed.
They had marked that day was the day they were
going to end it all. Their parents were going to

(26:13):
be out of the house that day, and he had
it all planned. And he went back to his house
and he took his stepfather's thirty eight out of the
drawer and he had it on his lap and he
was mustering up the courage to do it, and he
was watching MTV in the background. Had just at that
moment one of our videos came on, and it was
our video for After the Rain, and there was a

(26:35):
line in that song which is don't be afraid to
lose what was never meant to be. And then he
watched the video and he saw the arc of it,
and it's about a kid who was kind of in
his situation, and it gave him enough time to pause
and call his grandmother and she came over and they intervened,
got him treatment and it had saved his life. So
he wrote me a letter about that that I have

(26:56):
in my safe that I pull out every now and
again when I'm feeling a little.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
Low about why we do what we do.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
But the coolest thing was about a month ago, this
guy shows up at one of our shows in an
autograph language till the very end, and it turns out
to be that kid now a man, and he wanted
to introduce me to his children.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Dude, that's awesome, Dude, are you kidding me? That's amazing,
that's awesome, that's great.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
You know.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
So it's not about the stuff, man, it's not about
the fame, it's not about the fortune.

Speaker 3 (27:27):
It's not about the power.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
I've had all of that and lost it all and
got it all back and lost it all. You know,
you sit there and you kind of go, man, what
is really really really important? And to me, music has
always just been a means to an end, you know,
it's about connecting with people. That Nelson's have always been
in the connection business, not the entertainment business, right, And
any chance we can get to, you know, give people

(27:48):
pause or lift him up a little bit or or whatever,
we've done it. And a lot of times it's cost
us everything and more that we've had but it's really
been worth In that chapter you mentioned, I mean, if
somebody had said to me in the very beginning, Okay,
you're going to be the most famous person in the
world for two years, but it's going to cost you everything,
and then some you're going to be in debt and

(28:09):
paying that debt off for thirty years. You're going to
become the pariah overnight that you never earned the brunt
of jokes because the paradigm of music shifted, and it's
going to take you that thirty years to work yourself back.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
Would you still do it? And the answer is where
do I sign up?

Speaker 2 (28:25):
Right?

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Absolutely, let's go.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
And I don't know, call me a glutton for punishment
or just a raging code of pennant.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
I've got the greatest life in the world.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
Man, Hey, last thing, and then I know I got
to let you jump. If the paid per view double
bill would have taken place with Axel Rose fighting Vince
Neil and you fighting Sebastian Bach, would you have totally
kicked his ass?

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Well, I don't know, I you know, I don't know.
I will I will tell you this though, I was
a big Matthew says, Yes, Matthew says two things.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Number one, that Gunner was a huge man whore and
that you would have kicked his ass because of your
karate training.

Speaker 2 (29:01):
Well it was actually combat kunk ku, but who's training.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
But no, no, it's okay, I studied both. But you know,
it wasn't that.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
It was a time when everybody was exchanging barbs through
the press and all that stuff, and Sebastian said some
stuff not about me, but about my twin and he
was physically threatening and that was kind of crossing the line.

Speaker 3 (29:19):
So I just kind of said, you know, why don't
we stop being stupid.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Let's find a state that's unsanctioned and let's do this
is before the UFC. Let's do it and you know,
no rules sort of thing, and sell it on pay
per view. Let's not be dumb. Let's all make ourselves millionaires.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Let's go.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
And to me, the way I looked at it, I
couldn't lose because Sebastian's like nine feet tall. Okay, the
guy is really and he's tough man. I'm not saying
he's a worse at all. Guy is a tough man.
But you know, if I lost the fight, all right,
I just got my ask exactly exactly, you know, but
if he lost the fight, if he lost the fight,

(29:57):
that would have been bad for him, right. So anyways, look,
it all worked itself out, and I will say, man
to me, very very very few guys sang rock and
roll better than Sebastian Bach. The guys have just a
monster vocalist. I've always loved his vocals. I don't like
his temper, but I've always admired his artistry.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
The book What Happened to Your Hair?

Speaker 4 (30:19):
How We Played Loud, Loved, Proud, and Never Back Down
Together is out and available.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Hey.

Speaker 4 (30:25):
By the way, the chapter what if Pop Hadn't died
beautiful tribute Gunner.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
I thought it was really really.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Sweet, banks man. That's that's how we actually ended the book.
That was the question.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
And you know, of course I give everything just to
have five more minutes of my best friend, my dad here.
But you know what, if I'm really honest about it,
none of the songs that people know, almost that letter
that we talked about would not be in my safe
If our pop had had lived, I would be a
drummer in his band, probably right. I would never have
written that song. I never would have done any of

(30:57):
that stuff, So I don't know, Man, everything happens for
a reason. It doesn't feel that way when you're going
through it in the moment. But looking back on my
life now, man, everything that I've gone through has made
me who I am, and I don't regret that part
of it. But I also believe that your positivity is
a superpower and that the only control you really have

(31:18):
no matter who you are, because the circumstances are always
going to be the stimulus is going to be the
same as what you make out of it. And Matthew
and I have been making diamonds out of lumps of
coal for our entire lives.

Speaker 4 (31:28):
And by the way, if that doesn't happen, g Norley,
Charlie and I are at Griffith Park Zoo or just
out of Griffith Park with everybody for the filming of
the After the Rain video.

Speaker 1 (31:38):
Oh nice, but you were Russell the love muscle y,
Yes exactly, of course. Thank you for remembering Gunner all right, buddy.
The book is fantastic.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Congratulations dude, Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas, Happy
holidays to everybody out there. And man, good talking to
you after all of these years and what happened to
your hair. It's on Amazon right now.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Appreciate it, Thanks Gunner, thank you, Bye.