John Corapi has a new book called Horseshoes and Grenades (named after his father’s saying), and while touring the UK he took time to do a Q&A at the West Hampstead Arts Club, followed by a couple of acoustic medleys. Live tracks and book signings.
Krabi, as it is affectionately known, loves the UK. He tells great stories about his first show in the UK when The Ramones entered his dressing room and saw Nirvana and the original Tigertailz live at the Marquee. Even getting into fistfights over intellectual comprehension between the English and American vernacular offers humorous stories which he tells with great gusto and recounts in detail in his book.
He is a huge fan of the Beatles even though they almost called him daily when he reached the age of their discovery. He credits them with enlightening him about the power of music. On The Ed Sullivan Show, he saw the girls’ reaction and was hooked. He points out that nearly sixty years later we are still talking about it. When he was in Motley Crue he met Ringo at Nikki Six’s house. Contrary to popular expectation, he gets along well with Vince Neil and was great friends with the rest of the Crue guys until they had to let him go for business reasons.
During his time in Motley Crue he met such musical heroes as Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple, Aerosmith who left his tongue tied and Brian Johnson of AC/DC and told a hilarious story about Brian Johnson dropping his pants to get the attention of a small local band who didn’t recognize him so he could Board up and jam with them at a random club (along with the then Crue members) who all wander into it without warning. In spite of everything he thinks back on his time with Motley Foolishly. He maintains old friendships from this time of golden communication to the present day. After all he thought you needed thick leather and perseverance to keep going in this business. Note that he never had a plan B, it was this business or nothing: if he hadn’t he would have been in jail, dead, or ravaging the streets. The place he came from in Philly was the same place Rocky came from in the movie. Serial killers, rapists, pedophiles, street fighters, cops who were quick to accuse people of things they didn’t do, Crabbe himself was accused of a murder he didn’t commit, but was later acquitted.
Perhaps it was Sandra Bullock who survived Crabby. Gene Simmons was a huge supporter and always believed in him. Some of the stories in his book are entertainingly told by Crabby including a whole heap about Motley Crue we didn’t tell here to avoid spoiler. One thing that wasn’t shown in the book was his concern about Mick Mars and finding it hard to believe he was going to voluntarily retire from The Motley Fool. But the truth is other guitarists have been playing Crue albums for quite some time now and the music business is disadvantaged especially when large sums of money are involved. There were a lot of questions about Motley and John’s record unsurprisingly, including the firm belief that the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson tape was not released voluntarily for money, but it did witness real anguish on Pam’s part over theft and leaking of private material.
When asked if he would ever do Rock Musical Krabby he said he didn’t think so because it involved a whole other level of genius and he was aware of how hard Cinderella’s Fred Currie had worked in his now successful career in Music for TV.
Although the audience could have gone all night, we had already been several hours, and after a few tracks of sound to send them the right way, sung to Corabi’s groovy rock and roll tune, the evening was over. But not yet, the Joker Krabby has dealt a select few Mangy Dog with his tongue firmly in his cheek.
John Corapi’s book is available through all good book distribution channels. If you are lucky enough to meet him on his current UK tour he will either sell you one himself and sign it for you or something else (nota bene except check or dick).
Don Osborne
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