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Guest blogger Don Bernstine reports from his time in NAMM.
Back to the grind now that I am back from Los Angeles. I was out there to attend the NAMM convention. For those of you who don’t know what NAMM is. It’s the convention that artists show up to meet music dealers and people from the industry and pimp the products they endorse. Anything from guitars, cables, strings, keyboards, picks, pretty much anything you can think of is on display there. It’s three days of non-stop drinking, hanging, and for me it’s three days of trying to do deals with about 100 rock stars. .
Arrived in LA and checked into the Sunset Marquis and got a call from my pal (and Classic Rock contributor) photographer Neil Zlozower. He wanted me to join him and Van Halen’s business manager for dinner. When you stay at the Sunset Marquis you never know whom you will bump into. While I was waiting for my car to go to dinner out comes Billy Gibbons an he started giving me some shit for not calling him back last week! (Gibbons and I had been trading phone calls all week about a deal for the instruments ZZ TOP had used in the Viva Las Vegas video). Nowadays I work for the artists, instead of sitting behind that desk at the Hard Rock corporate office. So we finished our deal in front of the hotel.
Convention Day 1
Had a few meetings in the morning. My friends John Douglas (who makes all of the ZZ Top and Van Halen drum kits) from Texas and Natalie from the Met hotel in London arrived then we hit the road to Anaheim. We headed straight to the B.C. Rich booth to see my buddy Kerry King (Slayer). He was already posing for photos and signing autographs for hundreds of fans. We made plans to hook up later (never happened). If you ever meet Kerry’s wife ask her to show you the photos of her in high heels and a bikini while hanging with great white sharks. Then it was on to the Fender exhibit to see Eddie Van Halen formally introduce the new “Wolfgang” guitar. From what I was told the run was sold out as soon as it was available. At the same time Ludwig was celebrating 100 years and they were unveiling Alex Van Halen’s new snare drum.
After the Eddie thing I went to see a tribute to drummer Simon Phillips. It was amazing –Charlie from Anthrax, John Tempesta from The Cult, Simon and two of the most amazing drummers on the planet Ron Bruner Jr, and John Blackwell. John Tempesta actually told me that he was nervous. FUCK I couldn’t believe that! Ran into Dime Bag’s girl Rita Haney and we spoke about me getting some access to the vault of Dime’s guitars. After Dime’s death she honored a deal that I had done with Dime for a number of guitars and to my knowledge I am the only person to get any of the guitars after his death. LONG LIVE DIME!
Day 2
Hit the convention floor early. Imagine a football pitch filled with Rock Stars and equipment! You cannot imagine how many rockers are there and bouncing from booth to booth is an art form. Bumped into Flea who was launching a new bass line and saying hello to anybody that came to the booth (didn’t look like he was having much fun), Mick Mars at the Marshall booth or Duff (with short hair) signing autographs at a booth that provides with him with some sort of electronics. Zildjian always has a signing of 20 of the most recognizable drummers in the world. Everyone from Jason Bonham to Alan White from Yes was there. It’s fucking insane. I bumped into fellow Floridian Nicko McBrain and he was on the mend from a late night with a few other drummer types. But we all managed to find our way to the private Paiste cymbal party. I went expecting to stay for 45 minutes and ended up there for three hours.
It was hilarious. John Tempesta, Charlie Benate, Lenny Kravitz drummer (sorry cannot remember his name), the drummer from Motorhead, Nicko, and a number of others. I knew it was time to leave when all of these guys had a few drinks and began to think that I worked for them and started to order me about. I knew it was time to go when John Tempesta demanded that I start running to get them drinks. It was shades of a of a bad Deep Purple flashback (that was part of my job when I worked for them). After the party I ended up hanging in the lobby bar of the Hilton where I saw tons of posers and heard bad music from bands I have never heard from. Living Colour were playing somewhere in the hotel but at that point I had lost interest.
Day 3
This is the day that is the most crowded and most of the really big artists do their appearance this day. I remember last year Paul Stanley did an appearance for Washburn and there was over 1000 people waiting for hours to meet him. With all the big name floating around the one thing that really stuck in my mind was meeting this guy who about six foot five and weighed probably 280 and called himself ELVISS. He was dressed as Elvis with Gene Simmons makeup on with the cape and the boots. He sang Kiss song like Elvis.
Great for a party, but my first thought was Gene would be all over him with his lawyers, but it was a cool idea. His is supposed to be the love child of Gene and Elvis…. his only comment to me was “I hope my daddy don’t sue me.” Thank you very much.” Saw Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades do an acoustic set for Ovation and then, bumped into a few people like Dave Mustaine, James LoMenzo, Lee Sklar, Gary Rossington, Corky Laing, Marky Ramone, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, and Vinnie Paul. Then it was time to regroup and figure out the plan for the evening. Was it Alice Cooper or Papa Roach? Kind of hard to do both but somehow I managed!
Day 4
Back To LA for some meetings. First stop Eddie Van Halen’s house. A while ago I had done a deal that placed some of Eddie’s cabinets in the soon to be opened Las Vegas Hard Rock cafe. It was something we had been speaking about forever. Eddie though it would be cool to include some of his stage clothes from the last tour. So I had to go and pick them up. So I met his right hand man Matt Bruck at the studio picked up the clothes and checked the place out for any cool memorabilia. One thing I found is a blackboard that appeared in one the VH album cover. The story was during the recording of this LP anytime there was a phone message taken they wrote the information on the chalkboard. It is still in the same condition it was the day the photo was taken, with all the notes and phone numbers.
Day 5
If you have to have a meeting there is no reason why it cannot be on the beach in Malibu, CA. Anthrax manager Izzy and I decided to take the drive to Malibu and we dragged along Natalie. Nothing better than driving down the Pacific coast highway in a convertible when it is 80 degrees. That night I went to see Pearl Aday’s band perform with Scott Ian on guitar. Man, can she sing. Had a few friends come back to hotel to hang and unfortunately another night ending with the sun rising. Felt like shit all the next day and I managed to scrape up some energy to have a great meal with Scott and Pearl.
I am off to see the Eagles tonight and going to see Anthrax in NY next week.
Until next time…
Don Bernstine
link - http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/n...-don-bernsite/
.
Back to the grind now that I am back from Los Angeles. I was out there to attend the NAMM convention. For those of you who don’t know what NAMM is. It’s the convention that artists show up to meet music dealers and people from the industry and pimp the products they endorse. Anything from guitars, cables, strings, keyboards, picks, pretty much anything you can think of is on display there. It’s three days of non-stop drinking, hanging, and for me it’s three days of trying to do deals with about 100 rock stars. .
Arrived in LA and checked into the Sunset Marquis and got a call from my pal (and Classic Rock contributor) photographer Neil Zlozower. He wanted me to join him and Van Halen’s business manager for dinner. When you stay at the Sunset Marquis you never know whom you will bump into. While I was waiting for my car to go to dinner out comes Billy Gibbons an he started giving me some shit for not calling him back last week! (Gibbons and I had been trading phone calls all week about a deal for the instruments ZZ TOP had used in the Viva Las Vegas video). Nowadays I work for the artists, instead of sitting behind that desk at the Hard Rock corporate office. So we finished our deal in front of the hotel.
Convention Day 1
Had a few meetings in the morning. My friends John Douglas (who makes all of the ZZ Top and Van Halen drum kits) from Texas and Natalie from the Met hotel in London arrived then we hit the road to Anaheim. We headed straight to the B.C. Rich booth to see my buddy Kerry King (Slayer). He was already posing for photos and signing autographs for hundreds of fans. We made plans to hook up later (never happened). If you ever meet Kerry’s wife ask her to show you the photos of her in high heels and a bikini while hanging with great white sharks. Then it was on to the Fender exhibit to see Eddie Van Halen formally introduce the new “Wolfgang” guitar. From what I was told the run was sold out as soon as it was available. At the same time Ludwig was celebrating 100 years and they were unveiling Alex Van Halen’s new snare drum.
After the Eddie thing I went to see a tribute to drummer Simon Phillips. It was amazing –Charlie from Anthrax, John Tempesta from The Cult, Simon and two of the most amazing drummers on the planet Ron Bruner Jr, and John Blackwell. John Tempesta actually told me that he was nervous. FUCK I couldn’t believe that! Ran into Dime Bag’s girl Rita Haney and we spoke about me getting some access to the vault of Dime’s guitars. After Dime’s death she honored a deal that I had done with Dime for a number of guitars and to my knowledge I am the only person to get any of the guitars after his death. LONG LIVE DIME!
Day 2
Hit the convention floor early. Imagine a football pitch filled with Rock Stars and equipment! You cannot imagine how many rockers are there and bouncing from booth to booth is an art form. Bumped into Flea who was launching a new bass line and saying hello to anybody that came to the booth (didn’t look like he was having much fun), Mick Mars at the Marshall booth or Duff (with short hair) signing autographs at a booth that provides with him with some sort of electronics. Zildjian always has a signing of 20 of the most recognizable drummers in the world. Everyone from Jason Bonham to Alan White from Yes was there. It’s fucking insane. I bumped into fellow Floridian Nicko McBrain and he was on the mend from a late night with a few other drummer types. But we all managed to find our way to the private Paiste cymbal party. I went expecting to stay for 45 minutes and ended up there for three hours.
It was hilarious. John Tempesta, Charlie Benate, Lenny Kravitz drummer (sorry cannot remember his name), the drummer from Motorhead, Nicko, and a number of others. I knew it was time to leave when all of these guys had a few drinks and began to think that I worked for them and started to order me about. I knew it was time to go when John Tempesta demanded that I start running to get them drinks. It was shades of a of a bad Deep Purple flashback (that was part of my job when I worked for them). After the party I ended up hanging in the lobby bar of the Hilton where I saw tons of posers and heard bad music from bands I have never heard from. Living Colour were playing somewhere in the hotel but at that point I had lost interest.
Day 3
This is the day that is the most crowded and most of the really big artists do their appearance this day. I remember last year Paul Stanley did an appearance for Washburn and there was over 1000 people waiting for hours to meet him. With all the big name floating around the one thing that really stuck in my mind was meeting this guy who about six foot five and weighed probably 280 and called himself ELVISS. He was dressed as Elvis with Gene Simmons makeup on with the cape and the boots. He sang Kiss song like Elvis.
Great for a party, but my first thought was Gene would be all over him with his lawyers, but it was a cool idea. His is supposed to be the love child of Gene and Elvis…. his only comment to me was “I hope my daddy don’t sue me.” Thank you very much.” Saw Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades do an acoustic set for Ovation and then, bumped into a few people like Dave Mustaine, James LoMenzo, Lee Sklar, Gary Rossington, Corky Laing, Marky Ramone, Steve Vai, Steve Morse, and Vinnie Paul. Then it was time to regroup and figure out the plan for the evening. Was it Alice Cooper or Papa Roach? Kind of hard to do both but somehow I managed!
Day 4
Back To LA for some meetings. First stop Eddie Van Halen’s house. A while ago I had done a deal that placed some of Eddie’s cabinets in the soon to be opened Las Vegas Hard Rock cafe. It was something we had been speaking about forever. Eddie though it would be cool to include some of his stage clothes from the last tour. So I had to go and pick them up. So I met his right hand man Matt Bruck at the studio picked up the clothes and checked the place out for any cool memorabilia. One thing I found is a blackboard that appeared in one the VH album cover. The story was during the recording of this LP anytime there was a phone message taken they wrote the information on the chalkboard. It is still in the same condition it was the day the photo was taken, with all the notes and phone numbers.
Day 5
If you have to have a meeting there is no reason why it cannot be on the beach in Malibu, CA. Anthrax manager Izzy and I decided to take the drive to Malibu and we dragged along Natalie. Nothing better than driving down the Pacific coast highway in a convertible when it is 80 degrees. That night I went to see Pearl Aday’s band perform with Scott Ian on guitar. Man, can she sing. Had a few friends come back to hotel to hang and unfortunately another night ending with the sun rising. Felt like shit all the next day and I managed to scrape up some energy to have a great meal with Scott and Pearl.
I am off to see the Eagles tonight and going to see Anthrax in NY next week.
Until next time…
Don Bernstine
link - http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/n...-don-bernsite/
.
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