I've had to put off the "Greatest Story Never Told." I just don't think I was ready to commit those words to this site. And if I wasn't ready, trust me, neither were you. I think it's time to put a leash on my words for a little while, they are starting to sniff around places they shouldn't be. So for now those scribbles will remain miscellaneous ramblings on my yellow legal pad.
I just got back from Toronto/Virginia the other day. On the flight out I saw a movie called "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead." Not a bad movie, but it was the title that intrigued me more.
It was the spring of 1989. The Exxon Valdez became the worst oil disaster in history, on my birthday no less. Dan Quayle was learning how to spell potato, and the muslim world was calling a jihad on Salman Rushdie for writing "The Satanic Verses." I was two years out of high school and was essentially killing time. During the day I was spinning wrenches for some Ismali families that had come to Canada looking for the Canadian dream. It was odd at the time, I knew they had a lot of money but they didn't want to spend it. They bought all of these old Rolls Royce's and Mercedes that looked great on the outside, but were really falling apart on the inside. It was my job to piece them together. They obviously knew what they were doing, both families became very successful entrepreneurs in Vancouver, and are very influential to this day. At night, a man named Blaine Cullings opened a Club called The Roxy downtown, I was fairly well known in the club scene at the time, and he asked me to drive the "Hot Rod Lincoln" that was his promotional vehicle for the Club. It was a great job, beautiful car. It was '62 Lincoln convertable, flames painted down the side and leopard skin interior. It was basically my job to drive around town promoting the place and driving contest winners to concerts. It was nice, I could park anywhere, even the front doors of the Coliseum, or B.C. Place. Sometimes I even got to take the winners backstage to meet the band. Of course the publicist would normally push me aside so I would have to gaze from afar, I didn't mind.
One night at the Club, I ran into Murdoch, an old aquaintance of mine from high school. His said there was an oppourtunity at a club that had opened up recently, and he asked if I would join him for a meeting with the owner the next day. Not having a clue what I was getting into I agreed.
We met the next day in Gastown. The name of the club was The Twilight Zone. I had heard of it. It was the first of a new generation of alternative clubs that had evolved from Graceland. We walked through the door into an industrial darkness. The walls were plate steel, everything else was painted black. Daylight could not live within these these walls. We walked down the stairs, the room opened up before us like some lost Egyptian tomb. There was a single table set up in the center of the black and white checkered dancefloor with a solo spotlight shining down to an ashtry centered on the table with an ignored cigarillo providing the only motion in the room as the smoke spun and danced into the light above it. Out of the darkness, a man appeared. A small Ismali man, bookish, glasses, a Van Dyck beard. I am Abdul he said as he waved his hand to the chairs surrounding the table. "Murdoch has told me much about you." he said. I sat in silence. It turned out that Murdoch had been working there as a bartender. The club had apparently been having some "gang" issues and the manager had pretty much wigged out. He wanted Murdoch and I to run the place. Murdoch could deal with the day to day, and I could deal with the promotion. I was astounded that this man was offering a 20 year old, and a 19 year old to run a nightclub, was he nuts?? I told him I would let him know the next day.
I went to the Roxy that night and discussed it with Blaine. He said that he had heard some pretty brutal stories about the Zone, but at the same time, he thought it would be foolish of me to turn it down. I called Murdoch the next day and said I was in. I didn't know it at the time, but it was if I had pulled down the shades of my life for the next two years.
I was already in fairly dark period of my life. I was living above a gun store on Commercial Drive. My hair was half way down my back and wavy. I only wore black, or tie dyed Zeppelin shirts. I wore these horrible large framed rose colored glasses because I couldn't possibly look at the world I was living in with my own eyes. I hadn't discovered beer yet, I was purely fueled by bourbon. And I was normally guaranteed to be fully medicated in one form or another.
I went to the Zone the next afternoon around 3. As I said, there was not a single window in the entire club, and the entire place was always in perpetual darkness. There was a girl working behind the downstairs bar stocking glasses. I asked her if she knew where Murdoch was and she said he was down in the cave. "The Cave?" I asked. "That is where the offices are." She said. "Just follow the stairs down behind the bar." I went down the stairs. It was as if I had walked into a mine. The walls were literally carved out, it was lit by bare light bulbs hanging on wires. Water ran down the walls. The tunnel spun around and around in circles until this cavern opened up where several other caves split off. At the end, Murdoch was sitting at a desk with an asian man sitting across from him. His introduced him as Jance, our bodyguard. "Our what?" "Yeah, well, there were some things I didn't tell you, but trust me, he'll be your best friend." Jance stood and shook my hand, and asked where my car was. I had this beautiful '67 Meteor, as pictured above. I told him I had left it on the sidewalk out front. He asked me for my keys and said he would move it into the Batcave. "Huh?" There is a cave that exits out the back into the railyards, that is the way you'll be coming and going each night, it's the safest. Jance left and I asked Murdoch what the hell was going on. It turns out the Zone was gang central. The police had driven them out of every bar until they all ended up in one spot, and this was it. Ground zero. The Clark Parkers, the El Diablo's, the Russians, they were all there, turns out Jance was the leader of the Lotus gang. Murdoch's rationale was that if we hired someone from each gang, peace would be assured. Thinking was never Murdoch's strong point.
The first night I got to see first hand what cards I had dealt myself. People riding their Harleys right into the bar, three fights, and one stabbing. I spent a good part of the night hiding...and drinking in the cave. Jance standing at the top of the stairs behind the bar. It amazes me to this day how quickly I became desensitized to what was happening around me. I would walk in everynight, step behind the bar, and put a single shot of everything that was in the gun into a pint glass, add a shot of Long Island mix and a shot of lime cordial and that was how I started my night. I was living in a fog.
Within the first year of me being there, seven people were killed either within 10 feet of me, or just after they had walked out the front of the bar. A pimp named Lucky was shot right in front of me, and the worse thing at the time was that I was not even shocked. The police closed it down at least three nights a week.
By the time I was in my second year there, I was a paranoid mess. Jance followed me everywhere. Murdoch always did the dayshift, taking care of the liquor order, accounting, etc. etc.. He would always come back around closing time and would normally find me up in the sectional couches on the upper level. He would always say the same thing to me. "You better go before the devil knows you're dead." We always had this procedure when we left. Chris the DJ would always play "The Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring before playing the last song. We would flood the club with dry ice and disappear through the smoke down into the Batcave and gone.
Every morning (normally afternoons) I would wake up and look in the mirror. "What are you doing asshole?" I would always ask myself. My world was spinning out of control. I could barely tell the difference between fantasy and reality anymore. People I knew in high school would come by the club and were barely able to recognize me. Blaine would pop in on occasion and ask that I just get out of there. I would just blow it off, mostly because I basically incoherant at the time.
Three more people were killed in the next two weeks as they left the club. It was all over the news. My parents asked that I come over for a visit. When I got there, my mother was in tears. She begged that I walk away. My dad for once in his life actually seemed like he cared. He offered me a full years salary to just leave it behind. I did a little soul searching, I knew I had pretty much hit rock bottom. I knew what I had to do. I had to look at what I was doing through sober eyes. The next few weeks I would drink, but only a couple. I was horrified by what surrounded me. I really never knew. I had buried it all so deeply inside. Now I saw the violence, I saw the hate. There were many things that happened inside that club that I will never, ever, talk about. But it is behind me. It made me who I am. Strong, unbreakable. There is one thing that came out of the darkness. I met Miley's mother there. And Miley has provided me with more light than any single thing in my life, so no regrets. It's funny, they filmed a lot of Wiseguy, and 21 Jump Street there. In the odd scene you'll see me in the background hoisting a drink. I always made sure Johnny Depp and Peter Delouise got a real one instead of the fake stuff. Thankfully, it's the only evidence that I was ever there. I got out before the devil knew I was dead.
