Black Star Riders
scott Gorham and Damon Johnson reflect on snakes, the cocaine days and shattered kneecaps
What was your first gig?
Scott: “When I was 17, we got ourselves a gig at this old, crumbling Hollywood relic called The Knickerbocker Hotel. There were about eight people in the place. And those were the residents who stayed in this hotel on a permanent basis, like the old lady in the hat, sipping her Manhattan. It was pretty dismal. It was pretty much a shithole. Terrible pay.” Damon: “I think everyone’s first gig is in someone’s basement, so I’m not going to count that. My first real gig was in 1978, at an ice cream parlour in South Alabama. We played Sweet Home Alabama, Cat Scratch Fever and Takin’ Care Of Business, and made five dollars each. When we loaded out that night, I heard Van Halen for the first time, in the van of this old hippie who brought down the PA. An important night on many levels.”
What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened to you on tour?
Damon: “When I got the gig with Alice Cooper in 2004, my first gig was a casino up in New Jersey. What they neglected to tell me was that when I walked out to the front of the stage to start the song Is It My Body, Coop would walk up and wrap that 12-foot boa constrictor around me. So I started the song with this one spotlight on me. And out of the shadows, here’s Coop starting to sing, with this fucking snake. I just about shit myself.”
What piece of gear is most essential to your live sound?
Damon: “I could play any gig in the world with one Boss tuner and one Tube Screamer.” Scott: “My Les Paul. That’s where all the feel comes from. But accidents can happen. About four years ago, when I was getting ready to go on tour in America, I opened up the case and the neck is broken right in half. I called up this guy called Charlie Chandler – he’s been doing my guitars for over 35 years – in a panic, like,‘Shit, Charlie, what am I gonna do?’ He goes,‘Calm down, just drive your guitar over here and when you pick it up in the morning, it’ll be fine.’And it was. But every once in a while, you run across a shock like that. It’s always at the wrong time, isn’t it?”
What’s the nearest you’ve come to a Spinal Tap moment on tour?
Scott: “In Thin Lizzy, I used to do this thing where I would jump up on the drum riser, muck around with Brian Downey, then jump down next to Phil Lynott and we’d do a little dance. I’d done this 100 times. But on this one particular night in Washington DC, I jumped down and felt my knee go. It just snapped. My guitar tech dragged me off the stage, behind the amplifiers. Then I thought,‘Well, maybe it’s okay.’ So I walked back out and jumped up on the monitors – and the rest of my kneecap ripped off. I got wheeled around in a wheelchair for the rest of the tour, and I had to sit on a stool for the shows, which was really embarrassing. The first night, Phil gives me the big build-up and every spotlight in the house hits me. I was like,‘You dick!’ But I grew to like it; I’d get a huge sympathy applause.”
What’s on your backstage rider?
Scott: “I request two bottles of Sauvignon Blanc. Back in the Lizzy days, we’d go nuts. It was whisky, gin, vodka, lines of coke. It got pretty hairy. We’d get pretty blitzed almost every night. You’d walk on and you’d try to be relatively straight. And then when you came offstage, that was when all hell broke loose.” Damon: “You would think that Alice Cooper would have made the most exotic rock star requests. But the one thing we always had on our rider was a bag of new black socks. Well, coming from a family that was always struggling to make ends meet, I would save these socks from when I’m on tour with Coop. It’s almost six years since I played with Alice, but I still have black socks from when I was in his band.”