The year was 1989. The music world was still in the midst of its love
affair with heavy metal and hair bands. But the end was nearing. Grunge
was not far away, the music phenomenon that changed the sound, and look,
of rock and roll forever. But even before the revolution from Seattle
came, fans and artists alike were beginning to hunger for something new.
Something to light their imaginations and electrify the airwaves.
No one suspected that this something new was waiting in Sacramento, California.
In 1989, no one had heard of lounge metal. Today, few even remember that
it existed. But for that brief window of time, before grunge exploded
and wiped everything else away, this new sound, this fusion of styles
and eras and ideas that none had ever imagined, took the world's breath
away. For that golden moment, everyone stopped, and listened, and loved.
The band that they loved, that created and nurtured and shared this new
sound, that rose to the top of the music industry in a whirlwind and toppled
to Earth just as dramatically, was called The Lounge Axe.
This is their story.
Mike O'Connell, Rich Straub and Kris Kanas, circa 1988
It began in the Sacramento, California suburb called Carmichael.
Three friends--Mike O'Connell, Rich Straub and Kris Kanas--shared a house
together. They had been friends since high school, where they all met
and bonded because of their shared interest in music. This interest continued
for all of them after graduation, and when not working their day jobs,
the three were either playing in their separate bands, hitting the Sacramento
rock clubs to network and check out the competition, or lounging around
the living room of their house on Stollwood Drive, jamming and writing
songs together.
"It was a great time," Rich Straub remembers.
"I mean, we all had jobs, yeah. Lousy jobs. I worked at senior living
place. Kris was working at a warehouse driving a forklift and moving pallets
of skin magazines around. Mike worked in telemarketing. Something to do
with cosmetics, I think. But we didn't care about all that. It was all
about the music. Playing it, making it, hearing it. Sacramento was a great
town for rock and roll back then."
Guitarist Kris Kanas
They were each in different bands with different degrees
of success--from some to none. Kris played rhythm guitar for a Foghat
cover band called "The Fog". Rich played lead for a band he
formed called "Cutthroat", but member turnover and poor attendance
kept them from ever getting off the ground or getting more than three
gigs. Mike played piano for a lounge band that saw occasional work at
weddings, airport and hotel bars, and one mall opening. "The Mixers"
were never meant for greatness.
It was during one of their weeknight jam sessions at home
that the three friends and roommates came to the obvious conclusion. It
was time to stop talking about it and start their own band.
"It just made sense," Kris shrugs. "It was
all we talked about doing after high school, but then one of us was always
in another band or had a big overtime job or whatever. Finally we just
decided to do it. Our other bands were holding us back. We never worked
as well, musically, with any of those people as we did with each other."
During one of the pre-Lounge songwriting jams at the
Stollwood Drive house
So they quit their other bands and started putting their
efforts and all their free time toward songwriting together. Each of the
three brought different styles and skills to the process. Step one was
deciding on a sound.
"We wanted something different," Mike recalls.
"We wanted to stand out. Sac was just filled with one wannabe hair
band after another. I mean, we all loved rock and roll. We all dug the
metal. But the question we asked ourselves was how can we take what we
love and really make it our own? Really knock their socks off?"
After many experiments and failures, something just happened
one night. Mike started playing an old Sinatra standard on his keyboard.
Rich, just screwing around, started joining in on guitar. Kris suddenly
started laying down some power chords.
"I don't know what happened," Kris laughs. "Dude.
It was just one of those moments. This sound just came from nowhere. It
just worked. It didn't just work, it rocked!"
That was where the sound was born. These three musicians
began both writing songs and rewriting old standards, fusing lounge music
with hard guitar. The songs flowed, and their excitement grew. They knew
they were onto something.
Mike O'Connell songwriting at the Stollwood house
"You know that story of how Brad Whitford came up on
Steve Tyler at the piano?" Mike asks. "Steven's all excited,
says 'Hey, man, listen to this', and starts playing the piano part from
'Dream On'. He tells Brad 'This is going to be huge. A number one song.'
Brad's like, well, okay. Didn't think much of it. And look what happened.
It was kind of like that. I'd try to tell people about it, other music
people I knew, and they just kind of stared at me like I was nuts."
But neither Mike, Rich nor Kris listened to the doubters.
They knew that had started something. They also knew that if this music
was going to have a band to go with it, they'd need more than just the
three of them.
First came the drummer. Mike had met Joel B. Levy, a percussionist
and struggling novelist, at a Queensryche concert in Oakland. The two
had become fast friends.
"They were in the middle of 'Eyes of a Stranger', and
this guy I'm fighting for space up front with is doing air drums. You
know how people, like, do the air drums or air guitar or air bass when
they really can't play any instrument at all? Like they think if they
fake it with confidence, some hot betty will look over and go, 'ooh, he's
a musician! I'm so going to screw that guy!' But, you know, you can tell.
And I remember watching him and thinking, 'Hey, this guy actually is a
drummer. And a pretty good one, too. Maybe some chick will screw
him.'"
Drummer Joel B. Levy at the Oakland Queensryche show
While there was no screwing in store for Joel that night,
he and Mike did meet at the tee shirt booth after the show, and started
talking music. Now, a year later, Mike would call Joel and ask him to
drive up to Sacramento and talk about a band proposition. Joel meshed
with the rest of the group, and the concept, right from the start. Within
a week, he'd moved to Sacramento and into the Stollwood house.
Joel on drums at band rehearsal
The next step was a bass player. Here, it was Rich's turn
to contribute. One of the many bass players that he'd gone through in
Cutthroat was a guy named Aaron "A.T." Thompson. A.T. had worked
well with Rich, and was an excellent bassist, but personal problems with
the other band members, and musical differences, caused him to become
another Cutthroat casualty. But he and Rich would still see each other
at bars, clubs and shows. It took some time to track him down, since A.T.
tended to go through homes and roommates like Cutthroat went through singers,
but finally, he was called in.
Bassist Aaron "A.T." Thompson
"Oh, we knew he was the man right off," Kris says.
"Great guy. Got along with everyone. Was really excited about the
songs and the ideas, too. Guy's a serious artist. We'd get in these big
heated debates over songs, but not like fighting. Like, we were struggling
to get to a place we couldn't reach except by working together. Many late
nights doing that, dude. They were great. Some of our best songs came
out of A.T. griping that something just wasn't right. Usually, he ended
up on the money."
And then there was the last, and most important, piece of
the puzzle. The band, still unnamed, had no singer. Sacramento was ripe
with raw-throated rocker singers, trained in the art of the power ballad
and the party anthem. But for this band, a band trying for lounge metal,
no ordinary singer would do. They needed a crooner. One with attitude.
None of the assembled musicians knew anyone who fit the
bill. The group put ads up in local music stores and publications. Many
applied. None were what they were looking for.
"'No, dude,'" Rich says, rolling his eyes. "'Lounge.
We're going for lounge'. They'd be like, 'Huh? Oh, yeah, I get it. Let
me try again.' Then they'd start doing Coverdale. No one got it."
Just when it looked like all hope was lost, and this experimental
band was dead before its first real breath, Mark Tackett called.
Singer Mark Tackett
Mark was working at the time painting house numbers on sidewalks
and gutters around Sacramento. He'd done some singing in high school.
He was a fan of the old standards. But also of Skinny Puppy. And he never
had any real dreams of singing for a living. But one Monday, on a very
hot summer afternoon, he was painting numbers on the curb in front of
a local music shop. He just went in to ask for a glass of water before
he passed out. While rehydrating, he happened to read the bulletin board
there. He found the ad. And for some reason, he decided to copy down the
number and give a call.
"The whole band was together that night, all at the
house," Mike says. "Mark showed up, and we made introductions.
We talked music, but he really didn't say much. He wasn't the music nerd
that the rest of us were. And then we decided to just jump in and try
him out. We started him on 'Death Be a Lady'. And it was magic."
Everyone there knew it that night. Their band was formed.
All the elements clicked. They began rehearsing and doing more songwriting
as a unit. And discussing what the band's name would be.
"It's one of those things," says Kris. "There's
no way to know which one person came up with it. Somebody did. It just
came from the lounge and metal fusion. It made sense. And we all liked
it, so it stuck."
Finally, The Lounge Axe was ready to play.
Lining up gigs was a little tough, despite all the bar and
club owners the collected members knew. Their concept was a hard sell.
But their first gig did come together, on September 5, 1989, at a restaurant/bar
called Jose's. There was no stage at this bar. Bands had to jam themselves
into a corner of the bar, and there was scarcely room for them and all
their equipment. But they made it work, just happy to finally be able
to try their music out on a live crowd. Even one as small as the one at
Jose's.
"There were maybe forty people in there that night,"
former Jose's bartender Chuck Newton remembers. "About normal for
us. But those guys started playing? Man, everyone stopped. Stopped talking,
stopped hitting on chicks, stopped on their way to the john. They just
had to listen. No one had ever heard anything like it."
The crowd, small as it was, went wild. The mood was electric.
There were two encores and would have been more if Chuck hadn't needed
to kick everyone out and close. The Lounge Axe had turned their small
show into a big success.
At the Jose's show. (L to R): Rich's friend David
McKnight, Rich Straub, Vega Management's Tim Watts, Mike O'Connell, high
school friend Jack Barnes, Kris Kanas, and other high school friend Kevin
Brace.
"Who knew?" Rich shrugs. "None of us expected
that. We just hoped people wouldn't boo us and tell us to start playing
'Freebird'. We were just high off it."
But more happened that night than just standing ovations.
The first was that Creem Magazine's Charlie Dix happened to be there.
This might have been an amazing coincidence, but it wasn't. A.T., who
seemed to know everyone in the business, knew a guy who knew a guy who
leaked it to Charlie that he may want to be there, since he was already
in Sacramento covering the Whitesnake tour.
"Blew my mind," Dix wrote in the January 1990
Creem. "Like nothing I've ever heard before. I was witnessing a moment
of creation. I was there in the garden, watching the day being divided
from night. I ate from the f**king tree, and I knew. Rock and roll had
just evolved."
"Aside from the mixed metaphor with the creation and
evolution things," Joel would later say in a radio interview in Boston,
"I was pretty jazzed about that piece. I just liked the review, but
I didn't know it was going to be what really launched us."
The second turning point of the evening was the attendance
at the show of Mike's twin brother, Stuart O'Connell. Also interested
in music all his life, but lacking any musical talent, Stuart was trying
to make his way into the business through management. He and his business
partner, Tim Watts, managed three Sacramento bands and had aspirations
to get out of the small market.
Stuart O'Connell and Tim Watts of Vega Management
That night, they both heard the Lounge Axe sound. Stuart
was impressed and surprised--having been one of Mike's doubters when his
brother had tried to explain the band--but Watts was struck by lightning.
And, in his 1997 autobiography, I Did It For The Music, he wrote
that he had a vision right there on the spot, seeing money raining down
from the ceiling all over the band. And he made up his mind right there
that wherever they were going, he was going with them. And getting plenty
of that visioncash for himself.
Without even discussing it with his partner, Stuart, first,
Watts approached the band and immediately started working to get Vega
Management behind them. He worked every angle, shook every hand, and sold
them on the idea that he and Stuart would take them right to the top.
It was Mike's relation to Stuart that convinced everyone to give them
a try. After all, they didn't have a manager, or any experience at it
themselves, so it made sense to leave the business end to someone else
and just focus on the music. Watts arranged a weekend for all of them
in Reno, where the liquor flowed, the women were plentiful, and the papers
were signed.
Stuart O'Connell, Tim Watts and Rich Straub in the
suite in Reno signing the first Lounge Axe/Vega Management contract
To their credit, Watts and Stuart O'Connell did get right
to work, and soon The Lounge Axe was playing all over northern California.
Word of mouth spread fast. It was standing room only in every bar and
club they booked, and A&R reps started to get wind and take in the
shows. The band generated major buzz just on performance, but when the
Creem article came out, things went through the roof.
"A record deal," Mike marvels, holding his hands
up in mock astonishment. "We just wanted to play to people in bars,
man. This is this dream. Everyone who plays in every crappy little band
in any city in America. This is the dream you play in your head while
you're tuning your guitar or checking your levels. And it was happening
to us."
It happened through RCA records, who signed The Lounge Axe
to a three record deal and immediately started pushing for a national
tour. As their managers, Watts and Stuart were merciless on contract negotiations,
and got nearly everything they wanted. That's how much RCA execs believed
in the band, and this new phenomenon they felt they were going to be shepherding.
The band got huge advances. None of them had ever seen that kind of money.
And before they knew what was happening, they were on a national tour,
initially opening for Def Leppard. They were no longer playing clubs.
These six northern California musicians, all in their early twenties,
were playing stadiums, playing before thousands.
Kris checking out the crowds pre-show at Candlestick
Park
"You can't imagine," Kris says, shaking his head.
"Stepping out on that stage for the first time, hearing your band's
name announced--your band--and hearing and feeling the roar of
all those people. I almost passed out the first night of the tour. Mark
threw up for like three days beforehand, but got it together for that
night. And we rocked that place, dude. We were flawless."
Mike and Joel backstage in St. Louis during the "Rocked,
Not Stirred" tour
Concertgoers and record buyers alike felt the same way.
The band and their sound was a sensation. They made the covers of Rolling
Stone and Circus. But their fame wasn't just spreading in the usual music
periodicals. Word was getting out. Metal fans were in a frenzy, but fans
of Rat Pack-era music were getting the word and tuning in, and inexplicably
loving the new interpretation.
Manager Tim Watts and Guitarist Kris Kanas in a limo
after the sold-out Madison Square Garden show
"I loved those guys," Tony Bennett says with a
grin. "The first time I heard Mark Tackett belting out 'Best Is Yet
To Come'? I was floored. I told my agent, who was listening to the CD
with me, 'This kid's got chops'. They all did. They did what everyone's
supposed to do with the standards. You make 'em your own. And, baby, did
these kids. And they went a step further and wrote up some new classics
of their own. I was a fan. Bet your bottom dollar."
The Lounge Axe's first CD went gold seemingly overnight
Sales of The Lounge Axe's first CD, "Rocked, Not Stirred",
skyrocketed. Word of mouth kept the sales going. Kids were buying them
for their parents to listen to. The music itself seemed to be bridging
the generation gap in many families. When the band would show up for a
record store signing to promote it, thousands would pour to the locale
and block traffic. Each band member was shocked to find people knew their
names. Mark Tackett, a shy, formerly inconspicuous young man, was even
more shocked to find himself a sex symbol. Female fans would scream like
school girls when he crooned old classics, then go out of their minds
when his power vocals kicked in.
"He was Frank, man," Rich says. "He was Elvis.
The chicks were all over him. He got underwear thrown up at him. He got
flashed more flesh from the front row than David Lee Roth. Teenage girls
and their mothers wanted to take him home. He didn't know what to do with
that."
Mark takes a big dive into his pool at his Bel Air
compound
Indeed, none of them knew what to do with their new fame
and lifestyles. They were on talk shows. They had two successful music
videos on MTV at once, "Death Be a Lady" and the live concert
video for "Bite My Olive". And there was the money. Where once
most of the band members lived in the same house, now they all had their
own homes...some of them very extravagant. Most them either had houses
or kept houses or condos in L.A. But some, like Rich and Kris, also owned
homes back in Sacramento. They all had cars. Clothes. Boats. All the trappings
of fortune and fame were theirs. As well as the excesses that come with
them.
Rich taking one of his new cars out for a spin on
Hollywood Blvd.
Kris grilling up at his Beverly Hills mansion
Lost in the tumultuous happenings in their lives, many band
members overindulged. Drinking became a problem for some. As many new
stars learn, when you wait your whole life to become one of the rich and
famous, you want to mingle with as many of them as you can, so partying
at hotspots all over L.A. and the nation became the norm. The Lounge boys
were the toast of the town wherever they went, and the toasts were many.
Mike was arrested in Cleveland for D.U.I and excessive speed in a rented
Jag. After a weekend-long party in Malibu with The Cure's Robert Smith
and actor Christian Slater and others, A.T. was taken to the hospital
with a case of alcohol poisoning. Though Joel was the member of the band
who stayed away from the drink, he had his own problems with the law after
punching an over-ambitious photojournalist in Miami. The band, while still
tame compared to many of their contemporaries, was racking up a rap sheet.
A sure sign that they had arrived.
The photo taken by photographer Deke Jamison after
he was punched by Joel at Miami International
The next confirmation of this came when CD sales and reviews
resulted in awards. The Lounge Axe stormed the 1991 Grammys, winning 6
awards, including Album of the Year. They similarly reigned at the MTV
Video Music Awards, taking home 5, including Best Group Video for "Death
Be a Lady", where they beat out Joel's idols, Queensryche, and their
"Silent Lucidity" video.
A.T. backstage at the Grammys after the Axe's award
number four
Kris and Mike at the post-MTV VMA party
They had every kind of validation they
could ask for, from fans to critics to the music industry itself. The
Lounge Axe was, by anyone's definition, on top of the world.
And that's when things started to go wrong.
