STEPHEN PEARCY Mötley were about a year ahead of us. We’d troll the Strip, trying to see who the biggest, baddest band was when we moved up to L.A. And people kept saying, “There’s this new band, Mötley Crüe.” And we were like, “Oh, yeah?” “Yeah, they light their legs on fire and they do this and that, they’re crazy. They’re partiers and there’s chicks around.” And so we’re going, “Okay…”
CHRIS HAGER (guitarist, Mickey Ratt, Rough Cutt) Stephen and I were from San Diego. And there’s a big history of people who migrated up from San Diego who actually wound up becoming notable people in the scene. I’m talking people like Jake E. Lee, Warren DeMartini, Robbin Crosby, just to name a few.
BRIAN SLAGEL Ratt saw how Mötley had done it, and they naturally kinda followed the lead of Mötley and went in that direction. Once they did that, then the whole scene kinda took off.
STEPHEN PEARCY People were going, “Who’s the next band around here that’s doing something?” And people would say, “Oh, it’s a band called Mickey Ratt.”
CHRIS HAGER Stephen wanted to call the band Mickey Rat after this magazine cartoon character. He was sort of the antithesis of Mickey Mouse, this kinda fucked-up guy who drank and smoked and fucked a lot of chicks, right? Mickey Rat was a scoundrel. And he was funny. And Stephen loved it. Then we added another T to the end of the name to avoid copyright infringement.
DAVE JELLISON (bassist, Mickey Ratt) Stephen knew someone who had a house in Culver City. And he could live in her garage. And he’s like, “I’m going to go to L.A. and make it…”
STEPHEN PEARCY It was my friend’s mom’s house. Mrs. O’Neill. The garage’s back room was converted into a big, square white room.
CHRIS HAGER So we moved all the band equipment into the garage and put our little mattresses and stuff in there. We lived in this garage, we rehearsed there, we partied there. And that was the genesis of Ratt, basically.
DAVE JELLISON Stephen’s chief skill, to be honest, was his steadfast belief that he was going to be famous. I was like, “But you’re not that good of a singer and you’re not really that good onstage and you’ve got no rap…” But, I mean, from the day I met him, we were playing a backyard party in San Diego in 1978, he was like, “I’m going to move to L.A. and I’m going to be famous.” It was like “What? You’re playing a shitty party!”
CHRIS HAGER We played together for about a year and a half, doing all the clubs that were around at that time, like Madame Wong’s and Club 88. We even did the Starwood right before it closed down [in June 1981, roughly two months after Mötley Crüe’s debut performance there].
STEPHEN PEARCY We played the Troubadour once in a while but they were strict about “you can’t play down the street for two months…” and all this stuff. So you had to play the game until you became a house band, which Mickey Ratt did.
CHRIS HAGER We became the house band at Gazzarri’s.
STEPHEN PEARCY Stryper also played there, only they were called Roxx Regime at the time. They became really good friends with us.
MICHAEL SWEET (singer, Guitarist, Roxx Regime, Stryper) We used to hang out in front of Gazzarri’s and smoke cigarettes together and talk.
DAVE JELLISON This is before they decided that being a religious band was going to be their focus. Because they weren’t religious. They were in the parking lot, you know, with chicks just like everybody else. There was no indication of any Christianity in them.
MICHAEL SWEET The way it worked was you would do three to four short sets, maybe forty-five minutes each. And the minute you would stop the next band would go on. And there would be two or three bands each weekend. And this went on starting from seven or eight o’clock at night until two a.m.
CHRIS HAGER Bill Gazzarri was a quintessential Hollywood kind of a guy. Kind of a gruff, shady, tough old bird, you know what I mean?
DAVE JELLISON Bill Gazzarri was one of the most disturbing human beings ever made. He would get onstage and say, “Nothing but the hottest bands on my staaaage!” He kept referring to how good-looking all the guys were. And then there were the Miss Gazzarri’s contests, which were just a bunch of super-hammered nineteen-year-old chicks.
CHRIS HAGER As far as girls, Stephen and I were pulling a lot of women from day one. We had this thing where we would always … not always, but a lot of times, we would wind up with sisters. Even twins in some cases. This happened more than a couple times.
DAVE JELLISON You get a band that is appealing to the women and the men will follow. That’s been around since time began.
CHRIS HAGER Mickey Ratt was actually doing pretty well. But it came to a point where, musically, it wasn’t quite working for me. So we parted ways. And the name of the band gradually changed from Mickey Ratt to M. Ratt to, by the time I left, just Ratt.
MICHAEL SWEET And then Jake E. Lee was in Ratt. So that was really cool.
JAKE E. LEE (guitarist, Ratt, Rough Cutt, Ozzy Osbourne) When I was in San Diego I was in a band called Child. We were a big San Diego band, but I realized that we were never going to get any bigger than being a big San Diego band. I tried to talk all of them into going up to L.A., but they were all older than me. They all had jobs. Half of them were married. They didn’t want to do it. So I moved up to L.A. on my own, but I knew Stephen Pearcy and the guys in Ratt. It’s not like we were close or anything, but we had played shows together and partied together and stuff like that in San Diego. When I got to L.A. I’d go check out Stephen’s shows and hang with the band and stuff, and that’s how I got into Ratt.
MATT THORNE (bassist, Ratt, Rough Cutt) And then the bass player, I think it was Dave Jellison, quit. And Jake was my roommate at the time, so he said, “Hey, you want to audition for this?” So I learned the songs and went down there and I was in.
My first gig with Ratt was a house party in Culver City. But then we played the Troubadour, and we played Gazzarri’s a lot. But nobody was packing the clubs yet except for Mötley Crüe. And Mötley Crüe wouldn’t have played a house party in Culver City.
RON KEEL (singer, Steeler, Keel) The first time I ever went to L.A. I got in a rental car and went straight to Gazzarri’s. Coming from Nashville, I didn’t really have any gauge of anything. Back then your conduit of information was basically Circus, Creem, Hit Parader … There was no MTV, there was no internet. So I went inside Gazzarri’s and to me it was rock ’n’ roll heaven. And Ratt was playing. I’m pretty sure they were doing “Rock Bottom” by UFO when I walked into the room. And Jake, he was obviously the center of attention. I thought, That guitar player’s pretty good. I think I can take that singer, but that guitar player’s badass!
JAKE E. LEE Pearcy had been playing rhythm guitar up until when I joined the band, but I’d always pretty much been in one-guitar bands. And Pearcy knew it. And he knew that I could handle all the guitar parts by myself and make it sound full. So we became a one-guitar band for a while. And that’s when Robbin moved up to L.A. from San Diego.
DAVE JELLISON Robbin Crosby came from money. His dad worked for National Geographic, his dad was successful, they had a nice house in La Jolla. Basically he told his dad he wanted to be a rock star. He said, “I want you to give me the money you would give me for college and I want to apply it to being a rock star.” I was like, “Fuckin’ A…”
CHRIS HAGER Robbin had the nickname “King.” He was, I don’t know, six-foot-four or whatever. And a great-looking guy. But a little intimidating if you didn’t know him. And he was the kind of guy that was not afraid to speak his mind. So he’d give you shit, but usually good-natured shit.
JAKE E. LEE So he would come to all the shows, hang out, help us move gear. And he started hounding me, saying, “Jake, don’t you want another guitar player?” “No, Robbin, I don’t!” But he was a real likable, charismatic guy. We’d go out, party, get drunk, and he would harangue me about being in the band. And eventually I succumbed.
MATT THORNE Robbin had a hard time getting in a band because he was so tall. Nobody really wanted him because he was like a giant compared to everybody else.
JAKE E. LEE So finally I told Robbin, “Okay, you can be in the band, but you’re just the rhythm player. And if I just want you to play one power chord throughout the song, that’s what you’ll do, right?” He said, “Yes, yes, absolutely.” But as soon as he got in the band it was, “Okay, what leads do I get to do?” I said, “What are you talking about? You can’t do any leads!” And he was like, “Come on, there’s gotta be one or two…” So I said, “Tell you what, any lead in any song that you think you can do better than me, that’s the one you can play.” But he just kept talking himself into being a bigger and bigger part of the band. And that was one of the reasons I eventually left.
CHRIS HAGER Once Robbin and Stephen got together, they became the nucleus of what Ratt was.
JAKE E. LEE I think Robbin was living with Stephen for a while, in the garage where we rehearsed. Because I remember I showed up for rehearsal early one day, and I walked in and he was jacking off. The funny part was that I was embarrassed and kind of grossed out, and Robbin was totally casual about it. He’s like, “Hey, Jake, you’re early!” I was like, “Sorry … I’ll get out.” He goes, “Oh, no problem!” He was still talking to me as I was trying to back out the door. But Stephen and Robbin were always more flamboyant, whereas I was a little more subdued.
CHRIS HAGER Stephen also had this eye for fashion. A lot of the stuff we wore was, like, girl’s jeans and stuff like that. Everybody was wearing spikes and leather, but Ratt, they had more of this pirate thing going on.
MATT THORNE He had, you know, big, padded shoulders, with pants that look like riding pants that would be puffy and then tight at your ankle. And then these little booties. It looked really feminine to me.
STEPHEN PEARCY We would call ourselves Cement Pirates. We were looking like a cross between Adam Ant and Duran Duran. That was the image that Robbin and I kinda stuck to. Because we didn’t want to alienate the girls whatsoever, and we kinda catered to them by looking nice. So it was full-blown Cement Pirates for years.
JAKE E. LEE Then one day Stephen said something about the way I dressed onstage. And he told me that I really needed to up my game as far as how I looked onstage. I was like, “Really?” And he says, “Yeah. More like Robbin. Robbin’s a Ratt guy. I’m a Ratt guy. You’re not so much a Ratt guy.” And that was the moment I quit. You know, problem solved. I’m out. See ya later! I know that Stephen likes to say that I quit because I got the Ozzy gig. But I can say definitely that was why I quit Ratt.