Hired Gun Page #6

in the back of my mind, you know...

I could see the writing on the wall.

I never felt it. I thought we were gonna go on

and, you know, continue to go on.

But we were in Australia and Billy said to me,

"What if I go in the studio with

just you and all new players?"

And I was like, "Man, what are you

gonna do with the other guys?"

You know, he goes, "How am I

gonna get any new players?"

He just... cut them loose.

Now I've got three children and I'm married,

and I'm like, "What am I gonna say?

Well, I quit. I'm out."

We weren't making that much money

that I'm a millionaire, you know.

[Russell] The way it would work is

that we would do a tour or whatever,

and then you wait around and you get the call.

And you go in. There's a new batch of songs

and you go bang em' out.

So, you know, we were kind

of in that holding pattern.

And one day I'm driving around

and I hear on the radio

that Billy's got a new band and a new album.

I said, "What?"

I called up Doug, "You're not gonna believe this."

And that's how I found out.

Nobody ever said a word to me after all those years.

[Liberty] I knew it was going to announced on MTV

that Billy Joel was going in with just

me and a whole new bunch of players.

The guys didn't know yet.

And I told Billy, I said,

"You gotta call these guys

and tell them what's going on."

And he was like, "I don't have

to do sh*t. I'm Billy Joel."

[Billy] It was just time to do something different.

I worked with a different co-producer,

and I worked with some different

musicians for the first time since 77.

[Russell] Doug and I got let go at the same time.

I mean, I remember calling Doug,

to tell him what I heard on the radio.

You know, you think that you know...

If you work for a company that many years

you get a watch and a pension.

So, um!

You know,

I didn't even get a phone call.

Russell was upset,

you know, I think it still gets under his skin.

I can honestly say that I never had

any animosity towards Liberty.

It's just... I just didn't get

it. You know, I just...

You know, here we are,

you know, we're all brothers

and now we're kind of out...

of the loop here. It was just...

You know, it was... That was

the toughest pill to swallow!

You either accept it and move on

or you don't.

You are no longer the person

that you were the day before.

You're no longer in Billy Joel's band.

You're no longer,

going on tour.

You're no longer playing at Madison Square garden.

Your identity is totally gone now.

You're still the guy that played on the records,

but you're not that person

that you were the day before.

And Doug had a very, very diffi cult time with that.

[Russell] Doug tried and tried and tried to move on,

but... His life just kept taking steps

backwards instead of steps forward.

Then I went out,

to do a gig and then I came home,

and my wife then was crying on the couch,

and something had happened in the afternoon.

I said, "Come on, you're still crying

over what happened this afternoon?"

She goes, "No, Doug Stegmeyer killed himself."

Every time I spoke to Doug on the phone,

it was always, "Hi, how are you doing?

What's going on?"

Blah, blah, blah... Small talk.

And then,

you know, "Yeah, I'm having a hard

time paying for this." Or whatever...

"You at least... you still got

your f***ing gig with Billy!

F***ing..." You know,

"I f***ing lost my gig and you got your f***ing gig.

Remember, I got you that gig."

And I was like, "Holy sh*t!"

So, the one time that he called,

I'm listening to him on the answering machine,

and I didn't pick up the phone

because I didn't want it to turn

into one of those phone calls again.

And that's when he ended his life.

Doug did what he did to himself.

We all could have been...

better,

and helped him.

But...

it's something I still can't come to grips with.

I just don't understand,

how you go there.

It's been maybe one of the toughest

things I've had to deal with

because I felt like I lost my brother.

And it's...

That's it.

[Rudy] Right before I got the phone call from Ozzy,

the lowest point in my life...

I had just turned 30 years old.

The way that the industry was,

the music industry in those days.

Being thirty years old,

being in a dinosaur type of musical genre

like we were doing in Quiet

Riot wasn't very promising.

[laughs]

You know, to say the least.

But, what happened was that as I

was pursuing my musical career

I was also pursuing my own spirituality.

You know...

Finding the meaning of life,

I made peace with God,

that if I didn't make it as a musician,

it was all right.

That's cool.

But, as long as my fingers kept moving

I was gonna keep playing.

And within days I got a call

from Ozzy.

That phone call came in at the right moment.

Joining Ozzy had a completely different meaning to me

that it would had had...

if I didn't had made peace with God.

I understood the blessing that it was.

[Richard] I started my journey,

in music as a hired gun for Nine Inch nails.

Trent had this record contract,

and he said, "I saw you in that band Collapse,

and you were jumping around the stage

and you looked like you were having a good time.

Why don't you come and join Nine Inch Nails

and use it as a stepping board to

get out and do your own thing?"

And I was, like, "Okay, cool.

This sounds like a great idea."

There was no negotiation.

It was, like, "Hey, you want to go on tour?"

"Sure." "Okay."

I actually thought, "I'm a part of this, right?

I'm allowed to work with you

and make some guitar stuff."

I had said to Trent, I said "But

when is the record coming out?

He's like, "Well, I'm almost done.

I'm mastering it-II

I'm, like, "F***, I didn't play on it.

Like, I didn't do anything on it."

I said, "Trent, man, you're going to New Orleans.

You're going to, you know,

to rebuild your whole life,

rent a new house and put a studio in it."

And I'm going back home and living

with my mom in a basement!"

And he's like, he looked at me and he went,

"Get off your butt, and go write a record."

So... I did.

I had written this song called Hey Man Nice Shot.

There's a glass ceiling in Nine Inch Nails.

There was a glass ceiling at that time of,

even if you write you're never gonna own it.

I was making $400 a month.

John had called me up, who was their manager,

and he said, "Hey,

we're not seeing you that much,

and we know you want some more money.

We're not really sure what you're doing.

But if you want,

to make a little bit more money,

there's a pizzeria,

at the bottom of Cielo Drive,

and they're looking for drivers.

Would you want to go make some money,

as a pizza delivery boy?"

I took my little song Hey Man Nice Shot,

I got a new manager,

I've got a lawyer,

and I'm now in negotiation with five labels.

What would you go at?

The pizza?

A man

Has gun

Hey man

Have fun

The power of having a great song,

and the fact that you're the singer,

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