Hired Gun Page #7

changes everything.

All of a sudden it goes from me being hired gun,

to me being the guy who has to hire a band.

And I get why Trent was so heavy handed.

Now I'm in the hiring position.

To this day I sit him down and I say, "Listen,

I'm not gonna offer you anything.

You're gonna go on tour,

you're gonna have a f***ing good

time playing music that I wrote,

as the drummer, as the bass

player, as the guitar player,

and that's what you're gonna do."

Oh, man, Filter was...

it's almost laughable what we got paid.

We were...

Of every band we toured with we

were the lowest paid band members,

even if we were making the most in guarantees.

You know, as a hired gun in a band at that level

you're not getting paid enough to sustain anything.

Why are you in Filter?

You know, what are you doing down here, like...

"We like to get in the muck.

We like to get dirty.

We play, f***in', you know,

shitty clubs.

You know, we like to keep it real.

We have to do the paid meet

and greets unless they paid.

Like, the fans are paying money to meet the band.

We don't see any of that money.

I didn't see any of that money.

The singer keeps all to himself.

I like taking the money home.

I like just keeping it all at home.

You know what I mean? Like I'm

not... I don't give a sh*t.

Like, it's a bus, stay on the bus.

You don't need a f***ing hotel room.

I'd rather just sit home and not be in a band

than have to deal with them for another day.

I know of guys that are hired guns that have great,

stories, great situations.

They love their jobs.

That in this situation it wasn't for me.

I had that aha moment of, "Is this really worth it?"

on stage, in Germany.

The show starts just like any other show

and I'm running and jumping, whatever,

and really just rocking out and enjoying it,

and I almost felt this wave come over me,

and I just...

I straightened up,

I turned to Jeff, our drummer,

and I just looked at him, I go,

"This isn't fun anymore."

Like, literally, that was the

moment where I was like,

"I need to find my exit from this project."

And I was gone from the band like, a month later.

[woman] Yeah, so we'll just start with the duo.

You got it.

[man] Rollin on one.

The Philly cheese steak burger

on a fresh baked bun.

At Carl's Jr. and Hardy's.

And, I now am the voice on your TV and radio.

If they need stuff read, I read it.

The grilled cheese breakfast sandwich

only at Carl's Jr.

The most notable one is the Carl's Jr. voice

"Without us, some guys would starve."

On our second leg of the Diary Of A Madman tour

we started in Atlanta.

We did one more show, and our third show,

was in Knoxville, Tennessee,

which is the last time that Randy Rhoads performed.

A 25 year old guitar player,

lead guitarist for Ozzy's band,

Randy Rhodes is dead along with two other passengers

in the single engine aircraft that spun out,

wing touching the tour bus,

cart wheeling into a two storey house

that you see in the background.

[Rudy] I wake up to this boom!

This huge boom by the middle of nowhere.

I mean, the last time I saw Randy,

he was standing on the doorway

getting out of the bus...

He was yelling, "Hey, come on, Jim. Come on in.

We're gonna go on a plane"

Then I say, "You know what, I just...

I'm going to get out of my bunk

when we get to the hotel."

And then it just lay by the pool.

And that's it.

And I closed the curtains,

and went back to sleep.

That was the last time I saw Randy.

It's usually we were like always hanging out together

and do adventures and do stuff together.

This was the only time that I decline,

went back to sleep, and I wake

up to glass everywhere.

There was glass shattered everywhere.

The window... The passenger back window,

was gone. And I...

looked out and there was our tour manager,

Jake Duncan, on his knees pulling his hair out,

crying, "They're gone, they're gone!"

I...

My thought, "We must have

been in a highway accident."

The last thing that I could imagine

was that the plane hit us.

And once you realize,

what's going on...

it's this huge hum...

Hum... [humming]

Really low frequency,

takes over and I couldn't hear anything.

All I heard was a hum.

There's no cellphones,

there's no way to communicate with any authorities

like the fire department or the

police, or anybody to come and help.

The plane, the Cessna just

crashed through some trees...

and exploded on impact on the garage

that was attached to the house.

So the house was also on fire.

We thought, "No, they must've jumped off the plane.

They must be somewhere,

maybe on a tree or something."

You know, we couldn't just...

accept the reality of it, you know,

that they had crashed inside the plane...

And their bodies were burning as

we were listening to the fire.

That was...

the worst experience I've ever had in my whole life.

Sometimes death doesn't give you a warning.

It doesn't say,

"Treat this night,

and savor it,

because it will be the last night."

So, I play like there's no tomorrow.

I treat it like, "This is special."

Because...

There might not be a tomorrow.

This is it. This might be it.

Out of every tragedy there should be

something positive gained from it.

And that's one thing that I've gained from it.

Living like there's no tomorrow.

[man] Has a replacement for

Randy been determined yet?

No, a replacement hasn't been determined yet,

but a decision will be made,

in the course of the next few days.

To be honest with you we really

didn't have much time to...

to mourn.

A decision was made to continue,

to keep Ozzy busy... occupied.

If Ozzy would have just gone home,

and canceled the tour,

he would have probably drank himself to death.

So, basically, we had about ten days

to find a guitar player that

could actually play the songs

the way that Randy composed them and recorded.

And fortunately that's when Brad Gillis,

came into the picture.

[Brad] It was like the biggest gig in the

world that you could have at that time.

Because Ozzy was on top of the world,

with, you know,

coming out with his solo stuff...

And I got the call and I thought,

"I gotta do this."

And the first night I stood at the

sound boards singing The Castle,

and the big huge stage.

The pyro and the lighting,

and the sound.

I was at the soundboard going,

"Oh, my gosh. This is huge!"

I've never even played with the band,

hardly even met the guys,

And here I'm playing my first show.

So, I didn't know what to wear.

They gave me a... They got a

Ferrari jumpsuit they let me wear.

It was kinda cool. Wore that for the first show.

And they put make-up on me,

you know, I never really did make-up before,

and that was kinda strange.

And I tell you, for anybody,

that would have been a tough gig.

But, you know, I was a hired gun,

and been put on the spot,

and thrown into the fire.

It was either sh*t or get off the pot.

You know, I thought if I didn't

follow through with this,

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