TKO / Adam Bomb vocalist / guitarist
Adam Bomb
PART II
FIBM:   Now tell us about the story of the creditors taking those master reels from the "New York Times" (Steve Stevens) recording sessions and how you got them back several years later.

Adam Bomb:  That was involved with some shady fuckin people. Jack Douglas was pretty heavy duty, back in the day, with Krebs, but he blew his millions on heroin and women. Jack Douglas was there with John Lennon on his last day of life and you know, it obviously fucked him up for the rest of his life. You know, being involved in that, it was just a horrible, horrible worldwide nightmare...to be right in the front row....he was pretty much fucked.


FIBM:   It says on your site, that retrieving those tapes was like a scene from Goodfellas.

Adam Bomb:  Oh, I had to go to some fucking warehouse in Brooklyn....I don't know, we got a call, this was in.....you know we spent maybe hundreds of thousands of bucks making the record; Krebs kept writing checks to do this record...you know we'd get this guy to come in and then this guy to come in...oh, get Mick Taylor, he wants 200 a song...ok do it....and Jack, we need three more days of studio time, we need another ten grand...and so, me & Jack were hussling trying to get money, saying, yeah we're coming up with some great shit...uh, you know I just had all my buddies over there, you know, Bobby Chouinard, uh....when we finished the record, I decided I was going to take off and go to Hawaii (laughs). So I went to Hawaii and just started working with Rick Keefer. So I didn't really care about the "Times" record. You know, I just figured Jack would have mixed it when I got back. But Jack was really fucked up, instead of mixing it....he only mixed two or three songs and David said alright we're going to shop these. Finish the record now, otherwise it's all going to get lost. A couple of weeks later the studio went bankrupt and the tapes were gone. About a year later, I get a call...you know some fucking bitch saying if I wanted to get my tapes back she'd sell them to me. Otherwise they were going to sell them for scrap. So, you know, I went through this bullshit and I got the money up. We met up in some warehouse...had a feeling that you were going to get arrested, or someone was going to shoot me, like it was shady. But I got my tapes and got the fuck out of there.

FIBM:   Any other cool Jack Douglas stories to share?

Adam Bomb:  Ummmm, well, most of my stories would be things they'd want to tell themselves. Jack did tell me some great John Lennon stories, some great Beatles stories. Let's see.....I guess I could tell you...they were working together....that him (John) and Paul got back together through this pot bust. Paul was fed up apparently and this was around the time that John Lennon was supposed to be deported and they set up Paul to try and defame both of these guys. And after they started coming around, Paul started coming up to the Dakota and writing with John and they were going to do an album called the Ringo album and get George on board and then John Lennon died.

They used to do the session and then John would pull out this thousand year old opium pipe and put some pot in and they'd start smoking it, tell stories...they would talk about Beatles stories for hours.

FIBM:   Is it true that Axl Rose came up to you and said that they had wanted to ask you to join Guns n Roses, but thought you would have turned them down?

Adam Bomb:  I was at the Cat Club one day and Axl said some shit to me. He said he saw me play with TKO, right before that STEELER gig and him and Izzy were there. But if they would have asked me, I would have told them no. I mean, there were lots of like rocker kids back then, you wouldn't have known one from the next. Even though I knew Izzy. But I wouldn't have thought that joining a band with Izzy would have got me anywhere.

FIBM:   What is Izzy doing now?

Adam Bomb:  I don't know, you would have to ask him. The other day, when I talked to him, he told me that he still waits in line at the DMV just like everyone else. (laughs)

FIBM:   Tell us about some of your history with Hanoi Rocks vocalist, Michael Monroe.

Adam Bomb:  Krebs always tried to get us together. I think we met with him....I don't know, around the Steve Stevens time. I don't know, eventually I hooked up with Michael and we started working on material and we kind of clicked. I don't know....a lot of people didn't want us working together.

FIBM:   Why is that?

Adam Bomb:  I don't know. First it was his wife, I don't know. People are really protective over rock stars....it's ridiculous. It's like Oh he working with this guy, oh don't fuckin.....you know they don't know people who they work with...this fucking guys getting together fucking playing guitar, making music, talking about music

FIBM:  What happened to Michael's wife?

Adam Bomb:  She died of a brain aneurysm.

FIBM:  And she was the one that didn't want the two of you working together?

Adam Bomb:   They were off and on about it. At first they were very excited about it and you know I got her together with David Krebs. She was singing in the band and nobody could have really wanted her to be on stage singing. I don't know it was like a Yoko Ono thing, Linda McCartney thing. They were just a volatile couple. Michael was just kind of into making music and dancing around like a butterfly. You know...it was kind of similar....I don't know.....I had problems with Michael's musicians he had before I joined them.



Michael Monroe & Adam Bomb

FIBM:  What kind of problems?

Adam Bomb:  Well, he had these guitar players that weren't very good. I told him he should get himself some good guitar players. Let me play guitar for you and we'll make a fucking record and that's kinda what we did. But a lot of fucking politics went down..musicians he played with before.


FIBM:   Was there a feud between you and Michael?

Adam Bomb:   Well...let's see, eventually we spent months going back and forth to Finland...recording...making demos, doing gigs and then we finally did the record.....NO...we were finally going to do the record and do a tour and then Judy, his wife, canceled it. And then it was over, Krebs didn't want anything to do with it. So it fell apart. So I said fuck this, and said I was going to go to Hawaii and record the songs myself and so I did. And when Michael found out about that, he got livid and we got in a fight. And then eventually, well it was right after Judy died, I started getting in touch with him again. I told him I wouldn't put it out until way after his, you know, let's go make his and we got together and made his record. I had different ideas of where the record should go. At that time too, he had reformed Hanoi Rocks with this kid Mickey, you know there were always these guitar players trying to join up with him. With me being here in New York, you know, it's real easy for someone to get......work with other people and do other things, so we just kind of drifted apart. But he started Hanoi, we did the record anyway. They took the best songs from Michael's solo record and put them on Hanoi and then put the rest on Whatcha Want.

FIBM:   Tell us about how you began working with John Paul Jones.

Adam Bomb:   Let's see....I started doing some solo gigs. I did a one-off gig at the Borderline in England. Right before that I met him in New York because my wife Claire was doing his publicity. We went to dinner and I talked his ear off and I told him, well I got a band, maybe I'll come play in England and if I do I will get in touch with you and see if you can come out. So when I got the Borderline gig, I thought, yeah, I should call John Paul Jones, so I spoke to his wife, who I met in New York as well. I invited John out and John came and was blown away...he was psyched. Cause I play guitar like Mike Tyson fights. Well, he went home and got inspired and he wrote this song and he called me the next day and said hey, you gotta come play on this. He came and picked me up in his car and took me to his house and I went and did some solos and it came out on his record.

FIBM:  He has a studio in his house?

Adam Bomb:  Yeah, he's got...whew....such a fucking cool studio. Yeah, it was pretty cool to go to his house and play guitar.

FIBM:   Have you ever worked with him since?

Adam Bomb:   He's come and jammed with me...I speak to him all the time. He seen me more than most people in England. He has been to five or six different shows. The last one, he came and played....in London.

FIBM:   Any chance of you guys working together in the future?

Adam Bomb:   Maybe if I ever get a day off in London....go to his house...maybe.

John Paul Jones, Adam, Frankie Darkness


FIBM:  Can you share some of your experience with Johnny Thunders?

Adam Bomb:   Let's see...I met Johnny. Well, I met him in New York. My wife who ran the Limelight, used to book him or something like that. Anyway, we sort of hung out a couple of times and then he came to my "Pure S.E.X" release party in England. And then I caught up with him about a year later at a club called the Pipeline. The Pipeline was like an underground after-hours rock bar in Stockholm...I was in Sweden playing at this club and I think he did a few things there at the same time. I remember he introduced me....it's like five o'clock in the morning, but they're like fucked up out of there heads. He starts rambling on about how I play this heavy metal music and I'll probably put them all to sleep. It totally floored me, but I didn't realize that no one there really spoke english. Johnny used to take the piss out of me a lot...he was a really cool guy. I even babysat for him. It was really sad when he died. I remember Johnny was playing a gig at Pipeline and I stepped behind the drum kit and started playing and when he found out it was me playing drums, half way through the song, he stopped. (laughs) He stopped and made me get off. I opened for him a few times at the Limelight. I mean those were all the couple of years I was hanging out in New York.

FIBM:  When was the last time you saw him?

Adam Bomb:   The last time I saw him was at Spodiodi and....he was being real nice to me that day......(laughs) he borrowed twenty bucks from me. It was a sad thing when he died in New Orleans.

FIBM:   Did you go to his funeral?

Adam Bomb:   Yeah, I put a joint in his pocket.....and what else did I.....oh, I left him a mini-Marshall..... I put a mini-Marshall in his coffin. But I fucked him, because I didn't give him any matches.

FIBM:   Who were some of the bands you toured with recently? Didn't you tour with WASP?

Adam Bomb:  I toured with WASP and Dio.....I did a few tours..

FIBM:  How did those go?

Adam Bomb:   Aww...they were fun....WASP canceled their tour half way through it. They were giving me a hard time the whole time. I guess Blackie doesn't really like anyone to show him up I guess. I used to have blood on my guitar and they made me take it off.


FIBM:  Why would they make you take it off?

Adam Bomb:  Because he's the headliner and Blackie said so. They didn't want me to do anything with blood... I remember I once put like some red food coloring on my lips and they made me take that off five minutes before I was supposed to go on. Then once....you know I used to spit blood and it would get in my guitar, anyway I had cleaned it off, because of Blackie, but you know there's some still left in the pick up or something....and you know you play and you sweat and a drop gets in the pick up and drips red food coloring and I play a little with my teeth and some of that fucking shit got on my face.....so they threw me off the tour for that. But then the next day, we kind of talked our way back on, but then they canceled their whole tour. So we went to the Gods of Metal festival in Italy, which we weren't booked on and we said we were WASP...took their passes and we managed to get our way on.

FIBM:   You mean, you managed to get your band on stage and played?

Adam Bomb:   Yes. In front of ten thousand people...it was pretty amazing.
FIBM:  Adam Bomb is transported back to the year 1983, is there anything you would do differently.

Adam Bomb:  Well....let me see.....a lot of things I would do differently. (laughs) Yeah, I would have not left my Floyd Rose guitar in this guys house in Toronto. Girlfriend could get a crack addict to break in and steal it

FIBM:   It was your girlfriend?

Adam Bomb:   No, I was staying with this guy named William and his girlfriend was a crack addict and she was fucking everybody all over town and I left my guitar there because I was spending some time in Toronto working with this guy named Sean Pilot and this William guy went and broke through this guys sliding glass door, like ran through it and bashed the guys head in with a meat cleaver....he didn't kill him, but he cut him up pretty bad and he went to jail and the guitar got stolen.

THE FAST 5

FIBM:  What is your most disgusting habit?

Adam Bomb:  eating

FIBM:  What is the most feminine thing you do?

Adam Bomb:  Put on eye makeup before a gig

FIBM:  If there is a God, what is the first question you would ask God when you arrive?

Adam Bomb:  Why

FIBM:  Greatest Rock band of all time?

Adam Bomb:  Van Halen with David Lee Roth

FIBM:  What were you doing 40 minutes before you sat down to do this interview?

Adam Bomb:  Singing karaoke on Oxygen on Demand, it's my wife's birthday today.

Thanks Adam for the great interview. -AI

Adam Bomb Part I

Don't forget to visit Adam at his website
www.adambomb.com

-Additional Reference-
TKO Vocalist Brad Sinsel PART I

Watch TKO / War Babies Videos

Read our interview with TKO bassist Scott Earl

Search Fibits for Adam Bomb cd's

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