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Re: Interesting GNR/Izzy mentions in new Jimmy Ashhurst interview
These are the GNR/Izzy mentions from an interview published today with Jimmy Ashhurst (ex-Ju Ju Hounds/ex-Buckcherry) at 2fast2die. Interesting that he blames GNR for the demise of his band Broken Homes.
How did your early band The Broken Homes come together?
Guitarist Craig Ross, who’d been working with a singer from Pittsburgh named Michael Doman, asked me to join up. At the time I think I was in 4 or 5 bands at the same time, and playing as much as I possibly could. These guys told me they had a manager and a gig at the Roxy on a Friday night. I’d wanted to play the legendary Roxy super bad for a long time, so I jumped at the chance. We played on a Friday night and the following Monday morning we were in the offices of MCA Records signing a recording contract. Of all the bands we knew or would go see play in LA at the time, ZERO of them had a major label record deal. No local band since Van Halen had been signed to a major. This was before the post-Guns N’ Roses signing frenzy and was pretty much unheard of in 1984.
And then came the hard lessons of the music biz?
We were kids. I had no idea about the business side of anything, let alone a band, but they told me they’d be giving us a bunch of money to make a record and then we’d be going on tour!! Hooray! Nobody said anything about the fact that we’d eventually be paying them back, but we wouldn’t have cared anyway. We had no overheads and as long as we had cash for drinks, gas and tacos… Plus. back then, all of us scuzzbag musician types lived off of strippers anyway, so we were stoked. We made three albums, went on tour with Stevie Ray Vaughan, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, INXS, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Georgia Satellites, Jason and the Scorchers, The Replacements and tons more. And then? Guns N’ Roses happened. We immediately went from being the Great Hope to being the Great Nope overnight.
I’m guessing you were friendly with the GN’R guys from having crossed paths in the scene?
We played a ton of local shows together, even a couple of house parties. It started out with them opening up for us, but that very quickly reversed. It was one of those events in history that none of us realized was as important as it turned out to be. I remember those guys grabbing me at a club because they knew I had a good stereo in my car and they wanted to listen to their first record they’d just come outta the studio with. I had no idea that I’d be hearing those fucking songs for the entirety of my life. I just thought about that today as the hotel lobby band was butchering “Sweet Child O’ Mine” while I was on my way to my room. Christ! Here we are 30 fucking years later and it’s that Same. Fucking. Song.
And then came the copycat signing frenzy?
The labels in Los Angeles discovered the formula of the moment and it was GN’R. They started signing anybody and everybody with a Jack Daniels bottle in their band photo. But GN’R had the right roots and were the real deal from the start. I knew some of the guys came from a punk-rock background and even the heavier, metal stuff they liked were the COOL metal bands that I liked, too, like Rose Tattoo and Mötorhead, with a lot of old Aerosmith thrown in.
Plus, they were into a band called Hanoi Rocks. Hanoi had the perfect mix of everything we loved, plus the style and fashion. They could look and dress like chicks, but without being girlie in any way. This is harder than it sounds. You didn’t know whether you wanted to fight the singer or fuck him. BUT, just like anything else…the imitators missed the ball completely and the Sunset Strip turned into five miles of poodle haircuts, spandex, tiny pointy shoes, and songs about cherry pies. We had a lot of fun making fun of those guys, but it would’ve been a lot funnier if it hadn’t meant the end of our careers.
So, effectively, the explosive success of GN’R signaled the end of Broken Homes?
We had short hair and wore creepers and played in open G tunings. Nobody wanted to talk to us anymore. After three albums with MCA they’d figured out that nobody wanted to hear 1-4-5 songs influenced by Chuck Berry, The Clash and Little Richard, and we’d figured out we’d have had to sell something like 10 million records to just break even. Never gonna happen. The very last thing I remember was one night we were playing at a club called Scream and I looked down to see Lenny Kravitz standing right at the front in the crowd. I thought ‘Coooool! Lenny Kravitz came to check us out!’ As it turned out, Lenny Kravitz showed up to steal our guitar player! Craig has been with him ever since.
How did you hook up with Izzy Stradlin after he left Guns N’Roses?
I was watching MTV in my living room when Kurt Loder came through with an MTV News Update announcing “Izzy Stradlin has quit Guns N’ Roses!” I’m thinking, “Wow, ballsy move, but I wonder what he’s gonna do next?” Then my phone rings and it’s Izzy calling from his home in Lafayette. He asks me what I’m doing musically and then tells me he’s gonna be at my house in two days. He showed up with a road tan from his goggles and bugs in his teeth having ridden his bike from Lafayette to my place in Hollywood. We started the band that would become the JuJu Hounds after we got Rick and Chalo on board.
Izzy is so mysterious, yet loved by so many for his songwriting and sense of “cool.”
Tell us something about his personality. Is he funny? Any interesting hobbies? Strange eating habits? Anything?
I haven’t seen him or spoken with him in almost 20 years. Yes, he is a very funny, funny man.
He was always just one of those guys, even before he was in GN’R. You know, they come along every once in a while. They have an innate sort of charisma, whether they want it or not.
OK, going back to the funny …. share a funny Izzy story
On gig day somewhere in Australia we were being escorted across a parking lot by local security when this fan, who’d magically been every place we’d been throughout the trip, starts screaming for the thousandth time “IZZY!! IZZY!! PUNCH ME IN THE FACE!!!” Izzy finally turns to the nearest security dude and goes “Could you please punch that kid in the face he’s been asking for it all week.” 
Did he do it?
Nah, we were all laughing too hard
I once read somewhere that you were a little bitter about the breakup of the Ju Ju Hounds.
For me, the years after realizing that the band was over were the hardest of my life. But the only person responsible for that is me by having allowed addiction to take me over completely. It was his band and he had every right to do or not do whatever he wanted with it. I just wish that whatever it was could’ve been worked out by talking to his friends and band members about it, and I wish that, if nothing else, we could’ve remained great friends.
So what ultimately caused the break-up?
There was a ton of pressure on the guy at the time, and even though the crowds in Europe, Japan, Mexico, Australia really seemed to appreciate what we were doing, the crowds and press in the US couldn’t seem to shake the G N’ R comparisons. I felt that must’ve weared on him quite a bit, ya know? The little bit we toured here was pretty brutal and attendance was never enough to be breaking even, let alone for it to be lucrative. He was spending a ton of his own money to make it happen. That gets expensive, and when it starts to feel under appreciated or appreciated for the wrong reasons, it starts to not make a whole lotta sense. Im glad to see that he still enjoys making and recording new music -just without all the drama and hustle-bustle of the whole deal … and right now, boy can I can relate! Anyway, the JuJu Hounds ended because Izzy didn’t wanna do it anymore. I’ll never know what he was feeling that would’ve led him to that decision because i’m not him. Any regrettable behavior on my part happened as a result of the end of that band, not while I was in it.
It was my favorite band and still is, and I was crushed that it was over. It took a long time to for me to even come to terms with it being finished. As a result, I made a series of terrible decisions regarding drugs/crowd in the years that followed that culminated in me being sent to prison.
Of all the bands you’ve toured with over the years, who partied the hardest?
Well, at which time period? Back then everybody partied and now nobody does. You can’t. Since nobody buys records anymore, bands need to stay on the road constantly and YOU WILL DIE if you party non-stop. No joke. There was a time when it was pretty nuts. The Replacements stand out … Jerry Lee Lewis throwing knives into the wall while drunk on champagne DEFINITELY stands out … On the road with Stevie Ray Vaughan when he was wheeled off to the hospital with bleeding ulcers from drinking cocaine … Ohh wait, you wanna know who “parties”?
Continue reading at 2fast2die.
