Stephen Pearcy | The Magnificent Others
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What near-fatal event pushed Stephen Pearcy towards music?
When we went out there, we were like fired up, man. I'm talking, you know, I would put my band up against anybody. When I first heard you sing and I first heard your band, I was like, this is different. Out of the blue, Doug goes, you can't play here anymore under the name Rack. And I go, why? He goes, it makes a club look bad.
I was listening to a lot of hard rock at the time, and I remember thinking, This is weird. No, I remember thinking, this is the kind of band I want to be in.
I still go, wow, this is cool, man.
Don't give it away. We've got to mark it. Yeah, yeah. Steven, thank you so much for being here. I've wanted you on my show for so long, so I'm very honored to have you here. Thank you, brother. With a rock and roll life, you can jump into any point, but I think with you, the simplest way to do it, because there's some musical points I want to get at, is to kind of start at the beginning, San Diego area, late 50s.
No, that would be... I was born in Long Beach, but anyway, end up in San... There's not a lot of great biographical information about your life. Yeah, and even in the book, there's another one coming someday, but... I ended up in, you know, Los Angeles and whatever. I wasn't, I listened to music, but wasn't.
But I want to talk about your early life. Just, I'm not trying to cut you off.
I'm just saying.
Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Just give me your early life a bit because, you know. Well. Because, you know, for kids like us growing up in Chicago, this part of the world was the magical land. Right. You guys had Disneyland. You had sunshine. We didn't have any sunshine or Disneyland. Yeah. So there's kind of an idyllic version that we have from the Midwest of what. California. Yeah. So I want you to give me your version as a kid.
Well, as a kid, God, you'd go to the beach, sleep overnight, surf, wake up, surf at 5, 8, 6 a.m., smoke a lot of pot, and, you know, hang out, try to get the girls. And it was cool because you could actually sleep on the beach and not worry about somebody plummeting you like a baby seal. Yeah. I wouldn't do it nowadays. But, you know, you have your little gang and stuff. And I got into racing really young. I'd always see a race car across the street from my school, a funny car, NHRA drag racing funny car. So I was like, wow. And I drew a lot.
How did Ratt's sound differentiate from other metal bands?
So I drew all, you know, and this and that. and go touch it and everything. And then we moved again in L.A., and there was another race car in the neighborhood. I'm like, well, this is interesting, right? So I go bother this guy. Next thing you know, we're moving to Westchester. I'm riding my bike. There's a dragster, right? I become friends with this guy, and I'm like 14, and become his pit crew guy, right? It was crazy. This would have been like, what about? 68, something like that. I was like, yeah, yeah. And I just got the bug for drag racing. It was like every weekend.
It's loud, fast, exciting. And in that time, in American culture, drag racing had a much bigger place than it does now. You think that's fair? Yeah. It was kind of celebrated, Evel Knievel.
There was a lot of that kind of... Daredevil. Daredevil-ish. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. And these guys were nuts, drag racers back then. Especially back then. They were the real guys. Now it's millions of dollars and... The roll cages.
But back then, they were crazy.
It's not like when I was with them, you'd be sleeping under a truck going to a race, you know?
What challenges did Ratt face in the LA club circuit?
And that's what we did. And I was expected to go, I want to be a driver at 16.
Mm-hmm.
Well, that didn't happen. I went to San Diego. We ended up moving to San Diego. My mom had remarried, and we lived on this hilly area. Anyway, not even a year being there, I get run over by a car, you know, and break both legs and made a mess of me. And like, you're not going to walk again, kind of stuff. And you're a kid going, holy shit.
Tell me back to that story, because there's the information on what I could find was very sketchy on this. Because I think I have a theory that our lives are often defined by trauma, like they send us in a particular direction.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What near-fatal event pushed Stephen Pearcy towards music?
0:00–2:23
2
How did Ratt's sound differentiate from other metal bands?
2:23–3:37
3
What challenges did Ratt face in the LA club circuit?
3:37–15:05
4
How did Stephen Pearcy get into music after his accident?
15:05–18:21
5
What was the influence of Van Halen on Ratt's success?
18:21–23:00
6
How did Ratt navigate the grunge era?
23:00–30:52
7
What led to internal fractures within Ratt?
30:52–34:44
8
How does Stephen Pearcy view his legacy in rock music?
34:44–1:24:02
Speakers
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