Lane's creative development would continue on Cherry Pie — though it was nearly obscured by the album's greatest commercial achievement. Warrant originally planned to call their sophomore LP Uncle Tom's Cabin and lead with the track of the same name, a muscular, ominous hard rocker about two murderous police officers.
But shortly before the record hit shelves, Columbia Records phoned Lane and said they didn't hear a single. In response, Lane scribbled the lyrics to "Cherry Pie" on a napkin in 15 minutes — and unwittingly altered the course of his life forever.
The song fattened everybody's coffers and cemented Warrant's superstar status at the turn of the decade, but it also overshadowed the album's objectively much better songs: horndog hard rockers "Sure Feels Good to Me" and "Love in Stereo"; brooding, mid-tempo stompers "Song and Dance Man" and "Mr. Rainmaker"; and the heartrending piano ballad "I Saw Red," inspired by Lane walking in on his then-girlfriend in bed with his best friend, which prompted a nervous breakdown that delayed the release of Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich and perhaps contributed to his future struggles with booze and mercurial behavior.
As the grunge storm reached a fever pitch, Warrant attempted a commercial hat trick with 's Dog Eat Dog, a no-frills, hard-rock opus running the gamut from pseudo-speed metal "Inside Out" to post-apocalyptic sci-fi balladry "April ". It was a stunning artistic achievement that admirably went gold, but the writing was — literally — on the wall: Warrant's time in the sun was over. With his stardom evaporating before his eyes, Lane left Warrant in to pursue an abortive solo career, though he returned six months later and the band released the grunge-influenced Ultraphobic in The album failed to scrape the Billboard , as did 's Belly to Belly and the covers album Under the Influence , the last two Warrant records to feature Lane.
But it's to the band's credit that it resisted the pull of the nostalgia circuit for so long and its mid-'90s grunge excursions were more dignified than many peers'. Downgraded from arenas to clubs, Warrant continued to tour rigorously throughout the '90s.
He was ashamed of his afflictions, and would allegedly hide out in nightly lodgings, sometimes eluding his problems, other times indulging them. Ultimately, the demons got the best of him. Only 47 years old, Jani Lane was found dead on August 11 the same year, leaving behind him a wife, two daughters and two step-daughters.
I spoke to him the Tuesday before. He was in pretty good spirits. He had things he wanted to do. Unfortunately, drinking always got in the way. We wanted to get him back on track. The once-bright future of the former 80s rock star began to dim in the 90s when the pop-metal anthems of his platinum-selling group Warrant were eclipsed by the likes of grunge. As an LA-based rock writer, I met Jani several times and gained some insight into his gentle yet tormented character.
When he joined the Bad Boys of Metal tour in , he was not able to make it beyond three shows, leaving his co-headliners, the equally troubled Steven Adler and the late Kevin DuBrow, to continue without him.
At the time, I was working with Adler, acting as publicist and running his website. Has he been okay? Do what you want. His parents chose his middle name as a tribute to the recently assassinated US president. He learned to play the drums at an early age, assisted by his older brother Eric, and he was playing in local bands by the age of 11 under the stage name Mitch Dynamite. He attended Field high school in Mogadore, Ohio, where he showed himself to be a gifted athlete and musician. He ultimately chose to purse the latter direction despite being offered college sports scholarships.
After playing with an Akron band named Cyren, he moved to Los Angeles and played in the group Plain Jane under the stage name Jani Lane: he claimed that the inspiration for his nom de metal came from his German grandparents' pronunciation of "Johnny". Although life was sometimes difficult for Lane and the other Plain Jane musicians — he once took a job in an adult video warehouse in order to pay the bills — the band made a name for themselves, and in the mids Lane was invited to join Warrant, an established act on the LA club scene.
Warrant immediately benefited from their new singer's songwriting abilities, scoring several high-charting singles in a commercial heyday that lasted until approximately , when audiences shifted their attention from glam rock to grunge.
0コメント