Rock ‘n’ Roll Fans, You’re so Vein

If only because of the cliche, sex and drugs are the two subjects most closely aligned with rock ‘n’ roll.

Blood, however, could arguably rank third.

From the gory and legendary plane crash deaths stretching back to Buddy Holly’s, to the entire genre of heavy-metal mayhem songs; from Kiss’ Gene Simmons squirting mouthfuls of crimson syrup, to the naming of the band Blood, Sweat and Tears--rock ‘n’ roll has always been enthralled with blood, in both its literal and metaphorical forms.

Donating blood, however--at least for medical purposes and by the measured pint--has stereotypically been seen as the domain of the supposedly more responsible set: social workers, say. Or tax accountants. Or grandmothers.

Welcome, then, to the KLOS-FM (95.5) annual blood drive, where giving blood rocks.

In its 15th year, the blood drive by the classic rock station has grown into the largest in California and the second largest in the nation, according to local Red Cross officials. It’s now running 2,500 pints a year, or a total of 37,600 pints since 1981.

(In rock-speak, the grand total is enough to fill 12 1/2 average-size Jacuzzis.)

The Red Cross, which sometimes looks on the rest of us the way Dracula would if he were motivated by noble intentions, is properly grateful.

“It literally is the difference between having enough [blood] and not having enough in late summer,” when demand is highest, says Rick Radillo, Red Cross spokesman by day, rock musician by night.

The three-day drive, which ended Saturday, is unlike any you’ve seen.

Unless, as deejay Brian Phelps of the Mark and Brian Show points out, “you’ve ever been in a mosh pit.”

On an afternoon last week, a couple of dozen donors-to-be sat silently, perhaps a bit nervously, in the waiting area at the Van Nuys collection site on Sherman Way, one of seven around the city. One young man had curly blond hair cut in a Mohawk, giving him the look of a street-tough poodle. Next to him was a studious-looking man in Dockers and John Lennon spectacles. Down the row was a woman with peroxide-scorched hair and wrists weighted by numerous impossibly large silver bangles.

In this blood drive, the waiting and collection rooms are wired for sound and rock ‘n’ roll filled the air.

In the nearby room, where questionnaires are filled out and blood-types determined, one young fellow with a pierced eyebrow and backward-turned baseball cap sat with a large, white thermometer jutting from his mouth, listening to Ozzy Osbourne.

Ozzy, as anyone in this crowd can tell you, is the rocker who achieved mythical status for allegedly biting the heads off live bats on stage.

Across the hallway was the blood-letting room, where the stereo was turned up the loudest and a rather extraordinary amount of fun was being had, considering everybody was hemorrhaging the juice of life.

“Ah,” Hollen Baker of Woodland Hills yelped as the needle was dragged back out of his arm. And then, as if somewhat surprised by the sharp sting, the 27-year-old screwed up his face and said, “Hmm.”

Baker, clad in a Metallica tank-top, and with the nice, fat veins of nurses’ dreams, gives blood three times a year. But this event is by far his favorite. Where else can a rock fan lie back with a hundred others who share his taste in music, and at the same time donate lifesaving bodily fluids to the sounds of AC/DC’s “Back in Black”--written after the death of the band’s first singer, who choked to death on his own vomit after a long night of drinking.

Baker has such a good time at the KLOS drives that he takes great care to follow all donation rules so as not to be disqualified.

“I got tattooed three years ago,” he says with a tone of near-apology. “I was sorry I did that.”

The yin/yang “tat” in the middle of Baker’s back, it turns out, kept him from giving any blood for 12 months.

Recent tattooing--which involves putting needles into the skin, after all--is on the very long list of disqualifying factors for blood donors. Alas for the blood drive, many of these factors are fundamental to some people’s idea of the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

An extraordinarily informal survey showed perhaps 30% of donors this day were decorated with permanent ink. A good many of those said they had been kept from donating at least once in recent years because of the 12-month rule.

Among the numerous other deeds that will disqualify any would-be donor during any blood drive: recent treatment for gonorrhea or syphilis; shooting illegal drugs or steroids or having sex with someone who has; giving or receiving money or drugs for sex since 1977.

How many volunteers get bounced for lifestyle felonies the Red Cross declines to say. But according to radio station employees, many who fail one year clean up their acts and show up the next year, sober and qualified.

(It was a fresh orange-and-black Harley-Davidson tattoo on his left shoulder that did in Robert William Powell Jr. of Castaic one year. But Powell, who calls the blood drive’s party atmosphere a “festival,” came back when he could.)

Although the Red Cross tests all blood for AIDS, syphilis, hepatitis and other infectious agents, KLOS also sought to educate listeners about the process and requirements by conducting frank interviews with a Red Cross nurse on the air.

As a dozen or so donors lay pumping their fists in the collection station, filling blood bags to the sounds of heroin-overdose victim Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady,” others lined up to receive this year’s blood drive T-shirt.

The shirts, sporting a new design each season, have become collectors items. Many this year wore the ones they received four, five or seven years ago.

“It’s a rock ‘n’ roll generation,” says Ron Goldberg of Northridge after nurses had rebandaged an arm that kept bleeding after the needle was removed. But, he says, that does not make it an irresponsible generation.

In fact, he says, it is a generation, or a part of a generation, that gives what it can, even when that means its own body fluids.

“If I don’t have $25 to donate for the veterans food bank in November,” the burly Goldberg says, “I got blood.”