Defying Addiction to Choose Rock

By MIKE BOEHM

July 24, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Not long ago, the chances of Jack Grisham, Ron Emory and Mike Roche getting together again to play concerts as three-fourths of the original T.S.O.L. seemed remote. A more probable reunion might have been at a funeral, with one of them--most likely Emory or Roche--in a coffin and the others in mourning.

Drugs and alcohol have been a scourge for T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty), which in the early 1980s was the wildest, most popular and musically most diverse band in the original Orange County punk rock explosion. Many younger punk rockers, including the Offspring’s Dexter Holland, have trumpeted T.S.O.L. as a crucial influence.

Now, the three founding members--minus original drummer Todd Barnes--say T.S.O.L. is free of substance abuse, and the reunited band is on a six-week national tour, including a headlining slot today in San Bernardino on the Social Chaos tour, a nostalgia-minded trek by bands, many of them British, dating from punk’s childhood in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Grisham, who turned 38 on Thursday, undermined himself for five years during the 1980s with vodka, Valium and a penchant for violence. He said he’s been sober for 10 1/2 years, and is enjoying a creative renaissance as one of the most prolific and vital Orange County rock artists of the 1990s.

Roche and Emory have returned to rock with clear heads after years away. Both fell into the sump of long-term heroin addiction and did time behind bars on drug-related charges. As for Barnes, the other members say they have been in touch with him, but that he continues to struggle with substance abuse problems. Taking his place is Danny Westman, a former member of Down By Law.

“If anybody should be dead, I would be a likely candidate,” Roche, 38, said as he and his two partners took turns earlier this week at a Colorado gas station’s pay telephone, somewhere on the road from Denver to Albuquerque.

Roche got involved with hard drugs during the mid-1980s, after Grisham and Barnes had left T.S.O.L. Roche and Emory, with new members Joe Wood and Mitch Dean, carried on in a bluesy, hard-rocking, hard-living direction that set musical and lifestyle precedents for Guns N’ Roses.

Emory quit T.S.O.L. in 1987, dismayed at how drugs had taken hold of Roche, whom he regards as a brother. The two had been surfing buddies before taking up instruments together and jumping into the burgeoning Huntington Beach punk scene. Emory carried on in the promising band Lunchbox, but by the mid-1990s, he said, he, too, had turned to heroin after his marriage broke up and he was unable to see his young son.

Stealing Instruments to Pawn for Drugs

Grisham recruited Emory for his band, the Joykiller, in 1994, hoping that Emory could be weaned from drugs and lend his distinctive guitar sound to the band. He came through with a brilliant burst of playing on the Joykiller’s 1995 debut album, but his drug use continued unabated; Emory was stealing the other players’ instruments and pawning them to feed his habit. They booted him from the band before the album’s release, and Emory disappeared from the music scene.

“My life was a mess,” he said. “I was uncomfortable in my own skin. I tried getting clean so many times for everybody who cares about me, but I wasn’t ready. Suicide was the only thing that occupied my mind.”

Roche, who admits having sold heroin to sustain his own habit, said he served 21 months in prison before earning parole in September.

“I had a lot of time to think in prison, and for the first time my head was clear,” he said. “I thought if I get nothing more than not having to wake up and worry about what I’m going to put in a spoon, that would be enough. I hoped and prayed music would come back, but I wasn’t counting on it.”

Roche said he worked in construction after his release, then took a job with Mark Mahoney, a tattoo artist who inspired the Adolescents’ 1988 song “It’s Tattoo Time.” Now, with Mahoney, he is getting back into the punk-fashion business, a successful sideline for Roche during his earlier T.S.O.L. days.

Roche hung out in the studio with Grisham late last year as he recorded a solo album that will be released under his latest performing moniker, Gentleman Jack Grisham. Emory, living with his mother in La Mirada, heard that Roche was back on the scene and off drugs; they got together, and Emory credits Roche and Mahoney with guiding him toward the treatment program he entered about six months ago, with the Musicians Assistance Program paying the bills.

“It was amazing to see Mike wake up in the morning, make coffee and do normal things” instead of embarking on the junkie’s daily hunt for a score, Emory said. “I’ve been everywhere he’s been, done everything he’s done. If anyone could make an impression on me, it was Mike.”

Emory, 37, said he pawned his collection of guitars, which once numbered about 100, to make drug money. Now he lives in a home for recovering addicts near Marina del Rey. He returned to metalworking, his trade during earlier T.S.O.L. days., and relishes being able to go into pawn shops now to buy musical equipment rather than to place instruments in hock.

To help Emory along with his nascent sobriety, his recovery program sponsor is on tour with T.S.O.L., serving as the band’s soundman.

‘You Never Know’ About the Future

An album of new material is a possibility, but the members are realistic enough about the difficulties of recovery not to plan far ahead.

“It’s one of those things where you never know,” Grisham said. Meanwhile, the mercurial singer, an inveterate onstage rabble-rouser, has been treating a new generation of punk fans to some of the wild sights their elder siblings--or parents--may have marveled at 17 years ago, when the original band was at its peak.

Grisham reported that in Ventura, he spotted a teen-aged fan singing along to all the songs while sporting “a really bad haircut, like Friar Tuck.” Grisham said he rewarded the kid by inviting him on stage, tying him to a chair, and lighting a pile of papers beneath him until the fan’s clothes had caught fire; a fire extinguisher saved him from injury.

“He was stoked,” Grisham said. Or should that be “staked?”

Fans routinely jump on stage, he said, just like in the old days when T.S.O.L. delighted in breaking down barriers between band and audience. The only drawback, Grisham said, is “too many kisses from bearded men. I can do without the drunken kisses.”

Volatile as Grisham can be on stage, Robbie Fields, the record executive who first signed T.S.O.L. in 1981, and who remains in touch with the members, thinks the singer could be an essential stabilizing force in Roche and Emory’s comeback attempt.

“Jack has become a no-nonsense type of saint when dealing with people with abuse problems,” Fields said. “He’ll do anything to help someone who is ready to change their life for the better.”

Said Emory: “It’s more than I could ever wish for, being able to play again. It’s like when we were 18; we were with each other every day and having fun. The difference is we’re doing constructive things instead of destructive things.”

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SOCIAL CHAOS TOUR

11:30 a.m: Les Stitches

12:10 p.m.: Sloppy Seconds

12:50 p.m.: Gang Green

1:30: One Way System

2:15: DH Pelegro

3:25: Anti-Heroes

4:30: Vice Squad

5:15: Chelsea

6:00: Murphy’s Law

6:45: D.O.A.