GORILLA PARTS
Steve Grillo’s New Book is a Love Letter to the 1990s
I don’t have a lot of time to read books anymore. I was always a voracious reader but lately I pick up a book, read a few chapters, lose interest and watch an old movie instead. So I surprised myself when I read Steve Grillo’s new book Gorilla Parts all the way through in a few days (and enjoyed it). It’s mostly about his time on The Howard Stern Show as an intern back in the 1990s, but what I enjoyed most is that the guy is brutally honest about his experiences. There’s no filters, no bullshit, he just writes it as he sees it.
I was a huge Stern fan in the 1980s (when he was on NBC in the afternoons): Like Al Goldstein (Screw magazine publisher) Howard was testing the limits of free expression and free speech. But I lost interest in the early 1990s, when I felt a lot of his stuff became cheap “shock jock clickbait” so I don’t remember Grillo being on the Stern show(s) when the show moved to WXRK (K-ROCK radio). However I remember how Stern was ubiquitous in the 1990s: Almost every office at High Times magazine tuned in every morning. Everything the guy did got major publicity. Private Parts (Stern’s book that became a film, which BTW is dedicated to Grillo) was a phenomenon. He had a TV show and highly-successful Pay-Per-View events. Howard was truly “The King of All Media” back then.
Even though Grillo woke up every day at 3:30 am to get to work on time and never missed day? He didn’t get paid anything. After a few year he was getting the princely sum of $6.75 per hour and asked Howard getting a raise: “I’m working sixty hours, getting paid for thirty, and (the radio station’s business manager) he’s trying to give me a ten cent raise.”
Stern gave him the cold shoulder.
But Steve doesn’t rake Howard Stern over the coals for this, instead he tells a lot of behind-the-scenes stories about what it was like to be an integral part of the team that was producing a media phenomenon. The book is packed with wry observations like this and there are a lot of interesting anecdotes in Steve’s books about encounters with famous people, some good, some bad (Mark Hamill, Tupac Shakur, Spike Lee, Henry (Goodfellas) Hill, David Lee Roth, Debbie Harry, Charles Grodin and several mobsters, Howard Stern groupies and guests). He calls it as he experienced it, so you read about who was nice, who was a total prick, etc.
Grillo’s love letter to the 1990s is summed up in Chapter Nine (“The Greatest Fucking City in the World”): “Life was beautiful for a lot of people at that point in human history… we were the last ones not to have cell phones during out party years: you could actually go off the grid and get a break from the world for a moment… we didn’t have stupid cameras documenting every moronic decision we made. And… no internet, so no news and gossip could actually die instead of living forever like some dumb drooling zombie.”
I’ve noticed this lately and I feel sorry for kids growing up today: This “New Millennium” sucks donkey dick. We haven’t seen an economic boom since the 1990s, when the birth of the Internet was creating instant millionaires and the stock market was going crazy and there were good-paying jobs while at the same time “legacy media” was kicking ass because not many people were on the World Wide Web yet. Instead, we had the Internet stock boom go bust, followed by 9/11, a “worldwide economic meltdown” a few years later, never-ending foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a parade of scandals, crimes and conspiracy theories (which sadly turn out to be true too often).
I love what Steve wrote in his “Conclusion”:
“So I’ll leave you with this: Take risks, roll the dice, kick down doors, fuck shit up, honk a fucking tit, disturb the peace, never settle for what jerkoffs in a boardroom think is good or funny cause they suck. They suck so bad.”
I can’t think of a better summary of “Punk Attitude.”
By the way, I met Steve Grillo around ten years ago when we worked together on a TV show pilot. My friend Richard Belfiore heard that the music licensing company BMG was interested in an animated cartoon featuring rock music. Chris Munger (who was working as a consultant for BMG), quickly put together a deal and produced a “sizzle reel.” Grillo did a great job reading the Big Dog’s dialog and Chris’s band My World did an amazing job putting together the theme song. We tried shopping it, but streaming services were already cutting into cable TV’s budgets (animation was expensive back then!), so it was “close but no cigar.”
I missed doing a newsletter last week, and will probably be unable to deliver weekly newsletters going forward. I’m very busy preparing for “The 50th Anniversary of PUNK Magazine and Punk Rock.” I will be posting details soon: An art gallery show? A new issue of PUNK Magazine? A new book or two? Live events? Who knows? So stay tuned!
My Howard Stern Rant:
I have to admit that I was a huge Howard Stern fan in the 1980s, when he was on NBC in the afternoon after Imus and Soupy Sales did their radio programs. I remember listening as he did some of the outrageous antics that later became famous, like his on-air showdowns with “PigVomit.” As with the WWE’s skits between Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Mr. McMahon in the 1990s, these were classic confrontations between a horrible boss and a “I Don’t Take Shit!” employee. Anyone who had a job with a bad boss could relate.
Howard was breaking down barriers, insulting half of the celebrities in Hollywood, and creating very funny comedy. But by the time he moved to K-Rock in the early 1990s, he began kissing celebrity butt and his humor became more mean-spirited than cutting edge. And that’s when Grilllo started working for the guy.
I really began to dislike Howard after he pulled out of the 1994 New York gubernatorial race as the Libertarian candidate. Running against George Pataki (who won) and Mario Cuomo (Father of TV commentator Chris and former governor Andrew) was polling at 20% before he dropped out because he didn’t want to “disclose his finances” (I.e. how much money he was making). He had entered the race in March, then quit in August—wasting all of the publicity he was gaining for the Libertarian Party.
Why? Because even though the guy is a multi-millionaire, he didn’t want people to know how rich he is. So he used the Libertarian Party to promote himself for six months, then threw them under the bus.
Around the same time it leaked that he didn’t pay little people like Steve Grillo any money! Grillo was working his ass for Howard. To me, cheap bastards like Stern are everything that is wrong with the country. He’s a “progressive Democrat” who probably doesn’t pay any taxes and probably doesn’t tip very well. It’s all about him. Fuck him. A guy like Grillo should have been rewarded for his hard work, but Stern is such a miserable miser that he didn’t want anyone to find out how rich he was, nor pay his employees a decent wage.
I have always believed that America needs third (and fourth) political parties. We all get fucked over by both Republican and Democrats—especially when they “work together (I.e. NAFTA, our endless foreign wars, the “War on Drugs,” etc.) If Howard had run for governor of New York in the 1990s it would have brought so much attention to a third political party that it could have shaken up the world. A few years later, Ross Perot launched the Reform Party as a third option to Repulicrats and Democrans, but that was squelched.
In good news. The PUNK Magazine coffee production with Dark Matter at Adios Amigos was very successful. All of the products quickly sold out, and the events went well. Thanks to everyone who purchased it. It was a limited edition, so it is now unavailable.
This was a great read! I'll have to pick up that book someday. Or maybe skip it 'cause I already learned how to read people. And yeah, I fuggen HATE the sensationalist domino effect that Stern created. Look at all these "let's verbally fight!" podcasts these days. Goodbye... Who cares.... Pathetic.... Love the tidbit about your little doggy-kitty show. Was always super curious about the story behind that. You'll have better luck pitching it to an indie studio. Indie animation is booming and you have all the creative freedom you desire. Networks are not treating animation very well, and have not for a good number of years now.