Well if I have their picture on my business card for my blog, I better have some stories about them! And I do!
Actually, this is when they were the Neurotic Boy Outsiders. They later removed the word “Boy” from their name. This was a fantastic supergroup: Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols, Duff McKagan from Guns ‘n Roses, Matt Sorum from the Cult/Guns ‘n Roses, and John Taylor of Duran Duran. Sounds a little weird on paper, but it worked! While some people in the band hated the word “supergroup” when describing Neurotic Outsiders, I disagree. They are a “group” and they are “super”. On their own, each member has released solo albums that were alright or downright bad. Together? They released one excellent album that was better than the sum of its parts and it still holds up for me today.
They would play every Monday night at the Viper Room for pure fun. Tons of covers (no Guns & Roses songs, but they did cover Duran Duran, Stooges, Generation X, Sex Pistols, etc…) They even wrote some songs that were just as good as the covers. Often times Simon Le Bon, Billy Idol, and Iggy Pop would jump onstage to sing their songs with them.
I went on the “last night” they said they were going to do it. And I went just to say that I saw this. They were a total rockin’ blast! They thought so too, because they carried it on for another month or two. And I kept going.
I used my Flipside credentials to get my camera into the Viper Room for this show on October 16th. Simon Le Bon came onstage to do “Planet Earth” and Billy Idol also jumped onstage for a few songs (“Pretty Vacant”, “Ready Steady Go”, and “No Fun”). The Viper Room gave me FIRST CLASS treatment! Right up front, had my own security, etc… WOW! Only I used color film. And no flash, because I didn’t want to disturb the band. So everything came out red due to the red lighting flooding all the color in the film. These are the photos from that night. I removed the color on most of them to try to make them look better.
One thing that was funny about that show, was that Steve Jones kept looking at me the whole time throughout the show. As in “Who the hell are you and how did you get in here with that camera?!” You can see Steve Jones eyeing me out on a few of them. More on this in part two where I got my camera again into the Viper Room for another Neurotic Outsiders show. I made sure to use black and white film for that one.
All photos by Ted Tarris
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