John Corabi Q and A – West Hampstead Arts Club 2022

John Corabi has a new book ‘Horseshoes and Hand Grenades’ (named after a saying of his father’s) and while he’s over for his UK tour he took time to do a Q and A at the West Hampstead Arts Club followed by a couple of acoustic tracks live and a book signing.

Crabby, as he is affectionately known, loves the UK. He tells fond stories of his first show in the UK when The Ramones walked into his dressing room and he saw Nirvana and the original Tigertailz live at the Marquee. Even getting into fist fights over musinderstandings between English and American slang provide humerous stories which he tells with great gusto and which are told in detail in his book.

He’s a huge Beatles fan even though they were just about calling it a day by the time he came of an age to be discovering them. He credits them with enlightening him about the power of music. On the Ed Sullivan show he saw the reaction of the girls and he was hooked. He points out that about sixty years later we are still talking about them. When he was in Motley Crue he met Ringo at Nikki Sixx’s house. Contrary to popular expectation he gets on well with Vince Neil and was great friends with the rest of the Crue guys until they had to let him go for business related reasons.

During his time in Motley Crue he got to meet his musical heroes like Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple, Aerosmith who left him tongue tied and Brian Johnson of AC/DC and told a hilarious story about Brian Johnson dropping his trousers to get the attention of a small local band who had not recognised him so he could go up and jam with them at a random club (along with the then members of Crue) that they had all wandered into unannounced. Despite everything he thinks back on his time with Motley fondly. He retains legacy friendships from this time of networking gold to this day. After all he reasoned you need a thick skin and persistence to keep going in this business. He observed he never had a Plan B, it was this business or nothing: if he hadn’t done this he would be in jail, dead or sweeping the streets. The place he came from in Philly was the same place that Rocky came from in the movie. Serial killers, rapists, child abusers, street fighting, cops that were quick to accuse people of stuff they didn’t do, Crabby himself was accused of a murder he did not commit, but was vindicated later.

Sandra Bullock was possibly Crabby’s one that got away. Gene Simmons was a great supporter and always believed in him. Crabby entertainingly told some of the stories that are in his book including a whole heap about Motley Crue that we have not told here to avoid a spoiler. One thing came out that was not in the book that he is concerned for Mick Mars and finds it difficult to believe he would have retired voluntarily from Motley. But the reality is other guitarists have been playing on Crue albums for some time now and the music business is cut throat especially when large sums of money are involved. There were unsurprisingly lots of question about Motley and John put his opinions on record including a firm belief that the Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson tape was not voluntarily released for money, but that he witnessed genuine anguish on Pam’s part about the theft and leaking of the private material.

When asked if he would ever do a Rock Musical Crabby said he did not think so as it involved a whole other level of genius and he was aware how hard Fred Coury of Cinderella works in his now successful career in music for TV.

Although the audience could have gone all night we were already several hours in and so after a few acoustic tracks to send them off right way, sang with that wonderful Corabi rock n roll tone, the evening was over. But not quite yet, ever the joker Crabby treated the select few to his Mangy Dog song with his tongue firmly in his cheek.

John Corabi’s book is available through all good book distribution channels. If you are lucky enough to meet him on his current UK tour he’ll even sell you one himself and sign it for you or anything else (nota bene except a cheque or a dick).

Dawn Osborne