Hair metal group Great White’s manager is looking at hard time for his role in the Rhode Island club fire that happened about three years ago. Apparently, manager Daniel Biechele asked the club owners’ permission to light off the pyrotechnics that instigated the deadly inferno, but failed to notice the Station nightclub’s cheap-ass foam wall decorations that would ultimately spell doom for 100 Great White fans and injure 200 more. The errant manager might end up spending 10 years in jail for 100 counts each of involuntary manslaughter with criminal negligence and involuntary manslaughter in violation of a misdemeanor. The owners of the club are also facing the same 200 charges, but it’s definitely got to be the worst for Great White. While not facing any charges, they have to live with the fact that their shitty fireworks display wiped out a third of their fan base. Those who lost loved ones in the blaze are irate about the perceived leniency of the sentence, however. “It’s not enough,” said Jody King, whose brother’s mullet went up in flames during the show. “It never will be enough. Ten years can’t replace Tracy and 99 other lives. It’s 1.2 months per life.” In all fairness, more prison time couldn’t replace any lives, anyway. Whatever. Great White sucks. You shouldn’t go to their concerts. They’re truly awful. Have you ever seen their video, with the squinty Barbra-Streisand-looking, feathered-hair-having singer, playing piano with his gross fat fingers? Yeah, you know the one I’m talking about. Don’t try and pretend you forgot. It won’t work.
Apparently, fame has made life a lot easier for The Strokes, at least in the United Kingdom. The doors to the high life weren’t always open to the group, and it seems that in some extreme cases the doors were slammed shut in their faces. According to guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr. (the curly haired one), the band’s arrival in the U.K. to tour in support of their first record was met with fisticuffs by the native population. “When we first came out, there were a lot of people, especially in England, who wanted to fight us,” Hammond, Jr. revealed to Giant magazine. “We had to get security because people would try to start serious fights, like bottle us in the head,” he added. “There was a fight that broke out once. Nikolai (Fraiture) and Fab (Moretti) were getting into a car and this guy hit Nikolai in the head with a bottle. The two of them definitely stuck together. The security guards were like, ‘What?!'”
Strokes to-do list item one: better, more alert security guards. With the passage of time and the sale of millions of records the mood has changed, leading the popular richy-rich garage five-some to declare the U.K. their “second home,” and use their celebrity to get into expensive restaurants. “I don’t do it myself because it’s highly embarrassing,” elaborated Hammond Jr. “I make my girlfriend do it.”
Former Creed frontman Scott Stapp was arrested this last Saturday at Los Angeles Airport. It appears that the singer just tried to take himself little too much higher, and was stopped by airport police for being visibly intoxicated. There has been no comment on the type of intoxication or charges, if any, to be filed, but with the arrest taking place on the day after Stapp’s wedding, the charges are likely to be light. The singer (if you can call that bad Eddie Vedder warbling stuff that he does singing) was bailed out of jail by his new wife, Jaclyn Nesheiwat. In addition to personal bail bondswoman for her new husband, she also acts as the director of public affairs for the Scott Stapp Foundation. Stapp also found his way into trouble this past December, when news came out that he was involved a fight with another band, 311, in an upscale Baltimore hotel. The latter band said that, after acting belligerent and arguing with patrons all night, the drunken ex-Creed singer proceeded to make crude passes at their members’ wives. When asked to get lost, Stapp treated 311 drummer Chad Sexton to a high-class knuckle sandwich. The hotel’s security director, however, defended Stapp, stating that the fight was definitely started by 311. Old Scotty was also busted in 2002 for swerving off the road in his SUV, only months after being involved in a rear-ending accident that almost left him as a hunk of human clay. Stapp’s personal web site had no comment on the recent arrest.