• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

REGAN HAGAR Andy had the band on paper. He had notebooks full of drawings, descriptions, histories, all made up. In the beginning, my character was Thundar. My last name’s Hagar, I’m Nordic. I have this love of Vikings, and I was thunderous. Andy got his name, Landrew the Love God, from an episode of Star Trek—there was a character who spread love and was this omnipresent love person. Kevin’s identity was a little built by Andy, as well: Kevin Stein, like he was this dead guy.

KEVIN WOOD I originally was calling myself Ded Springsteen, as a protest against Bruce Springsteen, because he was so dorky and stupid. And then I changed into Kevin Stein. No, not like Frankenstein. I just wanted to have a different last name. Actually, the Stein thing came from a kid who was really popular in high school when we lived down in Texas. It was a 70 percent Chicano high school. This guy Stein drove a convertible; he always had a girlfriend. He was white and had blond hair, but he was bigger than most of the other kids—maybe he got set back a few grades—and so all these Mexicans just worshipped this guy. They always called him by his last name: “Stein! Hey, Stein!” He was the big man on campus. So that’s why I adopted that as my last name.

But these nicknames I generated for myself didn’t last long. It was just easier to go with my real name, because it’s what everyone knew me as.

REGAN HAGAR Around ’81, Andy would wear a big, long choir robe, with whiteface. Nobody else back then changed for the stage. It was uncool. But he went through the whole process, preshow. I only wore makeup for a short period of time—more Alice Coopery stuff, like black around my eyes with lines that came down. It was kind of a drag to deal with, and Andy was full-bore and up-front, so I didn’t need to do it later.

Andy would have girls who would do his makeup. Girls were just all over him; they would love to come back and help him get ready.

ROBERT SCOTT CRANE Women loved Andy. I mean, he was, fuck, maybe five-six and overweight, but he was so charming. I knew two or three of Andy’s girlfriends after he was with them. And since then, I’ve met one or two women who just randomly had a one-night stand with Andy, and they all have basically the same feeling: They’d love him. One-night stands in high school can be a bad thing, especially for the girl, but they all were like, “He was an angel. He treated me so sweet. He was so loving.”

REGAN HAGAR When Andy was probably 15, he was rejected by a girl that he had gone out with for a while. End-of-the-world stuff for him at that time, I’m sure. I don’t know what he used to do it, but he carved her name across his chest. Not terribly deeply, but it never went away, which was a point of a little jeering 10 years later. Her name was Ruth, but when the scar settled in, it looked like it said RUSH. When you’d see it, the joke was, “Wow, you’re really into Rush.”

DAVE REES Andy really became a character. Even in his picture in his senior annual, he’s in whiteface makeup and has a Malfunkshun quote. He was a star in his own mind already.

REGAN HAGAR Back then, 666 was huge—black-metal stuff was going on. Andy came up with the opposite, 333: “This is going to represent our band, and we’re gonna call it Love Rock.” We had a roll of stickers that were black with a white 3 on them, and we put ’em on shit. It was a big spindle that lasted for years. It was just a Love Rock thing. Three is a magic number.

DAMON STEWART (KISW DJ; Sony Music regional A&R scout) Andy had such a big-arena-rock-show presence. Even a little club like the Vogue, which seemed like it could barely hold a hundred people, he treated the crowd like it was a hundred thousand.

REGAN HAGAR He’d regularly speak to the balcony—and there wouldn’t be a balcony. He’d do typical rock banter: “How you doin’ tonight?” “Let me hear ya in the balcony!” Lots of “Hello, Seattle!”s. It sounds almost too cheeky, but the way he delivered it was just great. He brought big rock to a small-punk ethic.

KEVIN WOOD He’d mention that the band