July 26, Borders Books and Music, Rainbow and Lake Mead. I first heard of Lonn Friend not from RIP magazine, which he edited, or MTV's Headbanger's Ball, on which he appeared, but from a whacko press release. Three or so years ago. Said that music journalist Lonn Friend was about to spend a year living in a room at Paris Las Vegas—a heavy-metal Henry Miller rocking a pomo Paree. That idea was too good to work out, of course, and so it didn't, but Lonn wobbled into my orbit anyway. He moved to Vegas, published a few pieces in the Weekly and, long story short, I'm thanked in the acknowledgements of his new memoir, Life on Planet Rock (Morgan Road Books, $14), copies of which he's signing tonight. It chronicles his exuberant times hanging with and often befriending acts like Metallica, Guns N' Roses, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith and more.
He's always tried to live up to his name, Friend has, so it's no surprise that a steady hubbub of visitors hems in his signing table, even though he doesn't live here now. Nearby, a half-dozen deaf people at a table flutter their hands at one other, unconcerned with the noise. I finally wedge into Lonn's field of vision just as he's scribbling "Desert Mouthpiece" on the title page of some girl's book. "I don't know what goes through me when I write these things," he tells her.
The crowd has been good, he says. "This girl said, 'You're Lonn Friend!' I said, 'Yeah, I'm here signing my book.' She said, 'I didn't come here for that. I just now recognized you from Headbanger's Ball. You wrote a book?' I'm like, 'Yeah.' She said, 'I'm buying one!'"
A minute later, he breaks away in mid-sentence to hug someone new. I wander.
Over in the lit section, Borders has just one book by Henry Miller, the randy old sensualist who's one of Lonn's literary heroes: Sexus. I leaf through it and come across this: "An artist doesn't enjoy life by evading his task." Lonn, whom I can occasionally hear cackling all the way over here, probably has that very sentiment tattooed somewhere. As for me, I spent the day fending off a dozen forwards of a press release about a poker-playing chimp. Let's pause to let that sink in: a poker-playing chimp. Somewhere, on the road to enjoying my life by not evading my task, I took the road marked "Poker-playing chimp" when I should've gone for, I dunno, "Desert Mouthpiece." And now Henry Miller is giving me shit? Damned if I don't know when the universe is sending me hand signals. I wave Lonn a quick goodbye and go home.