A BRIEF REMEMBRANCE OF THE MENTORS: THE MADDEST ROCK ACT OF ALL TIME

by Cole Coonce

Ahhh, the Mentors! 4our guys with black leather hoods playing a highly disturbing, yet grinding variety of strip-club gutter-metal in the dark, back alleys of Los Angeles (mostly) in the 1980s.

At one show I remember Mentor’s drummer/vox El Duce  rabidly blathering from behind the skins, “While you’re backstage giving me head, the rest of the band is gonna’ be going through your p-u-r-s-e.” (And who said where have all the Noel Cowards gone?) He then passed out behind his dime-store drum kit and his hooded-noggin was flailed with a ride cymbal by the Mentors’ ace guitar player, Sickie Wifebeater.

The penultimate anecdote I heard about ol Duce was that he was living under the Santa Monica Blvd. overpass at the Hollywood Freeway. The ultimate anecdote was that he stepped in front of an oncoming train last year in  Riverside, CA.

One can only hope that there is another oncoming engine with the  words “Limp Bizkit and their ilk” in its destination window.-30-

(from Sex & Travel & Vestiges of Metallic Fragments. Originally published on kerosenebomb.com, 6/03)

Sex & Travel & Vestiges Of Metallic Fragments cover