Jake Wethers the biggest rock star, and most wanted man in the world, tomorrow will be sitting before me giving me an interview, and I haven’t got a bloody clue what I’m going to ask to him.
I put Jake’s album into the disc holder in my Mac, plug my headphones in and start to listen as the music flows into my ears.
I pull the insert booklet out and start to read through the track listings. Then I flick to the back page to read the dedications.
There’s one person I know, without doubt, who this album is dedicated too.
The person who co-wrote the album, and who it’s named after – Jonny Creed.
Jonny was Jake’s best-friend, lead guitarist in TMS, and his business partner, and he died in a car accident a little over a year ago.
Jonny’s car crashed through a barrier then rolled down a steep ravine in LA not far from where he lived.
I saw the pictures in the news the next day after it happened. His car was totalled.
He never stood a chance.
There were no other cars involved in the accident, and after the autopsy was done it was revealed that Jonny was way over the legal alcohol limit, and the level of drugs in his system was enough to take down a small horse, or so it had been reported.
The accident happened late at night, and the police said Jonny could have been swerving to avoid an animal in the road, or maybe, because of the alcohol and drugs, he could have fallen asleep at the wheel, though there’s no evidence to prove either to be the case.
The press have speculated that it was a suicide. But the bands spokespeople have vehemently denied it, and there was no evidence to show that Jonny was depressed in anyway at all.
His life was good. He was at the top of his game. He had everything to live for.
The band took his death badly. Jake even more so. And his pain was splashed all over the pages of the press for the world to see.
Jake upped his drinking and his drugs, and then fell in the worst possible way when on stage in Japan eight months after Jonny’s death.
It was the band’s first show since Jonny’s death. Jake was wrecked. He could barely talk, let alone sing. When the crowd got antsy at the poor show, he berated them. When they heckled, he unbuttoned his jeans and urinated on the stage.
He was arrested for public indecency.
I saw the clips of the show after it happened. It burned my heart to watch.
He was so far from the Jake I had seen over the years in the press, and even further from the Jake I remembered and once loved.
He was lost to grief, trying to bury it with drugs and drink. And for that one moment he lost control.
It could have ruined his career.
Luckily for him it didn’t. If anything, it only catapulted his status higher and the world’s obsession with him further.
He is the ultimate bad boy of rock.
Jake was fined for his behaviour in Japan and thrown out of the country. Soon afterwards he went into rehab.
He’s spent four months in rehab and has been out for the last four weeks, and is still maintaining a low profile.
But I know that’s soon to change, hence the interview, as the band has the album, which Jake and Jonny wrote together, to release and promote.
For a while there was a worry among the fans that the band wouldn’t go on when Jonny died, but from the press release that TMS put out a month ago, shortly after Jake got out of rehab, they said the band was Jonny's life and love, and that this album, his last and now his legacy, was his best to date. And also that if they didn’t put the album out, Jonny would more than likely come back to kick their asses for quitting now.
And this is not me being cynical, I just understand the music business, and well … basically the band is what keeps the music label riding high, and you see Jake owns the label that TMS are signed to; if it’s possible to sign the band you are in.
But basically, if the label falls because the band quits, then that’s an awful lot of people out of work.
When TMS first started out they were signed to a small label, ‘Rally Records’, but as the band rapidly grew, becoming one of the fastest growing bands ever and breaking sales records worldwide, basically becoming a phenomena, Jake grew too. And him and the guys soon outgrew the small label they were signed to.
It’s well documented that Jake is a shrewd businessman for his young age, and a serious professional, barring his drug and alcohol addiction, and the pissing on the crowd incident. It's also widely reported that he is notoriously difficult to work with.
Apparently, he was once quoted in the press as saying, ‘When you’re the best like I am, and give only the best, why is it so wrong to expect the same in return.’
That, I can believe. Because that reminds me a lot of the Jake I knew. Never one to mince his words or hold back from sharing his thoughts.
So when the band felt they were too big for Rally anymore, they walked away from the label, buying themselves out of their contract.
The figure has never been reported. But I’m in no doubt they could have afforded it.