During a new interview with Full in Bloom, producer Ric Browde talked about working on an “aborted” album along with Michael Schenker back in the ’80s,
Here are some parts of the interview:
You mentioned that you had worked with Michael Schenker. What did you work with him on?
“I did an aborted album in 1983 right after the first three albums.”
So he’s like a trainwreck at this point?
“He was more than a trainwreck. David Krebs – David called me and said, ‘I want you to go to England with Michael, a bass player named Chris Glen, and a singer named Ray Kennedy, and a drummer named Ted McKenna.’
“And I go to England, and Michael is beyond f**ked up, just ridiculous. We did three songs, first at the Roundhouse Studios, and then at Trident’s.
“Ray Kennedy was a total drug addict, he was drug dealing, and he and Ted were selling equipment – they’d sell a guitar for drug money and things like that. Ray was so f**ked up on coke, and Michael had a really bad coke thing.
“And I spoke some pretty fluent German, so once Michael comes up and he goes, ‘I don’t have any c*caine.’ ‘Tough s*it,’ basically, and he goes, ‘I’m going to call David Krebs,’ and he calls David, ‘If you don’t get me c*caine tonight’ – he gave him a three or four-hour time limit – ‘I’m going to burn my house down!’
“I wasn’t sure how good Michael’s English was, and it actually was quite good, I was like, ‘Michael, don’t you think it would be a better threat if you burned down David’s house than your house?’ And he goes, ‘No, that would be dishonorable. He won’t take me seriously, won’t respect me if I burnt his house down.’ […]
“And this time Michael threw all of his guitars, and this is before video cameras and things like that, into the, ‘I’m going to kill myself and burn everything!’
“So instead, what he did, he didn’t get the c*caine, he pulled the toilet off the bathroom of his hotel room, flooding out the entire place, threw all of his guitars and video camera and all of his possessions in a swimming pool, the Holiday Inn charged him for having to empty the swimming pool and having to clean everything.
“I think there was like $15,000 worth of damage, plus all of his guitars and everything. Michael was really crazy in those days. There’s something about him- he was really difficult to work with, he really was, because he was just always testing you whether you were paying attention, like he’d mess up deliberately to make sure you caught it, ‘I can’t trust you again.’ It’s funny, every time I see him, he’s incredibly pleasant.