In the first part of our interview we looked back at the early days of Enuff Z’Nuff you can catch up with Part One HERE. In Part Two we look deeper at ‘Beautiful Things,’ Enuff Z’Nuff’s final album ‘Dissonance,’ that first live show in 5 years and the letter to Metal Sludge. So if you want Part two then read on…
Just to recap… we’d just been talking about Donnie not being able to write for almost three years after ‘The White Album’…
Mark: So what happened to change that?
Donnie: When I finished the program I was thinking to myself and talking to God and saying “what now? Now I’ve got it together and got my head together are we still gonna do this anymore?” and the next day “I Could Save The World” popped into my head. Just like that. Then ‘Breaking Me Down’ then ‘Fly’ popped into my head after that, it was like three days in a row, and I was thinking “Well I think we’re back in business” there was my answer! (laughs)
Mark: As a long time listener I think it is my favourite of your solo material.
Donnie: I’m so proud of it, I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most conducive and expressive, you know exactly what I’ve always wanted… the record I should have made my whole life.
Donnie: But as far as Pledge goes we set a Pledge goal and we doubled the goal really quickly and so the budget easily would have been met, all the players paid and everything, and I still would have had like twenty, thirty grand to promote it. But they disappeared and vanished off the face of the earth and I think as one of the only artists that tried to do the right thing, and ended up honouring the Pledge using my own money, and my sister getting a loan, I took a shitty record deal so we could get all of those CD’s pressed and all the other stuff that people paid for, and postage and all of that stuff. They got fucked.
Mark: It was horrible, but also very interesting to see how bands reacted. I wrote about it at the time and I think that there was only you and Danny Vaughn and a couple of others that actually did that and honoured the Pledge out of their own pockets, some bands signed to major labels, even just said ‘tough luck’ it changed my opinions of a few people.
Donnie: That’s what I heard, but my fans I consider are all brothers and sisters, we’re like a family, we’re small but we’re mighty and I love them so much and I appreciate them so much… I was already forty grand in the hole so what’s another few thousand dollars to take care of these people? But in all reality we got fucked, they got fucked, the engineers got fucked, everybody who was supposed to get paid got fucked and that’s where it sort of lay, and that’s where everybody else left it. But we actually took loans and actively bought all that stuff, and I got a deal that sent them all out and honoured that thing. There’s still people busting my balls that they didn’t get theirs, there’s like two people who haven’t got theirs and that’s probably because the mail man can’t find the cornfield.
Mark: (laughs) It’s funny you should say that I didn’t get my copy but I also appreciate what went on and was so happy to get it digitally. I think I wrote the first review and I just looked before we spoke 27,000 people read that review to date so let’s hope they all go out and buy the album and then they all go out and tell their friends to do the same.
Donnie: Well there were a lot of things that tried to stop the album happening including me being in hospital almost dying… all those things made it almost two years after it was recorded before it got released. There was the juice and the buzz from everybody knowing it was done, and sending out the digital downloads, and releasing a single and everything… then it just sat there for a while, and you know the record wasn’t set up properly and done all ass-backwards and then before you know it, even right to this day it’s kind of deflated and I just can’t give up on that record that’s why I’m releasing a new single next month. A brand new song to re-breathe some life into it and launch the tour and make another round of press and all of that stuff, I can’t let it go it’s just too good, the best thing I’ve ever done.
Mark: I’m not even sure what my favourite track is on there after listening to it so many times, all I know is that it’s absolutely wonderful. But ‘I’ll Surrender’ is up there, ‘Falling Through the Pages’ is a beautiful song.
Donnie: All of those songs needed to be on that record, that’s the way that God orchestrated it and I just followed the songs and I followed the signs, and with putting the live (show) together and deciding which songs to play, I couldn’t… I mean I wanted to do a lot of the current and new stuff and then touch back on the Enuff Z’Nuff shit for the last 40 minutes of the show and I just could not figure out which song I could leave off of it. It all just flows, it’s the closest thing in my book and from what I can do to a perfect record. So it’s hard to pick… My favourite is probably ‘Tender Lights’
Mark: I love the closing track too ‘Back From the Blue’ that’s you at your best.
Donnie: That’s a good one.
Mark: Just your voice and the piano.
Mark: Over the years you’ve been through let’s say a few ups and downs. How do you feel in yourself at the moment, today? You penned that letter to Metal Sludge just a short while ago where you poured out your heart really. How are you feeling, are you OK?
Donnie: That was just a temporary leave of my sanity after the first Rock show I had played in five years. The way it started out, things just didn’t work out the way they were supposed to, and by the time it got near the show there was really late preparation. We were kind of ‘MacGyvering’ this thing together and I wanted to cancel so bad and I couldn’t find any excuse that I could use short of sticking my hand under a lawn mower or something. And it was sold out and everything, and so I had to do it and I knew what was going to happen that night, and uh, the fans all loved it, it was well-received but I knew that people were going to video-tape certain things and they were gonna post them. Two guys did it, Facebook live from there, and those guys if I ever see them again won’t be able to do Facebook live without broken fingers. But it was picked apart and analyzed and put under a magnifying glass, because there are lots of people out there, jealous fuckers that can’t wait to see the arrogant shit-talking Donnie Vie fall flat on his face. And Metal Sludge, it just was a very hard time I was going through, a lot of shit at that time and then I did that. I don’t know Stevie Rachelle has been a buddy of mine throughout the years and he’d written me some messages and I just wrote back and it just kept flowing out into this big long thing and before I was done with it I knew it was gonna get posted. And I didn’t care.
Mark: To me it struck me as a human reaction from someone who obviously cares…
Donnie: But you know that whole thing really affected me because I knew people were laughing, but if you weren’t there and you picked it apart under a microscope it was a disaster, it was a train wreck. I mean it was well-received but not in that light dude, so it really bothered me having anybody thinking that is what I’m up to now after five years, that was what I was gonna come back with. And so I kinda took a temporary leave of my senses but I’ve regained them since. I’m losing my mind a little bit, having some issues discerning reality from what’s going on. I’m older and my body’s been through a lot so everything’s breaking down and naturally the mind would follow. But I got it back together and realised that’s what that is, that’s the platform, that’s what they do over there and no matter what I do and how good I do it they’ve always done that shit to me and so if you don’t go to that page it doesn’t exist.
Mark: So what gets you out of feeling down like that?
Donnie: I reached out to the fans for support like I always do when I’m down and stuff like that, like they do for me I do the same with them and they picked me back up. They recharged my energy and you know, we move forward.
Mark: There are plenty of people out there like me who just want good things for you and for you to keep making that wonderful music. We will always be there in the background.
Donnie: I probably brought more attention to it than it would have gotten by not saying anything. I caused the drama. There goes the old theory of self-sabotage, Donnie Vie with his self-sabotage. But there’s so many things… people don’t know what they think they know and that’s why I’m doing a blog now to set the record straight and let everybody know what actually happened throughout my career and the tragedy that was the downfall of the great Enuff Z’Nuff that should have been. But it shouldn’t have been, otherwise it would have been and God just said “No, this guy can’t handle this yet.” With an abundance of money and fame, and no one who can tell him anything he’d be dead in two weeks.
Mark: Maybe that’s the reason.
Donnie: Oh there’s no doubt about it. I’ve died a few times even being broke (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) Oh mate, you’re breaking my heart. There’s so much I still want to chat to you about. The last time I saw you play was at Rocklahoma when, and I know he didn’t play there, but Jake E. Lee was part of the band for that fleeting moment and everyone was talking about if he’d play with you. When you did that wonderful swansong ‘Dissonance.’
Donnie: ‘Dissonance’ was another record where I had just come back to the band after a six year hiatus because I just couldn’t survive anymore. I was down to 135 lbs when we were on that Poison tour and I was addicted to everything and I just couldn’t go on anymore. And there was no way to really deal with that, there was so much happening and we’d just finished the best thing and I said I just gotta recuperate before I die and Chip still started booking little tours. And I was like “I told you I’m not doing this, until I’m better and I’m ready. I’m killing myself for nothing” and I was on the phone with the shitty manager we had at the time, we were on a three-way conference and he said “Well Chip why don’t you just go out without him?” and I heard Chip go (puts on great Chip voice) “Could I do that?” And that was it and then they did for six years.
Mark: What was it that got you back, the documentary?
Donnie: Yes, the reason I came back was because of that VH1 special about putting the band back together and everything and so I agreed to try and make another record because I was ready to, but there was a lot of ‘mind-fucking’ – that picked up right where it had left off. It was a disaster and we all ended up going home with basically nothing just a song or two and then I heard that Chip was going to release that shit and call it ‘Lost in Vegas and I thought no I can’t have that, I can’t have people thinking “that’s the best he’s got coming back”. So I wrote a bunch of new songs on my own and went out there to the studio with the guy who played the drums, Vinnie (Castaldo), and we ended up with ‘Dissonance’, ‘High’ and “Altered States’, ‘Roll Away’, ‘Joni Lynn’ all the great songs on that record. I went out there and I did them all by myself, and Chip heard it, and he came out and he just played the bass on that record he wasn’t even there for any of that. And then when I got a copy of the record, and I saw it, not only was there a song on there that I’d never heard before that I thought sucked, but I looked at the writing credits on it and he’d put just Enuff Z’Nuff. And that was the beginning of the end again, that was the last Enuff Z’Nuff record that got made, I couldn’t deal with his shit anymore. He had issues with me, I had issues with him. It was just time the culmination of twenty years or more of trying to be in each other’s head, taking a beating and just not getting along, and I thought “Fuck this”. But that’s my favourite Enuff Z’Nuff record.
Mark: Really? That surprises me. I love that record, I remember picking it up at Rocklahoma I actually bought it from Chip in a golf cart!
Donnie: Yeah Rocklahoma it was out by then. I remember Rocklahoma that day we were playing was a disaster, there weren’t a whole lot of people we were playing to and I got drunk as fuck, I ended up on the news and everything, doing interviews and shit, I got dumped by my old lady, oh Rocklahoma! (laughs).
Mark: Those were the days! Before we get to the podcast questions, I’d love to devote a whole episode to you and the album.
Donnie: I’d love that, I’m a great buffoon man! I’m great entertainment. My favourite subjects are the ones I know nothing about (laughs). You know when your Mom tells you to not criticize things you don’t know about? Well I love to criticize things I don’t know about.
Mark: (laughs) We do too, I love talking about stuff I know nothing about too, in a really authoritative voice.
Donnie: It’s fun (laughs) I do too! Anything I know anything about makes me sad (laughs)
Mark: If you could have been a fly on the wall in the studio for the creation of any great album just to see how the magic happened, what would you have loved to have been there for?
Donnie: Probably, oh man there’s so many, but I would have to say probably the Sergeant Pepper sessions and that included all of the Magical Mystery Tour album too. That was like the ones that didn’t make Sergeant Pepper. I kind of would have liked to have seen how they transformed (those songs) and from what I’ve heard from other Beatles stories it wasn’t the glorious magical session that everyone thinks it was, and it wasn’t all colourful and magical, but I think it’s very interesting how George Martin took these guys from the live shows and John Lennon with his hair parted on the side to all of a sudden, that happened and it changed musical history. Either that or Abbey Road.
Mark: Yeah.
Donnie: Or maybe the white album because I used to really love drugs and I heard they did a lot of heroin and shit like that making the white album. That might have been a fun one to have been a fly on the wall for, a fly doesn’t need many drugs you know (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) you can’t go wrong with The Beatles, those albums were ground breaking and what they were doing no one else was anywhere near. If you could be credited with any one song that you didn’t write what’s that song that really resonates with you that every time you hear it you get goose bumps?
Donnie: For some reason one song that chokes me up and make me feel emotional and I don’t even know why as it’s not the best song I’ve ever heard, but it’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water.’ It’s just something that I’ve felt all of my life that I really needed someone to be singing something like that to me. And it still chokes me up to this day, I did it at that show a couple of weeks ago, I play it for my mother and if you watch any of those clips from it you can see that I choked up. Every time I do it it’s the same, I don’t know why it’s not the best song I ever heard but I guess emotionally it’s the one…. Either that or ‘You Spin Me Right Round Baby Right Round’
Mark: (laughs)
Donnie: …because that made so much money. To this day that is a gay bar classic! Those guys have lots of money! (laughs)
Mark: ‘Dead or Alive’, I remember that one.
Donnie: I prefer dead (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) there is something about the chord changes in ‘Bridge’ though that make it so sad, like it seeps emotion.
Donnie: It’s just what it’s saying – “I got you, I fucking care” It’s like God wrote it. And Art Garfunkel’s voice was so sweet and so sincere, it just strikes a nerve in me and I don’t know why, you know. It finds my one feeling (laughs) and it does something to it, it gives my one feeling a boner!
Mark: (laughs)
Donnie: (laughs)
Mark: I’m sure Art would love to hear you say that!
Donnie: (laughs)
Mark: And the final question we always end with is really easy – what is the meaning of life?
Donnie: The meaning of life is… Well I drowned and I got a little peek at where we go after this and I found that I came back with, it’s hard to describe, but a ‘knowing.’ The meaning of life is we’re all energy and connectivity. Like the world that used to exist before people – the plants and the animals and the trees and the sky and the sun and the water, all worked in perfect harmony and everything was perfect and then came men and their agendas. So the meaning of life is to be a ‘whole’ – we’re all one whole thing, except for the greedy ones that come from some other energy source and are like cancer, parasites who just eat everything and can never get enough to feed that hunger. But that’s the meaning of life – connectivity. We’re all family, so love your fellow man.
Mark: Thank you so much for your time today Donnie, they say never speak to your heroes and the people who have made the music that you have loved over the years, but it’s been an absolute pleasure for me. Thank you so much mate.
Donnie: (laughs) You caught me at a good point in my life, there were many, many years where you would have been very disillusioned. I’m just a buffoon, and people can’t believe that’s the same guy who writes these songs. But you got me at a good time and I’m glad I had plenty of time for you. Thank you very much I really appreciate it, it means a lot to me.
Mark: You take care of yourself Donnie.
Donnie: Thank you very much Mark.
Connect with Donnie and buy ‘Beautiful Things’ at:
