Lars of Metallica to debate Chuck D on Napster iss

METALLICA's LARS ULRICH will debate PUBLIC ENEMY's CHUCK D on the Napster issue on today's Charlie Rose Show on PBS. Check local listings for the time in your area. DEFTONES, who will celebrate the release of the forthcoming White Pony album with a live Internet party on June 1 at www.entertaindom.com and www.deftones.com at 7 PM PT, will hit the road on the album's release date, June 20. The tour, set to run through August 7, will feature GLASSJAW in support. Bobby Blotzer of RATT recently did an interview with Mitch Lafon for HardRadio.com. Normally, this isn't a huge deal, but he said some pretty honest, ballsy things about former vocalist Stephen Pearcy and their future on Portrait Records. Here's a few paragraphs of the interview: "We were going to start the third leg of the Ratt tour in January. Shows were booked, tickets were purchased, ads were run. Everything was in motion and Pearcy does the craziest thing he's ever done. He pulls out of the tour four days before it started because he's crazy and doesn't care. On the last tour, he charged a bunch of money to the band. This isn't highly unusual. Band members would sometimes forget to repay their incidentals: charged plane flights, etc. At the end of a tour, they would be charged back when the money was cut-up/divided. Well, his bill was for $5400. Mine was $800 and Warren's was $1100. When it came time to cut the money, he would not agree that he owed the money, but we were saying 'here's the proof. What do you want to do about it? It's our money you used.' He was freaking and said 'well, then I'm not going to do the tour.'" "So, we offered to divert the money to the end of this next tour (this was in December), but any monies that come in prior to that will go to your debt. So, a small internet merchandise royalties check comes in and we took his $1400 or whatever it was and applied it to his debt. He went ballistic. 'You're ripping me off. You're doing business behind my back,' he said. It was just idiotic. It got to the point where we were four days away from the tour and I said 'you know what dude? You're going to fuck us so bad by doing this that I will personally pay your debt. This tour is going to net you between $60,000 to $65,000 and myself and Warren. I would rather pay your five grand or whatever the balance is than fucking blow off promoters and fans. He still didn't give a shit! He basically took a shit on everybody." So, Bobby has Ratt been dropped? "We did a showcase at the Viper Room in LA for Kalodner/Portrait. Call it what you want, but his position was that he is having a hard time selling bands on that label and that's bands with all their original members! Sony is not funding the label. There's no dough to market any of the bands on Portrait. Kalodner said that, 'to me Robert Mason sings great and as much as I hate Pearcy, this just doesn't feel like Ratt anymore, but if you guys want to change your name and write your record. I'm interested in putting that out.'" "Warren's and my response was 'NO!' I have twenty years invested in Ratt. Why should I quit now when there's a catalogue of great songs people want to hear? And they will hear them with a singer that sings 'em superior to how Pearcy sang 'em and with more balls. It'll be RATT! Robbie Crane's been in the band going on four years now. So what the fuck? We were out there with just three original members. So, what's the difference? Everybody puts so much emphasis on the lead singer. If Steve Perry from Journey can be replaced and they still fill 16,000 seaters then Pearcy can certainly be replaced. That's the way I feel about it. He was weak anyways, man. His live show was embarrassing to me. Every review on our band said he sucked. I used to say to him 'Dude, if this was me and every review said I sucked. I would be doing something about it. You know you need to get out there and work the crowd.' He never did. He sucked!" "Every band that became huge in the '80s did so because they opened for us and were able to steal our crowd with a killer frontman. Jon Bon Jovi did it. Bret Michaels did it. Jack Russell and Warrant did it. All those bands opened for us and their frontmen were twenty times more energetic and all over it than Pearcy even thought of being. I mean granted that maybe it isn't his thing, but he's just an ego-ed, jaded, mean bastard. He's fucking miserable. He was miserable on the last Poison tour. I'm like 'dude, we just played in front of 17,000 people. How can you be miserable?'" "The year before he was sucking dick for beer money and opening for fucking Manowar in front of 50 people. That's the truth.