Chris Squire playing drums on tour with Digital Leather
(photo by Chris Woo)
He Should Have Known Better
Page 2
D'ya Hear About Squire and the Mexican Drug Gang?
At this point, Squire disappeared from his usual hangouts, and it wasn't long before rumors started.
Of all the rumors going around town, the most action-packed was that he'd moved to an apartment in Tijuana, complained to a gang of drug dealers downstairs about the noise they were making cooking meth and filming pornos, and had to flee for his life.
Surprisingly, two parts of the rumor were true: Squire did live in Tijuana for a few weeks and he did have to flee for his life, but it had nothing to do with meth-cooking pornographers.
Squire moved to Tijuana for the cheap rent. In early June 2005, a customer at Pokéz mentioned that one of his Tijuana apartments had become available and the rent was $100 a week. The place was nice and spacious, a ten-minute bike ride from the border.
"Everybody that lived in his apartments were Americans that were running away or hiding from something," Squire said.
His place had been formerly inhabited by a "speed-freak prostitute" who stiffed the landlord for 75 bucks. When she moved out, she left her computer behind, and the landlord kept it as collateral but never bothered to take it out of the apartment.
"Instead of just doing the right thing and paying her debt, she went to these Tijuana gangsters," Squire said, "and I don't know what her pull was with these guys, but she got them to go over to the house and try to rob us.
"She actually warned the landlord, 'Carlos and his boys are coming over to get my computer, so you better give it to them.' The landlord had warned me, 'Look, these guys might come by. Don't answer the door if they do come by, and if you do unfortunately run into them, just give them the computer. It's not worth you getting into any trouble over.' Sure enough they did come around that day" -- June 30 -- "and I didn't answer the door."
Squire hid behind drawn shades until nightfall. One of his favorite bands, Sweden's Backyard Babies, was playing at the Casbah, and he wasn't going to miss them. He grabbed his bike, ran out the door, and took off for the border.
As he pedaled down the street, he realized he'd left his ID back at his place. He turned around and raced home, hoping the gangsters hadn't returned.
"Just as I was walking out of the door of my apartment, those guys were on my porch," he said. "They basically forced their way into my apartment. Trying not to show that I was scared, I said, 'Oh, you must be here for the computer. Here you go, here's the computer.'
"They said, 'No. Sit down,' and one of them tried to grab me, and the other one pulled a filed-down screwdriver out of his jacket and a roll of duct tape. I don't know what the fuck they thought they were gonna do with that shit, but I grabbed a cast-iron pan and fuckin' clocked one of them upside the head with it as hard as I could.
"It scared the shit out of the other guy, and I just powered past him, knocked him out of my way, and ran out of the apartment, leaving all of my possessions, including my recording equipment and drum set, behind. I ran as fast as I could to America, just assuming those guys were cleaning me out and I was losing everything I owned."
The apartment was full of musical gear: amps, speaker cabinets, mixers, and more.
"They actually left the house wide open with all of my stuff in it and went to get a truck," Squire said. "By the time they got back, my landlord was on the porch with his gun. They didn't get any of my shit. It still scared the fucking hell out of me, and I never did go back to TJ after that, except when I went back to get my stuff, but even that was months later."
Too Much of a Loose Cannon
In July 2005, Squire left town, heading for Oakland to fill in on bass with Verbal Abuse, which was about to go on tour with Fang. The two Bay Area bands had made their name in the '80s hardcore and punk scenes.
On roadie status, Squire drove with the bands from Oakland to L.A. to Phoenix to Houston. But he never played with them. "I was officially asked to join the bands," he said, "and I was on tour with the bands, and I learned the bands' songs, but it was fucking chaos, but we never played nor practiced. Yet we were on tour. And the tour fell apart before I even got to play a show."
Fang's vocalist Sammy had gone to Austin, saying he'd come back to Houston to pick up Squire. He never showed. Late in August, Squire moved on to New Orleans and was just getting comfortable in his new city when he heard the warnings about Hurricane Katrina.
He fled the city ahead of the storm and arrived in Phoenix a couple of weeks later. He settled in and landed a job helping out with sound at the Clubhouse, a large all-age club in Tempe.
Having grown up surrounded by stacks of amplifiers and musical gear, Squire was perfect for the job. He trained for three weeks under the main soundman, learning to wire and run the mixing board. Things were looking good until the main soundman took time off to attend a funeral.
"I had to do sound on my own, whether I was ready or not," Squire said. "My first night doing sound by myself was a hip-hop show. There was a gunfight, and a bullet was shot through the window and zoomed past my ear."
But the real trouble came the next night, when '80s thrash metal band Overkill headlined.
According to Squire, the band's roadies showed up for sound check at 3:00 p.m. the day of the show and reconfigured the sound system without letting him know.
"So that night when Overkill was playing, nothing worked right," he said. "None of the controls went to the right speakers. It was a nightmare."
Overkill vocalist Bobby "Blitz" Ellsworth screamed at Squire from the stage, and the roadies bitched at him in the sound booth. Squire blew up.
"I lost my temper," Squire said. "The roadie kept coming back there and yelling at me. I went and told the owner of the club, 'Look, if this guy steps one foot closer to me, I'm gonna knock his fucking block off.' The owner decided at that point that I was too much of a loose cannon and he let me go."