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> Login to your account > RegisterBuckcherry
From page 4 of Classic Rock Magazine July 2009
Cover of July 2009 issue.
WORDS: KEN McINTYRE B uckcherryare currently headed to the UK, where they'll play the Download festival to thousands of screaming fans, including a few who will most likely ditch their tops when the band plays its very unlikely female empowerment anthem/smash hit Crazy Bitch. To you and I, that's just another day in the life of a hardliving sleaze rock band. But to Buckcherryguitarist and
co-founder Keith Nelson, it's a fuckin' miracle.
Buckcherry has had one of the most dramatic rags to riches (and then back to rags, and then riches again) stories on record. Formed in Hollywood in the mid 905 by Nelson and ex-Slamhound singer Josh Todd, the band was snatched from obscurity in 1999 with A ll lit Up, the first single from their debut album. A sleazy and unapologetic ode to the joys of cocaine (on planes). the song's GN'R crunch and Aerosmith strut sounded like a timeless classic rock staple the first time you heard it. Buckcherry went gold and racked up three hit singles. The band toured the world, with everyone from Crazytown to AC/DC, but just three years later, the wheels were already coming loose. The second album, Time Bomb, fizzled. The record label lost interest. So did band members.
"No one in the band was getting along," says Nelson. "Three of the guys had left the band, one at a time, until all that was left was Josh and I."
The duo soldiered on, writing songs — including a raunchyglampunk number called Crazy Bitch — but without a band to play them, or a record label to release them, it was a futile exercise. Buckcherry unceremoniously dissolved in 2002. Nelson got a dayjob renting out guitars in Hollywood, while Josh Todd limped through an ill-advised solo tour.
They eventually reconvened but with no record label backing them and no one footing the bill, the band started again from square one, playing in small clubs and building their reputation back up one to-thehilt performance at a time. In late 2005, the band hit the studio again. But unlike their two previous albums, this one would have to be made cheap and dirty.
Keith: "We had to make the record really cheap and really fast. That's why we did it in 15 days, and I produced it."
15 debuted in the Top 10 on the Billboard charts, and the album's first single, Crazy Bitch, became the undying anthem for crazy bitches everywhere, particularly teenage ones with MySpace pages.
"For a good year and a half," laughs Nelson, You couldn't go to a girl's page on MySpace and not hear
"It's really crazy," Nelson says, reflecting on the story so far. "We were just a bunch of losers from Hollywood trying to make something of ourselves. It's been pretty incredible."
