Book ‘Tales From The Gutter’ from ex-L.A. Guns tour manager Mike Corcione available on May 15th
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Former L.A. Guns tour manager and Sweet Pain frontman Mike Corcione has finally finished his memoir, which is titled Tales From The Gutter: and other Rock and Roll Shenanigans and will be available on May 15, 2023.
Amazon indicates: “Mike Corcione is a rabid music fan who lived his dream of making it in the music industry through a whirlwind rock and roll career beginning in the late 1970s through the 1980s.
Starting his professional life in music as a nightclub DJ in 1978 working for wiseguys in clubs on Long Island, Tales From the Gutter follows Mike as he ascends the ladder of working in music at thrash metal record labels and import record distributors, leading an underground cult-favorite New York City sleaze metal band, Sweet Pain, tour managing for the platinum selling heavy metal band, L.A. Guns, promoting rock and roll nightclubs, and DJing at Peter Gatien‘s infamous Club Kid hangout, the Limelight, in an era of legally drinking at 18, no-photo driver’s licenses, and the pre-crack and pre-AIDS New York City.
Raised in an environment of old world Italian values with the infamous Lucchese wiseguys featured in Martin Scorcese‘s Goodfellas, it was ultimately music that gave Mike his purpose. This is a story of passion, hard work, and making your dreams come true, with lots of rock and roll debauchery on the side. Follow Mike and his friends on their drugfueled wild adventures with Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Twisted Sister, Danger Danger, Iron Maiden, L.A. Guns, and more, while gaining fascinating insight into a bygone era when the music industry was at the height of it’s powers.”
In an interview with Sleaze Roxx back in mid-May 2020, Corcione was asked about his role with L.A. Guns to which he replied:
“L.A. Guns — I was working for Relativity Records in 1987. I had known Kelly Nickels because we had been in Sweet Pain together. But I knew Kelly way before Sweet Pain. We were friends. He had actually worked for a band. We were all friends together. We all grew up in the early ’80s in Long Island and Queens [in New York City]. So I had known Kelly. I was going out to L.A. for the record label, Relativity, and I would hook up with him. He introduced me to Mick Cripps and Mick’s brother Robert. Mick’s got a twin brother. We just got really tight and towards the end of ’87, I was really at the end of my rope working for Relativity and it was coming to a point where I really needed the change. Mick and Kelly had asked me and said, ‘Look, you got to come work for us.’ Because every time that I would go out there, I would just take care of those guys. They would come to my hotel and I would buy food and beer. You know, get a bottle of tequila and sit on the roof by the pool. So I got really tight with them and they had signed their deal by this point. They had recorded their record and stuff, and their manager was paying their rent and whatnot, but they didn’t have any money really.
So I would come into town and take them out to bars, strip clubs, drinking and I would pay for everything. Like I said, at the end of ’87, they said, ‘Hey, come work for us. We’ve got to go on the road.’ So I said, ‘Sure!’ So I left New York and I moved to L.A. in ’87, at the end of ’87 to work for those guys and that’s really how it started. I met the rest of the guys, the first time that I saw them was probably May of ’87 I think. And Nicky “Beat” [Alexander] was the drummer at the time. They didn’t have Steve Riley yet. I met Tracii [Guns] and Phil [Lewis] and Nicky “Beat”. And by the time I started working for them in December ’87, Nicky “Beat” was out and Steve Riley was in. I talk about all this in the book and I really get into the specifics of all of it. And again, it’s not their history. It’s my time with the band, my point of view and my take on it. But I was very tight with Kelly and Mick. We still are to this day. I don’t speak to Kelly as much as I used to but I talk to Mick all the time. So we were always tight you know, and then there was Steve and Phil and Tracii. We were all friendly but me, Mick and Kelly — that’s how I got into working for L.A. Guns — through Mick and Kelly. We were the three that bonded.”
