Excerpt from On Display: The Unauthorized Story of The Scene –  © 2009

By Jay Whiteman and Karol Franklin

 

Chapter 18 – Missed Manage

From the outside looking in, most people have difficulty understanding why these music groups can’t just put aside their differences and continue to work together when so much money can be made. Unfortunately there is no easy answer to this problem.

James Benson (Gil’s Childhood Friend): Gil got burned a lot when he was younger by guys trying to exploit him. He just started to expect it, you know? He has a few guys that he considers true friends, but everyone else is kept at arm’s length.

Candy Schaeffer (Ex-wife of Kyng Mobb): Kyng always thought he was better than everyone else in the band. He figured that his talent would take over and that is why the band would be successful. He doesn’t care who he fucks over as long as it serves him. 

In the case of The Scene no one with even a passing knowledge of the band was surprised when Kyng Mobb left the group, taking Stevie “Sticks” Strider with him. Gil Jupiter and Mobb were always oil and water. And while most people point to the music both produced after the split as progressing in a similar direction, simply both wanting to do a heavier sound is not enough in common when one member believes the music the other crafts isn’t high enough quality, while the other wants to prove he’s better in every way, including song writing. This, along with ego, neuroticism and general poor behaviour, was at the root of the issues between Jupiter and Mobb.

James Benson: Gil was happy to be finally rid of Kyng from the band because he thought that TK would fall in line and that he could truly be in control of the band again. He constantly talked about the days of Crime Scene when we hung out, and I think that time was amongst the happiest for him. He loves being in control, but it’s that burning desire to be a success that allows him to give up some level of control. At some point, he recognizes that it’s for the good of the band, but he has a really hard time with it.

Cajun (Former Mobb Rulez bassist): Kyng had been looking for a way out for a little while. Right after they recorded the self-titled album he tried out for Manny Manson’s band. He thought that he was in, but then they wound up hiring Sam E. Stone which pissed Kyng off to no end. He felt that joining up with Manny was the way to get heavier and get the respect he thought he deserved. Once Sam E. got the gig, Kyng called me up and asked me what I thought of putting together a band. I was working with Claptrap at the time but they were going nowhere so I said sure. But I wasn’t sure if he wanted to do a solo thing and then go back to The Scene or not so I was keeping my options open.

Jezzy Belle (Former Mobb Rulez singer): Mobb Rulez was all about getting back at Gil. Kyng wanted to prove that he could rock harder alone and write songs that kicked ass. But the vibe was so heavy, right? There was this push to make fucking heavy music, with blazing fucking solos and lyrics that meant shit to people. It was a lot to ask of a bunch of freaks who hadn’t had the same level of success that Kyng did. We didn’t know shit about how to be the band he wanted us to be, but we sure as shit tried. Streets of Rage is a kick ass album, and I think it would have been a great stepping stone, but Kyng always wanted bigger and better right out of the gate.

Johnny Calypso (Former guitarist for The Scene): I came in right after Kyng left. The band needed a guy who could play the solos, but would basically keep his mouth shut. You could see that they were imploding at that moment, but it was a great way to earn a paycheck. Both The Scene and Mobb Rulez were tracking heavier, and Gil was racing to try and put out an album before Kyng did. There were a bunch of sessions we did with TK and some of the heavier material, but he was never really very comfortable with it. Gil kept pushing him to dig deeper and reach for it, but TK wasn’t digging on the feel of the music. TK kept bringing in this pussy shit that he’d done on his acoustic guitar and you could just see Gil lose interest the second he started singing it. I do think a lot of that stuff wound up on Graceland, but I don’t really know, I never listened to it. The big problem is that it was only me, Hairy and Gil in the studio on a regular basis. And Hairy and I are getting paid to be there. So nothing really was getting done. We probably could have had the album out before Mobb Rulez, but the process just seemed to drag on for years.

Success could only mask that for so long.

TK Grace’s firing was more surprising to the casual fan, but equally as understandable once you dig a little further. 

Even at the height of their success Jupiter could never put aside the loss of power and fame he perceived himself having in regards to The Scene. Undoubtedly this contributed greatly to the band’s rise, as the driven perfectionist that is Gil Jupiter was never satisfied.

On the other hand things had always been a little too easy for TK Grace, and the lack of struggles created a blasé attitude towards the success of The Scene. So as Grace pursued other opportunities in music and television Jupiter became increasingly frustrated and jealous, and eventually used this opportunity to re-assert himself as the Alpha Male of the band by kicking Grace out.

Still, despite the increasingly unstable state Jupiter seemed to be in, no one, even those closest to him, saw the fallout that was coming between him and The Scene’s long time manager Nigel Rodgers.

We’ve documented Rodgers influence on the band extensively in previous chapters, but fully bringing to light just how close Rodgers and Jupiter once were is difficult. Perhaps no two people in the 80’s contributed to the success of the other party more than they did for each other.

Yes Rodgers is manipulative, a liar, and selfish, but he could always justify those actions as having the band’s best interest at heart, because their best interest was his best interest too. And Jupiter seemed to understand this more than anyone else.

What happened in early November of 1997 behind closed doors between them is largely the subject of speculation, as neither has ever publicly spoken on it. Additionally, those who should know on the inside for both parties give wildly different opinions and stories. This much is known though… It wasn’t good.

And that’s hardly a surprise. Rodgers had been holding it together with the band using shoe strings and packing tape since almost the beginning, only managing to keep his hold for so many years through often brilliant re-working of the facts and an almost inhuman ability to read the needs of people and tell them what they want to hear.

And with full power now within the band Jupiter had no scapegoats left for any failures he believed people saw within the group. 

So when The Scene’s final album, “Ob-Scene”, failed to make much of a splash on the charts with Jupiter on both lead guitar and lead vocals, somebody had to be to blame. In retrospect the gold record status that “Ob-Scene” achieved is more than respectable for a band of their genre in a landscape of changing musical tastes, but for a man who’s most successful album of songs he’d written was now approaching 14 million more copies sold than that, his surprisingly fragile ego couldn’t handle this fact.

And Nigel Rodgers was all out of miracles.