Oh, What a Mangled Web We Leave

"They took us to Six Flags," says Decious. "We wanted to go to a strip club and do all the fun things that you do when you sign a record deal, and we were talking to the president [at Six Flags] and he was like, 'Can you guys even get in there?' He had no idea that we were old enough to drink."

"[It was] one of those once-in-a-lifetime, 'you wouldn't believe it unless you were there' kind of things," says Friction. Almost overnight, they had gone from sleeping in their van to basking in the glow of fast cash and major-label promises.

They moved out to Los Angeles to be close to the label and started writing their debut album. Decious and Friction moved in together into an apartment on Sunset Boulevard, and Ferrari found a place in the grimy Gershwin Hollywood Hotel and Hostel, a favorite of drug dealers. The notoriously debauched poet/novelist Charles Bukowski wrote some of his most famous works there.)

"I liked hanging out with dirty people," says Ferrari. "I liked to stay in my roots."

They made themselves comfortable quickly in Los Angeles, but they were soon yanked from one coast to the other when the label chose former Cars frontman Ric Ocasek to produce their debut in New York at Electric Lady. Ocasek, who had produced Weezer's beloved debut record (referred to as the Blue Album) and worked with No Doubt, Nada Surf and Bad Religion, seemed a perfect fit for the Pink Spiders. But the recording process was stressful—Ocasek would not tolerate drinking in the studio—and the band didn't take well to New York.

"L.A. is sunny, everyone's nice—everyone's phony, but that's fine. [New York is] grimy," says Ferrari. "It's cold.... If you hold the door open for someone, they think you're trying to mug them."

And for the first time, the Spiders found themselves without the production control they had grown accustomed to. When Friction stepped in to try to mix the album, their high-profile mixer, Tom Lord-Alge, wouldn't let him. "Every time [Matt] had a suggestion, [Lord-Alge] would just point at the wall of platinum and gold records. He wouldn't even talk," says Ferrari.

Strangely, the acumen they had exhibited for catchy, single-worthy album cuts on Hot Pink had come to haunt them. The label demanded that they re-record five of their debut's 11 tracks for their first Geffen full-length, Teenage Graffiti. The record even took its name from a Hot Pink track. Still, the band was happy to re-record the songs that had gotten them noticed, and eager to see what they would sound like with Ocasek at the controls.

Unfortunately, Ocasek's hands-off recording process failed to yield the slick, polished product the label had been hoping for. The band had to re-record several tracks in Los Angeles.

"In hindsight, [Ocasek's mix] may have been better, but it wasn't really thick or big, which was what the label wanted," Decious says. "They were like, 'It has to sound like a Blink-182 record.' "

Eventually, the label had a finished album it was prepared to get behind, and the release date was set for April 2006—a date that would give it time to become part of the nation's summer soundtrack. The time came to choose a single, and the band lobbied heavily for one of the songs from Hot Pink that they had breathed new life into: a schizophrenic ditty called "Modern Swinger." In just over three minutes, "Modern Swinger" gamely switches steps from anxiety to aggression to exuberance. It's as close to a checklist for the Spiders' oeuvre of rock 'n' roll bluster as any new listener could expect: cheerfully nodding to fast women, no-strings sex, cocaine, cigarettes and Hollywood dreams gone awry, all while building to a shimmy-inducing sing-along chorus.

The label didn't want to touch it.

Instead, they opted for "Little Razorblade," a tepid ballad that the band had only grudgingly resuscitated from their earlier album. Operatic production values had elevated it from a plodding, tossed-off mid-tempo track on Hot Pink into a plodding, synthesizer-driven luxury liner of a pop song. The Pink Spiders had built a reputation on their ability to craft two-minute hit-and-run pop rock confections. Clocking in at over four minutes, "Little Razorblade" is infuriatingly inert. It. Just. Doesn't. Move.

Nevertheless, Geffen maintained its expensive course in the absolute wrong direction. The label tapped big-time video director Joseph Kahn, who had helmed big-budget clips for everyone from U2 to Britney Spears. Kahn was enthusiastic about the project, and he was given a tremendous budget.

Bob Ferrari, ever outspoken, had clear ideas about where to take the video. "I wanted to be shooting dice," he says. "I wanted us in the Jacuzzi with hot girls...like Rick James videos. Something just decadent and ridiculous. I wanted us going down the street in a limousine with a hot tub in the back, having a ball with girls who'd never talk to us unless we had money. 'Cause it's funny."

But the label had bigger things in mind than fulfilling Ferrari's thug-life fantasy. If The Pink Spiders had any doubt about the target demographic Geffen had selected for them, the completed video surely wiped it away. The "Little Razorblade" video is a superbly produced paean to roller-skating girls and Matt Friction's clean-scrubbed, boyish face. The storyline goes something like this: Model-in-glasses discovers a secret portal to another dimension in a Laundromat dryer, enters Pink Spiderland, where girls in shiny gold shorts skate circles around The Pink Spiders as they perform on a monolithic platform in front of a giant stadium monitor that bears their name. Model-in-glasses takes off glasses, lets hair down, becomes model-on-skates. Has blast. Video morphs into psychedelic orgy of band logos and vanity shots. Girl wakes up in Laundromat. It was all a dream. Or was it? Pink balloon floats out of secret portal/dryer.