Metal Sludge — He is now a frontman for a promising, dynamic new band called Anita Squeeze, but Josh Lewis was also the original guitarist in Warrant, who would go on to sell millions of records and tour the world – but without Lewis, who was sacked in 1987 about six months after the late Jani Lane had joined. 

As part of the in-crowd at Fairfax High in Los Angeles with future members of Guns N’ Roses, Red Hot Chili Peppers and other huge bands, Mr. Lewis has stories for days.

He shares a few good ones in this compelling Metal Sludge scoop.

—————————————–

METAL SLUDGE: What are you currently up to. Here is where you can plug all your stuff.

JOSH LEWIS: Well in November 2019, my band Anita Squeeze were very fortunate to be selected as one of the top 100 unsigned bands in the nation by Music Connection Magazine…and for the last few years (during Covid) we have been working hard rehearsing, playing shows, and we finally released our debut self titled EP. 

The amazing David Dominguez, who worked Mike Clink on Chinese Democracy, with Papa Roach and a bunch of other amazing artists mixed and mastered it…. and it sounds LARGE.  

This band is filled with great musicianship. Brent Terry slams the drums with a feel very similar to John Bonham, Lex Wolfe is one of the most fluid bassists I’ve ever seen, and Mark Brown plays the B3 like he was taught by Billy Preston himself.

The record is very song orientated and the response so far has been amazing!!! We will be working hard to promote this album for the next 10-12 months, and then we’ll release another one. It feels great to finally have something to share with everyone, plus we have so many songs, we could literally go into the studio and come out with 7-8 full length albums right now.

2, Which popular musicians did you go to school with at Fairfax High? Please list every name plus a few words about what they were like as teens.

LEWIS: Man if I told you all the names of the people I grew up with and hung out with at and around Fairfax High, you would think I’m a total liar. So many bands that you know and love were born in the halls of Fairfax High School.

Here’s a few names…..

Slash – Guns N’ Roses

Tracii Guns – L.A. Guns

Steven Adler – Guns N’ Roses

Flea – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Anthony Kiedis – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Jack Irons – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Wallflowers, Eleven

Hillel Slovak – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Robbie Crane – Ratt, Vince Neil Band, Blackstar Riders

Rami Jaffee – Wallflowers, Foo Fighters

Adam Shore – Warrant’s original singer

Alain Johannes – Red Hot Chili Peppers, Eleven, Queens of the Stone Age

.. and the list goes on and on.

Slash was kind of like a mentor to me before any of us knew what a mentor even was. I’ll explain later.

Tracii Guns was always great to me, I remember I was building a guitar in wood shop and he would come up to me daily and tell me he’d give me album credits if I built him a guitar. I never did build the guitar for him, but he gave me album credits anyway. That’s how cool he was.

Robbie Crane is and will always be one of my favorite people in the world. Such a positive soul filled with infinite energy. He used to throw pebbles at my bedroom window when I was dead asleep at 6 a.m. as he was on his way to go bag groceries at Alpha Beta. All of our friends were mutual, and we hung out a lot. He later roadied for Warrant, then Poison, and then, as you know, went to be a super successful bass playing force in a many great bands.

I moved to the neighborhood when I was 5,  and the first kid I met was Hillel’s little brother, Jamie. I’d see Hillel at their house but he didn’t hang out with us. He was probably about 8 or 9 then. I always used to see him walking… he was always walking somewhere. He moved kind of like the slanky kid from Fat Albert…with that cool slow swagger. To me he seemed so tall, and had this giant head of light dirty brown hair. Like a giant light brown Q-Tip. 

Rami Jaffee, was and is the greatest guy. He was really popular in school and could play “Baba O’Riley” on the keys. And if you could play “Baba O’Riley” you had to be good. Rami played with Adam & Max, the 2 architects of Warrant before I came around, and before “Warrant” was ever a name they even considered…they were called, “Quest”.  

One day I met Jacob Dylan, singer for the Wallflowers and Bob Dylan’s son, and I told him I was an old friend of Rami’s. He looked at me and said, “Rami has been in so many bands, did you know he was in Warrant?” Jacob had no idea I was ever in Warrant.. we literally just met 30 seconds prior. I thought it was hysterical. Rami and I talk frequently and he has invited my wife and I to see the Foo’s quite a few times. In fact, we went to the Studio 666 premier and after party in February. Sadly,  I think it was Taylor’s final LA show. 

3, Tell us about your time in Warrant and who was in the band with you?

LEWIS: I joined original singer/bassist Adam Shore, and original drummer Max Mazursky in the summer of 1983. We eventually added Jerry Dixon and Erik Turner in ’84, and we played the LA scene until 1986 when Adam and Max left to start Hot Wheels. Jani and Steven joined Warrant within a week, and we played our first show a month later. I left in 87 about 6 months after Jani joined.

After Adam and Max left it was a major tear fest for Erik, Jerry and I, as well as our closest friends. We played a show in San Diego, and the next morning Adam and Max quit the band. The drive home was horrible for Erik, Jerry and I. We thought our bond was unbreakable, but it wasn’t. 

One of our friends told us that Jani and Steven left Plain Jane; they were a sing/songwriter and a drummer, and that’s what Adam & Max were, so our friend left a note on their door and that week they came down to audition.

The plan was to go over a couple old Warrant songs, “Tease Machine,” and “Nice N’ Slow.” But Jani had a new song he wanted us to hear, it was called, “Down Boys”. I remember him playing it and he was using chords that we never used, and I thought “this guy’s gonna bring us to a new level.” We loved the song and then said, let’s play, “Nice N’ Slow”. He puts his hand in his pocket to pull out the lyric sheet, but he forgot to bring it. He kind of had a panicked look on his face, went to the office to get a pen and a piece of paper and then proceeded to write down the lyrics word for word from memory. It blew us away. Then he sang his ass off – worlds better than we ever heard that song before.

4, Why exactly did you leave Warrant?

LEWIS: To put it frankly, I was axed because I sucked. I was 18 and I just wasn’t ready, I didn’t know my instrument that well, I didn’t have good equipment, I had timing and tuning issues, and when Jani joined the band I wasn’t ready to be on equal ground with the rest of them. I’ve come to terms with it, Yeah it hurt, but in a lot of ways, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

When you are let down by something you put your life into, you have a choice to either crawl into a corner and dwell on it for the rest of your life, or you pick yourself up and do the work necessary to improve your skills…. and hopefully one day you get to a point where you feel like you can hang with the best of them.

When you get to that point, you earn a confidence that nobody can take away from you. That’s not to say, you’re better than or worse than anyone else, you’re not, you’re equal, and it’s a great goal to strive for. 

To know that you are better today than you were yesterday, and tomorrow you’ll be better than you were today. To me, that is what life is all about, not only in the creative space, but also at your job, and your relationships.

5, What do you usually order at Canter’s deli?

LEWIS: My “go to” at Canter’s is the Hot Corned Beef on Rye with Swiss and Thousand Island dressing on the side.. and Fries!!! 

6, Do you ever see yourself in Jani Lane’s shoes? A big rock star?

LEWIS: Always!!!! Music is my No. 1 passion… I’ll do it til I die, whether I’m home alone or in any size venue. Obviously I haven’t given up: it’s something I do better than anything else.

Some people might think that is delusional, but it doesn’t matter. Remember, there was a time when it was delusional to think you could walk into a room, flip a switch, and a light would turn on or off. Most people also wholeheartedly believed that it was delusional to take a multi-ton cylinder and fly it over an ocean. If you’re not believing in the delusional, you’ve probably either given up, or you’ve achieved everything you ever wanted. 

Either way, being motivated to achieve something new is what makes life more enjoyable at least for me. Yes there will be disappointments, that’s crucial in every journey. Why??? Because there’s no better teacher than failure. Failing is the greatest indicator that there is still something you need to learn.  

7, If you saw Slash today, would he give you a big hug?

LEWIS: I hug everyone, so it would probably be me that initiates a hug.  You have to realize that I knew him before he played guitar. My best friend at the time and I would go to Laurel Elementary where all the kids would bike and skateboard just to watch him ride his bike. We were younger than most of the kids, but we were drawn to him for some reason. Probably the same reason the world is drawn to him. 

I distinctly remember one day, the school was empty and Slash was sitting on the top of a staircase trying to figure out how to play guitar. I never saw him on a bike again, and he never went anywhere without his guitar.

On Friday and Saturday nights everyone from school would go to Pan Pacific Park (next to The Grove). One night, Saul walked up to me, and I said, “Hey Saul”,  he told me that he was changing his name to “Slash”, and that I should call him “Slash” from now on. Thinking about it in hindsight, how fortunate was I to be told by one of the most iconic guitarists of our lifetime that he just changed his name to “Slash”? 

Of course, most of us still called him Saul, because that’s how we knew him, but a few years later, I went to see GnR at the Long Beach Arena opening for somebody, (I can’t remember who) and backstage I said “Hi Saul”….. he looked me dead in the eye and said, “You can call me Slash now, even my grandmother calls me Slash”, and from that day on I never made that mistake again. 

He was like a mentor to me…. he would lend me equipment, give me advice when I’d go into Hollywood Music, where he worked, (where Ghenghis Cohen is) and he was always cool to me. He even bought me my first Jack & Coke at the Rainbow. 

A lot of people don’t know this but because of our friendship he gave Warrant our very first show. It was New Years Eve Party going into 1984, and the lineup was, Warrant (Adam, Max, & Myself only… yes as a 3 piece… before Jerry and Erik joined). Pyrus with Tracii Gunns, and Road Crew with Slash. Slash came to our rehearsal in Adam’s bedroom and gave us the gig right on the spot. 

I roadied for him with Hollywood Rose also, and one of my favorite Slash and Axl stories happened when they played Madame Wong’s West. I remember 2 songs from that night… “Anything Goes”, and another song called, “Cold Hard Cash”. which to my knowledge never was released or recorded in any manner, but I loved the title. Anyway, so Slash picked me up in his Trans Am, took me back to his mom’s house to pick up his equipment, and Axl. In the car Axl was in the front seat and I was in the back seat, leaning forward and seated in the center. We were driving down Wilshire entering the Westwood area and traffic was really heavy. Axl was getting really irritated, and he kept saying, “Look at all these fuckin’ cars.. and not one of those mother fuckers driving them knows we’re playing tonight…. NOT FUCKIN’ ONE!” He was literally irate about it… and I thought that was very weird, and a bit “delusional” because they were completely unknown. Slash looked back at me and rolled his eyes.

A few years later, they were opening for the Stones at the Coliseum and every mother fucker in the city knew they were playing that night. It made me realize that Axl knew his destiny and he wasn’t delusional after all. 

I went to many of GnR’s early EARLY shows. The first one I saw was at the Stardust Ballroom on Sunset near Western. Home Depot is there now. That day Slash asked me to check out his new band, Guns N’ Roses. I went by myself and it was clear they were really great… sloppy but great!!!! After the show, I helped him load his Marshall cabinet into his car told him I thought he had something special this time. It was the classic lineup, Axl was wearing his quilt, and for some weird reason David Lee Roth was there. But the band was great, right from the start. 

I last saw Slash at Canter’s for Ron Schneider’s funeral about 10 years ago. Ronny played bass in Virgin for a bit with Riki Rachtman. If you knew Rondog, you’d know… he was there since the beginning with all of us, especially Slash. He was everyone’s friend, and we all loved Ronny, he was the sweetest guy, and an amazing bass player. It was a huge loss for all of us. 

It was weird seeing Slash that night because I hadn’t seen him in a while, and it was a sad event. I wasn’t really sure how to approach, but when I did, it was great, he said, “I thought that was you.” and we chatted for a bit about Ronny.  

8, What kind of a connection did you or the band Warrant have with Poison?

LEWIS: One night we opened for Odin at the Roxy and I look into the audience and Bobby Dall is right in front of me bobbing his head. We were huge Poison fans at the time, and he seemed to take a liking to us. He hung out with all of us after the show, and the next thing we knew we were opening for Poison all the time. We got to know all of them pretty well and a few of our mutual fan/friends, “The Hui Hui’s” always through these amazing parties. Both our bands would all be there partying all night with so many friends… many times we’d wake up the next morning after crashing on the floor in one of the back houses…. It seemed like almost every party had a theme, whether it was a Halloween costume party, or a Hawaiian Luau’s, it was always such a great vibe. The Hui Hui’s really deserve a lot of credit for creating a bond between so many of the local bands… Poison, Warrant, Pair A Dice, Paradise, New Haven and a bunch of other bands were all at the Hui Hui parties and we all became very close friends.

Editor’s Note: Lani Hui Hui gave Stevie Rachelle a ride to his Tuff audition in June 1987.

One of our biggest shows with Poison was at the Santa Ana Bowl, there were a couple thousand people there and we were first on the bill… backstage was very festival feeling, everyone hanging out, but the funniest thing I remember was walking into the restroom and Bret was just stepping up to the urinal, (you know the kind that goes all the way to the ground) his back was towards me and I was just walking in, maybe 30 feet behind him… I could see he was getting ready to do his business and with perfect comedic timing, seconds after he opens his fly he says, “Damn that water is cold!!!”  Bret is one the funniest guys I’ve ever know. 

One time we were playing the Troubadour and we asked he guys from Poison to introduce us, before the show Bobby told me, “Be who you wanna be, not who you are”. In the world of entertainment when it’s so easy to be shot down and insecure, I took that as the greatest advice that I still believe. Thanks Bob!!!

Say what you will about Poison, but when they got to LA, they immediately owned the whole city. They worked harder than anyone, they promoted better than anyone had seen before and they knew that success was less about being the fastest guitarist etc.., and more about likability and sexuality than every other band at the time. In my opinion, if Warrant hadn’t seen them, and followed their lead, Warrant never would have known how to work as hard and never would have been successful.

9, Compare Hollywood in 1985 to 2022.

LEWIS: Hollywood in 85 was unreal!!! The sea of people on the strip was unlike any scene I know of… bands were out there working hard, passing out flyers to anyone that would take one. You could go to the Troubadour and see GnR, The Whisky and see Warrant, The Roxy and see Faster Pussycat all in one night. Passing out flyers to total strangers, meeting people, really broke me out of my shell… before that I was kind of shy and quiet, now you can’t shut me up. 

There was competition and camaraderie between bands. Promoters would put similar type bands together to make every night an event. We had great magazine’s like Bam, The LA Weekly, and Rock City News that gave all of us some much needed press. It was like the whole city was about music. Today the magazines are only online and people don’t seem to depend on them as much. In addition, promoters don’t promote anymore, and I rarely see shows with bands that compliment each other. 

But the biggest killer in Hollywood in my opinion was “Pay to Play”, when Pay to Play took over the promoters filled young bands with lies about industry people being at the shows, all while making these bands sign contracts that said they would have a certain cash amount the day of the show. If the band didn’t sell enough tickets, they were responsible for the monetary difference. Warrant had a big enough following where we avoided that crap, but after Warrant, I actually had to give a promoter one of my amps to make up the difference in ticket sales. How unscrupulous is that??? 

In the 80’s musicians came from everywhere to be in a band and take on the world. Today you see a lot of hired gun types playing in tribute bands or singer/songwriters for $100 a night or less with the hopes of being seen and getting on a tour that they could easily get kicked off of. I get it, if you’re a musician, it’s better to make a living  playing music anyway you can than flipping burgers at In and Out… unfortunately, it just seems like they’re looking at the small picture, the short term.  That’s never been my thing.

10, This should be good: What’s the biggest music-related check you’ve ever received?

LEWIS: Music related checks seem to be written by me rather than paid to me lately. I’ve had a great career in photography, all while working on my musical skills at the same time. I’m looking forward to letting these songs do their thing, playing bigger and bigger shows, and hopefully having a number for you that’s in the green rather than the red. 

Bonus Question, Final words: What have we left out?  

LEWIS: The future just feels really exciting, this album is something I’ve been yearning to do for quite some time and it’s just amazing that it can now be shared with the world. Making the transition from only playing guitar to being a frontman is not an easy transition, but I worked hard on my voice, and I didn’t even consider starting a band until the reaction from people went from a quiet and counterfeit, “the show was good” to an enthusiastic “that was f’n awesome!!!”. I’m proud to say the the hard work paid off, and with any luck these songs can make their way to the hearts of people all over the world.


Josh Lewis @ Facebook – Instagram – WikiPedia –

Anita Squeeze @ WebSite – Facebook – Instagram – Twitter – Spotify – Apple – Amazon – Sound Cloud – YouTube –

Gerry Gittelson can be reached at gerryg123@hotmail.com