The Ballad of Jani Lane

On #MeToo, Epstein and the Crisis of Accountability

I never really bought into the concept of guilty pleasures, at least where musical taste is concerned. You like what you like, and caring about someone else's music taste past the age of about twenty-two always makes me think that person is either living in arrested development or battling a midlife crisis. Being a grown adult who’s still doing the hipster thing in the year of our lord 2025 makes me think of those Japanese soldiers who kept fighting World War II into the 70s—it makes me want to enlist Jeff Mangum to order them to stand down. To that end, I have no shame in confessing that I absolutely love 80’s hair metal. I guess I’m just a sucker for a catchy riff, sing-along chorus and guitar pyrotechnics. Hair metal, also referred to as glam metal, was a genre of music that arose in the 1980s and was marked with big guitars, big personalities and even bigger hair (hence the name). The sunset strip, where the scene originated, was a land of rock ‘n roll debauchery and bands like Motley Crue or Quiet Riot rose from total obscurity to household names seemingly overnight. Soon, even old guard artists from the 70s like KISS, Heart, Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne were teasing up their hair and getting in on the action. By the late 80s, glam metal was one of the biggest musical forces on the planet and acts like Bon Jovi or Guns ‘N Roses would rival even the megastars of the decade like Prince or Madonna. The 1980s even closed out with a massive metal festival in the Soviet Union, with the biggest acts of the era breaching the Iron Curtain for what is even today still one of the largest concert ever held with over one million attendees.

One of the biggest bands of the glam era was Warrant. Warrant, led by singer and songwriter Jani Lane, was one of the last hair bands to hit it big. Although they had a few middling hits in the late 80s, Warrant is perhaps best known for their 1990 mega hit Cherry Pie. Even for me, someone who has a genuine love for the genre, Cherry Pie is a bit much. With a grating chorus, generic riff and chord progression that had been done more times than a Sunset Strip groupie, the song was far from the best the genre has to offer. Cherry Pie also features a cheesy music video with scantily clad supermodel Bobbi Brown being sprayed down by the band with a firehose in a subtle visual metaphor. Instead of the campy wink you’d get from Def Leppard or Twisted Sister, the Cherry Pie video feels like the creative vision of a thirteen-year-old boy who’s only half figured out what sex is. But at the tail end of the glam metal era, this video made the band superstars. Lane and Warrant were riding high and were even eclipsing some of the bigger artists of the genre in sales and popularity. Warrant was on the top of the food chain, but there was a Nirvana shaped meteor on its way to the music world, and Warrant was about to go the way of the dinosaur.

“I feel like maybe we’re being too subtle”

As the 80s changed to the 90s, so too the fortunes of many a hair band changed. In the late 80s, the biggest hair bands of the era could reliably pack stadiums anywhere in the world. But by the early 90s, these same bands struggled to fill a local bar. There were many dramatic rises and falls in that era, but perhaps none were hit harder than Warrant. Warrant were one of the many bands that went on tour in 1990 as superstars only to come off of the road in 1991 to find that they no longer had a career. Almost overnight, Warrant’s brand of glossy party anthems sounded like relics. Grunge was ascendant, harder-edged metal was in fashion, and their attempts to reinvent themselves went nowhere. After an unsuccessful series of follow-up albums to Cherry Pie in the 90s and early 2000s that saw the band try to (unsuccessfully) chase the trends of grunge and more straightforward rock, Lane was fired from Warrant in 2008. Lane spent several years after his departure from Warrant attempting a solo career, guest starring in reality TV, writing for other artists and starting a new band. A comeback even seemed possible as bands like Motley Crue or Van Halen had successfully reunited in that era, riding a wave of 80s nostalgia. But on August 11th, 2011, Lane was found dead of acute alcohol poisoning in a hotel in Los Angeles at age 47. At the time of his death, Lane was financially destitute and viewed as a joke by the rest of the music industry and the public at large.

While an early death is somewhat of an occupational hazard for a rockstar, there was always something about Lane's death that felt especially tragic to me. Sadly, it was not merely the lingering effect of Cherry Pie and the specter of fleeting fame that haunted Lane. There was something much darker, much more sinister at play. In April 2004, Jani Lane appeared on the “Hollywood’s Monsters of Rock” radio show (92.1 The Wolf, Fremont, Ohio) and revealed something about himself that at the time was not widely reported on. When talking to the radio host, Lane was being questioned about being sued by his former bandmates and he would respond: “I don't care man. I’ve been abused, divorced, raped- I don’t care”. Perhaps some people didn’t know how to take the comment as Lane seems unwell in the interview. Some speculated that perhaps by “rape”, Lane meant “raped” metaphorically, referring to his treatment by the record label. After all, there’s a history of artists making similarly melodramatic and tasteless comparisons to the music industry over similar treatment (looking at you, Kurt Cobain). In any case, the interviewer seemed uncomfortable and moved on without pressing Lane on his comment. But after Lane's death, none other than the Cherry Pie video girl, Bobbi Brown, revealed that Lane was in fact not engaging in hyperbole or metaphor. In her Book, Cherry on Top (2019), Brown (Lane’s x-wife) revealed that near the end of his life while he was semi-homeless and in and out of rehab, Lane broke down crying in front of her and revealed that early in his career, he was sexually assaulted by another famous heavy metal singer of the era.

“At the moment that he admitted [he was drugged and raped by a member of a famous heavy metal band and their manager], it was devastating to hear. He admitted this to me before his death. It was traumatizing to watch him reveal those things and how much it had affected his life up to that point. When we were married, I had no clue. This occurred when he was just starting out on the Strip. So, when I’m hearing all of this with him, I’m crying with him. I was going, ‘We have to do something, we have to say something.’ He was like, ‘No! No!’ It was a humiliation for a man to be in that position.

“It’s so emasculating and humiliating. It would have been humiliating for him. So we couldn’t say anything. Instead, he lived with this anger inside. He felt like he couldn’t say anything because he was a man. He was raised to be a man, not to cry. It was all mind-fucking. I could see how it would have been devastating and humiliating for him to speak up. I got his perspective from it, but at the same time, I felt so hopeless for him, knowing that he felt he couldn’t say anything. And wouldn’t. That affected him greatly his whole life. It was part of the reason he drank. It’s sad, really."- Bobbi Brown, Cherry On Top (2019)

Lane was forced to stay silent about what happened to him for fear of retaliation or being mocked by the industry that had abandoned him. Putting aside how homosexuality was seen at the time of the incident or how men are generally not taken seriously when they come forward about sexual assault, one can only imagine how something like that would have been handled in the early 90s. A Beavis and Butthead skit where Lane is assaulted to the tune of Cherry Pie in a similar manner to the iconic video with Lane playing the role of Bobbi Brown comes to mind. No one would take Lane seriously precisely because he was the “Cherry Pie guy”. And this is something that ate at Lane until he drank himself to death. Lane never named names. He died with the truth still hidden, like so many others in this industry built on silence

Surely they will handle this matter with the sensitivity and care it deserves

The fear, shame, guilt and anger that Jani Lane felt was sadly not a lone example of abuse of power, but a tragically common practice in the entertainment industry. Nearly a decade after the beginning of the #MeToo movement, which promised a reckoning for exactly this kind of abuse, it seems that frustratingly little has changed. The pattern Lane lived through—being built up from obscurity, exploited by an industry that had all the leverage, discarded once the shine wore off, and then mocked so no one would take his pain seriously—has repeated again and again. From Brittany Spears being dismissed as “crazy” to discredit her as she was exploited to Justin Bieber being a punchline for nearly 15 years all while he was almost certainly being abused, this pattern seems to be a feature, not a bug. In fact, it seems that the whole industry would not function without this level of abuse.

Forgive us, Brittany, we knew not what we did

While in the early days of the #MeToo movement there were some high-profile convictions with powerful men like Harvey Weinstein, Dr Luke, Kevin Spacey or Bill Cosby facing public allegations, time has revealed that the punishment of these powerful figures was not the structural change it appeared to be. Many of these men have gone on to be acquitted, had their sentence reduced or the charges dropped. This miscarriage of justice has been facilitated through more conventional legal means to more sinister methods where accusers mysteriously die or recant their testimony. Even when there seems to be overwhelming evidence of guilt, as was the case with Sean “P Diddy” Combs, the verdict is a comparatively light sentence. It seems that #MeToo was less of a reckoning and more of a classic Hollywood publicity stunt—giving a few scapegoats slaps on the wrist while the power structures that facilitated their abuse of that power remain intact. From entertainment to business to politics, escaping justice is something that can be purchased for the right price. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of Jeffery Epstein.

Jeffery Epstein is a figure that is almost too big of a subject to talk about in the scope of this essay. He is the center of conspiracy theories ranging from the plausible to the wildly speculative, but that is perhaps because Epstein has become more than just a man. He has become symbolic of the corruption and moral rot of our leaders. Without even delving into the realm of conspiracy theory and just relying on the publicly available and agreed upon facts, anyone with a conscience will feel a deep level of disgust and anger. Epstein was a known pedophile and abuser who had connections to some of the most powerful and influential people on earth. From sitting or former US presidents to the British Royal Family and countless figures in the business, entertainment and scientific world, Epstein’s circle of friends and confidants reads like a who’s who of the most rich, powerful and connected people in the world. His supposed suicide while in jail for these crimes strains credulity and is an insult to the collective intelligence and dignity of the general public. If it were not so disturbing, it would almost be funny how little effort is being put into the lie—like a child caught with an empty pack of cookies that he insists he didn’t eat. But it isn’t funny. Epstein was obviously killed to silence him on behalf of his many powerful clients, and there has been a bipartisan and systematic effort to maintain this lie.

Couldn’t have happened to a better guy

But Epstein ultimately isn’t really about Epstein. “Jeffery Epstein didn’t kill himself” or “release the Epstein files” have become a kind of cultural shorthand for rage and distrust with the status quo. It’s about what happens to us when we watch, over and over as the worst people imaginable get away with heinous crimes and naked corruption. It’s about the total lack of accountability and the ever-fraying fabric of social trust. There is a growing sentiment in the public that our entire system is built on abuse and exploitation, with the ideals of justice before the law a mere platitude. The average person can no longer expect justice but merely pray to avoid the notice of the predators on top. I have seen—and felt—how this creates a burning anger at first. Anger at a system so broken that open corruption is just expected to be tolerated. And the average person is left behind and forgotten. A rounding error in the human race. And I have seen—and felt—that anger turn into something else, something darker. A cold apathy and resignation. Be it Epstein, political corruption, endless war or the systematic abuse that permeates every aspect of the entertainment industry. More and more, people don’t feel rage, but resignation. If no one is coming to help, why even bother speaking out anymore?

This makes me think back to Jani Lane. Alone in a hotel, poisoned by decades of substance abuse and inescapable memories. According to interviews, from only a few years after the release of Cherry Pie, Lane expressed bitterness at the song that made him famous as well as the industry that pumped him up and then dumped him for the next big thing. “I could shoot myself in the fucking head for writing that song” Lane would later say in a VH1 documentary. He resented the song, his career and his success for the pain it caused him. By the end, he was no longer even able to remember the good times for the shadow that was cast on them by years of pain. In the end, Lane wasn’t just running from the bad memories, he was haunted by the good ones. That’s the part people don’t understand about trauma. The nights on stage with a sold-out crowd screaming every word back at him, the rush of writing something that clicked, the stupid backstage laughter with people he thought were his brothers, all of that stayed with him. But instead of softening the pain, it sharpened it. Because the higher you’ve been, the more it twists the knife when you hit the bottom.

This is where I and many others I speak to find ourselves. Numb and apathetic from years of betrayal and disappointment. It’s not merely dread for the future anymore. It’s resentment for the past, for the gap between what we know now and the memories we used to hold sacred. The joy feels poisoned. Music, film, even the material comforts of the country we grew up in. All of it looks different once you understand the suffering it was built on. And once you see it, you can’t go back to ignorance. After a while, it starts to seep in. That resentment. That creeping, bitter voice in the back of your head that whispers maybe the whole thing was a lie from the start. You stop just being angry at the people who broke the rules, you start hating the things that made you believe in the first place. Music, books, movies, the flag, the church pew, the stories you were raised on. If all that beauty and connection just served as a pretty curtain to hide the rot, then what was it worth? If it made you blind to the evil, if it let you smile and cheer while the wolves fattened themselves, then maybe it was poison all along.

But it isn’t over and we aren’t helpless. We can still resist. There are endless examples in history of people standing up and choosing love and strength over fear and apathy. Moments where people say “No, this stops now. This far, but no further. This ends here”. The fact that we once felt love, hope and meaning that they could exploit can never be taken away. It also means we can find that love, joy and meaning again. The task is not insurmountable, and it has never been more important to stand up to do what’s right. If it were hopeless, the propaganda wouldn’t be necessary. So, still we fight. Still hold the powerful to account, now more than ever. Don’t lay down, don’t let it happen. Raise hell and don’t let those motherfuckers have a moment of peace. But above all, refuse to let them steal the joy that once made life feel like something worth living. Not for their sake, but for ours. Because those songs, stories, and moments mattered. They made us who we are. It’s okay to mourn for what is lost, even necessary. But don’t let them take what made life worth living in the first place. Don’t give up on community, on art, on music, on faith. Because, as they say, a revolution without dancing is not worth having.

So, I turn back to Jani Lane in remembrance. For someone who was hurt, left behind and forgotten. I think about how much he hated Cherry Pie and how that was all he thought he would ever be remembered for. How the pain overshadowed joy. So, I picked another song I hope he would rather have been remembered for. In I Saw Red, a raw acoustic ballad that never topped the charts, Lane sings about a relationship gone bad, about catching a lover in the act of infidelity. The lyrics trace the evolution of the joy and infatuation of a relationship to the depths of despair as that love is lost. I Saw Red isn’t about cheap thrills or easy victories. It’s about betrayal. About the gut-punch of realizing the thing you trusted most has been corrupted. But it’s also about the ache of remembering how good it felt before it all went wrong, and how even in the middle of the hurt, some part of you can’t help but hold onto the beauty that made it worth losing in the first place. That’s what’s worth holding onto. That’s what they can never take away from us. That’s what’s worth fighting for. That’s what Jani Lane showed me. Below are lyrics from I Saw Red that I hope in some small way show that to me, he’s not just “The Cherry Pie Guy”.

Everyday I wake up
I thank God that you are still a part of me
We've opened up the door to which
So many people never find the key
And if the sun should ever fail to send its light
We would burn a thousand candles
And make everything alright