Ex-Wife of Jani Lane Says the Warrant Singer Was Sexually Assaulted by a Member of a Famous Metal Band
Jani Lane had a short and sad life. Although Warrant found a ton of success with their first two albums, Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich (1989) and Cherry Pie (1990), they were one of many glam metal bands whose popularity took a nosedive after the rise of grunge and alternative rock. Lane would later claim that the band’s biggest hit, the stripper anthem title track from Cherry Pie, was a record label-mandated inclusion, and that he had wanted the album to be named after the more “serious” song “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” instead. This didn’t make a lot of sense — “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” takes its name from the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe novel about slavery, but the song is about witnessing a pair of cops disposing of some dead bodies, and has nothing to do with race, which makes the whole track seem gauche. In other words, I’m not convinced a greater focus on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” would have made the world take Lane more seriously as a musician the way he seemed to think it would have.
Still, it was hard not to feel bad for the guy, as he sunk, quite publicly, into a struggle with addiction. If you caught him live at all during the early aughts, what you saw was likely depressing as hell. Lane ultimately died in 2011, at the age of 47, from alcohol intoxication. So it’s pretty clear he struggled with a great deal some heavy, heavy feelings.
Now Lane’s ex-wife, Bobbie Brown — best known for her starring role in the “Cherry Pie” video — has made some shocking claims about Lane’s past that shed light on the demons Jani must have been battling.
During a recent interview to promote her book Cherry on Top: Flirty, Forty-Something, and Funny as F**k, Brown was asked about a claim within that book — specifically, that “there was no #MeToo movement during the time when Jani could have used it the most.” That’s when Brown dropped this bomb:
“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.
“Sad” seems like an understatement, to put it mildly. I suspect that kind of trauma would lead most of us to drink.
It’s understandable that Lane would have felt like he couldn’t speak up; it’s also tragic. One can’t help but wonder how his life would have gone had he felt able to share his pain with others.
If you’ve been assaulted, please, PLEASE, seek out help. We know it’s easier said than done, but there are people out here you can lean on. RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the United States’ largest anti-sexual violence organization, created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE, online.rainn.org) in partnership with more than 1,000 local sexual assault service providers across the country and operates the DoD Safe Helpline for the Department of Defense. They also carry out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. Learn more here.
[via Classic Rock]
