Oh, What a Mangled Web We Leave

On Jon Decious' 22nd birthday, producer and pop icon Ric Ocasek took the Nashville bassist and his band, The Pink Spiders, out to dinner in New York with his wife, supermodel Paulina Porizkova. Earlier in the afternoon, during a pre-production session Ocasek sat in on, Decious wandered out into the hallway of the studio at Electric Lady—the famed New York recording studio built by Jimi Hendrix where the band would soon record its high-profile major-label debut—and ran into Mick Jagger and the rest of the Rolling Stones lounging on a couch.

It was already a day he'd never forget. But later that evening, when he attended a Weezer concert, he met not just the band's frontman and songwriter Rivers Cuomo, but also his childhood idol, Guns N' Roses bassist Duff McKagan, who was hanging out backstage. He was flabbergasted.

"I was just like, 'I can die right now,' " he says of the euphoric night. Fortunately, Decious lived to tell the story, although not from a New York or L.A. hot spot. He's in Nashville, a town he's returned to after leaving the band that elevated him to a stratosphere of pop most can hardly fathom.

Today, he sits at Fido coffee shop in Hillsboro Village. It's a far cry from the famed Rainbow Room in Los Angeles, a favorite haunt from his days of living high on a major-label advance. But Decious, youthful and shaggy-haired, with a tan line circling his eyes from his trademark sunglasses, appears relaxed and comfortable—like a mourner who has, at long last, reached the final stage of grief.

Dixie Whiskey, the country-rock band he formed with his fellow former Pink Spider Bob Ferrari, is playing a show at The End in a couple of days. They'll set up their own gear and play to a crowd composed largely of friends. It may not be the throngs of thousands he and Ferrari grew accustomed to on the Warped Tour, but at least they're playing on their own terms. On that same night, the newly rearranged Pink Spiders will arrive at the Time Warner Cable Amphitheatre in Cleveland—where Matt Friction, the singer, guitarist and last remaining original member, will introduce his new drummer and bass player.

This is the story of how the biggest-hyped Nashville band this decade—the group local scenesters love to hate—went from Dumpster-diving to Hollywood high-rolling, only to fall apart with bewildering speed. It's a story that in many ways you've heard before. But because of the changing music industry—where the days of high-stakes gambling on new bands are pretty much history—you may never hear it quite the same way again.

There was always something a little un-Nashville about The Pink Spiders. When MTV viewers caught their first glimpse of the band in 2005, they seemed to have stepped out fully formed from some parallel universe—a universe where sex is currency, money does grow on trees, and the blinding-pink sky rains cocaine and whiskey.

It was, of course, as calculated as the color scheme the band adopted and the attitude they exuded. "We weren't artists," says drummer Bob Ferrari, whose thick glasses and trashy Southern drawl lend him an endearingly cartoonish quality. (His birth name, Robert William Fort V, would have made an almost equally audacious stage name.) "We wanted to be entertainers. Most bands are like Public Enemy. We wanted to be MC Hammer. We wanted to give you a show."

But before the band even imagined rolling with an outrageous Hammer-style entourage, they were just three friends who'd met in Nashville's all-ages club circuit. Friction (né Matt Bell) had already achieved some degree of local celebrity as frontman for Silent Friction, an emo-tinged group that played regularly at The Muse, the dingy coffee shop/rock club on Fourth Avenue where he also booked shows. He had spent some time filling in on guitar for Oliver's Army, the band Ferrari drummed for.

The two formed a fast friendship. In each other, they recognized the potential for an ambitious partnership. They both wanted to make a living playing music, and they both had some ideas about how to go about it. By then, Friction had also developed a reputation for self-motivation—Silent Friction played a show almost every week.

Friction brought the same piss-or-get-off-the-pot mentality to his new project. He and Ferrari left their own bands behind and tapped Decious to shoulder the bass. (A second guitarist, Jamie Mecham, was later ousted from the group.) All they needed was a name, a sound and an image.

They toyed with a handful of names that evoked the slick, provocative color Ferrari insisted upon. The Pink Tigers and The Pink Diablos were both early contenders. But when they found that "pink spider" was Japanese slang for "pussy"—eureka! "We were like, 'yeah,' " says Ferrari. "Gotta keep that name."

The name inspired the band's trademark look: skin-tight clothing, striped shirts in pink, black, and white variations, dark tousled hair and white shades. In promo shots, the band looks like a gang of punk teenagers who just raided the luggage of a French sailor and a mime.