Tough music business — Steve Grimmett and Nick Bowcott never made any money from Grim Reaper
Tough music business — Steve Grimmett and Nick Bowcott never made any money from Grim Reaper
Ex-Grim Reaper guitarist Nick Bowcott was recently interviewed by Jimmy Kay and Alan Dixon for Canada’s The Metal Voice. Bowcott‘s former Grim Reaper bandmate Steve Grimmett passed away at the age of 62 from heart related complications back on August 15, 2022. Grim Reaper featuring Grimmett on lead vocals and Bowcott on guitar released three studio albums back in the 80’s consisting of See You In Hell (1983), Fear No Evil (1985) and Rock You To Hell (1987).
Grimmett‘s funeral will take place on Wednesday, September 7, 2022 and will be live streamed starting at 9:00 am EST / 2:00 pm UK time. You can contribute to the funeral expenses via a GoFundMe page that was created by Rachel Thomas on behalf of Grimmett‘s wife and now widow Millie Grimmett.
Bowcott spoke about how he was going to assist the Grimmett family with the funeral and aftermath expenses. The guitarist stated (as transcribed by Sleaze Roxx):
“I’ll let something out of the bag now. One of the blessings Covid gave me and I mean this sincerely was it enabled me to do some quarantine jams. I did it with a mutual friend of [Steve Grimmett] and mine called Steve Stein. He’s a great guitar player, great Youtuber and him and Steve [Grimmett] did an album called Grimstein way back when, maybe about 10 years ago. When Covid first hit and the lockdown started, Steve Stein phoned me up and said hey I’m going to do a quarantine jam. He said ‘Would you like to be involved?’ and I went ‘I would love to be involved. What’s the song?’ He said ‘Heaven and Hell’ and my brain immediately started to make excuses as to why I couldn’t do it if it’s going to be an okay singer. I was thinking God, if he tells me someone who I don’t think can match the vocals, I’m gonna have to be busy that day painting. So then he said ‘Good question. Steve‘. I said ‘Steve Grimmett?’ He said, ‘Yeah’ [and] I said ‘I’m in!'”
Bowcott continued: “Yeah, Steve crushed it. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that but it got to like six hundred thousand views, which is quite ridiculous. Steve was a big [David] Coverdale fan so then we went on to do “Still of The Night” [Whitesnake cover], then we did “[The] Number of The Beast” [Iron Maiden cover] which was a lot of fun because we got my good friend Courtney [Cox] from The Iron Maidens played on that as well. and we got Craig Gass, the amazing impersonation comedian to do the intro. And the last one we did — he actually did it magnificently — actually Russ Grimmett, Steve‘s son, did the, made the video. He actually edited it. And then we finished with “Slide It In” — no — “Slow And Easy.” I get Whitesnake confused because of all the double [inaudible] they have but yeah. It was “Slow And Easy” versus “Slide It In.”
My grand plan was once Covid was finally over and done with — sadly, it’s still not over and done with even though it’s not news anymore — I wanted to finish it off with “See You In Hell” [Grim Reaper]. We never got a chance to do that unfortunately so I was talking to Steve Stein after I heard the dreadful news. And I didn’t post anything until I heard it from like the family, like Millie [Grimmett] and Russ. There is so much fake news. I remember years ago, some idiot had posted that Phil Campbell had passed and he was actually in Brazil or somewhere. His family found out via some idiot’s post and he didn’t, he hadn’t passed. It was false. He ruined that family’s life for God knows how many hours until it was proven otherwise. So I am very aware of irresponsible postings so once it was confirmed, then I sort of crafted my — for a loss of better words — my eulogy to Steve, or at least my first one.
And then I was speaking to Steve Stein that evening and we talked about stuff that we could do to help the family. You know because as you correctly pointed out and for those listening, even if it is 50 cents, please, throw something in the GoFundMe because a funeral is extremely, extremely expensive and as you’ve, as Jimmy [Kay] correctly pointed out, there will be an aftermath [of expenses]. You know Steve — we never made any money from Grim Reaper. We got to tour America three times. We got to do things we never thought we’d do. I view that as my payment you know — being on MTV, yadi, yadi, yada. I haven’t bought anything from funds from Grim Reaper but I had an amazing time. I had the time of my life.
But to quote Hunter S. Thompson, the late great gonzo journalist, my favorite quote of his from many great quotes, it goes something like, ‘The music industry is a shallow plastic trench where thieves and dogs roam free, and good men die like dogs. There is also a negative side.’ Which is perfect! ‘Thieves and pimps’ he said. ‘Thieves and pimps run free, good men die like dogs… There is also a negative side.’ And that sums up the industry. Everyone from Elton John down, who is one of the richest guys on the planet, was ripped off blindly by the industry but that’s just what it is. What I’m trying to say here is that everyone might, they might look at Spotify and go, ‘Wow! Grim Reaper got a million streams of such and such.’ Me and Steve haven’t seen a penny from that yet. So and that’s going to be about 30 cents I think.”
The guitarist added: “Going back to the “See You In Hell”, myself and Steve Stein were talking about that, and Steve said ‘It would be kind of cool if we could do that and kind of bolster the GoFundMe stuff, which we knew was going to happen because of concerned friends. Once again, the problem arose of ‘Who do we get to sing it?’ And I had three choices and my first choice was because he’d done stuff with Steve [Grimmett] recently. Just prior to Covid, he did something with Steve. He has a very similar voice and said it was recent and not 30 years ago. I think that’s kind of important. And the other reason is, the first time I heard this man open his voice on a stage when I was playing guitar, I did the exact same thing I told you about when I was playing with Steve [for the first time], I stopped playing.
And at the risk of name dropping, which I’m now going to shamelessly do — I think it was 2000, maybe 2010 or little bit earlier. We did a Dime Bash at NAMM. We’ve always done the Dime Bash at NAMM but we did one in the Hilton Hotel. I turned up early for soundcheck and it was myself, Jason Bittner was from Shadows Fall, now in Overkill, was playing drums. On guitar was this little guy with the goatee — Scott Ian or something from Anthrax. Amazing guy! Amazing player! From some band called Arctic or something [laughs]…. And the bass player, may he also rest in peace, was Paul Gray from Slipknot. And we were playing, I think it was a KISS song or something and then [Tim] “Ripper” [Owens] showed up and grabbed the mic and started singing. And I stopped playing and I’m pretty sure Scott did as well cause it was like ‘Holy Mother…. Where did that come from?’
So I phoned up Ripper and said, ‘Hey, you know we want to do this tribute and hopefully to help raise funds and awareness.’ Because there is so much white noise on social media these days right now, stuff gets lots really quickly. And Ripper — God bless him — agreed. So yeah, Ripper said ‘Yes’ and I’ve already recorded my parts. We’ve dropped the song down to E flat and myself, Steve [Stein] the drummer who already recorded their parts. Russ [Grimmett] is going to edit the video so we’ll do that obviously post funeral but just to keep the celebration of life moving forward. I think that’s really important now to celebrate the life. Yes it is sad. It’s extremely sad we’re all still grieving but I am also grateful. This might sound like an oxymoron but I’m grateful that I’m sad because if I wasn’t, that meant that I didn’t know Steve or didn’t work with him, and to me, that’s an unacceptable alternative.’
You can listen to the interview with Nick Bowcott on The Metal Voice below:
Grim Reaper‘s “Rock You To Hell” video: