Ratt Guitarist Succumbs to AIDS

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Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby died of AIDS yesterday. He was forty-one. Crosby had been living with the HIV virus for seven years and announced that he had AIDS last summer.

Ratt was formed in 1983 by Crosby, singer Stephen Pearcy, guitarist Warren DeMartini, bassist Juan Croucier and drummer Bobby Blotzer. Their first self-titled album was released independently in 1983 and led to a major-label contract with Atlantic Records. In 1984 they released Out of the Cellar, which hit the Top Ten and sold over three million copies. "Round and Round," the first single drawn from the album and MTV staple, reached Number Twelve.

While Ratt were absent from the music scene for most of the Nineties, they reformed to release Collage in 1997 and Ratt in 1999.

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Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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