In 1978 a new style of music came
to America from England. It was rude, obnoxious and confrontational and the
band spearheading this new British Invasion was set to tour the South, the
least likely place they’d be welcomed. Anticipating a violent backlash to this
coming culture clash, the band’s record label needed to hire a security team
that could handle any situation that may arise. The man they chose for the job
was Dwayne Warner, a bouncer in some of the toughest biker bars in Los Angeles
County.
Paid To Die novel on Amazon.com
For twenty years after that historic tour, Dwayne’s brother, Neal Warner, co-founder of the L.A. multi-media band The Tooners, insisted Dwayne’s ever expanding and exaggerated stories of life on the road needed to be recorded for posterity. But being a biker, the idea of being perceived as a “rat” was unacceptable and as a professional bodyguard who worked with bands such as Steppenwolf and Van Halen, telling tales about his employers was unprofessional so he adamantly refused to write about his experiences.
Neal, a professional cartoonist and writer, decided an acceptable alternative could be to write Dwayne’s stories in the form of a novel. Names, except for Dwayne’s, would be changed and the “facts” of what happened on the tour would be buried under a mountain of action-adventure movie-style scenes. Dwayne had imagined his memoir being titled Paid To Die and Neal’s band, The Tooners, had already record a CD (Rocktasia) which included the theme song to Paid To Die so that was chosen as the novel’s title.
The novel was written in 1999 and was intended to be an elaborate joke for Dwayne’s eyes only. Stories of experiences shared by the brothers were included in the book knowing that Dwayne would recognize, and hopefully appreciate, this very personal novel which included a lot of something the two brothers had in common; a very sick and twisted sense of humor. However, the joke was ultimately on Neal, the author, when his brother refused to read the novel citing plausible deniability fearing those caricatured in the book might recognize themselves and sue. The joke fell flat and was locked away on a hard drive from another 22 years.
Sometime in the year 2020, fourteen years after the sudden death of Dwayne Warner at age fifty, Neal Warner was self-quarantining in his home when he realized that if he were to die from the Coronavirus pandemic, his finished novel, Paid To Die, the story about his only brother, would die with him. And so, on May 30, 2021, the 65th birthday of the late Dwayne Earl Warner, a limited edition printing of the novel Paid To Die along with a release of the single Paid To Die from the album Rocktasia by The Tooners will be made available for the first time.
It has been about a year since the name for the new James Bond movie, No Time To Die, was announced. The movie was scheduled to premiere in April so that didn't give us, The Tooners, much time to write and record our own theme song to the movie and be able to include it on our latest CD, Theme To A Dream. There are several "theme songs" written over the years for various reasons that are included on that album so a James Bond movie theme seemed to fit right in.
And then the movie's premiere was pushed back one whole year. That means that although Billie Eilish has already written the official opening theme song there is still plenty of room over the movie's ending credits to include The Tooners' song.
So, we are now asking all of you out there, like us, with nothing better to do because we're all shut-ins now, to help us start a "grass roots" campaign to get the producers of the James Bond movies to include The Tooners' No Time To Die in the new movie since there's still time. Russia, if you hear us, please help us get our song noticed by the Powers That Be. Спасибо (Thank you).
