Rock Star Rebel: The Life and Music of Ratt Guitarist Robbin Crosby 

This is a Re-Post from another RC page that I posted on over a year ago. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-oUgcJLUoUlo.html I played drums for Robbin after he was out of RATT in 90 or 91. The name of the band was Secret Service. I was the second drummer. Robbin was a great down to Earth guy that was very smart and had a lot of courage in ways people really wouldn't understand. Yes he had an addiction. So what, so do many people. However, I am absolutely grateful that after I auditioned that Robbin liked my playing and he ushered me into his band and I learned a lot!! When I auditioned, he turned around and said to me "Round and Round, count it off!!!" Great times and because of my stint with Crosby I was able to get many other gigs with high profile players. I thank him for that. From a horses mouth I can testify that Robbin was not only a great guitar player, he was also a great person and human being with flaws, like we all have. God bless and RIP.......................If anyone wants to reach out to me about my experience and many adventures with Robbin you reach me at robertk6868@yahoo.com

It is said in one article of 2022 that Robbin was high on vodka & drugs during his very last "Ratt" perfomance in Osaka'91 and the other guyz got to know by that moment that he is intravenous addict. The narcotics already cripple his abilities of virtuously guitar playing. He left the band shortly thereafter, after a couple of months. Still the Michael Schenker on guitar couldn't improve the sutiation, and the Ratt disbanded in 1992, a year after Robbin left. He was diagnosed HIV-postitive in 1994. Lead singer Steven Pearcy blamed this, in his 2000's interview, with almost certainity on "dirty needles''. When the band decided to reunite after 1995 in the original line-up, Crosby tried vigorously to be accepted back. He reportedly became fully sober and sold all of his memorabilia and old possessions. But bandmates has been seeing nobody in him now, but a weary, disease-bloated parody on his former energetic self, barely capable of producing his trademark solos and overall technique. They just say, he didnt meet the standarts. Ratt then reunite, but without Robbin Crosby, who, compelled to step back felt himself betrayed by his former friends and colleagues. And what even worse - almost totally abandoned. Then went another coil of his downward spiral, and then another, and another. Sometime in 1999 doctors reported him that his HIV developed into full-blown AIDS. In 1999-2002 he also underwent numerous surgical interventions in need for removal inflammatory fluid from his spine and abdomen. At 6 june of 2002 Crosby died, two monthes short of his 43 birthday from heroin overdose & AIDS-induced pneumonia, having gained, reportedly, over 150 kilos of weight. At the last year of his life he complained to his old childhood friend, that members of Ratt rarely visit him, despite that all of them lived only 30-minutes away.... It's sarcastic, sad irony...but Robbin Crosby has been "The King" for them only when they needed him.

Many people really don't realize the greatness of Rob and Ratt. They shaped the 80s hair metal genre.

My favorite band 80s

Watching the iive performances, Warren's sound was out there and clear to the ear, while Robben cloaked his sound with heavy chorus. It's very noticable if you know what I'm talking about.

We all miss #KingRLC

Ah yes, nothing says 80 's and the Viper Club quite like the classic "Crosby Squeal". Thanks for memories!

Are band was signed to RCA/JIVE and played shows with Ratt in Big Venues of 10K~30K people! Had a blast playing with them!

I had the biggest crush on Robin. We hung out at the Rainbow chatting. He was always so sweet to everyone who approached him, a true gentleman, not some conceited Rock Gods of the 80s. I had no idea he was struggling with a heroin addiction nor his HIV status. He was rather wholesome...a really good looking surfer dude, a virtuoso on guitar, a kind and gentle soul. I met my fiance at the Rainbow and moved to Florida for about 5 years. By the time I got back to L.A. it was the early 90s (I never married my hair farmer/stand up comic/fair weather fiance). Music had taken a turn for the worse, as far as I was concerned. The many little Hollywood live music venues I had managed throughout the early and mid 80s were all gone. The Whiskey a GoGo, The Roxy, The Troubador, Gazzaris were catering to the grunge scene by then. I became a Karaoke Hostess and stuck to singing my favorite Metal and Rockabilly songs (isn't that a polar opposites of musical taste?), while my "customers were singing grunge and Emo songs or tipsy Elvis renditions. I was a teen and a young adult in two of the greatest music eras, the 70s and 80s. The stuff that is blasting out of youngsters open car windows isn't music at all,its noise pollution. I did end up marrying a Master Sergent in the Army (again, my husband is the polar opposite of the kind of guys I dated as a teen and throughout my 20s. We had fertility problems but after 5 years of fertility treatments and 5 years in the adoption system our baby boy was born at the same hospital I was born just as I was turning 50. I am the mother of a long haired, 80s music loving 14 year old son, while his peers (and their parents) sport shaved heads, tattooed necks and face (in the jail house black ink) and listen to that noise, while our son has been exposed to my loves in music and his father's love of 60s rock (the British Invasion), classical, Country Western and New Wave. He sometimes hitches rides home with a school mate's mom or dad. He comes in the house and tells me how much he despises "the loud noise and heavy bass pounding in his ears and the smell of cigarettes or blue raspberry vaping that seems to be the trend with current teens AND their parents. Our son wants to be a professional baseball or football player...he plays both for his high school. We can afford to have him coached by a former L.A. Dodger. He wears two crosses every day around his neck to show others he is a "man of God". I'm so happy we were able to give this boy the love and guidance to become a confident young man that doesnt need liquid courage or drugs of any kind. I truly believe that if Robin's parents got to him sooner and he never had his heart broken by Tawny Kitane, when she chose O.J. Simpson over him, that he would be hear today. But my heart tells me I will be seeing him again in Paradise named Heaven. He's one of the musicians now in the Lord's biggest Rock and Roll band...doing what he loved most...no pain...no heartbreak. R.I.P. Robin, rock on!

Saw them in Austin, late 80's I think. Somewhere on sixth Street. Closed with Round and Round.

Even though they traded off lead, Warren was considered more of the lead and Robbin more rhythm. Also, even though they presented themselves as a "glam" band, I think their sound and music was more traditional Hard Rock in disguise. We "true" rockers dug Ratt while despising Poison... at least publicly lol!

Nikki S Introduced Hero to RC.

Ratt was just rollling.Dude dated Tawney Kittaen

RIP 🤘🏻

Love my KIng!!!!

Still the best hair metal bands....ratt, motley, cinderella and poison

I wouldn’t put him in the same category as king Edward but I did kick it with him a few times at a bar in El Paso tx.

Man was Robin was lucky O.J. didn't stab him to death

Stay in school, don't do drugs....moral of the story.

Dude. Speak into a microphone. Seriously. It's not that hard. I couldn't get through more than half before all of the AI mispronunciations had me tap out. Speaking of tapping, Robbin was known for a lot of things, but a guitar tapping virtuoso ain't one of them. Finally, it was never called 'Hair Metal'. That's a pejorative that was coined decades later. It would be like if we started calling Grunge 'Junkie Metal' or Nu-Metal 'Wigger Metal'. It's an insult. Why would you use an insult in your tribute?