Victor Wettner was born on Aug 6, 1946 to an Italian/gypsy family in North Jersey. His father had just returned from the Pacific war a war hero. He recalled a Japanese proverb on an encampment wall that read "Get busy making babies or get busy dyin.'" A motto Mr. Wettner took to heart as he got six different women pregnant and produced six of the most degenerate bastards this side of the Gateway Arch.

Vic's mother raised him as his dad was out slipping two in the pink and enacting that Japanese proverb he read. Vic's mom was a gypsy from Tanzania who lived in New York City and loved rock n' roll. She used to take young Vic with her every time she slept with various rock groupies like Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Pasty Cline. To this day Vic remembers how passionate a lover Buddy Holly was back then.

Growing up around Rock N' Roll might seem like a glorious gig, but Vic fell into deep drug addiction before he was 15. It started out as just one harmless puff on the Elvis toilet bong back in the 60's. Pot was Vic's gateway drug to Brown Acid and Brown Tar Heroin. If it had the adjective Brown in front of it, Vic snorted, ingested, or injected it. His mother took him to England to get away from the hectic hippies and to clean up him.

While Vic got clean he was singing at Trident Studios when Tim Staffell overheard him. His high operatic voice and flair for the dramatic was perfect for the project Staffell had started with Brian May. Vic went to May's house and later jammed with Staffell and May. After four hours of drinking, ookie cookie, and "guess who is touching me," the trio wrote My Fairy King.

But Vic's drug habit caught up with him around 1973 after celebrating the release of their first album Queen. The '73 Queen tour was a complete disaster with Vic overdosing on brown heroin five times. Queen kicked him out after the fifth overdose and decided to hire Freddie Mercury. They never looked back.



Vic had become friends with Dee Snider after returning to NYC. They bonded over body modification, pink leotards, and the Metro. Three things Vic had to turn to when he ran out of brown tar heroin in the cold winter of 1973. Dee was singing with a band called Mach 1 with guitarist Randy Rhoads. Dee had set up a side band and was looking for an out from Mach 1. He found it in the singing style of Vic.

Rhoads knew of Vic's work in Queen and loved his vocal work and front man stage presence. Despite that, Vic still had to audition for the gig in front of a 16 year old Rhoads in Rhoads' own kitchen. Dee remembers the first meeting between Vic and Randy like this:

"Well there wasn't much said because at the time Rhoads was 16. He was just looking for any excuse to get the pussy to come to him. I don't know much about Vic's love life at the time. He seemed to put the pussy on a pedestal, if you know what I mean. In the 70's, Vic only really loved drugs and Oreos."

Vic and Rhoads formed the skeleton of Quiet Riot that evening and wrote a few spines for Quiet Riot. Sadly, it was only saw a Japanese release. As Quiet Riot toured Japan, Vic had a chance encounter with his father. Vic remembers the night vividly.

"I was doing the TPS reports for the tour after a particular rowdy show at the Nakano Sun Plaza. We had just wrapped up a long seven month tour of Japan and I was going chart crazy. I needed to run a few figures through various pie charts to see if we made any money. Mind you, this was before Microsoft came out with Office products to make my life easier. Anyway, I hear a knock on the tour bus door and in comes a man who looks like Booger from Revenge of the Nerds. He says 'Vic I am your father. I know you son, you are not the lead singer of rock bands. You are a manager. You manage like it is no one business and until you start brown nosing upper management you won't be happy.' It was a weird conversation."

Little did Vic realize, brown was his code word and the seeds had been laid by his father. Vic did one more album with Quiet Riot, but left in 1980 after being replaced by Kevin DuBrow. Quiet Riot never looked back.



After Quiet Riot, Vic moved to Philadelphia and met up with Tom Keifer and Eric Brittingham. Glam metal was about to go full throttle into the mainstream and together the trio formed Cinderella. Unlike his drug habit, Vic couldn't shake the words his father imparted to him in Nakano, Japan. "I won't be happy until I am brown-nosing upper management," he thought sitting on the gray beaches of Ocean City, Maryland. He called up Keifer and Brittingham that night and told him he was quitting Cinderella to pursue a career in business. He recommended a woman he saw working at the Green Grocers in Philadelphia. That man would be Britny Fox. Cinderella never looked back.



After business school, Vic excelled. He did more mainlining of brown nosing than anyone had seen. He worked his way all the way through the plebes just collecting paychecks to that glass ceiling above the middle managers. But the confines of sexuality, rock n' roll, and heroin never held Vic back before and neither was this glass ceiling. He busted through it like it was the hymen of a Japanese school girl. His meteroic rise to management was copied by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

After years of managing others at someone else's company, Vic decided to go back to his true passion, music. Like his friends Gates and Jobs, he wanted to start his own successful company. He started Wettner, INC, but employed his long lost brothers, who he found on MySpace. The company is collection of half wits and assholes. Vic has had more trouble trying to manage the likes of Joe Wettner and Bob Wettner than the cadre of characters he managed over the years. Vic has always looked back.

Thanks to James for the pictures and the memories. If you need to see those pictures close up, just click them.