Jani Lane, ex-lead singer of Warrant

Published 5:00 am Saturday, August 13, 2011

Jani Lane, the flaxen-haired former lead singer for the heavy metal band Warrant who wrote its 1990 hit “Cherry Pie” and other anthems, was found dead Thursday in a hotel room near his home in Los Angeles. He was 47.

The Los Angeles County coroner’s office said it had not yet determined a cause, but Lane’s manager, Obi Steinman, said the death was alcohol-related. Lane had struggled with alcohol, he said.

Warrant exemplified the hair metal scene of the late 1980s and early ’90s, and Lane was its keening frontman. The band’s first album, “Dirty Rotten Filthy Stinking Rich,” went double platinum after its release in 1989 on the strength of power-chord-heavy tracks like “Down Boys” and saccharine ballads like “Heaven,” both written by Lane.

Warrant is probably best known for the title track on 1990’s “Cherry Pie,” which also went double platinum, selling more than 2 million copies. The song, a campy, misogynistic tale of a sexual liaison interrupted by a livid father, still resonates with fans today, as does its accompanying video featuring a scantily clad model.

Lane, however, had mixed feelings about the song. He wrote it in one night after the president of Columbia Records asked him for a song like Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator.”

“I could shoot myself in the head for writing that song,” he said on the VH1 documentary “Heavy: The Story of Metal,” inserting a bleeped expletive.

But he later said in a radio interview in Kalamazoo, Mich., that he was “happy as a clam to have written a song that is still being played and still dug by so many people.”

Lane was born John Kennedy Oswald on Feb. 1, 1964 in Akron, Ohio. (His parents named him after President John F. Kennedy, undeterred by the fact that they shared the last name of the suspect in the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Lane got his first drum kit at age 6, began playing in clubs at 11 and was performing professionally in a band by 15 while also playing the guitar and piano as well as sports in high school. After high school he moved to Florida, played drums and sang with a cover band. In 1985 he moved to Los Angeles, where he formed a band called Plain Jane and became its lead singer, adopting the name Jani Lane. Plain Jane opened for acts like Guns ‘n’ Roses but never got a record deal. He joined Warrant after its founder, Erik Turner, asked him to rehearse with the band.