London had been on the LA metal scene for some time, with earlier members leaving to form Mötley Crüe and Guns N’ Roses. They also provided some of the funniest moments in The Decline of Western Civilisation Part II: the Metal Years. They are shown onstage trying to burn a Russian flag – which won’t catch fire – and almost blowing themselves up with fireworks. In the movie, singer Nadir D’Priest described the endearingly hapless combo as “a training school for rock stars – as soon as they leave, they become rock stars”.

“Whatever people say about London,” D’Priest says, “and we have been called a lot, nobody can take it away from us that the band was formed by Nikki Sixx from Mötley Crüe, and the early lineups included Blackie Lawless of WASP, and Slash, Steven Adler and Izzy Stradlin, who went on to form Guns N’ Roses. I got the band’s first record deal when those guys couldn’t get a hand-job from the industry, but they were long gone by the time we did the film.

‘The stupidity wasn’t acted’ – London. Photograph: PR Company Handout

“London were interviewed in the IRS Records offices on Sunset Boulevard, which was next to a modelling agency, so it was fucking amazing. We had blow [cocaine] under the chairs. If anything, the film was sanitised, because this was the era of Tipper Gore and the Parental Advisory sticker. My life was about drugs, vodka and girls. It was a crazy time – we had a lot of fun – but the stupidity wasn’t acted.

“In the film I talked about the size of my dick. It was a fun comment that I didn’t expect to be taken seriously. We had no idea that all the other bands would get so big that their shit wouldn’t stink. I was filmed trying to burn the flag onstage for our song Russian Winter. It wasn’t anything against the Russian people – it was drugs- and alcohol-fuelled silliness – and I didn’t know the flag was fireproof. I still have it – it’s at my mum’s.

‘My life was about drugs, vodka and girls’ … Nadir D’Priest, 2013. Photograph: Imeh Akpanudosen/WireImage

“The band imploded in 1992, after our manager left us in New Orleans with no bus and no money. I worked for the Rolling Stones for three years doing the CD-ROM for the Voodoo Lounge tour. Keith [Richards] was under the impression that I’d remixed them. People had to say: ‘No, Keith, he’s the guy who does the CD-ROM.’ But I got to party with Ronnie Wood.

“I’ve been clean for 19 years, and have done everything from construction to being a stylist, but haven’t given up on London. We’ve done gigs where the crowd have been yelling ‘Fuck you, fags, you suck!’ and we played to 20 people in Arizona, but we had a couple of hundred at the Whiskey the other night. We’ve more or less reactivated the 1989 lineup to work on a new album. I’m not sure if the film helped or hindered us, but it’s been 27 years and I’m talking to you from beside the pool. That’s what happens when you have a wonderful girlfriend who has a shitload of properties.”

‘We’re all still friends, none of us are destitute’ …Seduce in the 80s. Photograph: Robert Laperriere

The Detroit trio were interviewed riding round in fast cars, while young guitarist David Black pondered his distant middle age: “When I’m 45 I’ll be retired and have stocks, bonds and investments. I’ve got long hair, but I’m a businessman.”

“We signed to Miles Copeland’s IRS label in California just as the movie was being made,” Black says, “so our scenes in the movie are actually our first day in LA. Penelope noticed that, being from the Motor City, we were freaking out staring at all the Lamborghinis and Ferraris in LA, so she hired some for our interviews. So we were driving round like stars in cars we didn’t own. Before being interviewed, I asked if I could see what she’d already filmed so I didn’t make an idiot of myself, but I still kinda did. I was just a dumb kid back then.

“We had high hopes, but the band broke up a couple of years later. At that time, everyone wanted a big flamboyant singer like [Mötley Crüe’s] Vince Neil, to look good on MTV, but being a trio with no obvious frontman fucked us.

“I hated California, but ended up living there for 10 years. I bought a sports car, fell in love, and did a lot of work in the movies: post-production, camera guy, shampoo commercials. Whatever I could get a piece of, but I never gave up playing music. I’m now playing in Crud with the singer from Sponge and I play on lots of other people’s records. Chuck [Burns, drummer] plays in Negative Approach, a huge hardcore band. Every once in a while we’ll play a Seduce gig, a couple of thousand people show up and it’s like playing a school reunion. We’re all still friends, none of us are destitute and we’ve all carved a niche for ourselves without having to answer to anybody. I look pretty much the same and I’ve had a fantastic life. I even got a couple of those investments.”

‘In 87, the Sunset Strip was one big party’ … Lizzy Borden. Photograph: Michael Uhll/PR company handout

The Los Angeles quartet were filmed tearing through Steppenwolf’s Born To Be Wild, with the singer (also named Lizzy Borden) declaring: “We want to be the biggest, most outrageous heavy metal band ever … but there’s a million bands out there, playing the clubs for a lifetime.”

“In 87, the Sunset Strip was one big party, seven nights a week,” Borden says, “which would carry on after the gig in some house or other in Hollywood Hills. I thought the film would be about that kinda rock star lifestyle, so I was a bit shocked when it came out, documenting all these crazy people who would give anything to succeed.

“The director filmed everyone answering the question: ‘But what if you don’t make it?’ Nobody could contemplate failure, but we’d already been around for five years and had played gigs, going on after comedians. So I said: ‘If we don’t make it big, we’ll have an amazing time.’

‘The film didn’t do much for our career’ … Borden today. Photograph: Bobby Bank/WireImage

“The film didn’t do much for our career. We got a bit of notoriety and perhaps a little more money from promoters, but we were on the same independent label [Enigma] as Poison and the distributors, Capitol, put all their resources into them. I bumped into the president of Capitol in the elevator once and he said: ‘Your song, Me Against the World, should have been No1.’ I thought: ‘Well, you distributed it!’ It felt like we were running a race that we couldn’t win.

“When Alex [Nelson, bass] and Corey [James Daum, guitar] were killed in car crashes, that knocked the stuffing out of me, but playing the Bang Your Head festival in Germany in 2008 revived my passions. We recently celebrated our 30th anniversary. In that time, we’ve toured with Motörhead, played the Reading festival and had a shared cover of Metal Hammer magazine last December.

“I see kids now with their leather jackets and long hair, totally believing that their band is going to make it, just like we did, but ironically, the film’s cult classic status has given us a whole new audience. I see all these young faces in the crowd and just think: ‘Wow!’”

‘It took me years to get over the humiliation’ … Odin in their prime. Photograph: 1996-98 AccuSoft Inc., All right/PR company handout

The young hopefuls’ scenes in a hot tub, surrounded by female fans, are among the most infamous in the film, not least for singer Randy O’s supersized bravado: “I want to be as big as Zeppelin or the Beatles … go down in history like Jim Morrison or Robert Plant – it’s gonna happen.” It didn’t.

“It was Penelope’s idea to film us in the hot tub, at her house,” says guitarist Jeff Duncan. “She gave us a bunch of beers and the cameras rolled. Even then, I was uneasy with the things being said. When Randy said he wanted to be as big as Robert Plant or else he’d commit suicide, it was a bit much, but he had that attitude: shooting for the moon.

“Regardless of what we said, even as we were being filmed, we were already close to breaking up: I went to the premiere as a member of Armored Saint. When I saw my previous band on screen, I was embarrassed. I was cringing, but I figured that the film would show a couple of times and that would be that. Unfortunately it was the best promotion Odin ever had … but we were no longer a band. We broke up because everybody was getting signed except for us. We made one album that came out in Japan, but never went to Japan. Everyone blamed each other.

“It took me years to get over the humiliation of The Metal Years, but when people started telling me they loved our youthful craziness, I started to I embrace it. I realised that I’d been 22 years old, when LA was a crazy stream of riffs, hairspray, excess and debauchery. Odin were no different to any other young band, only we were filmed.

“I haven’t touched a drink in 26 years, but I look back on Odin fondly. I’ve seen the damage caused by excess and overblown egos and Odin taught me what not to do. We’ve done a couple of reunion shows but Randy doesn’t really sing any more at all. He became a Teamster [trucker] in the movie business and seems pretty happy. I play with [former Angel singer] Frank DiMino when I’m not touring with Armored Saint and have made a living as a musician all these years, which is all I ever wanted ever since I was little. So, in a way, all those crazy dreams came true.”

The Decline of Western Civilization triple set of music documentaries is out now as a DVD and Blu-ray box set.

