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"I could've done it all in three days, but my girlfriend and I moved him out of his hotel, and he stayed at our house," Freese explains. "He's a good kid. I didn't know anything about him until he landed. By the end of the week, I felt like I had become a big brother to him. ... The last thing I wanted was for the kid to go home and go, 'You know, I guess it was okay. Yeah, I met Maynard, and he was a dick, and then he dropped me off. Thanks.'"
However, many criticisms posted online blasted Freese for accepting money from a teenager. "I was really bummed reading [about it] on the Internet one night, and I felt pretty shitty," Freese says. "I put this thing up for sale; someone bought it. I didn't know if he was 60 or 15."
Freelance photographer and pharmacist Andrew Youssef, 33, of Huntington Beach, purchased a $250 Cheesecake Factory lunch — the first fan package experience ever — with Freese.
"I think [Freese's marketing strategy] is genius. I think people are jealous they didn't think of it first," Youssef says. "With the music industry going the way it is, he's gotten more publicity out of all this than anybody could even dream of buying."
Youssef says he's definitely another satisfied customer: "I think the criticism is definitely unwarranted. Obviously he's doing it for the money a little, but it's not like the people who wanted to pay for it are feeling gypped at all. I don't think you're hearing any complaints from anybody who spent the money."
A few weeks later, Freese finds himself in front of the Indiana Jones Adventure ride at Disneyland with Ferris Al-Sayed, 18, from Carmel, Indiana. The recent high-school graduate is quiet, but he slips in a funny one-liner every now and then. He wears a faded black Nine Inch Nails Ghosts T-shirt with a black button-up over it. It's his first time in California since childhood, and he's being given a tour of Disneyland by Freese as a part of the $5,000 package. Freese has on a baseball cap and sunglasses; a one-strapped Tumi backpack is slung across his chest. And he is wearing a huge smile.
Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard had FedExed Freese a thick envelope a few days earlier, containing the letter to Al-Sayed explaining his favorite song from Since 1972. When Al-Sayed is asked why he chose that particular package, he replies simply, "He [Freese] has to write a song about me and spend a pretty extensive amount of time with me."
Freese and Al-Sayed head toward the Rivers of America and then run into Eric Wilson, the bass player of Sublime. Freese points out the Mark Twain sternwheeler floating just behind them, where he and his little brother would play hide-and-seek while his father and the Disneyland Band played at the bow of the riverboat.
Freese, Al-Sayed, and Wilson pose for photos in front of the Pirate's Lair on Tom Sawyer Island. Al-Sayed cracks a joke about chopping off Sawyer's foot and replacing it with a peg leg. He stands, posing with a thumbs-up and his mouth gaping open.
Freese and Al-Sayed decide to tackle the 45-minute wait at the Haunted Mansion. While in line, the two chat about music, and Freese swaps stories about his rock-star pals such as Twiggy Ramirez and Buckethead, the latter of whom is apparently a huge Disneyland fan. A pregnant woman with a belly ring and two scrunchies in her hair stands just behind them, listening in on their conversation. Al-Sayed reveals he's an aspiring musician himself, about to study music theory at Indiana University or Purdue in the fall.
The group finally reaches its destination inside the Haunted Mansion and is ushered into the room with the "stretching walls." Freese grins and asks, "You want to know something scary? I can recite every single word of this."
He isn't kidding. "Welcome, foolish mortals, to the Haunted Mansion. I am your host — your Ghost Host," he begins, reciting along with the same speech playing overhead. "Your cadaverous pallor betrays an aura of foreboding, almost as though you sense a disquieting metamorphosis. Is this haunted room actually stretching? Or is it your imagination, hmm?" People around him are staring. "And consider this dismaying observation: This chamber has NO windows, and NO doors. Which offers you this chilling challenge: To find a way out!"
Freese lets out a maniacal laugh. "Of course, there's always my way," he finishes.
Freese and Al-Sayed hop into their Doom Buggy and ride off into the dark, where happy haunts materialize. Afterward, Freese reveals that from 1985 through 1987, he probably made out with more teenage girls there than anyone else in the world.
"My whole summers were spent at the Haunted Mansion," he says with a laugh. "Let's put it this way: My first groupie experience was in the Haunted Mansion. I'll go on the record with that."
But that rumor that he got a blow job in '87 on the monorail? Not true, Freese says.
Controversial or not, Freese's flippant marketing tactic has everyone from fans and non-fans to marketing execs and other professional musicians talking.
"Josh is irreverent and perceptive and punk in his music and his marketing," Pearl Jam guitarist Gossard says. "His creative energies are so vast, he's having fun with all aspects of his music and how people get interested in it." (Gossard later retracts this quote, thinking it way too serious, and e-mails a possible alternate: "That little punk-ass bitch is cracking me up. Shit, I love Josh Freese.")
Mark Mothersbaugh, composer, artist, and Devo frontman, also admires his bandmate: "Josh may be the first artist to go beyond talking about it and finally figure out how to sculpt the 'new business model' to really work — letting the Internet and technology complement and enhance his own sense of humor and expression in a truly original and honest way that is ultimately attractive to fans and converts alike, appealing to their own personal interest for interaction," he says. "I'm seriously jealous."
