‘I’m a Bona Fide Rock God’: Nelson Recalls How an In-Store Appearance Led to a Riot (Book Excerpt)

Nelson burst onto the music scene in May 1990 when debut single “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love & Affection” charged onto the Billboard Hot 100, reaching the summit weeks later on the July 7-dated chart. The band — led by twins Matthew and Gunnar Nelson — saw its star continue to climb when its first studio album, After the Rain, arrived a month later, peaking at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 and reaching double-Platinum status by July 1998.

It was a quick transition from unknowns to widespread fame for the duo known for their long, platinum locks and notable family history in entertainment. (Their grandparents are performers Ozzie and Harriet Nelson; dad is late singer Ricky Nelson, known for Hot 100 hits such as “Travelin’ Man” and “Poor Little Fool”; sister Tracy Nelson is an actress; and their uncle is actor Mark Harmon.) But the duo’s popularity proved to be fleeting — sophomore album Because They Can arrived in 1995, but did not chart.

Now, 35 years after the immense success of their debut album, the Nelson twins are ready to tell their story in their new memoir, What Happened to Your Hair?, which arrives Dec. 16 via Permuted Press and Simon & Schuster.

In an exclusive excerpt shared with Billboard, Matthew details from his point of view a planned in-store appearance at Los Angeles’ Sherman Oaks Galleria, where the band expected few people. Instead, thousands showed up, resulting in a riot that led police to shut down the event. (Excerpted from What Happened to Your Hair? by Matthew and Gunnar Nelson © 2025 and reprinted by permission of Permuted Press.)

“The story about the pandemonium at the Sherman Oaks Galleria is important to us because it was our very first indication that our world had shifted overnight in an epic way, and that Nelson wasn’t just going to be successful — it was going to be a phenomenon,” Gunnar tells Billboard of including that moment and its aftermath in the new memoir. “Every aspiring musician dreams of that kind of fandom that they saw in movies like Hard Day’s Night while they’re paying their dues on their way up.

“It’s that sort of fabled payoff that keeps them going through all of the doubt, poverty and setbacks they’ll have to overcome as they put in their 10,000 hours. They keep visions of such things in their bag of power while working their way up in an endless parade of dive clubs, playing to scores of empty rooms,” he continues. :We were no different. Throughout all of those years of making our bones in the L.A. nightclubs from the time we were 12, we dreamed that one day, thousands and thousands of girls would be screaming our names in unison like a jet engine. Only in our case, it actually happened.”

“What blew our minds though was the fact that we were the exact same people we were just a week earlier … when we went to that very same mall to buy underwear for our trip to New York City to guest VJ on MTV. Just a few days earlier, we might as well have been invisible,” Gunnar marvels. “And now the LAPD was having to shut the mall down because the girls were starting to stampede. It was surreal. And it was FANTASTIC. Isn’t it amazing what a little TV exposure can do?”

Read Billboard‘s excerpt from What Happened to Your Hair? below.

Gun grabbed the store’s crappy announcement microphone, and we both tried to calm down the audience. It worked for a second. We thanked them for being there, and between the screams we played them a little bit of our first single on the acoustic guitar held up to one microphone over the PA in the record store. Big mistake. When we were done, the entire place exploded. Every girl there started pushing forward toward the store’s entrance at that moment.

The guys in the band started to look scared. Gunnar was smiling, although looking in his eyes I saw a new look that I would see a lot for another year and a half and through a breakdown or three, and I had a small but foreboding feeling that deep down he was terrified too. I was amazed that there were so many people there to see us because of what they saw on television just that week. I’d remembered being at that very same mall two weeks earlier and being completely overlooked by everybody, including salespeople, when I went to buy socks and underwear. That’s when I was an unknown soldier of rock: unhailed and disposable. A few days later—and I’m a bona fide rock god and one-half of the most famous twin brothers in the world.

Overnight, the world wanted its piece of us and wanted it now. Somehow, I didn’t forget I was the exact same guy as I was two weeks ago. After what I’d been through in my life—what we’d been through, and the ups and downs I’d seen my pop go through—I refused to abandon my “remember thou art mortal” emotional compass…even with every chick in the Valley in front of me wanting to devour me. I thank God for that inner compass as it kept me balanced and (mostly) sane in the years to come, through our success and especially through its demise. The music business, as we lived it, was absolutely not for the faint of heart. It’ll kill you. Ask our dad, the late great Ricky Nelson. The greatest lesson from him I ever learned was instilled by personally witnessing his ups and downs in “the biz.” The hard truth that fame is not love. Pop’s life taught me that fame is a whore—she loves you and makes you feel like a stud until the moment you stop paying her price. Then she’s gone, as if she’d never met you. I watched my dad’s fame rise and fall many times before the business killed him in a plane crash 2,000 miles away from his family one horrible New Year’s Eve. Still, Gunnar and I chose to do the same thing our dad did. Are we insane? Yeah—probably. But the difference (we told ourselves) was we had each other to keep us alive and keep us real through it all. We had, in fact, sworn an oath after Pop’s accident we would never let happen to us what happened to him. The biz wouldn’t get us. Then we soldiered on.

In hindsight, I think in some ways I was more prepared emotionally to deal with instant fame than Gunnar was, at least initially. My emotional breakdown happened years later long after the dust had settled and hope had finally abandoned me. How we each handled superstardom as Nelson, from zeroes to heroes and back again, revealed and solidified our personalities and our symbiotic roles in each other’s journey. To outside spectators I was promoted as the “sensitive twin,” Gunnar the self-proclaimed “shameless one.” True duality. To the fans I was apparently candy-coated; Gunnar was bulletproof. In reality (and I think only really known between the two of us), the opposite was true when we initially became really famous and the lights went down and the cameras shut off. Unseen cracks in the emotional armor eventually became a real problem when the inevitable backlash from haters happened shortly thereafter. Gunnar could let things really get to him—much more than me—and I was truly concerned about him.

At first, life was a blur of activity, and we were unflappable. We were so amazingly busy when “Love and Affection” hit number one. For three months we couldn’t breathe, let alone worry about a backlash. I was always quicker to say “f–k ’em” and move on than Gun when we first caught the fame wave. Gunnar was more sensitive than anyone knew, save me. He wore the hero suit very well. He was unquestionably a champion. Gunnar goes all in, but an idiot A&R executive or a jealous hater could really mess him up. Riding that aforementioned wave with my brother, I saw that a rock star’s ego can be shaken from a mighty height by a single middle finger hovering above a sea of 10,000 raving fans. True story. You do get what you focus on. Don’t get me wrong. Gunnar has strength and courage and all that comes with it, but underneath it all I believe there is a little kid who needs an embrace and an “I love you” just a little more than my little kid does. Fame was a trigger. I’ve always felt he was broken inside by our mom when he was a baby. That woman really did a number on both of us (I’m sure you know that by now), but Gun was always more sensitive and things cut deeper. I fought for him when he hurt, and he fought for me in return.

That’s why God brought us in together. When it really comes down to it, we are there to back each other up. We need each other. We can count on each other. The man upstairs made sure we each had a spare.

That day, with thousands of girls screaming for us, I knew we were in for it. We were gonna need to protect each other more than ever, or we would be in deep trouble. Remember, there is a huge difference between fame and love.

I could see in Gunnar’s eyes in that moment at the Galleria that to him this was a huge wall of love. Yeah, wow, awesome. Bravo! Almost 75 percent of me felt the overwhelming rush too. But somehow inside I also knew it was just fame disguised as love. It was a beautiful lie. As happy as I was at that moment, I was a little bit irritated knowing our “instant” success was Pavlovian. An illusion. The remaining 25 percent of me thought that we were just the special-of-the-day meat in a corporate greed sandwich. That jaded inner postpunk/preteen cynical part of me that will never die thought that it was all completely media-driven horseshit. An illusion. But on the other side—the side that won the battle that day—was a chorus of inner voices screaming, “WHAT A RIDE! ENJOY IT! Why NOT? You’re only twenty-one so why not tear it up already! Fantasy NOW…reality LATER! Isn’t this everything you’ve struggled for, and then some? Re-fucking-lax, Nelson! This is your moment!”

It was admittedly addictive to feel that kind of energy being thrown my way because of the years of sacrifice and hard work we’d put in. So, I talked my inner punk off his high horse and let the moment sink in and basked in the sunshine of it all. And it was glorious. Matt and Gunnar were the conquering twin heroes of Dial MTV and the San Fernando Valley.

First, the Galleria. Next—THE WORLD!

It was euphoric. It was a dream. And like all dreams, you wake up. “The cops are here, and they’re shutting it down,” Geffen rep informed us. “They say if we don’t leave immediately, we will get arrested. They want to keep people from getting killed. They estimate there are now at least seven thousand people trying to see you guys right now. The crowd is getting unruly and refuses to leave.”

Time to go. Well, that was fun while lasted…every bit of one-half hour. And I was right—we were back at the house by noon ordering pizza.

Nelsonmania and its ensuing female tidal wave was launched that day at that mall. And the Sherman Oaks Galleria’s notorious Valley Girls were there first. That was the flashpoint and the true beginning of Nelson’s official establishment as a “chick band.” To put it bluntly—it’s a massive understatement to say we appreciate women. They were the mission, and mission accomplished! All those girls were nuts for us. The same kind of crazy we had seen with our father years earlier. I saw firsthand that women, especially beautiful women used to getting their way, will go to great lengths to get what they want. Without shame. I discovered that day that it was amazing how attractive having a number-one record and being on TV and in magazines make you to the opposite sex. Irresistible, in fact. Gunnar and I were now human catnip for a million kitty cats.

To prove my point: To cap off the day of the first mall riot at the Galleria, that very night we drove the band to the Sunset Strip for a celebration dinner at the Rainbow, a well-known hangout next to the Roxy. We had eaten and were waiting for our cars to be pulled up when I was approached by the reigning Penthouse Pet of the Year. She was spectacular in every way. And she wanted me. How do I know? She walked straight up to me in front of the entire band and made a proclamation.

“I’m taking you home right now, and I’m going to f–k you like you’ve never been f–ked before,” she said.

The band froze wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Now, there are a million reasons why I should have grabbed her by the hand and gotten into her Mercedes and experienced a night of erotic bliss. But before I could stop it, that cynical awkward inner punk that brought a guitar to high school to keep him company had an answer for her.

“You know, I went to school with girls like you who thought they could have anything they wanted that ignored me, and two weeks ago you would never have given me a second look,” I said. “So, I’ll have to say ‘no thank you.’” She froze in astonishment, blinked a few times, then briskly walked away hoping nobody saw the exchange. I admit blowing her off actually felt pretty damn good. The band ripped me up for that, but I couldn’t help it. I had to do it for all the other social rejects out there and to heal old Pali High wounds. That’s not to say there are some nights when I admittedly wonder, What if? Let’s just say I made up for shunning the Penthouse Pet of the Year in the years to come. And how. But I’ll save that for another chapter.

For the next two years, I was rarely in public alone with my twin brother. Our image was iconic and unmistakable. We looked like a pair of hot Swedish chicks. We caused riots almost everywhere we went. If we went out on days off on tour, we went solo. People would see us and say, literally, “Look at that loser trying to look like a Nelson twin!” and move on. But it was a harsh reality that I couldn’t really truly enjoy the ride with my brother or a riot ensued.

Part of the reason Gunnar unraveled emotionally during our eternal tour was the fact we couldn’t hang together. It was the first experience of not being able to have each other’s backs. The final mall riot was a solo act in late 1991. I was in Toms River, New Jersey, visiting my old friend and producer Jack Ponti while we were on a break from the tour. He had a twisted sense of humor that was a lot of fun. He even managed to talk me into a social experiment—walk inside the Ocean County Mall to see how long it took people to recognize me. We placed our bets. Jack brought his dad’s old-school stopwatch. We drove to the mall, and I bought a Mrs. Fields cookie while he timed me from a distance. Five minutes. It started with a single “Oh my GOD!” and built from there. Jack laughed hysterically from his corner. Ten minutes later, the cops arrived and politely asked us to leave as the growing crowd of over 500 was too much for them to handle. That’s when the fun of causing mall riots ended for me. I was really scared. For the first time I truly asked myself, What if this is the way it will always be for me? For us? If this kind of fame is just the beginning, what kind of a life is that for a person? What if it never ends?

Well, it does. I’m living proof that even if you are on the cover of People magazine (and I was) that the world does eventually move on. It doesn’t take long. As a mall riot veteran in 2025, I can honestly tell you that fame, as a whole, is fantastic. I highly recommend the experience. But my advice to those seeking fame or new to stardom: Never forget that fame is not love. That knowledge could save your life. And don’t forget anonymity has its benefits too. Like being able to catch a movie at the local mall on a day off with your twin brother without causing a riot. Or going to the Galleria to buy socks and underwear blissfully unnoticed.