Hesperia, California, is a dusty city of fewer than 100,000 people in the Mojave Desert, about a two-hour drive northeast of downtown Los Angeles. Far from the glitz of Hollywood, it’s a city of squat houses with high chain-link fences surrounding dirt yards. The purple snow-capped San Bernardino mountains loom on almost every horizon.
On the week I visited, a big white tent was selling freshly cut Christmas trees in a vacant lot between a Chevron station and a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant. The smell of pine sap hovered over the arid plateau.
I’d come to the High Desert because it’s the home of one of the internet’s most recent - and most reviled - viral stars: Jered Threatin, a hard rock musician who performs simply under the name “Threatin”.
A month earlier, Threatin had become an international laughing stock, after a small army of internet sleuths revealed that he had tried to fake his way to stardom using paid Facebook likes, YouTube views and bots.
He had uploaded deceptively edited film footage that appeared to show him playing to sold-out crowds, lied about a non-existent award and album sales, completely fabricated an entire US tour, and used it all to secure a 10-city tour of Europe and the UK.
As it would turn out, that was all just the tip of the iceberg.
By the end of it, his bandmates had abandoned him, his final stops in France, Italy and Germany were cancelled, and the internet was in a frenzy over the young man’s downfall.
“The guy’s clearly a delusional rich kid,” scolded a commenter on one of the dozens of articles that helped unravel the hoax.
“A simple conman,” read another. “I'm surprised he hasn't gotten the hell kicked out of him yet. I'll do it for free.”
His own brother, Scott, an extreme metal musician still living back in their hometown of Moberly, Missouri, had warned me not to bother coming to California to speak to his now-infamous younger sibling.
“It's all smoke and mirrors with Jered,” he wrote to me via Facebook. “He'll lead you to believe there’s something big to get you to bite... only for you to be let down. Be careful.”
Scott went as far as to wonder if Jered might rent out some kind of party mansion in anticipation of my arrival, to convince me that he really was an international rock star. But my GPS instructions led me to an ordinary-looking, single-storey house on the side of a thunderous four-lane freeway lined with fast-food restaurants and superstores.
When I rang the doorbell, a woman with long reddish-blonde hair and librarian’s glasses answered the door. It was Kelsey, Jered’s wife. I recognised her from her Instagram account, which had briefly gone dark as the internet mob descended upon her, demanding to know her level of complicity in her husband’s scam.
Threatin - whose real name is Jered Eames - stepped into the hallway behind her. The 29-year-old was shorter than I expected, about 5ft 9in (1.75m), wearing the same black leather motorcycle jacket he wore in his promotional photos over a black T-shirt and black trousers.
He has one of those ageless faces that would make you believe he was either 19 or 50, depending on what you were being told. His distinctive hair cascaded down his back.
“Nice to meet you,” he said, extending a pale hand. “I’m Jered. But you know that.”
As we briefly toured the Eames’ immaculate and sparsely decorated home - framed portraits of Jered hung throughout, rows of identical black T-shirts and cargo pants hung in the walk-in wardrobe - I still didn’t know what to expect. Would he be defensive? Apologetic? Was he embarrassed or oblivious?
Over the many hours of conversation that followed, I discovered that he was none of these things. Even all the cunning of internet detectives hadn’t been able to fully uncover the truth behind Jered Threatin, and the strange and sparklingly unique trainwreck that was the Breaking the World Tour.
When I told him point blank that there was no way I could completely trust what he was telling me, he was unperturbed.
“I understand that,” he shrugged. “That’s part of the fascination.”
Weeks earlier, when the immolation of Threatin was in full effect, even the people he had tricked into supporting his disastrous bid for fame had to give him credit - the attempt was impressive in both its intricacy and its audacity.
“This whole thing is just surreal,” said Rob Moore, lead singer of the band Dogsflesh, which opened for Threatin on one of the early tour stops. “He’s basically duped the whole of the music industry. He’s duped everybody, myself included.”
Months before Threatin boarded a plane bound for Heathrow, London, material sent out to venues and prospective support bands claimed that Eames had “signed to SPV Records (Whitesnake, Scorpions, Motorhead)” and that his “last single charted Top 40 in 7 countries”.
“The world rarely sees so much talent wrapped into one person,” read his website, alongside photos of a wan young man with long, straw-coloured hair glowering into the camera.
The site reported sales of more than 55,000 copies of his debut EP. His Facebook page had nearly 40,000 likes and his YouTube channel was filled with clips of Threatin playing to packed arenas of screaming fans.
“I would let Jered Threatin do literally ANYTHING to me!” one of dozens of fan comments gushed.
It was this kind of online fandom that helped convince guitarist Joe Prunera that playing with Threatin might be the kind of break he’d been waiting for.
It began with a Facebook friend request from someone named Lisa Golding. Prunera, a 36-year-old AV technician at the Wynn Las Vegas resort and casino, had moved out West years earlier with aspirations of a career in music, and noticed immediately that Golding was an agent with a company called Aligned Artist Management based in Beverly Hills.
As soon as he approved her request, Golding sent Prunera a message.
“We have a signed hard rock artist on our roster that is looking for a new rhythm guitarist for their upcoming tour in Europe this November,” Golding wrote. “If you are interested I would like to set you up with an audition/meeting with the band in Los Angeles.”
Prunera immediately called the number at the bottom of the message, spoke to Golding, and agreed to make the four-hour drive for the audition. A second employee of Aligned Artist Management named Joe Abrams took care of the logistics via email, writing that while the tour would pay only $300 (£239) in total, all Prunera’s expenses would be covered for the two-week itinerary.
On 21 July, Prunera arrived on the Sunset Boulevard location of SIR Studios. When he texted Golding to tell her he’d arrived, it was Kelsey who met him and walked him back to the rehearsal studio where Jered was waiting.
“He was very down to earth, very nice and easy to get along with,” recalled Prunera. “My initial thought was this is someone I could actually see myself hanging out with.”
At dinner that night, Eames offered Prunera the job. For someone who’d put some of his own rock star dreams on the back burner to make ends meet, it felt like a great opportunity. The fact that he’d never heard of Threatin didn’t bother him.
“I was thinking: ‘OK, he’s a signed artist, he’s got a label behind him, a manager, a promoter.’ I’m thinking that he’s not huge, but he’s on his way,” said Prunera.
Threatin also hired bassist Gavin Carney, a local from outside LA, and Dane Davis, a drummer based in Las Vegas. All three were approached by Golding and Abrams, who’d found their videos on YouTube. None of the band members ever met anyone from Aligned in person, but were nevertheless excited by the opportunity, and the prospect that if Threatin took off, it could become a regular, paying gig.
The quartet started practising in Hesperia every other weekend from July until October, then the Eameses put them up in the guest bedrooms and on their living room sofa for a full week before departure. The band practised non-stop until it was time to leave for the airport in Los Angeles.
“It was exciting, it was cool,” recalled Carney, a 24-year-old car mechanic, who hadn’t travelled much outside of California before. “My first tour ever, we’re going to Europe and the UK - that’s pretty crazy.”
The quartet started practising in Hesperia every other weekend from July until October, then the Eameses put them up in the guest bedrooms and on their living room sofa for a full week before departure. The band practised non-stop until it was time to leave for the airport in Los Angeles.
“It was exciting, it was cool,” recalled Carney, a 24-year-old car mechanic, who hadn’t travelled much outside of California before. “My first tour ever, we’re going to Europe and the UK - that’s pretty crazy.”
At the time, the only thing that struck any of the three hired band members as odd was a surprise announcement that their promised $300 fee was now actually their food budget. Davis says he was upset, knowing that $300 would hardly last a week in an expensive city like London. (Eames disputed this account, saying the band members always knew the money was for per diem.)
“But I’m the kind of person where I’ve given my word that I’m going on this tour, and my word means something to me,” he said. “I didn’t want it to end up screwing over the band.”
After two days of London sightseeing in the hired Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van driven by Kelsey, the band arrived for the first show of the tour at The Underworld in Camden. While the band was backstage taking giddy pre-show selfies, Jon Vyner, The Underworld’s booking manager, was expecting a fairly sizeable crowd for a Thursday night.
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