LOS ANGELES -- Here amid the grit and glamour of Sunset Boulevard, Ty Longley lived an uninhibited, uncensored life that was as hilarious and heartbreaking as any Hollywood script.

The Sharon, Pa., native pursued the same rock 'n' roll dream that each year lures guitarists from garage bands across the country to the bright lights of L.A.

In a sense, he succeeded. He played the kind of kick-over-the-table-and-take-home-the-waitress music that he loved. With practical jokes and a Bart Simpson sense of humor, he made people laugh. And when he ended up touring with the band Great White, "he was in his glory," his father said. "They were one of his hero bands when he was a kid."

But Longley's life was no Disney film.

Working in a cut-throat business, Longley struggled, at one point taking part in pornographic films to help pay the bills. Though he ended up on the road with Great White, his rock heroes were more than a decade removed from their glory days, pulling into blue-collar towns to play tiny clubs on what was essentially a nostalgia tour.

And there was no Hollywood ending for Longley.

He died in a fire sparked by his own band's pyrotechnics. On Feb. 20, Great Wheat played at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, beginning the show with fireworks that ignited cheap soundproofing around the stage. In the inferno that followed, 100 people perished, making it the deadliest fire in Rhode Island history.

While his bandmates escaped, Longley died wearing his guitar, leaving behind a girlfriend, who had been a topless dancer until she'd become pregnant with his child.

Now, with the baby due Aug. 3, Longley's girlfriend is embroiled in a series of disputes with his parents -- the two sides battling over everything from Longley's Web site to his ashes.

But in the months since the fire, those who loved him are finding their own ways to remember Longley -- whether with a high-profile benefit concert on the Sunset Strip or a quiet moment in a Sharon, Pa., cemetery.

Longley's father, J. Patrick Longley, visits his son's grave every day at lunchtime. It's not far from his construction manager's job in Brookfield, Ohio.

"He was a character," Longley's father says. "He did more living in his 31 years than I could do in another 60, or longer."

Patrick Longley says his son didn't drink much but did have a taste for Captain Morgan rum and Coke. So on Easter Sunday, he mixed one up in a plastic mug and headed to the cemetery.

"I chugged a little bit myself," he says, "and poured the rest on his grave."

BORN ON Sept. 4, 1971, and raised in Brookfield, Ty Longley became a headbanger at age 12. It was a Ratt video that hooked him. Even years later, Longley would grow excited recounting details of the video, "Round and Round."

His girlfriend, Heidi M. Peralta, remembers Longley saying, "I was a little kid and I saw [Ratt guitarist] Warren DeMartini coming down through the ceiling. The band was in the attic rocking out and DeMartini came right through the ceiling and he landed on the dining room table. He had ceiling stuff in his hair and he kept playing."

Peralta says it was an epiphany for Longley: "That's what I'm going to do," he said. "I'm going to get out of Ohio. I'm going to be a rock star."

As a teenager, Longley rarely missed an episode of Headbangers Ball, the heavy metal series that debuted on MTV in 1987, his mother says.

To be sure, he had other interests as a kid. With a Pittsburgh Pirates hat on his head, he liked to play baseball. He was on the wrestling team. And he liked to watch the race cars at Sharon Speedway, where his father was a timekeeper.

But his heart was in rock 'n' roll.

His first band was called Chains. His parents agree that it was terrible. His mother, Mary Pat Fredericksen of Valdosta, Ga., remembers watching Chains play at a county fair. "The rain was pouring down," she says. "He was playing his guts out. We were sitting in folding chairs, sinking into the mud. We always cheered him on."

By his junior year in high school, Longley was playing in a band called Naked Alibi. "They were OK," his father says. Then came Typhoon. "They were good," he says.

Longley ended up going to a county vocational-technical school, where he focused on electronics, becoming adept at working with musical equipment. He never went to college. He was focused on his guitar and his music. "He'd stay up all night and practice," his mother recalls.

His favorite book was Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, which espouses "the basic principle that creative expression is the natural direction of life."

"My son lived by that book," his father says.

Longley's music pushed him in the direction of Saginaw, Mich., where he played his first "road gig" in 1990 with a "hotel band" called Scene of the Crime. "I was scared to death," his father says of the road trip. "But he got a kick out of it."

Longley later moved to Boulder, Colo., where he played with a band called Vendetta. "His girlfriend tossed him out," his mother says. "So he rented a truck and drove out to L.A."

There, he moved in with a friend and started playing with a band. He ended up performing with groups like Samantha 7 and 5-Cent Shine. For the last five years, his home was Los Angeles. "That's where the music scene was," his mother says.

LOS ANGELES is a sprawling city of nearly 3.7 million people, but much of the music scene is concentrated on Sunset Boulevard, amid the guitar shops, tattoo parlors and legendary nightclubs.

A pair of singer-promoters -- Happenin' Harry and Skum Love -- size up that scene at 3 in the morning while sitting at a table at Mel's all-night diner.

"There are 10,000 bands in Los Angeles, and they all want to be Limp Bizkit and do all original stuff," says Skum Love, 29, who insists that is his real name. By comparison, he says, there might be 1,000 bands in New Jersey, all wanting to do mostly cover songs.

Happenin' Harry, 34, whose real name is Marc Robert Harrison, was friends with Longley, and Longley played in his band, Happenin' Harry & the Haptones. "At any given time in L.A., there are probably 50,000 guitar players, 25,000 drummers and 20,000 bass players," he says. "That's a lot of people."

With so much competition, why do so many young musicians continue to come? "Because it's 'Hollywood,' it's 'L.A.,' " Skum Love says, using his fingers to signify the quote marks.

Pitfalls await the dreamers, who often live rock-star lifestyles before actually achieving fame. "I know so many bands -- from Idaho or somewhere -- who come out here to be the next big band, and they want to drink everyone under the table," Skum Love says.

Happenin' Harry nods in agreement. "I know so many people who act like rocks stars who aren't, and I know so many rock stars that don't," he says.

But Longley worked hard and took care of himself. At 5-foot-5 and 135 pounds, with long corkscrew-curly hair, he was in good shape. "He used to run all the time," Happenin' Harry says. "He ran as much as I smoked."

"Ty's biggest addiction was his hair gel -- Avena," his girlfriend says. "It's expensive. I'd say, 'What are you talking about? You're in Great White, not Bon Jovi.' "

In a land of air-brushed images and Shaq-sized egos, Longley was considered genuine and unassuming.

"A lot of the mentality of Southern California, of Hollywood, is what you are and who you know -- but not really who you are," says his friend John Finberg, a booking agent. In this city, he said, "hound dogs, hood rats and clingers" are all too common; true friends, all too scarce. But Longley was "a good person," he says.

"So many people come here with so many dreams," says Linda Taylor, a friend of Longley who works for Music Connection magazine in Los Angeles. "Competition is so tough. It can be depressing, and people can get so jaded. But Ty was never like that."

"We are in this business where everyone is trying to look cool -- have the right clothes, the right haircut, the thousand-dollar tattoo," says Anthony "Tiny" Biuso, a friend and former bandmate of Longley's. "But Ty was one of those guys who didn't care about those things."

Longley cared about his music. "There is no other place I'd rather be than on stage, sharing my gift of music with an enthusiastic audience," he said in a Sugarbuzz Magazine interview.

ONE OF the most famous Sunset Strip nightclubs, the Viper Room, is owned by the actor Johnny Depp and noted for the fact that actor River Phoenix collapsed and died of a drug overdose outside the club in 1993.

It's also known as the home of Metal Shop, a band that resurrects the 1980s "hair band" scene each Monday at midnight, playing tongue-in-cheek tribute to the music that catapulted the likes of Ratt, Dokken and Great White.

It was one of Ty Longley's favorite places. "My son loved Metal Shop," his father says.

On a recent Monday night, about 200 people pump their fists and bop their heads as Metal Shop pounds out songs from Quiet Riot and Def Leppard. Wearing oversized wigs, leopard-skin bandanas, ripped fish-net shirts and skin-tight leather pants, the band members prance and prowl around the stage, striking exaggerated poses.

"We are bringing heavy metal back," lead singer Ralph Saenz says amid a swirl of stage smoke and colored spotlights. "We are trying to bring back the days when it was cool to wear tight pants and do covers."

At one point, Saenz jumps into the crowd and seemed to stumble, prompting lead guitarist Russ Parrish to say, "You could totally break a hip doing that, dude."

Biuso says some people come to laugh at Metal Shop, others come because they love the music, and many come for both reasons.

"This town was bred on that music," Biuso says. "In the late '80s, these bands were serious. They ruled the Strip. Bands like Poison, Warrant, Motley Crue, Alice in Chains."

Those days are past, but a core audience remains for 1980s hair-metal groups. "That dream lives on in clubs like the Rainbow and the Roxy," says Peter Wilkinson, contributing editor for Rolling Stone magazine. "Even though that heavy metal era has passed, there are plenty of people trying to recreate it."

Longley, of course, had his own twist to that theme. Biuso tells how he and Longley had planned to launch a tribute band called Heavy Joel. Standing outside the Viper Room, wearing a long black leather jacket, Biuso offers up heavy-metal versions of Billy Joel songs, adding shouts, curses and air-guitar bass notes to the likes of "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant."

LONGLEY MADE people laugh, and those who loved him have his greatest hits in their memories.

His mother recalls the day that she and her son headed out to a local mall with a remote-control fart machine. He put the speaker down his pants, and she stayed nearby with the remote control. He'd sit down next to some people on a bench, and she'd push the button.

"He'd bend over, grab his stomache and apologize," his mother says. "We had a ball. He liked to laugh. That's what I'll miss so much."

His father laughs about the day he was supposed to meet his son at a local Wal-Mart. He was in the middle of the store when he heard his son on the public-address system, using a "Jerky Boys" voice: "Welcome, white-trash Wal-Mart shoppers."

"I came around the corner and said, 'You are going to get thrown out of Wal-Mart,' " his father says. "And he said, 'Oooooh.' "

Longley's humor will live on. Relatives are compiling a calendar of photos showing Longley dropping his pants and "mooning" the camera at landmarks such as Mount Rushmore, the Golden Gate Bridge, even the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam.

Also, after Longley died, Knight Records released a CD, Ty Longley: Regular Guy. On the cover is a photograph of Longley at age 2. His pants are down and he's sitting on a toilet seat at a Lake Erie summer house. He has curly hair, chubby cheeks and a Penthouse magazine in his hands.

WHEN THE Station burned, Adult Video News posted an online story about Longley's death, saying he had "worked in the adult industry in various capacities both behind and in front of the camera." Adult Industry News said Longley "appeared in many movies by Zane Productions under the name Ty Bo."

Longley shared an apartment with Mark Zicari, whose business name is Mark Zane and whose family runs the adult film company Zane Entertainment.

Those who knew him say he got into the porn industry when he was short of money, but that he had not been involved in several years. The Ty Bo films were done in 1999 and 2000.

"It was a way to make money when he was working at a video company and not making much money at the time," says Finberg, Longley's friend.

"He was out in L.A. trying to live his dream," says Peralta, his girlfriend. "He had to do what he had to do."

"It was cool at first," Peralta says, "but then you get burned out, you don't want to do it anymore. He hated it. He didn't want to lose Great White or anything with that in his past. He worried he wouldn't be taken seriously."

His father says, "He felt bad about it when my mother died. He thought that now she would know about it, and that bothered him." So he decided to stop.

FORMED IN Southern California in 1978, Great White achieved fame briefly in the late 1980s, propelled by the Grammy-nominated 1989 hit "Once Bitten, Twice Shy."

"Ah, the '80s," begins the liner notes in the band's 2001 Greatest Hits CD. "Hard rock ruled the Sunset Strip, guys sported longer hair and more makeup than girls . . ."

But grunge music did in the hair bands, and by the time Great White rolled into West Warwick this year, with lead singer Jack Russell and guitarist Mark Kendall remaining from the original lineup, the crowds and record sales had dwindled.

Still, the band could count on a core audience -- usually men in their 30s and 40s -- to show up at small clubs across the country. "They're hard-working, blue-collar people kind of recapturing that moment in time," Rolling Stone's Wilkinson says.

When Longley began playing with Great White in summer of 2000, it was a dream come true. He kept an online journal at www.tylongley.com, and in an entry on Dec. 4, 2002, he talked about playing dueling guitars with Kendall.

"It's been quite a treat playing alongside one of my all-time favorite guitarists," Longley wrote. "I used to go to the concerts and sit right in front of Kendall and take in his great playing for many years. Now, I have to remind myself on stage to play my parts and not get lost in listening to him play."

Longley also loved the road. "Ate dinner at the Space Needle in Seattle," he wrote on Oct. 22, 2002. "Watched the sun rise in Montana. Walked the streets of New York City. Seen the beautiful autumn leaves in Massachusetts. From coast to coast, man, it's all too incredible, too much fun!"

But it wasn't all fun. Finberg says Longley was paid "a pittance" when he first started playing with Great White. He says he tried to negotiate a better deal for Longley but grew frustrated. "He wasn't some hired gun who [stunk]," he says. "Ty was an amazing guitar player."

Peralta says Longley wasn't making much more when he died -- maybe $200 to $300 a show -- and the payments sometimes were late.

"He wasn't asking Bon Jovi bucks. He just wanted enough to get by," Peralta says. "He'd perform before 2,000 people and come home and his car doesn't start and he doesn't have enough for the rent."

Also, Peralta says Paul Woolnough, president of Great White's management company, had been promising to put together a CD of Longley's music for more than a year, but only did so after Longley died.

Woolnough did not return calls seeking comment, and Russell has declined comment. Proceeds from Longley's CD are to go to the Ty Longley Memorial Fund, which is controlled by Longley's parents.

PERALTA HAS raised questions about the memorial fund, saying the only way to ensure that money will get to her unborn child is to donate to a fund that she has established -- the Baby Longley Fund.

Longley's parents have defended the Ty Longley Memorial Fund, saying most of the money will go into a trust fund for the child, while some will go into annual scholarships for aspiring artists near Longley's hometown.

But the fund-raising is just one part of a wider rift between Longley's parents and Peralta. It has gotten to the point that Peralta has filed a complaint with police and both sides have contacted lawyers.

"For some darn reason, she tried to take over everything," Longley's father says. For example, he says Peralta "took over" the tylongley.com Web site, so Longley's parents started a new Web site: tylongley.org.

Peralta says she plans to press charges against Longley's parents in part for "hacking into Ty's Web site." Longley's mother, who is divorced from Longley's father, says they never hacked into the site. She says they made a Web site payment that had been missed and Peralta took back control of the site within days.

For her part, Peralta says Longley's parents did not invite her when they buried a portion of his ashes. Some of his ashes were placed in vials and given to friends and relatives, but the Longleys refused to give her a vial, she says.

Longley's father says the burial took place on short notice and, "I didn't want the Heidi show." As for the ashes, he says, "I'm saying she doesn't deserve them. These are the baby's ashes."

Peralta says she doesn't want Longley's parents to see the child. "There is way too much negative energy from them," she says.

Longley's father says he's talked to a lawyer about that. "We have laws to protect us there -- grandparent visitation rights."

Patrick Longley says his son had been trying to break up with Peralta for seven months before they learned she was pregnant. "It was a Fatal Attraction type of thing," he said. "I think she was a groupie looking for her little rock star."

Peralta bristles at hearing those statements, saying she and Longley were in love and that his father was jealous of their relationship. "We were an unstoppable team," she says. "No one can break that. His parents can try all they want to, but he loved me."

Longley's father points out that Peralta worked as "a topless dancer in Chicago."

"So what?" Peralta says. "Ty had dated porn girls. Ty said 'My parents will be glad that you're just a dancer.' " She says she worked two other part-time jobs, also selling Mary Kay cosmetics and working in the accounts-receivable department in an office. "They were saying I have a terrible lifestyle," she says. "I live in Plainfield, [Ill.], on a cul de sac, in a house that backs right into a cornfield."

Peralta says she met Longley two years ago when he was playing in Chicago with the band Samantha 7. They maintained a long-distance relationship, she says, but they planned to buy a place in L.A.

Peralta says she and Longley were surprised when, in early December, they learned that she was pregnant.

Longley was scared but reassuring, Peralta says. "He said, 'Someone upstairs obviously thinks we are ready for this, so it's our job to prove them right.' "

If it was a boy, Longley wanted to name the baby Acey because "it's very rock 'n' roll," Peralta says. If it's a girl, she favors the name Tylee.

Peralta says Longley wanted to continue touring with Great White until the baby came, skip a few shows and then get back on the road. She says he had a photo of rock singer Mark Slaughter with his wife and two kids, proving that rock stars could also be family men.

"The worst thing is this kid has the best father in the world," Peralta says, "and yet he's taken away."

GREAT WHITE launched its Feb. 20 show at The Station nightclub with the song "Desert Moon" and a burst of pyrotechnics, which quickly ignited the polyurethane packing foam that had been installed as soundproofing around the stage.

The foam burned like gasoline. And as flames began to consume the 50-year-old wooden building, most of the band headed out a nearby stage door.

But Longley leaped off the front of the stage, heading over to his friend William D. Long, manager of one of the opening bands, Trip. Long was standing near the T-shirt table, inside the "greenhouse" area where pool tables were pushed against curved windows, Long says.

"He came to make sure I was OK," Long says. "He grabbed my arm and said, 'Come on, dude, let's get out of here.' "

Long says Longley began tugging him toward the main entrance, which is where most people were heading. Long said, "No way, we'll never make it out." Many people died piled up in that doorway.

They then turned toward the stage door, but the fire had already reached that area. So Long crawled up on a pooltable, turned around, got on all fours and began trying to kick out a window with his "big Harley boots."

It wasn't working, so Long called to Longley: "Give me your guitar -- I'll smash the window." By that time, the lights had gone out. He yelled again, and the smoke choked off his voice. "It took me awhile to realize I'm yelling into emptiness."

Long fell to the ground. The heat was so intense. Something on the ceiling -- tiles or the foam -- was melting, dripping on his back and searing his flesh.

But then he felt some cold air. Someone outside was yelling, "Anyone in there? Come over here." People were pushing and stepping on him. Someone pushed him toward the hole and he tumbled out into the blessedly cold night air.

"Where's Ty? Where's Ty?" people pleaded after he emerged.

"He's right next to me," Long said.

"Where?"

"He was just right there."

Long says he thinks Longley made a run for the stage door, but never made it out. Peralta says Longley's death certificate gave the cause of death as "inhalation of products of combustion and superheated, oxygen-depleted." Investigators are focusing on whether toxic fumes from the fire incapacitated those inside.

Long, 31, spent a month in Rhode Island Hospital before returning home to Las Vegas. "I'm lucky to be alive," he says.

But Long says he feels horrible about Longley's death. He blames himself. But he says Peralta made him feel better, emphasizing that it was Longley's nature to help a friend; If he hadn't grabbed Long's arm, he would have gone to someone else's side -- Bob the soundman, a fan or anybody else he cared for.

"His heart was bigger than his hair," his mother says.