Back at my mom’s house at night, I was busy writing my first song. I was nervous and had nothing at all to gauge my little opus against. No, I would have to play it in front of my newfound friends to see if this song was any good or not. The nurturing atmosphere of that first band made me feel safe sharing my first ever attempt at songwriting, a song called “The Fake.” And it was well received! In fact it ended up being released as a single—though by then we had changed the name of the band to the Vains.
The punk scene in Seattle was all about creating something out of nothing. There was only one bar that booked punk bands, the Gorilla Room. Aside from that, bands had no choice but to do it themselves. Bands rented VFW halls and Oddfellows lodges or played in the basements of communal houses. The houses weren’t squats, they were just places a bunch of punks would rent together. They all had names: Boot Boy House, Fag House, Cleveland. You could go hang out at the houses anytime you wanted.
People didn’t take themselves too seriously in the scene, either. There was a weird sense of humor. And being musically different was rewarded. It didn’t matter whether a band’s playing was any good; if they were striving to do something original, people would go check them out. It made for interesting and sometimes cool music. A band couldn’t just look good and expect people to go to their show.
In the summer of 1979, I played my first real concert, with the Vains. Because we were all underage, together with two other bands we rented a community center attached to a public park. The week before the show Andy and I stole about twenty plastic milk crates from the back of a grocery store and somehow nailed plywood onto them. Now we had a stage for the gig. That alone was pretty damn exciting for a fifteen-year-old kid. Our own stage. Man, now we could play anywhere!
I’ll never forget the buildup to the gig. I borrowed a pair of pointy black Beatle boots for that very first gig, and wore yellow corduroy pants that someone tapered in for me and a black-and-white, button-front bowling shirt that I’d found at the Salvation Army—this was well before there were “vintage” clothing stores.
There were only 80 or 100 people at the show, but the feeling that I was entering a place that I was destined for was overwhelming. When we finally went on stage—standing on our plywood-covered milk crates—I was very aware of everyone staring at me and Chris Crass and Andy … then everything stopped … and then sped up … and stopped again. I was trying to get a handle on what was going on, and that too, just stopped. Everything became a blur … a whirl of emotion and confusion and triumph. I don’t remember why, but I kicked a guy in the head in the front row. The blur of it all started to feel like warm water washing over me. The noise was all-enveloping and comfortable. I could forget about the fact that I had cystic acne on my face and that I was a confused and unfocused teen. I could forget about my awkward childhood and fractured relationship with my dad and all the rest.
Afterward, I didn’t remember playing a gig so much as experiencing a feeling. A moment of perfection. Suddenly all I wanted to do was play music. Day and night. But not everyone wanted to rehearse, or at least not as much as I did, so I tried to stay in multiple bands so I always had people to play with. I started practicing multiple instruments, too, so I could fill any position a band had open.
Guitar, drums, bass, whatever, I’ll join!
I remember meeting Kim Warnick of the Fastbacks one afternoon in 1979 when I was fifteen. She was about five years older than I was, but she knew a friend of mine and gave the two of us a lift home from school one day.
When she dropped us off we all played some music together. I played bass. She mentioned that her band needed a drummer—their drummer, Kurt Bloch, was a much better guitar player than drummer.
“I play drums, too,” I said.
So Kurt switched to his guitar and I joined on drums. From that point on, I was in and out of bands nonstop.
CHAPTER SEVEN
For those first few years in Los Angeles I lived beneath the poverty level. I always maintained a working phone line; I had a car, but no car insurance; of course I didn’t have health insurance.
When you are making minimum wage, a lot of things can be hard to fit into the budget. My body was forced to realize that it would get only one meal a day. At least while I was working at the Black Angus, that meal was a good one—the daily staff meal.
We couldn’t just grab anything we wanted. The owners usually allotted each of us a piece of chicken plus some rice and vegetables. As one of the prep chefs, I did have free rein to prepare the allotted ingredients as I wished. A bunch of my coworkers were from Mexico and Central America, and they taught me how to spice up the simple meal. Under their tutelage, I developed a go-to dish. Sometimes we would eat it every day for weeks on end.
PREP CHEF POLLO
—Skin and rinse chicken breasts, and arrange on broiling pan.
—Depending on thickness of the breasts, grill for approximately five minutes per side under the broiler. During final thirty seconds of broiling on each side, brush on a thick layer of teriyaki sauce.
—In a mixing bowl, toss together diced avocado, julienned jalapeño peppers, and cubed pineapple.
—Cook wild rice together with an ample amount of bread crumbs. This thickens up the rice and adds more gusto and calories to the meal.
—Place chicken breasts on rice and spoon spicy fruit salsa liberally over the top.
To this day, I love to make that dish for family and friends—though now I usually grill the chicken on the barbecue.
For the first three months in L.A. I lived on Prep Chef Pollo. Then suddenly I found myself scrambling to find both food and work: just after Thanksgiving, the Black Angus had to lay me off—I was the last one hired, so the first one to go when things slowed down.
Looking back, of course, I realize I would have qualified for government assistance. I’m not sure why I never applied for unemployment or went to a food bank during the worst periods between various jobs. Part of my reluctance was a legacy of my mom’s philosophy, impressed upon us as kids. Much of her thinking on such issues was informed by living through the Great Depression; she emphasized the fact that there were always people more needy than we were. I believed that resources were scarce, and that they should go to those with kids to feed or those too old or infirm to fend for themselves. It wasn’t that I was too proud, either; I just would have felt somehow dishonest because I knew that if I were really, really bad off, I could have called a brother or sister—I had a last resort. As a matter of fact, my sister Joan did send some money to me once. I didn’t ask her, she just knew I needed it.
My reluctance to avail myself of government services had been reinforced a few years prior, while I was still living in Seattle. One of my bands was on tour, and we were stuck in San Francisco without any money. I hadn’t eaten in a couple of days, and I was so hungry that I went to get emergency food stamps at a municipal aid office. I felt so down standing in that line at the government office. I had made choices that put me in that predicament, whereas the others in line—mothers with children in tow, for instance—seemed faced with situations largely beyond their control. I realized two things at that moment: my own problems paled in comparison to the level of desperation many of the people depending on assistance faced; and I never wanted to reach that level of desperation. This was definitely a motivating factor in my always keeping a job and usually having an apartment when I lived in Hollywood.
After I lost my job at the Black Angus, food joined the list of things that were hard to fit into the budget. I was left with the task of figuring out a cheap way to cook and subsist with only a hot plate, a single pan, and a small refrigerator. That’s when I discovered the wonders of Top Ramen, and after some experimentation I hit upon the perfect modifications to provide a filling meal for about a buck a serving:
HOLLYWOOD (NOODLE) BOWL
—Bring a pot of water to a hard boil.
—Add ramen noodles and a package of frozen mixed vegetables and cook for
three minutes.
—Crack a raw egg into the boiling soup and let cook for an additional thirty seconds.
—Turn off hot plate and stir in powdered flavor packet from the ramen noodles.
Another discovery: for an occasional break from ramen, the low-rent hotel on my block offered a happy hour buffet. If you bought a beer, you could gorge yourself on pig-in-the-blankets, fried mozzarella sticks, and french fries.
In front of the hotel was a pay phone. One evening, walking out with my belly filled with its meal of the day, I saw a guy doing business on the phone—a guy dressed like Johnny Thunders. Taking a second glance, I recognized the guy. It was Izzy Stradlin. We had met a few weeks prior, when we both turned up at the same girl’s place on the same night. It could have been awkward, but we both shrugged it off and started talking about music. Izzy was into Thunders, Hanoi Rocks, Fear—the rough “street” acts I also preferred to the technical polish of metal. He reminded me of some of the cooler figures I had known back home, and I ended up giving him a ride to some other girl’s house later that night. We exchanged phone numbers and that was it. Now here he was on my block.
It turned out Izzy had just moved in across the street. I knew the alley behind Izzy’s place was really bad—full of hookers and drug dealers. Shit went down there all the time. What I didn’t realize was that Izzy’s place was in the back of the building and that he sold heroin out his back window.
Izzy was pretty much strung out the whole time. But he wasn’t sloppy, not nodding out. He was a “maintenance guy,” meaning he did just enough heroin to stave off withdrawal. As we got to know each other, for some reason I was able to look past his smack habit. In part it was because he handled himself well. In part it was because we bonded over a mutual love of Johnny Thunders—alone in L.A., musical touchstones, it seemed, could trump something that months before in a different setting would likely have snuffed out any budding friendship. In part it had to do with his drive and determination.
Generally, I looked at heroin users as a rung below. I was bitter about dope because of the friendships and relationships it had cost me back in Seattle. I saw what the drug did to people and saw that nobody ever got off it. But for some reason I wasn’t bitter toward Izzy. He was different somehow.
During those early months I sometimes had to pawn things to make rent while waiting to get paid. One day I heard a knock at my apartment door. When I opened it, I found two cops.
“Do you own a black B.C. Rich Seagull guitar?” They read out the serial number.
I answered in the affirmative. I had gotten it back in Seattle from Kurt Bloch of the Fastbacks—traded him for it in exchange for another guitar.
“And you pawned it?” They said the name of the shop I regularly used.
Yes, I had.
They then informed me this guitar had been stolen from a music store five years earlier. Pawnshops have to report every item they take in, and my guitar—again, the one I got in Seattle—had raised a red flag.
They began to question me as if I had been the initial burglar. It must have been easy to read from my reaction that I was just the guy left holding the bag. They didn’t arrest me. But they took the B.C. Rich. Great, I had just recovered a piece of stolen gear and transported it back to Los Angeles for them. I felt pretty down that day.
I already had no money and now I also had no guitar.
CHAPTER EIGHT
My childhood experimentation with drugs—speed, coke, LSD, mushrooms—had come to a screeching halt the day in 1981 when I had my first panic attack. I was sixteen.
It came out of nowhere.
Though I had already moved out, I was visiting my mom’s house and taking a shower. Suddenly the floor of the bathtub seemed to drop two feet. I fell.
What’s happening?
Now I could barely breathe.
I think I just went crazy.
Something had broken inside me and I knew it.
I crawled out of the shower, soaking wet. I didn’t want my mom to see me naked, but I needed help. I was terrified.
“Mom! Help!”
My mom came running into the bathroom. She wrapped me in a towel. She managed to get me out of the bathroom and put a pair of sweats on me. She rushed me to the emergency room.
At the ER the doctors determined there was nothing physically wrong with me. They gave me Valium and walked me across the street to see a bearded psychologist. He wanted to talk about what I had gone through. Once the psychologist and I were alone, I revealed to him that I thought the episode was drug-induced—specifically from taking loads of mushrooms and acid. He said he highly doubted it. He drew me a diagram of some sort. He tried to explain.
Despite his dubiousness about my expert medical diagnosis, I cut out the drugs from then on. The timing couldn’t have been more fortuitous. In Seattle, heroin was fast becoming a staple in pretty much everyone’s diet—not just musicians. With beer in hand, I watched it take over the city. The spread of the drug seemed directly related to the recession that hit the city during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president; as jobs disappeared, smack oozed into the vacuum left in people’s lives. Up to 1982, I heard about heroin but rarely saw it. Then suddenly I began to see a lot of older kids starting to use heroin openly. As more and more of my contemporaries lost their jobs, smack spread quickly. It would be everywhere by 1983.
At the time of the panic attack I was living with my girlfriend, Stacy. When she and I had originally hooked up, I was a punk-rock outcast and she had been dating the quarterback of the high school football team. I had been playing drums in a band called the Fartz when we started hanging out together. Early on, Stacy rode her moped to a gig the Fartz played with another band called The Fags. That band’s singer, Upchuck, was a full-on queen who was one of the first people in Seattle to die of AIDS a few years later. He lived in a building with an eclectic group of gays who liked to call their collective residence the Fag House, and that’s where the gig was. There was Stacy, watching me play in the basement of a notoriously debauched punk-rock party house. The cops came to bust up the show. Stacy and I escaped together, running down the street in the rain. We fell in love. For each of us, it was our first real love. I had a loving mom and family, but now I was able to branch off on my own and show another person what I had to offer from my heart.
When Stacy and I got together, guys from her previous boyfriend’s circle began to threaten me. The jocks didn’t like the punks back then and I had on several occasions been beaten up by groups of drunken high school football players and in one case by a gang of Washington Huskies players. These guys probably looked at such encounters as the culmination of a fun night out. For me, although terrifying, these events somehow confirmed that I was into something new and threatening—and I liked the feeling that the way I looked and the music I made threatened others. Their violence toward people like me also made me understand very clearly that the world wasn’t going to be fair—these guys were always much bigger than I was and they ran in packs. Those beatings were also probably a factor in why later I would see red every time I perceived a wrong done to me or someone close to me and would fight at the drop of a dime. Justifiably or not, I saw myself as the protector, and the street-fighting skills I was forced to learn while getting my ass kicked as a teenager meant that I was not reluctant to perform that role with my fists.
I had also stopped going to the same school as Stacy pretty soon after we got together. I switched to an “alternative” high school to make it easier to spend more time playing music. To fulfill the requirements of the alternative school, I had to show up for half an hour every two weeks. It proved too great an obligation, and I got thrown out of that school. That was junior year, and that was it for me and school. Yeah, good riddance, I remember thinking—I was already crafting a new career for myself.
Actually, career may be overstating the case. I didn’t make a living playing music back then—and never thought I would, to be honest. That just wasn’t p
art of my calculations: I assumed I would always have to maintain a job. The most lucrative jobs I had were in construction—one summer I managed to save enough to buy a Marshall combo amp. My first restaurant job was at a place called Huwiler’s. It was popular enough to experience a nightly dinner rush, and even though I was a lowly dishwasher, if the pots and pans weren’t clean, the whole kitchen could get thrown out of whack. I really liked the work, liked being part of something with lots of independent moving parts working toward one goal, liked the characters who made up the staff.
After some odd jobs I had landed a full-time slot at Schumacher’s Bakery. The place took its name from Billy Schumacher, a local celebrity known as a pioneer in the sport of hydroplane racing. In Seattle, hydroplanes were considered godlike chariots, carrying our heroes at ridiculously high speeds across Lake Washington. This particular hero turned out to be an asshole. I was hired to wash dishes. Scraping out cake pans and muffin tins is hard physical work, which was fine. Except that on top of it Schumacher made me wash his cars, dig a drainage ditch, and clean up his dog’s shit. He also treated me—and all the other employees—like garbage. But I couldn’t quit. There weren’t any other jobs out there. And I had to make rent.
Not long after the panic attack I went away for a week with my family. Stacy was still in school, so when I got home I went to meet her after her classes. She came running up and jumped on me, practically tackling me as she told how much she had missed me. There were tears in her eyes. She did this in front of the entire student body as they spilled out at the end of the school day.