The Dirt (6 page)

All I had in the way of music for the ride was an Aerosmith tape, a Lynyrd Skynyrd tape, and a beat-up boom box. I listened to those cassettes over and over until I arrived in Jerome. I walked off the bus in six-inch platform boots, a gray tweed double-breasted suit, a shag haircut, and fingernail polish. My grandmother’s face turned white.

Away from Seattle and my mother, I didn’t cause any trouble. I worked on the farm, moving irrigation pipe, through the end of the summer. I saved the money I made and actually purchased a guitar—a fake Gibson Les Paul that they were selling in a gun shop for $109.

My priggish aunt Sharon visited the farm a couple of times with her new husband, a record executive in Los Angeles named Don Zimmerman. He was the president of Capitol Records, home of the Beatles and the Sweet, and he began sending me cassettes and rock magazines. One day, after receiving his latest package, it dawned on me: Here I was listening to Peter Frampton in fucking Idaho, while in Los Angeles the Runaways and Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer and the dudes from
Creem
magazine were all partying at the hippest rock clubs imaginable. All this shit was going down over there and I was missing it.

T
hey were charging two bucks for a shot of tequila at the Stone Pony, and I wasn’t going to pay that. We should have been drinking for free that night since the Southern-rock band I was playing in was on the bill. They were originally called Ten-Wheel Drive, but I told them that if they wanted me to join, they’d have to change their name. Now we were Spiders and Cowboys, which, on a scale of one to ten as far as band names go, gets a 4.9.

In North Hollywood, I walked down Burbank Boulevard to Magnolia Liquor to get a half-pint of cheap tequila. It was as cold as a witch’s tit, and I stared at the ground the whole way, thinking about what I could do to teach Spiders and Cowboys about good music. I hadn’t spent my life playing guitar and neglecting my kids, my family, my schoolwork—everything—just so I could end up playing in a southern-rock band.

When I walked into the store, the guy at the counter sneered, “You look like a rock-and-roller type.” I couldn’t tell whether he was complimenting me or making fun of me. I looked up and saw a kid with wild dyed black hair, messy makeup, and leather pants. I think I told him that he looked like a rock and roller, too.

I’m always on the lookout for people I can play with, so I decided to ask him a few questions and see if he had any potential.

He had just moved here and was living with his aunt and uncle, who was a big shot at Capitol Records or something. His name was Frank, he played bass, and he seemed like an all-right guy. But then he said he listened to Aerosmith and Kiss, and I can’t stand Kiss. I never fucking liked them. I instantly crossed him off my list of possible people to play with. I was into good music, like Jeff Beck and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.

fig. 6

“Listen,” I told the kid. “If you want to see a real guitar player, come on down to the Stone Pony after work.”

He was an arrogant kid, and I didn’t think he’d show up. Besides, he only looked to be about seventeen, so I doubted they’d let him in the door. In fact, I forgot all about him until I saw him during the show. I was playing slide guitar with the mike stand and doing all these insane solos, and his jaw just dropped open. Somebody walking by could have stepped on it.

After the gig, we had a few drinks together and talked about the kind of shit that people who’ve drunk too much tequila talk about. I gave him my phone number. I don’t know whether he ever tried to use it, because I went up to Alaska to do some gigs. I didn’t care anyway: He liked Kiss.

M
y uncle Don hooked me up.

He let me drive his powder blue Ford F10 pickup with fat radial tires; he scored me a job at a record store, Music Plus, where the manager would stuff our noses full of cocaine; he took me shopping for bell-bottoms and Capezios at the mall; he brought me Sweet posters to paper my room with. And there was a crazy onslaught of new music everywhere—X, the Dils, the Germs, the Controllers. L.A. was what I’d been looking for, and I was going out of my mind.

It would only be a matter of months before I blew it all and was homeless and unemployed again.

At my uncle’s, I felt like a punk rocker who had been dropped in the middle of a
Leave It to Beaver
rerun. His family led a clean-cut yuppie life in a perfect little house with a perfect little swimming pool. The kids would ride their bicycles outside until Mom called them in for dinner at dusk. They’d take off their shoes and wipe their feet and wash their hands and say grace and put their napkins in their laps. There are those of us who see life as a war and those who see it as a game. This family was neither: They preferred to sit on the side and watch it pass by from a distance.

For me, it was a war: I had angst dripping out of my pores. I wore skintight red pants that laced up the front, Capezios, and makeup. Even when I tried to fit in, I couldn’t. One day my cousin Ricky was kicking a ball around the yard with some friends, and I tried to join them. I just couldn’t do it: I didn’t remember how to kick or throw or stand or anything. I kept trying to motivate them to do something fun, like find some alcohol, run away, rob a bank, anything. I wanted to talk to somebody about why Brian Connolly of the Sweet had bangs that curled under, and I didn’t. They just looked at me like I was from another planet.

Then Ricky asked, “Are you wearing makeup?”

“Yeah,” I told him.

“Men don’t wear makeup,” he said firmly, like it was a law, with his friends backing him up like a jury of the normal.

“Where I come from, they do,” I said, turning on my high heels and running away.

At the mall, I’d see girls with their Farrah Fawcett hairdos shopping at Contempo, and all I could think was, “Where’s my Nancy?” I was Sid Vicious looking for a Nancy Spungen.

Eventually, I just ignored my cousins altogether. I’d sit in my room and play bass through an old amplifier which was half the size of the wall and made for a stereo instead of instruments. When I decided to come to the table for a meal, I wouldn’t apologize or say grace. I’d ask Don things like, “Tell me about the Sweet, man! Do those guys do a lot of drugs?” Then I’d go out to the clubs and come home when I felt like it. If they tried to impose a single house rule on me, I’d tell them to fuck off. I was an arrogant, ungrateful little shit. So they kicked me out, and I left in a rage. I was as mad at them as I was at my mother, and once again found myself alone and blaming everybody but myself.

I found a one-bedroom apartment near Melrose Avenue and conned the landlady into letting me rent it without a deposit. I didn’t pay her a penny for eighteen months, even though I managed to hold onto my job at Music Plus for a little while. The store was heaven—cocaine, pot, and hot chicks coming in all the time. I had a sign near the register: “Bass player looking for band.” People would ask, “Who’s the bass player?” When I told them it was me, they accepted that. They’d tell me about auditions and invite me to gigs.

One of those guys was a rock singer and hairdresser (always a bad combination) named Ron, who needed a place to live. I let him stay with me. He had a bunch of girlfriends, and soon we had a small scene. I met a Valley girl named Alli at Music Plus, and we’d all snort an elephant tranquilizer called Canebenol, drink beer, and hang out at a rock club called the Starwood. Then we’d head back to my cinder-block apartment and fuck and listen to Todd Rundgren’s
Runt
. I had all the free drugs, records, and sex I wanted. And I bought a car, a ’49 Plymouth that cost a hundred dollars and was so shitty that when I went to pick Alli up at her parents’ house, I’d have to drive backward up the hill because the motor couldn’t handle it any other way.

Then I got fired from Music Plus. The manager accused me of stealing money from the till, and I told him to fuck off.

“Fuck you!” he yelled back.

I went into a blind rage, punching him in the face and stomach. I kept yelling, “What are you gonna do?”

There was not a lot he could do: He only had one arm.

The worst part about it is that he was right: I
was
stealing money from the till. I was a volatile kid who did not like to be told off, even when I was wrong.